Poet and dance writer Karen Hildebrand hosts this two-part podcast, focusing on dramaturgy and dance. In this second part, Hildebrand explores how dramaturgs have worked with choreographers at the Pillow, focusing on works by Bebe Miller, Jane Comfort, and Rennie Harris. Hildebrand is the former editorial director for Dance Magazine, and a past editor in chief of Dance Teacher magazine.
Poet and dance writer Karen Hildebrand hosts this two-part podcast, focusing on dramaturgy and dance. In this second part, Hildebrand explores how dramaturgs have worked with choreographers at the Pillow, focusing on works by Bebe Miller, Jane Comfort, and Rennie Harris. Hildebrand is the former editorial director for Dance Magazine, and a past editor in chief of Dance Teacher magazine.
[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 Pillow’s Director of Preservation. And it's my pleasure to introduce this second part of a two-part podcast, focusing on dramaturgy and dance. Our host. Karen Hildebrand is a poet and dance writer, formerly the Editorial Director for Dance Magazine, and a past Editor-in-Chief of Dance Teacher Magazine. In this second part, Karen specifically discusses dramaturgy at the Pillow, with examples from works by Bebe Miller, Jane Comfort, and Rennie Harris.
KAREN HILDEBRAND:Ultimately, to understand the role of a dramaturg in dance, is to learn how choreographers collaborate. How they invite people to enter their creative process, and how they embody the concept of a creative community. A choreographer collaborates with their dancers, whether the dancers are actively making phrases, or whether they learn the moves given to them. It's a collaboration. And there are elements of music, lighting, costumes, and set that bring another artistic perspective and personality to bear. What happens when a dramaturg enters the mix? It's rare for a dramaturg to have a dance background. Here, we'll look at three different dance works all presented at the Pillow, where dramaturgs were part of the creative team in residence. The teams shared behind the scenes stories of how the work came together, and what the experience was like. In each instance, the dramaturgs contributed their skill in any or all of three general categories. They provided research. They help the audience connect to the work. They gave feedback to the director. It's particularly great that the Pillow archives have these instances of the dramaturgs themselves speaking. It's a perspective we don't often hear from. Inspired by the 50th anniversary of the Barbie doll, Jane Comfort’s Beauty from 2011 is a dance theater work that speaks to the American perception of female beauty and our obsession with physical perfection. Or as Comfort says, “how our culture has moved to the Barbie ideal of beauty.” With tongue firmly in cheek, Comfort depicts a beauty contest where four Barbie doll-like characters are coached by a male performer, who at one point, wearing white physician’s lab coat rattles off a list of 38 questions that escalate and both speed and degree of intrusiveness. Are you on a diet? Is there any part of your body you obsess about? Do you have breast implants? Do you think you're pretty? In terms of movement the dancers mimic the stiff limitations of a plastic doll, including the permanent releve of Barbie’s feet. And they also have a chance to dance more expressively. There's a body number, where they're in black corsets and shiny vinyl boots, torquing with abandon, and in one scene, they take up a 1980s aerobic exercise class. All the while one character is at a dressing table located at the corner of the stage. Throughout the duration of the show, she conducts an elaborate performance of grooming, makeup application, hair arranging. She changes from a dressing gown into her outfit for an evening out, squeezing into shapewear along the way. Ann Davison was the dramaturg for the production. Here's what the Boston Phoenix had to say about the show: “The dramaturgy behind Jane Comfort’s gimlet-eyed pageant in beauty on delicious display at Jacob's Pillow Doris Duke Theater this past week is spot on. Petra van Noort is coached in the hyper-feminine lexicon of the catwalk. Svelte young Lucie Baker has her body redrawn with a black marker to refine it for the plastic surgeon's scalpel. Leslie Cuyjet’s glamorous image is photoshopped, click after click to refresh as thinner, taller, and whitter-skinned, until the model is unrecognizable. Seeing the work with a live audience was a revelation. Gasps and sighs around me convey that the facts of the soul killing self-appraisal that has become part and parcel of the beauty trade or not all common knowledge.” The day after Beauty’s premier, Comfort and Davison spoke with Pillow scholar-in-residence, Nancy Wozny.
ANN DAVISON: I think that in, you know, working with Jane's piece, and Jane has so, so much of her work has such clear theatrical elements. And so that's something that was very exciting to me, to be able to work with her in bringing in research, and looking at research see about that, and in collaboration with, you know, the dancers going through these issues and asking questions of both the company and each other and, you know, friends of, you know, questions of what, you know, everything from what is your take on labiaplasty? to you know, do you, how often do you wear makeup? You know, from the kind of very mundane to kind of deeper, more disturbing questions about people actually altering themselves, and for themselves or for others.
NANCY WOZNY: So, you would be asking the performers these questions as you were developing it? [Davison: Yes] And so you developed a kind of list of things that help bring forth material.
ANN DAVISON: It's a very, in working with Jane, it's a very collaborative process, which is very exciting. And so, it wasn't as if, in this case, you know, my role was to find out research on the specific things and kind of bring it in and let everyone do their thing. There was a lot of discussions about sharing stories and issues, and what issues about beauty and presentation of female, and what's feminine and is and why is that, you know, the ideal, in all these, you know, we're talking about also makeover shows, how all those kinds of what not to wear those kinds of things.
NANCY WOZNY: Well, I wanted to ask about the monologues. It seems like they each have a monologue, and I'm wondering if it came from their own lives? [Comfort: Well, it’s interesting] Or sharing of stories…
JANE COMFORT: Structurally also I had, knowing the people as Barbies, knowing the people as characters, because Ellie plays somebody who's addicted to laxatives [Wozny: Right]. And then knowing the people as the dancers themselves [Wozny: Okay, so there’s these three layers]. So, you have these three, it kind of got, in the end it was so great to have Ann there because it kind of got a little messed up [Wozny: Aaah]. Ellie’s story is about how, and I'm sure all the women here know this clothing sizes are getting smaller and smaller, but we’re the same [Wozny: Right]. And Ellie was talking about, she's quite tiny, but she said she used to be a four, and then she was a two, and then she was a zero. And recently at Banana Republic, she's a double zero petite. And so [toddler’s] section [Wozny: Yeah]. And she's like, what are they trying to do? Make us feel better, build up our self-esteem that you were [Wozny: Probably] getting fatter and fatter in this country [Wozny: Yeah, yeah]. That’s her real story. But when she brought it into rehearsal, because we've been talking about all the stories, she brought it into rehearsal, and she turned it into a character [Wozny: Ohhh] because she also has to conceal the fact that she's back in her Barbie suit [Wozny: Okay], she's got a tutu in front of her. So, she turned it into a stripper. And then Ann kept saying, now here, you've turned a real story, the level that I had wanted, you know, got these levels of artifice [?]. And you turn it, it's become a character. So, which was she? And then we tried to have her tell that story naturally. And it was just so…
ANN DAVISON: And I think as, as the piece evolved, and those stories evolved, there are different levels of character, because to your question, I think that it's a combination of their actual stories, and other stories that were collected. And they changed over the time. Like they all I think, started out with completely different stories that have now become the, so they had, there were all kinds of different things in different aspects from their lives, and other things we were talking about. And in kind of trying out the telling of the different stories and in different ways, you kind of honed into what works best.
NANCY WOZNY: So, do you, do you function partly as an Assistant Director? Is there's, [Davison: I think so] there's some of that crossover?
JANE COMFORT: And you know, Brandon, our sound designer has played a role like that too, as kind of a dramaturg, we just all get in there [Davison: It’s very collaborative]. I really appreciate it. I really like to work like that.
NANCY WOZNY: So, so you like working collaboratively? And I noticed you credit the dancers [Comfort: I just think that everyone is going to be better]. Yeah.
JANE COMFORT: But there are times when everybody here has a lot of ideas and you're like mmm…
ANN DAVISON: No, and that's what I was about to say, it's something that’s [a couple of unclear phrases] it’s a rare, you know, choreographer or director who can foster a truly collaborative working environment, and still keep complete control over where the piece is going and what it's going to be.
NANCY WOZNY: Ann, when you are giving notes and feedback, are you, are you, is it completely different for you to be considering movement choreography choices, as opposed to traditional theater, which is just, you know, blocking, and we’re…?
ANN DAVISON: Right, It’s certainly, certainly different. And, and, you know, I think in the most part differs from the theater work I've worked on in that it is like completely nonlinear again [Wozny: Right, right], I guess is probably the biggest difference, and also that it's movement-based. Huge difference. But yeah so, I think like in Beauty, there's the book end of the beauty contest, and kind of a through line of these stories. And so, we would talk a lot about, you know, the tone, Jane was talking about the various levels of these characters and how they come in and out, and how the tone of the piece changes, because we also had a lot of conversations about is it, is this getting too funny? Is this getting too heavy? And you know, what that balance is so that this, you know, very fun Barbie piece also hopefully addresses some very real issues for people, you know, to think about. So. You know, I think, as far as kind of, the way I look at it is Jane says whether it is a theatre piece or a dance piece and more kind of narrative thing or not, it is just kind of looking to see what I feel like Jane, you know, most wants to come across, and then asking the questions about, you know, is this the right order for this to happen? Is this best? Is this coming across? I don't, and since I have just a theater background, you know, I don't have the breadth of knowledge to kind of specifically critique certain movements in a choreographic language. But I think there are times where, you know, you can kind of, say, like, oh, I know what that's kind of supposed to be and you know, that are kind of that moment that happens there is would be exciting, if that kind of came back. And it was referenced again, you know, that kind of…
JANE COMFORT: Also, she'll come in with fresh eyes, like we've been working on every single day, [Wozny: Right] and then she won't have seen it for two weeks, and she's like, whoa, you know [Davison: Yeah] That’s so valuable to us.
KAREN HILDEBRAND:Rennie Harris’ street dance version of Romeo and Juliet is a very different proposition. For Rome & Jewels, Ozzie Jones not only served as dramaturg, but is credited as a writer and performed as a character in the work. Jones is a celebrated theatre director with background in Shakespeare. He's also a teacher and a dancer and was taking class with Harris when movement for Rome & Jewels was in development. Whereas the project of Beauty was to develop original material, Harris used Shakespeare's plot as his foundation. Rome & Jewels depicts the feuding families of the Capulets and Montagues as warring street gangs, “Monster Q” and the “Caps.” There's a Romeo character and his friends Mercutio and Benvolio. There's his nemesis Tybalt. The lovers are star-crossed as in the original story, origining from the opposing factions. Beyond that basic structure, Harris says, the story began to change during the rehearsal process to more deeply explored the ways men consider women, and their romantic relationships. The Juliet character, Jewels never appears on stage. And the plot is revealed in the dance and music vocabulary of Hip-Hop. the spoken word text samples freely from Shakespeare, and the monologues written by Harris, Jones, Sabela Grimes, who plays Benvolio, and Rodney Mason, who plays Rome, are filled with the music of Shakespearean rhyme and meter. Harris first came to the lovers’ story via West Side Story when he was 14. And he had the idea could be told through the lens of Hip-Hop. Here he is introducing Rome & Jewels to the Jacob's Pillow audience in 2000.
RENNIE HARRIS: This new work, Rome & Jewels, to date is probably the hardest work that I've ever done in my entire life and may not look like that or feel like that. But for me it has because it was something that was projected. I began writing this piece when I was about, or thinking about this piece when I was 14 years old. The first time I saw a West Side Story. And I began, over the years I always would write things down like I thought West Side Story would be better with Hip-Hop dancers. I love the dancing, I love the choreography, it was incredible. But I knew all I knew was Hip-Hop dancing. I never heard of ballet. I never, I didn't understand why people went to school to learn how to dance because I thought everyone just dance because it's something you do to worship. And so, over the years, I, you know, began to write the script down for West Side Story, and eventually became Rome based on Romeo and Juliet. And creating his work, I was one way felt pressure to create a work by a time date, or by a by date, I had a timeline to do that. And I had to really focus. And I was one thing that I've never done, was focus. I've always been in my head: Oh, I can do a million things, but never mastered one. But I always do a lot of stuff. So, this work really marks a strong point for me spiritually. And I had to battle with my commercial side, my conditioned side, my cheesy side. And what was the reality of my own life. So, it's based on Romeo and Juliet, but not really Romeo and Juliet, it became about my vision, and what I, you know, saw in the world. And I always looked at myself as having one foot in the street, and my other foot in the universe. And so, this work has actually put me right over here into the universe.
KAREN HILDEBRAND:Jones doesn't talk a lot about his role as dramaturg. But what he offers is pretty interesting.
OZZIE JONES:The, the whole idea of being a dramaturg is really, is really a functional idea. Like, it's pretty much depends on who's directing it. But I, I guess the clearest way to put what a dramaturg does is a dramaturg gives you the sort of actual historical and literary and political background of what of the piece that you're trying to do. So, let's say for sake of argument of doing Saving Private Ryan, you would get someone who's really into World War II or into World War I, who can, who knows what went on, and who knows the time period and what was going on politically. And so, Shakespeare is something that I know a lot of, and I've done a lot of so. And Rennie and I've been working together, and, and known each other for a long time. And I predominantly direct. So, he knew he was doing this, and he knew he wanted them to do a lot of acting. So, when I first came in, I gave them acting lessons, because some of them had never acted before. So, we, we had, gave them acting lessons and some just dealing with text. Well one of the great things about teaching dancers to act is I just think it's so much easier to teach a dancer how to act, then the vice versa you know? Because they like, because they automatically understand that it's more about what you do, then what you say.
KAREN HILDEBRAND:Not everyone who acts in the capacity of a dramaturg has the official title. Tina Packer, founder of Shakespeare & Company in nearby Lenox, Massachusetts, was in the audience that night and gave Harris some very fresh feedback during the post show discussion.
TINA PACKER: These are the things that struck me immediately. One was how close it is the original Shakespeare. So, it's a story that has to be told, that's not being told. It's a story the whole community needs to hear, and the people need to hear it. Not just, I mean, what happens to Shakespeare's because 400 years of academics have got hold of it, you know, you often have to see it through that fog now. Whereas the kind of rawness of this dancing, and the really telling the story in the physical action of what's going on, is very close to the Elizabethan experience. The whole thing of the down and dirty stuff is very close to the Elizabethan experience. The three musicians on the stage doing that stuff is almost identical to the Elizabethan experience. So, what, this interaction, I got to tell the story, and this is what it is, and there's a spiritual part to man, and there were several, is very close to the Elizabethan. So, you know, sitting in the experience of that, and the kind of the mixture of violence, spiritual energy, and down and dirty talk is very close to the original. I guess the only other thing that I, you know, that they only hinted out which I guess you're still working on it Rennie, is that true? The thing that I that they only hinted at was, you know, spiritual enlightenment is meant to be between her legs, and the love of a woman or the feminine or whatever you want to call about that, that is where spiritual enlightenment is. And I would like I mean; I'm interested to see where you're gonna go with that.
KAREN HILDEBRAND:So, you can see in these two productions how differently a dramaturg might operate. In one, the dramaturg is an outside eye, and in the other he operates from the inside. both beauty and Rome & Jewels rely heavily on text. With Rome & Jewels, the audience is likely already familiar with the storyline. But the time and social setting and movement vocabulary are new. In Beauty, the narrative is delivered in a kind of cabaret setting with a series of vignettes. So, there's the question of what order to best reveal the material? But what happens when a choreographer makes purely abstract non-narrative dance that doesn't rely on text to convey its ideas? How then does a dramaturg contribute? As Davison points out, even when there is not a story being told, there's usually some emotion or state the choreographer wants to communicate. Bebe Miller's 1998 Going to the Wall about race, identity, and gender is a complex work composed of postmodern dance vocabulary that Sarah Kaufman described this way in TheWashington Post: “Bebe Miller's dancers move as though there's one breath uniting them. One pulse fueling the endless molten flow of steps. The choreography is all one smooth motion whether the eight dancers are in unison or have splintered into groups. There's never a moment to regain balance or steady the footing. The emphasis is on dependents. The dancers throw themselves at one another are heaved over backs, twist together, like pipe cleaners bounce away and melt onto someone else.” While Going to the Wall does include text, the words serve as a frame for the dance movement rather than as dialogue. They give us a context in which to consider the abstract movement we're watching. For instance, here's the series of questions that open the work against the background of people coming together as if at a cocktail party.
OPENING EXCERPT FROM GOING TO THE WALL: Okay, so who of you look for gay men? And how many of you fall in love with white people? [next question is unclear] How often does it come up in conversation that they work for Black choreographer [series of unclear words] useful information. At least one was abused by a parent. Nobody there was a Jew [?].
KAREN HILDEBRAND:This was a preview performance at the Pillow in 1998, before the official premiere. Afterward, dance writer Suzanne Carbonneau moderated a discussion with Miller and dancers, along with dramaturg Talvin Wilks, who's worked with Miller on five productions, including Landing Place, for which he received a Bessie award in 2006. Wilks is a playwright, theater director, and is writing a book on Black theater history. He's also worked with choreographers Camille A. Brown, Ping Chong, and Carmen de Lavallade.
BEBE MILLER: This is a piece that we've been working on for a good year and a half that I, I felt, it was issues of identity were something that, which is a cold sounding word and term, but I felt issues of who we were individually and as a group, were something that, it seemed the right time to explore. This is a group that has been together from about five years to three months duration, and I, I was really interested in, in, in making a kind of a personal journey in a group selfishly. And in trying to, to make the rehearsal studio a different kind of a forum for exchange than what we usually do, bringing things inside of the room that often stay out. And in opening up that process, it mean, the dancers are, are my collaborators in this work. That this was a joint discussion, dialogue, disagreement, exploration movement with, I don’t know, a large contingent, I guess.
KAREN HILDEBRAND:When Miller says large contingent, she's referring to Wilks, composer Don Byron, set lighting and costume designers, and the eight dancers who contributed to text and movement material. Also, some initial material came out of workshops in 1997 and 98, with Ishmael Houston-Jones, Laurie Carlos, Ralph Lemon, and Carlson, Pat Graney, and Tere O'Connor—all prominent and influential artists of that time. Here's Wilks talking about his role as dramaturg.
TALVIN WILKS: I came to the process, in a term that I like to use for myself which is as a structural— structuralist in a way. Finding, finding ways to, we weren't necessarily working with a text that was a narrative, but we definitely had elements of a text. Clearly there, there were thematic issues that we were exploring, issues of race, gender, sexuality, community, all of those things that worked their way through as a type of journey exploration that clearly the dancers were involved in. And so we had to find ways that that could fit into a type of structure, how we could hold it, without necessarily having a text that kind of holds the stories or the different interactions. So, I came into the process about halfway through maybe, after seeing this incredible beginning work in progress in June of last year. And in some ways begged to be a part of it, because when I saw it, there was an incredible, very alive discourse going on, a discourse of the body, a discourse of all of these particular issues. And I definitely wanted to be a part of it.
KAREN HILDEBRAND:This would seem to place Wilks role as one of giving feedback, the third general activity of the dramaturgy function list. But he also took on certain responsibilities of a communications director, developing residency workshops, organizing literature and text materials, facilitating audience discussions about race and culture. Here's a little more about what Wilkes means when he describes himself as a structuralist. You'll hear Miller, dancer Anthony Phillips, and Wilks in this conversation. They're talking about the structured improvisation activity they used to generate material. One particular section was difficult, requiring the dancers to move with an awkward hunched over posture for an extended period of time. When Miller talks about this, she stands up to model for the audience, the hulking motion.
ANTHONY PHILLIPS: We started using improvisational structures that we would do over and over and over and over again. Not always necessarily to collect material that we would use, but just sort of hone in on what it felt like what the issues were in it. Individually, the clearest example of that is the section where we're four women and four men, and we're moving around the space, we did that forever. And actually, it was, it was a difficult process to actually choose what, what we're going to use, and how to track that and keep it from that experience that we would have over and over and over again, like digging a trench that we could go back to, but eventually we had an end up with something that we could repeat. So that was difficult [Miller: And that's].
TALVIN WILKS: That, that improvisation has very strict rules to it, I think that gave it kind of a confining structure, it wasn't just always an open. It was an open exploration internally, but not necessarily an open way of going in because of the structure of the diamond and conforming to that diamond and conforming to a leader, and following the leader and letting that create the sort of the choreography of the of the group or the intention or the mirroring sort of conflict. So, there were elements within that improvisation that I think gave it a kind of a core structure that helped to hold it. Or to hold those, you could repeat it and repeat it but it had a form that you could lock into preserve.
BEBE MILLER: And then there was also a point, though, where I mean after looking at something that took, that we did for an hour and a half and then getting it down to a 17-minute version, and then getting it down to a 9-minute, 8-minute version, and then going, I want to phrase here, you know kind of dealing with that, that little bit okay now is this, are we just the only ones into this? Just because I feel so good for us. What’s it like on the outside? And I found that there were several times when I said maybe she just made it like 3 or 4 minutes and, and, and an outside eye would, would say that, that they were really still involved in watching this so that was very reassuring. It was a funny, it was more it was one of the most unknown kinds of sections to do, to perform, I think [Carbonneau: Unknown, in what way?] Well, not knowing, there's a certain, we, we know how to, to, to sort of spark each other, dance-wise: Oh, cool move. Nice lift. Oh, yeah, great physicality. But they're there like this. So, years of dance training. And so, where's that, where's that point? And can you recognize something beyond it? Can you, can you, you really feel like the weight of the whole experience as, as something that, that, that has to speak that way and how to learn how to listen to that? And I think that was that was difficult.
KAREN HILDEBRAND:Regardless of style, format, or specific production needs, what each of the dramaturgs in these three shows have in common is an objective viewer’s eye, the ability to raise questions, and a theatrical perspective and dramatic timing. More than that, you might go further to say a dramaturg brings a framework to the process of collaboration itself. Sort of like a process moderator, sometimes mediator. They help keep things on track. I am also struck by their passion, the energy they invest in an artist's work that is not their own. In these examples, the choreographer remains firmly in control. In each case, the result is clearly the choreographer’s work. The collaborative process exists for the sole purpose of achieving their vision in the best possible way. I'll let the answer to a question from a very young member of Bebe Miller's audience have the final say.
Suzanne Carbonneau: Another question?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Why do you make shows?
BEBE MILLER: What?
Suzanne Carbonneau: I couldn’t here.
TALVIN WILKS, ANTHONY PHILLIPS: Why do you make shows?
Suzanne Carbonneau: Why do you make shows, Bebe?
BEBE MILLER: Isabel, I'm not sure. Well, [Carbonneau: we’re getting existential, aren’t we?] you know sometimes it feels like you have an idea. And, and you need to talk about it. And this seems like it's a good time to talk about it, and you make a dance.
[Music begins, 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 Dance Interactive dot Jacob’s Pillow dot 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.