NEW YORK, NY.- Since the inception of Harlem Stage’s dance series E-Moves 25 years ago, that “E” has stood for several categories of artists: Emerging. Evolving. Established. But the series itself has always stood for one goal in particular: providing space and resources for artists of color to develop their work.
“We found that there was an uneven playing field,” Harlem Stage’s artistic director, Patricia Cruz, said recently about the series’ origins. Choreographers of color, especially African American ones, had less support, she said: “We provided that platform.”
To date, the series has helped more than 300 dance artists. One of its intended effects has been to take choreographers who work mainly “downtown,” in white-dominated dance institutions, and bring them “uptown” to Harlem.
For the 25th anniversary season, Cruz invited back five major choreographers who have had close relationships with Harlem Stage, which is celebrating its own 40th anniversary. The season began in October with Ronald K. Brown’s company, Evidence, and continued in January with Urban Bush Women. The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company kicks off the spring installment on April 19, followed by Nora Chipaumire in May and Camille A. Brown in June.
In the E-Moves tradition of bringing attention to the next generation, most of these artists have chosen to share their program with an emerging one. Camille Brown selected five. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder of Urban Bush Women, has handed off the leadership of that company (also turning 40 this year) to Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis, who presented their work.
But when Cruz and the choreographers gathered in early April to discuss the impact of the series and why it was needed, the talk was more about the past than the future. (Zollar joined on a video call; Camille Brown, immersed in rehearsals for the Broadway opening of “Hell’s Kitchen,” among other projects, was too busy to join.) They spoke at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse, a theater and headquarters that the organization, originally called Aaron Davis Hall Inc., built out of a 19th-century aqueduct across the street from Aaron Davis Hall in 2006. Jones’ “Chapel/Chapter” was the first dance work performed in the space.
Some of the discussion was a mutual appreciation session. Cruz, 77, who is stepping down in July, called herself a fan of the others. Zollar described herself as a groupie of Jones’ early work with Arnie Zane in the 1980s. Chipaumire, 58, who came to the United States from Zimbabwe in 2003 to work with Urban Bush Women, recalled the thrill of first encountering Ron Brown’s work. “I was screaming,” she said. “It was so real, so beautiful, so avant-garde, so African.”
Quickly, Jones, 72, widened the discussion to touch on the segregated racial geography of New York dance, the burdens and restrictions placed on Black artists, politics, capitalism and much else.
He spoke repeatedly about the discomfort of being a “guilty unicorn” as a Black artist in the mostly white avant-garde. (Zane, who died in 1988, was white.) Jones told a story of being on a 1980s panel about the future of Black dance, surrounded by a pantheon of older Black dance artists, and declaring that he was an artist first and a Black man second. The pioneering Black choreographer Pearl Primus ran down the aisle and cursed him, Jones said.
But Zollar, 74, recalled being a “border crosser,” moving between the white avant-garde and a Black one, located in Harlem institutions like the dance studio of Dianne McIntyre. “I saw connectivity, but I also saw a lack of equity,” she said.
Brown, 57, quiet among the outspoken others, talked the least, but he summed up the feeling of everyone about Harlem Stage. “Harlem Stage provided that safe place where you could just come in and create, without judgment or questions about who you are,” he said.
Here are some edited excerpts from the conversation:
Bill T. Jones: Why was the avant-garde “downtown,” so that Harlem Stage had to get us “uptown”?
Patricia Cruz: There was a climate in which the avant-garde developed downtown, just as Harlem had been the place for the Harlem Renaissance. I also think there was an unstated conservative element in the Black community.
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar: There was a very strong Black avant-garde — in the music, in the visual arts, in poets like Ntozake (Shange) and in dance at Dianne McIntyre’s space. But there was segregation, and some rigid ideologies that kept the segregation in place.
Jones: I didn’t know about the Black avant-garde. When Arnie and I came to New York, we were looking for the cool kids. There was a loneliness being a Black face in the white avant-garde. But I thought that the Black Arts Movement people made the choice of wanting to make art with people who looked like them.
Zollar: I don’t think it was that (those Black artists) needed to be with themselves. They needed to be with people who were not constantly shaming them or saying what you should or shouldn’t be. You could just be.
Jones: I didn’t get the memo. I was told that if you are a truly progressive person of color, then you’re going to be about healing historical wrongs. There was this idea that Black dance is the recounting of the trauma narrative. That became tiresome. I’m believing in liberation. Gay liberation. Woman liberation. Free at Last. But “No, my brother, you have the weight of history to answer to.”
Zollar: When I was embraced by the downtown world, I caught hell from the Black folks, as if I wasn’t Afrocentric. Why can’t you say you’re Black and let that mean anything? And I was also telling stories in my work, and that wasn’t the fashion downtown. In all these communities, there were toxic ways of behaving to anything that did not conform to a standard. That is what I resist.
Nora Chipaumire: Perhaps I come into this conversation at a different moment. When I came to New York in 2003, I was asking myself, ‘Where do I belong?’ I wanted to be in Jawole’s orbit, because it was Black and I would say African. Also your work, Ron, it was Black with no apology. I wanted to be myself, and these universes of Ron and Jawole felt like they had space.
Jones: I wonder if the group wants to take on the idea of a Black aesthetic. I was running like hell not to be tarred with that. I thought it put me in a ghetto. I wanted to be free.
Cruz: I think that’s what we have attempted to do (at Harlem Stage). Artists don’t want to be put in a box.
Ronald Brown: As an artist, you’re looking for opportunities to share your work. I remember teaching a class downtown, and someone asked me, “Do you feel you’re part of this community?” Harlem Stage had the sense of family.
Zollar: Yes, you need spaces where you can be yourself, where you can do absolutely anything and everything. That’s what Harlem Stage was for me. And you don’t have to deny who you are in order to be there. In the downtown spaces, being proudly Black could take on a kind of exoticism.
Jones: Definitely. I felt you (Pat) were hip enough to have something that the downtown impresarios had. “Y’all come in and do your best work.” That was very encouraging.
Chipaumire: This is a space to learn, to grow. I was invited to mentor an E-Moves participant, Marguerite Hemmings, who was a student then. That conversation has continued, and I don’t think it would have happened without E-Moves.
Jones: But what about the audience? I remember working on a series of dances set to Schubert. And Barbara Ann Teer (founder of the National Black Theater) came to a rehearsal and said, “I know what you’re doing, but what are the young people in this community supposed to make of it?” She was letting me know that I was not speaking to the audience I should have been speaking to.
Zollar: I resisted the idea that I’m making work for a specific audience. I’m making work that resonates with me, and because of what it comes out of, it’s going to connect with certain people more than others. But I knew that Harlem Stage audiences would be integrated. What I’ve experienced as an audience member here is that we’re coming for the art.
Cruz: We want more of the people living nearby to come here and own it. But our audiences are from all over. You build community around the things you have in common. Artists can be free to make what they want, but audiences can also be free, to come in and discover something that they might not know. I think that represents a kind of mixing that’s ideal for an equitable, diverse society.
Jones: I know we have to stop, but I want to take this up with my sisters. Black women can make confederations with other women around the question of feminism. Would you say that you have the edge over us brothers that way?
Zollar: Oh, that’s a long conversation. What I offer to this group is that we need these conversations to continue. We should meet again and regularly.
Chipaumire: Maybe that’s the next offering at Harlem Stage.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
