Connecting my present to the foundations of my past...
Prior to performing at Montpellier Danse Festival, Stephen participated in an interview with Wilson Le Personnic, digging into his thoughts about Bloodlines and the works being presented on the program. The English translation is below:
You present in Montpellier Danse a 4-piece program: Tread by Merce Cunningham, Yvonne Rainer's Trio A With Flags, Steve Paxton's Goldberg Variations and your latest creation American Landscapes. What do these 4 pieces have in common? The historical works by Cunningham, Paxton and Rainer frame historical moments that created a context for my artistry to grow in. This is the foundation of Bloodlines and is a way to connect my present with the foundations of my past.
Tread and Trio A With Flags was created in the 70s, Goldberg Variations in the 80s. What do these years represent in the history of dance in the United States? What do these pieces represent especially in the history of American dance? These works represent a total redefinition of what dance can be, how movement can be generated, and what the underpinnings of composition can be on a stage that is not dominated by narrative and meaning. I will say particularly for Trio A with Flags, it was a complete draining of inflection and meaning and compositional skill that were previous prerequisites for what we thought a good dance was. Goldberg Variations, and to some extent, Tread, also present a relaxed kind of compositional. Particularly with Goldberg, an improvisational composition based on simple themes involving unexplored terrain in the body, particularly the use of the spine.
What is the story of Goldberg Variations? Why did you choose to put this particular Steve Paxton piece together? I met Steve as a noice dancer when I was 18 years old at a time when he was just inventing contact improvisation. I have seen his body of work first hand over the course of my career and he was in fact one of my first important teachers. Goldberg Variations is an improvisational work as performed by Paxton and my proposition to him was that I would memorize one of his improvisations as a kind portrait to give back to him. I felt that my unique position as an early student of his while he was brokering this kind of vocabulary put me in a very unique position to do this kind of work in honor of him. Many, many artists can employ his principles, but I felt that with my historical relation with him, and the talent of my current dancer Nicholas Sciscione, we could come very close to a deep portrayal of the essence of Paxton’s dancing.
How did the re-creation take place? Did Steve Paxton intervene in the transmission process? What does Steve Paxton think of the covers of these old pieces? Steve sent me a particular evening performance of the Goldberg Variations from 1992. With my dancers, I set out to reproduce an excerpt as closely as possible to what we saw in that performance. We then began to send rehearsal videos to Paxton for his feedback. He made various recommendations and suggestions of ways to investigate other kinds of movement that might inflect what he was seeing in our work. For example, he suggested several rehearsals with eyes closed, as well as working with dancers of different abilities and physical limitations to give us a new perspective.
What is the story of Trio A With Flags? Why did you choose to put Yvonne Rainer's piece together, in particular? Yvonne and Steve were friends and colleagues and their work informed each other greatly during their careers. I grew up with a close working relationship with both of them and they were stripping down movement in very similar ways, all parallel to the Minimalist movement of visual arts in New York in the 70’s. Strip work down to its essence the fact of its motion devoid of meaning, inflection, and preconceived destination!
How did the re-creation take place? Did Yvonne Rainer participate in the transmission process? What does Yvonne Rainer think of the covers of these old pieces? I’ve known Yvonne socially and professionally since I began dancing in New York in 1978. I was the first male dancer of the Trisha Brown Company and Yvonne and Trisha were very good friends as well. I got a lot of social time with Yvonne who was then making films and not so much choreography. It was a great pleasure to have her in the room to give us advice about Trio A while having one of her dancers do the heavy lifting in the transmission process. There were times they disagreed about various things, and that was all the more fun. Restaging a work is not an exact science, and part of the beauty of the experience is that everyone sees everything from a different point of view, but somehow we arrive at an agreement of what the work is.
Your company has already taken back several pieces of Merce Cunningham. How is Tread a special piece? What does Tread represent in Merce Cunningham's work? Tread represents a very special moment in Merce’s history. It is very playful and very involved with the interaction and lifting and hauling of the dancers through the space. While there is certainly an element of what we know as “Cunningham dancing,” what makes this unusual is its sense of interpersonal play between the dancers. It also has an incredible set by Bruce Nauman, which is a row of oscillating fans between the dance and the audience creating a barrier which the audience must look through to see the dance.
In what way do you think Merce Cunningham's dance is contemporary, current, today? Merce decentralized the stage, giving the body an infinite number of centers and facings. We are all still dealing with the repercussions of that kind of decentralization both on the stage and in contemporary culture.
Why do you think contemporary choreographers are so interested in today's notions of dance history, tradition, heritage? I can’t speak for other choreographers, but I created the Bloodlines project 5 years ago because a generation of great thinkers was passing away. Revolutionary artists that challenged the possibilities of what dance can be and how we perceive it. I felt that it was crucial to begin restaging their works while there were still dancers who had touched these masters personally so that transmission could be body to body. Going back to some of these great landmark works in the history of postmodernism is like re-reading great works of literature, but this time I get to do it with a lifetime of experience under my belt. Understanding where we came from evolved has become incredibly important to me in understanding where I am today.
How does American Landscapes enter into dialogue with this dance story? The assumptions and basis for my compositional field in American Landscapes have been looked at through the lens of historical works I have been restaging through Bloodlines over the last 5 years. Because I see American Landscapes as a series of conversations with American culture about how space is shaped, reexamining my compositional techniques, many of them brokered through the lens of the Judson artist has been a crucial element of the works creation.
http://www.maculture.fr/entretiens/stephen-petronio-bloodlines/
Photo by Ian Douglas of Stephen Petronio Company in Tread (1970) by Merce Cunningham.
