Choreographer Sydney Skybetter interviews fellow dancemaker Adam H. Weinert, focusing on the recent reconstruction of Ted Shawn's iconic Dance of the Ages, a 1938 work that had not been performed in nearly 80 years. Weinert speaks about the communal living experiences that informed Shawn's company of Men Dancers, and how these practices resonate today.
[Music begins, composed by J.S. Bach, performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN: Welcome to PillowVoices, a production of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival with content from the pillow archives. I'm Norton Owen, the Pillows Director of Preservation, and it's my pleasure to introduce Sydney Skybetter, one of our scholars-in-residence, who will be your host for this exploration of the intersections of choreographer Adam Weinert’s work with the history of both Jacob's Pillow and Ted Shawn.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: I talked with choreographer Adam Weinert about his latest work, a remake of pillow-founder Ted Shawn’s magnum opus, ‘The Dance of the Ages.’ I watched Adam and his dancers rehearse in loincloths in an unheated dance studio which used to be a barn, and I found myself thinking about the lifestyle choices that landed Adam, and Ted Shawn before him, in this situation. How was it that Adam came to be at Jacob's Pillow on a cold, dreary day to reanimate the work by a dead master in a literal barn? I spoke with Adam the day after their re-premiere of ‘Dance of the Ages’ at The Pillow in 2018 and asked him what inspired this particular peculiar project?
ADAM WEINERT: Well, I was in graduate school and I was studying relationships between dance and labor, and, you know, early Americana imagery basically. And I started reconstructing his solo works for performances at the Museum of Modern Art and later the Tate Britain, but I felt like the solo works didn't get at the kinds of community that he was creating. I think what drew me to Ted Shawn’s project, vision, mission as a young dancer was the way that he brought this group together, and they established this place up in the woods, and grew their food, built their barns, lived together, worked together. And I thought that perhaps resurrecting one of his ensemble works could get at that mission in ways that the solo material couldn't. I know I did the summer program here 15 years ago when I had no professional ambitions of dance, you know, I danced throughout my childhood and I loved it, but it never occurred to me that it could be a vocational pursuit. And I did the program here and it completely changed my life. Like the minute I got home, I started drafting my application for Juilliard. And my teacher here actually wrote my recommendation. So, Jacob’s Pillow definitely set me on that course. And later, it gave me my first major commission as a choreographer and it changed my course again. So this has been a touchstone for me and a very loaded space. You know, another reason why this feels important to do right now, today, is that you know, this work, in particular, it was his most overtly political work. And he was responding to what he saw as rising fascism and authoritarianism around the world, and he wanted to respond to that, and the way that he knew how and the way that he could here, which was by making this dance. And, unfortunately, you know, these questions and these concerns are very relevant again.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: I’ve known Adam for a little over a decade since we met dancing in Manhattan for another choreographer, Christopher Williams. Over that time, as Adam's choreographic career has expanded and blossomed, I've been impressed by the extent to which his artistic practice interfaces with his life as an erudite, cosmopolitan contemporary choreographer. Whenever I gave him a call while he was working on the Shawn material, it always seemed like I caught him at an odd pastoral moment, I'd catch him when he was, like, sharpening his scythe or harvesting crops. I asked Adam about the effect that researching Ted Shawn had on his person and the extent to which Shawn’s repertory crossed over into Adam’s and his dancers’ personal lives.
ADAM WEINERT: Yeah. Well, as part of my research and trying to put myself physically in the state that those men were in, I got a job on a farm because farm work was a part of their daily physical training practice and I think also Ted Shawn's creative process. And I got a job at a farm, like, I didn't really expect it honestly to be very profound. I was kind of doing it just to say that I'd done it because it seemed like a thing that would look good on a thing that I wrote. And I, so, I got a job on the farm. It was the closest farm, but it was uncanny how it, how it worked out. You know, this was a farm that had been in the same family for 13 generations. They bought it from the Dutch. And this, the director was collecting the first known archive of work songs because he had this belief that work songs help synchronize movement, it helps increase productivity, it creates joy. He had these kind of lofty ideas about what that does. And so, that became the perfect place actually to make these connections between dance performance and this other kind of sweat equity that goes into growing food. And I remember I said to the field manager one day, like, “oh, you know, I thought that farm work was going to be really repetitive. Like, I thought we'd come in and do the same thing every day, but it's not, you know, we do something different every single day,” and he said, “Well, it is repetitive. It just works on an annual cycle.” And I found that after the, you know, brief time, I think it was four or five weeks I spent there, my sense of space and time had really shifted. And in dancing, space and time is the medium. Like, those are important factors. So I was surprised by what it did. I mean, another aspect was, this was actually a second farm, a more kind of witchy farm, but they had a practice of walking barefoot in the fields every morning so that the soil could absorb your toxins and learn your nutritional deficiencies. And also the plants could acknowledge that just as you're laboring to help them achieve their life goals, that they can labor to help you achieve yours. You know, I don't know, it's a little out there, but also why not? And also, you know, I've been a barefoot dancer my whole career and I've never really grappled with why, like, this whole barefoot groundedness thing which is something that as a dancer I have struggled with. You know, my, I think my wheelhouse is more kind of light and airy and I've had a hard time getting down into the earth, and it becomes less metaphorical when you actually do it.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: The ‘Dance of the Ages’ is a long, complicated work. The archival video that served as the primary source for Adam's reconstruction was generated by a manual, crank camera, so the visual quality is blurry and flat, and the tempos are tormentingly variable. I asked Adam about the rehearsal process of reconstruction.
ADAM WEINERT: You know, we, we joked with the beginning of the project, and we're watching the film, you know, at the end of the second section, when all the dancers are like, almost falling over, they're so exhausted and we're like, “haha, look at them. They're, they're not professional dancers.” And then we ran the first time and there we were, like grasping for air. And I think it's been humbling for us too because a lot of the time, dancers will look at films of Margot Fonteyn, or, you know, these greats, but it's like, “oh,” you know, “actually, they're leg isn't that high. Actually, they're not doing very many turns.” But, you know, what they achieved, it’s challenged, I think, every part of us, like our ability to learn, our ability to execute, our ability to listen to each other and the music. So it's been, I think, inspiring and humbling. We were joking last night, that like, about how there was so much material to learn, but actually, only one person really needs to know any particular section. So we all know, “okay, watch Dante. He's got this one leg up. And there's Brett and seven and eight.” And there's this way that like, we really can't do it without everybody's participation. And it's pretty democratized in terms of leadership, and also in casting, you know, I, I dispersed Ted Shawn’s soloist role amongst as many people as I could, and it's been exciting to watch people kind of rise up to that. And I think it's created like a non-hierarchical social environment. It was news to me as of a week ago that the soloists largely created their own solo material. You know, my impression of Ted Shawn was very much that he, you know, he had a very strong vision and I imagined that everyone's doing exactly his bidding. And so then, to learn that, actually, they crafted their own solo works and he credited that in the programs, it's actually a very contemporary practice that has sort of started again in the last 10-15 years. And learning that I think did change the tone of what we're doing, you know, we're not beholden to this particular film, which, you know, may or may not be a perfect document of, of what it was. I think it also helps that they're not exactly doing recognizable steps. It's not like “okay, well the sequence goes, Tombe, Pas de Bourree,” you know, whatever it is. They're these weird things. They're these expressive things. And having, we spent one afternoon listening to Ted Shawn’s dramaturgical narration which accompanies the film, so you can watch the film, and then hear Ted Shawn explain what it was about. And it's a wonderful audio recording because you can hear ice cubes in his glass and you can hear puffs of a cigarette.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: I knew it.
ADAM WEINERT: Yeah. And I think it's so great that it wasn't written down, that it was this kind of off the cuff and he's sort of rambling. Because I think if he had written it down, it would have gotten formal and more exacting, but you're just hearing him expound on, you know, what, what it is they're doing. And that really unlocked certain aspects for us. Like, there's a portion where they're kind of gathered around in a circle and they're making these shapes in the air, and we didn't quite know what it was they were doing. But then we found out that they had just completed a hunting dance, and now they're eating a raw animal because they haven't yet discovered fire. Great, that really helps us clue into what these shapes are meant to be. And it, I think, having that sort of inside-out information rather than the outside-in information of, like, well, what's the shape, and I think, I think it helped us find a through-line. And, like, something else I'd like to say is that this group, it's, we know we've got a lot of strong personalities and we have a lot of very different kinds of bodies. So whereas in the film version of ‘Dance of the Ages,’ where you have Ted Shawn as this much taller imposing figure amongst a group of very similar-looking and in scale, and skin-tone dancers, it changes a lot when you can follow certain individuals through the course of the whole event, and that these relationships start to emerge. And that's something that I really wanted to lean into because I think that that adds a lot to the texture of the work. And, you know, as soon as we had learned the material, I was encouraging us to do complete runs of the whole program so that we can start to connect the dots for ourselves and chart our own kind of personal experiences over the course of the 90-minute choreography.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: Adam’s performance practice has long been involved in what I understand to be a technological investigation. He's very intentional in his use of media technologies in his work. A facet of his choreography I've enjoyed in particular since he used state-of-the-art software to haunt New York's Museum of Modern Art using spectral augmented reality tech and solos by Ted Shawn. I asked Adam about his use and awareness of historical technologies during the process of remounting the ‘Dance of the Ages.’
ADAM WEINERT: I got special permissions from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to watch the actual film reel which they have. Which I loved how theatrical it was because, you know, you basically have to touch everything with white gloves, right? So you go into this room and you're alone, and then you have to hit play. You can't pause and you can't rewind, because any viewing degrades the footage, and you can bring in a notepad and a pencil and, you know, you get one go and that's what it is. So, you know, there, I like these like full circle moments when like, yes, we're very, it's technological, but it's also, it really brings you back to a very kind of performative, ethical place. We had, we had a lot of information about this work, thanks in large part to this film footage. Which yes, you know, some of these tempi, I remember talking to the pianist was when I learned that the film is very sped up, which was a relief to all of us. And he said, he was like, “how are you rehearsing this? Because you can't rehearse to the audio from the film,” like, “oh, we are,” he's like, “how are you getting that fast?” well, “we are, or we're trying.” Or and, you know, I, a lot of reconstructions tried to update works for a contemporary audience. You know, I chose not to do that in part because there isn't this sort of familiarity with this repertory that we could make choices to change things and have anyone have the wherewithal to know how that varied from the original and I think without that kind of base knowledge It'd be a disservice to do that. But I did want to be very specific about how to present the work, you know, so we're very rigorous about presenting as true to the original as we can. But then I think where you can get creative is, how it's presented and how it's framed. And sometimes dealing with the limitations of what we know, you know, with the solo that Tate performs, “Death of an Adonis” from 1924, All we know about it are these five photographs and less than 10 seconds of film footage. We don't know how long it was, we don't know the music, we don't know, we don't have the dramaturgical notes. And so, rather than trying to invent what that dance might have been, we just took those five shapes and, and the setting which was a white column and white body paint, and just stretched those five shapes out into this durational movement score that is both, you know, contemporary but also as true to the sources we know how to be at this time. So I think, you know, I enjoy exploring the extent of the media and documentation and technology that we have and also the limitations that we're dealing with.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: There’s a tendency to talk about historical dance repertory in precious sterile terms. With Ted Shawn’s choreography there's a number of dances that because of their subject, music, and costuming, they just appeared dated or obviously not contemporary. Yet to watch Adam’s crew perform ‘Dance of the Ages’ was to see choreography that I knew rationally was about 80 years old, but that somehow seemed new and vigorous, not dusty or antiquated. I asked Adam about his relationship with Ted Shawn, his impassioned work with his repertory, and the ghosts that haunt The Pillow and Adam’s choreographic project.
ADAM WEINERT: Well, the first time that we did a residency here was in early March. And, you know, I live in Hudson, which is about an hour west of us. So I always think of, you know, I don't live far away, it's the same kind of climate. It was a lovely day in Hudson, drive here, we get up the hill…snow globe like we are in. It didn't stop the whole time. It just did not stop snowing, and we couldn't see the paths. We couldn't get to the studio. We loaded into my car which had been frozen over in a sheet of glass, and I couldn't see outside, like, what we ended up doing was I rolled down the window, still leaving the sheet of glass, and punched a hole through the glass and stuck my head through that hole. And that's how I drove us to the studio and I was like, this is pretty extreme. And it was hard not to take it personally like it is this Ted Shawn feel chilly towards us and this project? And, you know, here we've been dealing with some weather events, not, not quite as extreme. And you know, I think, like, I'll never know what he really thinks of this project. You know, I think I did have an experience early this week where I was having, I think it was really the when this project and its ambition really seemed insurmountable and I, I just broke down. And I went through this walk in the woods and I was just beside, I was crying. I was crying so hard, I threw up and I sat on a rock and I looked at a tree. I stared at that tree and Ted Shawn’s face appeared in the branches. And I had this moment of like, how did he do this? Because I got him doing it here. Now I have so much support. Right? There is a production staff, there is a costume shop, there is all of the modern-day comforts that we're used to. And I just honestly, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. How did he ever do this? And I had this moment of, like, doubt, like how am I going to pull this off and I realized that I'm not, but that we are. And the ways that I, then went back to the cabin, and this person had brought me the plate of dinner from the session. That person is, he just became so clear to me the ways that we're actually going to pull each other through this. And that's actually what this dance is about. And I, I went against some of my kind of choreographer instincts of the never showing weakness to your calves, like you are the fearless leader, and if you doubt yourself, then they'll doubt this project. And I went against that, and I just shared this story with them. And I think allowing for that kind of vulnerability, acknowledging it, created, like, enhanced our sense of community and ever since that moment, you know, that felt like the crest of the wave. And at this point we're, we're on the other side and feels good.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: I had and still have a lot of questions about how Ted Shawn did what he did to build up an Arcadian dance facility, The Pillow in the context of the Great Depression and a great deal of scarcity and hunger and precarity and anxiety. That's some killer arts administration, but it's never been clear to me which came first, the necessity or the dogma. The mythologized fervor with all the building of our own dance barns and farming our food and making dances about labor or the spirited inventions of hungry artists. Despite its unlikeliness, Shawn created at The Pillow, a kind of queer agricultural dance commune that built, farmed, ate, and danced together. I asked Adam about that community and the extent to which he tried to rebuild it for the ‘Dance of the Ages.’
ADAM WEINERT: Yeah, we ate together. We cooked our food together. You know, which is something that that Ted Shawn and his dancers did, you know. In the documentary, they refer to a dish that they ate called carrot ring, which was boiled carrots arranged in a circle. And then we did that. There were other food choices for dinner that night. I mean, it's interesting. I feel like there's a balance in, in that part of his project, like, yes, they were growing their own food, and it was a very light, a nutritious kind of diet, but it was also the Great Depression. And I think food was scarce, and if they didn't grow it, they might not have it to eat. So I don't know how what, how much was idealism, and how much of his practicality. We've been consuming a lot of food. Well, I think that that is part of what dance and agriculture have in common is that it's the doing of it. You know, I think part, part of my initial impulse to reconstruct the solos, you know, I was in graduate school in a performance studies class, and we're talking about these dances in these very abstract terms. And it's like, you know what, guys, we actually have to do the dancing. You know, dance is a verb and a noun, right? You gotta. It's in the doing of it. That's the it and the doing.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: Yeah.
ADAM WEINERT: And I think that that kind of sweat equity and that kind of physical manifestation is, is where I see the connective tissue between the idealism and the practicality of it.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: One of the reasons I'm such a fan of Adam Weinert’s choreographic project is the way he braids highly physical dances with deeply researched thought work. The body stuff and the brain stuff are both integral to the choreography, maybe equally so, which makes Adam’s process notable. He did graduate work in performance studies under André Lepecki at NYU and the way he talks about dance makes sense coming from that milieu. I asked Adam about his study of dance, how it informs his dancing and vice versa.
ADAM WEINERT: André Lepecki is brilliant. And the way that he framed his course, you know, encouraged a kind of erudition and a questioning that had never come up in any of my dance training. And at the same time, I felt that the kind of embodied knowledge that you get from the dancing was missing from the performance studies curriculum. And I'm glad that you find the the think work as rigorous as the, as the physical part. And I guess it's hard to kind of parcel the two out right now, for me. You know, I do think that with all of the questioning about this work in particular and this reconstruction, questioning, like “oh, well, what is that step and which is, how is it supposed to go, and is this the right sequence? Was there a pause there?” Like all of those questions that we kind of agonized over this process are now ended. And we have the premiere last night, that was our, our seance. And it exists now in this form. And you know if it's right, if it's not right, that's what it is now. And that is a wonderful feeling. You know, as a performer, it can be challenging to always be questioning what it is that you're doing, you know, to a certain point, you need to have the script, that you can play with the script. So I'm excited to see how this evening and tomorrow's performance goes with the kind of confidence that, you know, we have achieved this, this resurrection and, and it's ours now.
SYDNEY SKYBETTER: Adam ended his interview with me by saying that ‘Dance of the Ages,’ it's ours now. I think this is his way of saying that he and his dancers took responsibility for the care and feeding of Ted Shawn’s work. They atone for it, reframed it, and now it belongs to him and to a new generation of dance artists. I like Adams' approach because it situates dance history as a thing that lives on with us because it doesn't insist on a sterile archival distance between the contemporary moment and the modern dance canon.
[Closing music comes in, composed and performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN: That’s it for this episode of PillowVoices. Thank you for joining us today on behalf of Jacob's Pillow. We look forward to sharing more dance with you through the films, essays, and podcasts at danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org and of course through live experiences during our festival and throughout the year. Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts for helping launch this podcast series. Please subscribe to PillowVoices wherever you get your podcasts and visit us again soon, either online or on site.