In terms of mentors in your life, I don’t want to presume anyone, who do you consider your mentor(s)?
My parents were my first mentors. I was influenced by my parents’ support of the underdog. I admired their courageous political attitudes of socialism in the McCarthy age. They were subpoenaed because of their left wing beliefs and their opposition to war and racism. I was also influenced by their amazing music and art collection. They collected and listened to classical, folk and all types of political music and on the walls were prints of Picasso right next to social-realist paintings by one of their friends.
Paul (Taylor) was also definitely one, but there were other influences since my work was so different than his. I was tremendously influenced by dancing in his work, and ‘living it’ from the inside. In terms of style, my work was very different, and the influences go back to paintings, Charlie Chaplin, Ray Charles, a circus physicality, and my dramatic and physical beliefs, sense of humour and politics. I was influenced a lot by Laurel and Hardy and their films and Marcel Marceau and I was definitely influenced by the physicality of dance. I was born to dance, and was unique. I had a very unclassical body. Paul used it to death in the sense that I trained my body to do more than it ever could doing his movements. In that sense he really was a mentor. Now that I look at it, it was a pretty perfect complement to my beginnings with my parents.
What was it like growing up in San Francisco in the Social-Political environment of your parents and their friends?
Their environment of friends who were united in what they believed would make a better world, made it very interesting for a child. I met all sorts of people who were very eccentric. There were parties which were always multi-generational and the picnics we attended were usually to raise money for a cause. The kids were there with the grandparents and there were always folk singers and some kind of folk-art. It was also a very happy existence. I had to go back to that influence when I left Paul to do my own choreography, my work comes more from those early years.
As a child, did you have any inclinations for dance?
As a child I loved to dance, but I didn’t know you could make a living and I didn’t know anyone would ever like you as a dancer.
Do you think that ‘one is born a dancer?’ Do you remember what you were like growing up?
Definitely, by junior high, everyone was writing in my yearbook, “To a wonderful dancer.” I was just living my life and being a cheerleader and making up dances with Margy Jenkins. It’s not what I did, but they were already saying, “To a wonderful dancer.” I have seen wonderful dancers all over the world who didn’t have a profession of it. You always see them, they will take over the dance floor and everyone will back up. Its not about JUST having a profession, it must be a physical need, and they are liberated, or that is when they are most free. They ‘have’ to do it.
I used to go out late and try to see the dancers all over the world, since everyone would come out late. It is a gift and often you can meet them and they will talk to you and ‘they know’. They know you are a younger dancer and you are watching them to learn from them. Its like Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. Just imagine that Miles was listening to Dizzy Gillespie and then Miles plays and Dizzy knows he is good. All around the world I would meet people like that. I wouldn’t just look for it on stage, but socially. It wasn’t just the dancers I loved, it wasn’t elitist like that, it was a force and people have it throughout the world who were never so called “dancers”.
What were your modern dance influences?
The modern dance influences were started by Gloria Unti in my early training and continued with Gertrude Shurr, May O’Donnell, Wishmary Hunt and Don Farnworth in New York city. Gloria Unti put me in her work and allowed me to be creative in it. She picked the movements that I could do well and made a work of art with them instead of forcing me to do something that I wasn’t meant to do. All of my teachers allowed me to believe that I could dance. They were encouraging and they never took my confidence but empowered my will to dance and my physicality.
Is it true that Paul saw you dance at a party?
I saw him come in and I did every dance step that I did as a kid because I was an improviser as a kid. You had to not only do the popular steps but improvise on them. There would always be a period when the group would back up and I would have to dance with an amazing partner. We were on the floor, under the limbo pole, it was absolute modern dance improvisation, no formula, but the form was the song in the room and the ritual. I already had that and the physicality of living in San Francisco, biking or roller skating up and down steep hills, I had a certain physicality. That’s what I did when he walked in, I did all of that. He asked me to take class on Sixth Avenue and a few months later I was in his company.
Was there room for you as a young dancer in the Taylor company to express yourself with your trademarks of politics or humour, even though it was ‘his’ choreography?
Yes. His work ran the gamut from narrative to poetic to intensely macabre and I had all that in my personality. Aureole is so beautiful and lyrical and I had all of that in my personality. When I was relaxed as a child, I could listen to Billie Holliday and cry like a baby one day and be happy like a lark the next day because I loved life and had a sense of humour. I was born to be in some of Paul’s work.
Did it come easy for you right away?
No. I was scared on the stage at first. I was scared to death and paranoid but often by the third performance I would think, ‘Why was I paranoid? I feel so at home.’ I grew as a performer quickly, but I was with Paul for ten years, I did lead an emotional, and perhaps even spiritual life. I learned in his work to rid myself of my demons as a performer and find ecstasy and even deal with political themes on stage.
What did dancing in Paul Taylor’s work give you?
I think I gave to the work but also grew from it. It gave me something to live and breathe. It gave me a place to dance the lessons of my own life as well as to learn what dance has to teach life. You have to eat great food, and you have to live great work. Great work isn’t necessarily the great work of a famous person. There are lots of great works around. Some dancers didn’t become famous, but they were deep artists who learned how to make fine work. An artist has to live, and they live the work and the work lives through them.
Do you remember the first Taylor piece you danced?
“Party Mix” But, opening night I was terrified, I shook through the whole thing. Just like I did in my first rock & roll number with Margy Jenkins at Roosevelt Junior High to Laverne Baker singing ‘Jim Dandy to the rescue’. I shook through the whole thing but I did every step and my jumps were higher than ever before. Something happened and I kept going. Already, that dance hit my spirit and it was fast as hell. I was a slow learner because I had to stand behind everyone because if I was in front, or if I was under pressure I would become insecure. If I was relaxed, I wasn’t really slow at all. My part was certainly built for me because I had a springy, easy jump like a slinky. I could stop in the air for a moment. I felt great in it.
Do you think that the language of the body is articulated differently according to the emotional or psychological place that a person is experiencing? For example, you were telling me how scared you were in the beginning; as you became more comfortable and were more secure, how does that affect the work?
Out of fear comes a sense of ecstasy which leads to exaltation and a sense of peace or calm. At the best moments in performing I found that.
Did you have rituals at all before you performed? Do you still?
There may have been times when I had good-luck charms. I think when someone stole one of my rings I was pleased because nothing dreadful happened. I would go to the theatre hours before a performance and warm-up because my body was so tight. I was thrown into dance after only a couple of years of training, I was thrown on stage. I needed much more for my body to become pliable and feel secure. I was not a cool performer, and I went places when I danced.
Can you tell me what you mean by that comment, ‘you went places when you danced’?
I literally lost myself when I could. I went out there to go to that other plane where you are not conscious and there is no separation between you and the audience. An example of that was Paul Taylor’s Big Bertha. Big Bertha is both a social satire and a dark world. It is about an all-American family at a carnival. The family becomes controlled by the band machine called ‘Big Bertha’. The father rapes the daughter, the mother executes a striptease and their family breaks down. I premiered in it and it was a very dark piece. I went to this very dark place that was in me, on-stage on opening night. Right away I was in the piece dramatically.
Can you talk about the difference dancing Aureole, which is a much lighter piece?
Aureole was made when Paul was still a young man. It is such a beautiful, simple, human, life-affirming piece. Such simple but fine choreography. Aureole means light. It was the other side of my personality. It was the side of my personality that loved bike riding in San Francisco on summer holidays, thinking it would never end. Right away you have to be spiritually there not warming up to be lovely in the last section. Ideally, you are an angel from the beginning. To get into that spell, there is lots of work to do. As you get older you don’t have to rev up for that one, just define what it is right before you go on. You can call it in a second. When you are young , you have to find that physically. Not thinking, but physically, you have to get into that spell, in that trance, so to speak.
Did the fear leave you?
We were in three or four dances a night, usually by the last dance the fear was gone. It often happened when you were so fatigued on tour, you were somewhere else and then you were untouchable.
That must be really wonderful, to give yourself up to the dance like that, or is it terrifying?
No, it’s like a bird in the wind. It’s inevitable like a flowing brook. In a piece like Big Bertha, that night, the dramatic horror, it builds to a horrendous conclusion, utterly unintellectually mapped out. As you get older, you can map it out because you have lived the emotions both on-stage and in your life. You can recall them, you remember where they came from and you go to that unconscious realm. Now I can say ‘Tell me the narrative’. So you can stay cool. You summon it up just before, you may even go into a state where you come off crying but then its gone.
I am very curious about that heightened state that you can feel when you dance. My sense is its very similar to other artistic states when an artist is painting or doing sculpture, or writing. The losing of oneself which in my mind is a very sacred energy when it happens, and its so mysterious.
You are finally relaxed, you aren’t afraid, they aren’t there to judge you, all of your fears come from that. All of a sudden, you don’t feel those fears anymore like an innocent child.
Could you make a separation between Danny, the performer, and Danny, the man?
In the beginning, that’s the winding down process, going out with other dancers and the pressure is off and you have been to the Promised land or hell, you’ve been there, or you have been on the even keel of achieving that purity, whatever the dance is about in your personality. You’ve been there, and now it’s time to wind down. That’s why we rehearsed so much even on the worst nights, it still looked pretty good to the average public. The beauty of performing is that you always get another chance the next day or you go back to class, and you get to start over. When you reach the heights, maybe you fall, the beauty of that is you think ‘Thank God, I fell, now I can get to a more even ground.’
Tell me about your relationships with other dancers when you were in Paul Taylor’s Company?
I had a wonderful friend in the Company, Carolyn Adams. We had a wonderful partnership with Paul Taylor. We loved each other on stage and the audience could see it. We did all the lines of Paul’s movement, we were both musical, and he choose beautiful music, and afterwards, we were very critical and supportive, but critical not just in technical ways. The spirituality of the part was the meat of the matter. When I was dancing with Paul, I was analyzing my work with a brilliant woman, but she was also an organic thinker and spiritual and artistic. I could say what I loved and I could live my life openly. I was lucky because I had a work of art to live in.
I have always had friends who I could talk with in this way.
Was it difficult for you to leave Paul’s Company?
It was almost impossible because I had put myself and physicality so deeply into his work that I felt I had created them.
Can you tell me more about what you learned working and dancing with Paul Taylor?
He let us into his life and we became a family in a sense and in a way he facilitated us becoming ourselves. He was incredibly generous in many respects and that was probably hurtful to him some times. He had a tremendous generosity for me to become me.
How did he do that?
Just by our worlds meeting and he trusted all of us who were strong willed, and would later move on. I think he was very accepting of us as people. He had certainly given us an opportunity to dance, but that’s almost the smallest part of what I am saying. Everyone could say that we loved him. When you look at what we’ve each gone on to do, he facilitated that process. We didn’t know how long it would last. The inevitable took over for all of us to follow our own charts. I was living in this beautiful work because of him. I know the pain I must have been to him, I was spoiled and obnoxious. Somehow we were uniquely drawn together at a crucial time and that’s essential. When I waved good-bye to Paul, if anything, I think there were too many years in which I wished my works would feel like his. But, of course, that was never meant to be.
Do you know the term ‘temenos’? it means ‘sacred ground’
Ruth St. Denis, supposedly, never set foot on the stage without knowing that it was a sacred place. I heard that when I was young but thank God, I didn’t know what it meant then or it would have scared the hell out of me. I never would have gone on. You realize that potential, since the stage is like a cathedral. It’s a wonderful place for all sorts of reality. You could show the worst demons or the most beautiful things. I think it is a very truthful place and yet it could be a sarcastic mean place. Usually, it is also used for great humanitarian beliefs, a belief in the human spirit, and the simplicity that the human spirit is grand.
You bring up a good point, in terms of an artist; in dance asking and certainly the work that you do reflects a lot of our important social ills and political ills. Can you address that a little bit? A lot of dance makers don’t address those things, they are making ‘pretty dance’
I come from parents of great depth, who have pioneering and courageous spirits. So did many of the modern dance pioneers. Their work was so specific, they were primal, they were clear, they were human, they were deep. They were humanist. They weren’t confused, they weren’t making dance with every image thrown out there--for the audience to do what they want with it. They weren’t artists that were victims of their own wild cacaphony of ideas and emotions. Their work was so carved and etched and simple. It’s where I come from. I have made some frightening and happy and playful little dances to the best of my ability within that domain.
Let’s talk about your first work, HIGHER, apt for the times.
Higher was my first dance, choreographed in 1975. It is a sexual acrobatic duet for a man and a woman on a ladder and two chairs to the music of Ray Charles. It is designed like the Kama Sutra, and they are sliding through the ladder and the implications are really wonderful. With this work I went back to my roots. I took all the knowledge and the desire to make a dance from my years with Paul Taylor. Some of my friends thought it was a bit sexist, and others thought it was physically outrageous, but, if you look closely, sometimes she is on the top and sometimes he is on the top - it’s the battle of the sexes. This piece was about sexual relationships in relation to the spirit, and the spirituality of sex. I usually show sex as sex and not as an arabesque. I design it so the audience knows exactly, its as clear as a bell. To make a work like that, whatever your sexuality, you have to love women, you have to love sexuality. I always took a shot of Brandy before Higher so that I was fearless of the perilous feats.
What was the first solo you choreographed?
My first solo, choreographed in 1977, was called, Curious Schools of Theatrical Dancing. It was titled after a book from 1716 by Lambranzi which illustrates theatrical dance steps of the period. It is a paranoiac dance to the death and redemption for a crippled harlequin to music by Francois Couperin. I created the dance by digging deep physically and emotionally into what you can’t intellectually say. It’s in the muscles, it’s visceral. You have to get to the state where that comes out, not what you think you want to choreograph. With Curious Schools of Theatrical Dancing a more advance spiritual journey came to be. In a solo for oneself, it’s not good to set it on someone else. At some point, get another dancer, teach them so you can get a sense of the design and kick them out of the room, otherwise, it becomes their dance.
What does it feel like to perform Curious Schools of Theatrical Dancing?
The absolute paranoia of looking at the audience is draining. If you were to relax in this dance, it would not be a dance to the death. It is a dance you dread more than anything else in the repertoire. It’s terrifying, you are running the whole time. In the beginning, you look at the audience with lights blinding you and say ‘What are you looking at?’ In the end you ignore the audience and reach straight to God and you can barely move and you are absolutely crippled. Anyone who does it feels queasy all day. Each night I did that dance I went to that place inside where I created it, where I had been in my earlier life - running and hiding as a homosexual or feeling the political persecution of my folks. For ten years performing that piece, I had to keep going there.
You couldn’t remove the emotional content after doing it so much?
With certain dances you can but with this one, it doesn’t work. By the time I stopped doing it, I had figured out how to use very little extra energy. I always stepped into the circus ring at the last minute because it would sap your energy. When you are a mature performer, you just click it on and the rest is easy, but by then, you can’t do it physically, so it’s not easy.
How did that dance help you?
It was a tremendous purge. What sometimes happens is a work of art is created that is more evolved spiritually than you were when you created it.
Its interesting that the spiritual component is already there but it takes years to understand that growth or idea.
That’s why it’s important that the dance be done and done and done. It’s not that the overall design isn’t there from the beginning but you don’t quite know what you have until you start directing the drama and realize where it came from in your own life. This happens to all of my work that doesn’t abort. Sometimes you have people from the outside who tell you things and they are right but there are still things to discover from the inside and the dances grow and grow and grow.
I’d like to talk about some of the other works you have choreographed. Can you tell me about the piece; Ces Plaisirs?
In 1985, when I choose to do Collette’s novel, THE PURE AND THE IMPURE, I set the work in a whorehouse using the characters of Collette’s work - prostitutes, predators and a voyeur. It deals with sexual perversion and voyeurism, yes, but it is more than that. It’s a journey of awakening that comes after the suppression of sexuality is released. It is also a sad dance about looking for sex without love. Three female prostitutes are exploited by male predators, one a woman appearing as a man. Once the women are no longer playing sexual games and being exploited they are friends and have found something simple and real. The voyeur is a total reject with no sexual games to play. The voyeur and the predators’ lack of real human companionship is the loneliest aspect of the piece. When the voyeur crawls off, he crawls off with his pants tied around his neck, so it looks like he has hung himself. In certain dances, I have used my own life and my own political point of view. At certain times, I have almost gone into the position of a woman in my work. That to me is not a sexual piece, it’s a spiritual piece.
You told me earlier that you were a healthier person with each dance that you made. I thought it was very telling. When you made that piece did it stem from the beating in Paris, or looking at the sexual roles that people play in life? I read a review of that work and one critic considered it a very sexual piece but as you said, it is more than that.
I loved Collette’s book and the way she not only lived some of these sexual situations but stood away from them and wrote about them and her own life evolved. The very time I was interested in this book, I was beat up in Paris outside a gay bar and kicked and kicked and kicked. I remember that she wrote in her book about one lonely guy who finds the man of his dreams and he takes him home and the man takes off his clothes and the man is a woman. The poor guy kills himself. I don’t have that in my dance, I replaced him with a figure who is beat up. It’s an impeccably clinical piece, like looking in a window with no emotion but it is devastatingly sad. The dance is about myself transcending my own life, step by step, step by step.
You tackled the issue of homosexuality on stage in Nobody’s Business, was it a difficult piece to do?
No, it was no problem at all. I certainly could be secretive in my private life but not on stage, which is odd. I would find humorous or dramatic ways to be specifically clear like a movie. An audience is willing to watch a movie about anything with a tight little script, well-acted and hopefully done with a little ingenuity. I made a joyous celebration of It Ain’t Nobody’s Business What I do before I was free to celebrate in public or before I felt emotionally free. We took the piece everywhere even in small towns because the dance was done with humor and with the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Joe Turner and we had the audience tittering.
What happens when you go into the studio to create a dance? Has your process changed through the years?
In the beginning, it was coming from ‘finding the movement’, and now it comes from having a clear indication of what the dance is about. Now, I have a group of artists who, after several years with me, know most of the repertoire. The more mature dancers are the more in tune with my search and the younger ones use their amazing intuitive physicality, so between the sensing of the elders and the physicality of the younger ones and myself, it is created. There is still that trust and you have to allow things to happen, you have to be looking.
How do you mean that?
You have to be totally open so that you see things out of the corners of your eyes. As the dancers are experimenting and trying to achieve what you want, you can say, ‘That was it.’ when it appeared that you were looking another way. Now I work the palette that way.
Do you use your dreams to create dances?
I had a dream several years ago where my mother and father and I were walking across an old wooden golden gate bridge. They were both elderly and I said, ‘Don’t worry, I will go ahead.’ On the other side a wolf came up from below and grabbed me by the neck and pulled me down, I woke up. I said ‘Damn it, Danny, why did you wake up?’ I woke up because I thought it was real. This was my chance to get torn apart and come back wise like the Shaman but I was afraid. Some years after this dream I made a dance about transformation called Visionary Realm (1996). In the dance, the shaman, guided by animal spirits, transcends opposing forces of male and female and birth and death to journey to the solar realm or beginning and return to earth with a new sense of balance. The Shaman has a physical understanding of androgyny. That related to my own life being attracted to both male and female. The struggle between male and female begins at conception and there is a very slight genetic difference whether you are a male or a female.
Dreams can be incredibly powerful and I often have used them as my guide for my own works. Can you tell me about any other dreams that spoke to you?
I had a dream where several of my friends and I were perched high on a building. My friends flew to the other side but I was scared to death and an old Crone picked me up and flew me across. Then, I had another dream where my friends and I were hanging on cliffs and they just ran lightly along a rope, across the waterfalls. I was too frightened to go with them, but I was glad that there was water below because if there isn’t water the life force is no longer there. There is a Buddhist poem, that says that many of us run back and forth on one side, while others just cross over to transformation. I am interested in that.
Do you meditate?
Going into the studio and thinking about these things is a meditation. My intuitive friend and long-time designer, Mary kerr, gave me a book on rebirthing. I have always been interested in reading books that deal with my own transformation to becoming a happier person. I had a very meditative experience when I was creating Visionary Realm. I walked through a wooded area in a park and saw a dead raccoon that was decomposing and discarded sexual magazines and as I thought about this I came out onto a hill and I lay upside down and I experienced a rebirth.
You have talked about how visual aspects using photos and paintings really helped the process instead of rational thought for some works.
In many of my works I explored artistic influences including Ecce Homo (1977) which was inspired by religious sculptures of Michaelangelo, Bella (1977) which was inspired by the paintings of lovers on horseback by Marc Chagall, Spiritus (1997), inspired by the sculptures of Rodin and Endangered Species (1981) for which I drew my inspiration from the drawings of Kathe Kollwitz, who depicted the poor so magnificently, George Grosz, who satirized decadent power, and Goya’s Disasters of War and also from pictures of the holocaust and Hiroshima in my parents’ library.
I know you often teach your works to children, can you tell me about that, particularly the dances with religious themes. What is that like for you?
Young people aged 13 -17 have been in my work and their parents watched them in some of this work and they were devastated. They said to me; “How could my child know all of that ?” Yes, they do it with an innocence which makes it even more beautiful. They understand what it’s about. They have performed in sections from Ecce Homo which is about religious ecstasy and sin or guilt on the almost nude body. One section, the trio, depicts running in joyous footsteps to God. They have also performed Triptych (1976) which is a trio about abuse. Triptych means three. It is about three desolate characters. It portrays personal physical abuse with political undercurrents. Some viewers see these people as street people, some as refugees between the wars. When I created the dance I went into the studio with some old clothes - some dark and some bright and the characters in the dance peel off their dark clothing to reveal the brightness of their souls. In the sense that ‘The meek shall inherit the Earth’ it is also a very spiritual piece. Both of these dances have been performed by children as well as adult professional dancers. The children bring a beauty and simplicity that is quite remarkable.
Your work really echoes the depths of despair and the heights of ecstasy. Does one come first?
Almost at the same time, it was like when I created Nobody’s Business which was joyous and announced ‘If women want to lick the men, they can do it, and if men want to be femmes, it ain’t nobody’s business.’ The same year I choreographed Endangered Species. Endangered Species is about the extermination of human beings. It was absolutely imperative in those early years, that the depths of despair went with the highest ecstasy. You have to understand those two dimensions. It’s the balance between them as well. I have dealt with the highs and lows as a performer and as a creator and in my own life and I have achieved a balance.
Do you feel that your work is taking you in a new direction now?
Recently I returned to the music of my childhood. I brought Ray Charles into my parent’s home but there was already music there. I grew up hearing Paul Robeson, the great activist, actor and singer, and I think at one point I sat on his knee. Recently, I chose spirituals sung by him that I love, made drawings and I worked from an incident that happened to my father when he was a lawyer defending a black man unjustly accused of raping a white woman. My father was beaten by the authorities and almost killed and the accused man was executed. I created a dance called Hear the Lambs A Cryin’ (1997) with great ease. I loved Woody Guthrie when I was young and the old country and western railroad blues singer , Jimmy Rodgers and the great blues singer, Leadbelly. Some of the modern dance pioneers have touched on this. I have some ideas of my own.
Its interesting and makes sense that your work would be so organic, it would make it more authentic.
For Nobody’s Business, I was out of the closet in the work dancing cheek to cheek with this man. It was tongue in cheek which allowed me to get my message out in spite of the fact that society was not and is not that open about homosexuality. Heterosexual couples go about their lives publicly while others are ostracized from society. Nobody’s Business was out of the closet physically before I was in my own life. I have lived with a man since 1962.
Is he an artist as well?
He was. His name is Germain Pierce. He was a singer and dancer. He’s also a fabulous cook and he is a very wise person. He has given me much of my music over the years and has really been the greatest mentor in my life. He is my life companion.
In 1998 I created Passion Symphony . Although we are not in the dance, in it the male lovers, guided by daemons are joined in a sacred union. “Whom God has joined together, let no man put asumder”
What has been the main philosophy of your work if you could distill it?
I have always tried to make work that was clear, and simple and human so no one would shoot me. I have never been afraid of subject matter. I have always had courage, not always in my personal life like being honest about my sexuality.
Have you ever had a problem performing any of the pieces with strong political or sexual themes?
In most places, no. But once in Toronto at a children’s theatre we performed Nobody’s Business for school children and when we were done, the teacher stood and removed the class. They did not get to see the rest of the performance. The kids had no problem with the dance but the teacher was afraid.
We did National Spirit very early on in Florida at an elementary school. National Spirit is a lighthearted send-up of the same which was choreographed in 1976 to patriotic American anthems and marches and it does imply, in a humourous way that if you follow the leader, you can get killed. We were supposed to do two shows and the principal called us to her office and told us “ I will not allow you to do the second show. It will take me ten years to unteach what you have shown them.” I said “Thank you very much”. She called the police.
I never personally had a problem making or being in any of the works. It’s like being born one way and finding out that people think that there is something wrong with you. You dig in and do what you have to do. It’s who you are, it’s how you see the world. After the fact you hear things and you realize that you can get into trouble for that honesty.
My Company over the years has had a brush or two. It’s like Charlie Chaplin touched certain themes too, and he knew what he was making fun of and he tried to get it across in a humorist way. What can you do? Be as clear as you can and keep doing it.
Do you consider that ‘pain’ has been a teacher in your life as a dancer?
All the years, for example when I improvised that night at the party. I could barely walk the next day. All the years I worked with Paul when he was choreographing and I so wanted to give my all that the next day I would have so many sores on my knees that I couldn’t duplicate the turns. I was willing to go into those spells of daring, and could barely walk the next day. Then, with adrenaline the pain was gone and you would take and hour bath when you got home and in the morning you took another hour bath and it all started again and you had great optimism. If you had to you went into the studio for an hour and a half to stretch and before you knew it you were back to square one, and by the end of the day you couldn’t walk again. But we were young and we kept doing that.
Was there a difference in physical pain when you were choreographing your own work?
No one in their right mind would have created some of the dances I have made. I had to go into those other dramatic states where you don’t feel the pain.
Has there ever been a time when you hurt yourself dancing on stage?
Funny you should mention that. In 1991 I returned to the music of Ray Charles Golden years and choreographed Rite Time, an ecstatic mating ritual with limbo pole. At the climax of the dance, the tribe elevated the dancing demon or wiseman (myself) vertically on the pole. You could say that at the point of personal elevation as a performer I started to experience physical deterioration. I had a simple ecstatic jump on one leg, I was up in ecstasy and ‘rip’ I felt the calf muscle tear. Thank God I was near the point where I would be carried around for the rest of the dance. I gripped my calf muscle so tightly and did the best I could. I told the cast not to walk forward in the bows since I couldn’t walk. When I recovered, I changed all the jumps to the other leg. There I was again and at the same point in the piece, the other calf muscle ripped. I finished and said “Okay, I get it now.”
Could your work be danced by and older dancer, given the physical problems that occur when one dances their entire life?
Artists could dance my work Triptych at sixty. In my work I need many ages of humanity to give it depth - the young war horses who can navigate the whole repertoire as well as the mature dancers who enrich the repertoire with the content of their lives. Many so called non-professional dancers, children and adults have been able to receive and give to the work.
What are your thoughts about the future of dance as we approach the year 2000 with so many cutbacks in the arts?
I haven’t a clue. It does scare me but after a point you don’t worry about it. I am a director of a Company, an incredibly fortunate one who has received tremendous support from the Arts Councils and audiences in Canada. It takes tenacity to survive. It is funny that at the point when we have the most to give, the funding is slipping away. What I can’t do any more is worry about it. It must be balanced against the odds. It’s not that different from becoming an artist to beat the odds and survive.
What about the people in the Company?
Now with my dancers, we all came together organically because there was a need to do something, to say something. In that doing a body of work was created. This work has nourished us as artists and I hope we have nourished our community as well. The dancers are the co-creators of the work, they share in the journey. They are the blood and memory of the work and they pass it on to the next generation.
Tell me about the vision of your Company for the future
The Company’s main functions will always be the creation, preservation and dissemination of dance. The vision of the Company is based on the values inherent in the work. My dances, for the most part, are journeys. The solos are personal journeys confronting death and the group works confront societal destruction or transformation. In Visionary Realm, the Shaman journeys to the creative source, returning to the community to share. This is what we now do. My life is in this work and I hope that it is meaningful to other people’s lives. As a choreographer, I have been transformed by the act of creation. Now, I have started to use my Company to showcase modern dance gems by pioneering artists. Over the years we have had many requests by non-professionals and professionals to study and perform the work.
What is your vision for the future, Danny?
When I was in his Company, I was in Paul Taylor’s web. I learned in those confines. Then, I came to Canada and started to spin a web of my own with the dancers. I thought I was alone but the web was spun the minute I was born. I am part of a universal garden that has been growing the whole time. I was watered there and came here and was watered and now we are part of nuturing a new generation of dancers.
In the late 1980’s I was on a beach in Vancouver. I saw a freighter sailing from the protected bay into the ocean. This reminded me of a trip to Asia with my parents in 1960 and sailing underneath the Golden Gate bridge into the rough waters of the Pacific. I cried like a baby because I had come full circle and felt my life was over. I could remember the moments of joy, sadness, and calm. I had no idea in 1960 that any of this was going to happen to me, that I would have a calling, such a difficult profession and an inspired life. I then realized that the freighter was not a metaphor that my life was over but a symbol of rebirth and that I would sail again. |
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