Really? I walked away last night really uncertain. Just the way that I create, I create really insularly. And I wait until a certain point where I put it in front of people and then I allow their eyes to tell me what’s wrong with it and I walked away last night seeing its flaws. And so I’ve been battling all night.
 

I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like it. It contains some of the most finely drawn characters I’ve ever seen in a dance piece. And that you manage to do that with such economy, you pull all of that off in an hour, it’s astounding. I was really stunned, I think everyone was last night. But maybe we should back up a little bit here, do we even want to call this a dance piece?

That’s interesting, I’ve been calling it a “danced theater work” [laughs]. How do you like that one? I don’t like calling it dance theater because I think that term has a lot of connotation to it.
 

Yeah, and there’s that damn workshop.

Right [laughs]. This piece is something I have never done before. Because I’m a choreographer who’s worked in the theater a lot, I understand and, you used the word economy already, but I feel like I understand the economy and the value of movement in theater and the choreographic elements that go behind it. So yes, even when I work with actors, I like to believe that every small gesture that is given to them is choreographed. They may not think so, but because that’s the way that I work with my own dancers, I see this as a choreographed event.
 

Is doing something you’ve never done before an important draw in a new project?

I feel as if I’m at a particular point in my own career where I need to make a shift. I made a lot of dances last year. We premiered five of them at the Joyce and I felt every time I was going to the studio that things were coming out the same way. I needed to really challenge my creative initiative to find out something new about the way that I deal with drama, the way that I deal with space, the way that I deal with time. So I specifically took on this project as a way of denying certain possibilities in my own creative line of thinking to hopefully jettison me to a new place.
 

It’s funny you say that, because what I’ve been reading, especially about those last five pieces you did, says exactly the opposite. There was one piece in particular that where you just went into the studio with a video camera and really sprung it on your partner after the fact that what you improvised had become the dance. That seems to me like a real departure from the way you had been working.

Well, it is. And I’ll say quite clearly, we never see our own processes. I mean, I see my processes from within. And other people that came to see last season saw five completely different pieces. Hopefully they were, but at a certain point you run out of imagination to find new ways of creating ideas. It becomes something by rote as opposed to by process and I think that’s what I’m talking about. So yes, the process of putting the duet together, I can’t even think of the title, not enough coffee this morning…”Polanise!” Putting “Polainse” together was vastly different, but I think you can only do that when you have an on-going relationship with a group of artists.
 

Well, that’s another question I have for you, how do you find your dancers? I mean, I’m always amazed when I see dancers acting onstage. I think Keely Garfield works with some amazing actor/dancers. Yvonne Rainer, earlier this year, did some riveting work with her dancers and these really long blocks of Nabakov text. I’m wondering, when you’re auditioning dancers, are you concerned purely with movement or are you having them run lines?

No, as I’ve said, we’ve never opened our mouths before [laughs]. I think that a lot of the dramatic work that I do is layered in honest dialogue and I like to think that’s what makes it so compelling. So for me, in terms of directing this work and finding a way to have something choreographically resonate aurally is trying to approach it the same way. As dancer-actors, we understand the nuances of how to tell a story, the movement, through the tiniest gesture. All I’m asking you to do is put a word on top of that so that it’s real.

Well, Nancy was incredible.

She’s pretty remarkable. She has been studying acting for several years and I knew that was a strength, so I created the story line around her. She’s also been with me for ten years so I feel like there’s an artistic relationship that’s developed.
 

Speaking of your dancers, you get lumped in with Mark Morris and Bill T. Jones as a choreographer who casts non-traditional dancers, whatever that means. How do you feel about that? It kind of annoys me a bit because, I mean, you look at somebody like Larry Hahn and what he did last night and even what he did in “Sleeping With Giants” and he’s just incredible. To me the question is “Who else would you cast in a role like that?”

Exactly.
 

How do you feel about that?

That’s a great question. I don’t do it intentionally. I look for people that interest me first as dancers. They understand a particular movement vocabulary that I’ve been mining for a few years, or at least it’s recognizable in their body. I look for intuitive artists that, when given material, will already bring something to it. Even if they’re young, they have a certain sense of maturity to themselves and a certain sense of intelligence. I look for people that have information that I don’t have, different ways of moving, different vocabularies in their bodies that I can draw from and be inspired by. Most importantly, I look to build a world onstage that looks as if it could be the real world. Everyone doesn’t have to look the same, doesn’t have to dance the same. I feel like I embrace dancer’s strengths, but I also embrace their faults when we’re choreographing. I should use the words “their weaknesses.” I think as I’ve gotten older and as certain members of my company have gotten older, as opposed to denying that, we extend that into the work. So they are mature dancers because they want to continue dancing and they dance remarkably.
 

How do you feel about dancing into your 40’s, 50’s and 60’s? Does that sit well with you? I know there’s a certain school of thought that thinks there’s a point where you just don’t do it anymore and then there’s a school of thought, I mean Martha Graham was dancing when she was…

Unfortunately, we’ve all seen that video [laughs]. Martha doing the bride at 65, that I think is wrong. If you accept what you can do, and you’re working for a choreographer who knows how to draw that from you, then it can be astounding. You know, Larry Hahn is an anomaly, he’s still dancing like he’s 28. And the work that we do is incredibly physical. We made “Rise” ten years ago and he still looks like the day we made it. And, you know, the man is 50.
 

Actually, the last time I saw you dance before last night was with Larry out on Fire Island.

Oh, great.
 

When I was out that weekend, I was only there for the day. I was coming back on the ferry and I bumped into a friend of mine. He, like some people out there, can be kind of oblivious to other things that are going on Fire Island, so he didn’t know that there was a dance festival out there. He said, “I don’t know what was going on last night at The Pavilion, but people were just cutting up.” He said he was scared on the dance floor and he’s a not bad dancer. So it seemed to me like a bunch of you hit the town the night before and he just didn’t figure that out. I told him there was a dance festival on the island that weekend and he may have experienced that once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence of professional dancers dancing without getting paid for it.

[Laughs] And that’s exactly what happened.
 

So tell me about that weekend, what was it like?

Well, you know DRA [Dancers Responding to AIDS] is so fabulous and what they’ve been doing is so tremendous. Being part of that always is kind of like a gift that you hand back. I hadn’t been to Fire Island in years. Years! So it took me to a very particular place in time in my own life. It was kind of like a trip down memory lane for me. But the festival was such a wonderment of sharing because the gay community is there and because of the agenda that DRA has, I think there’s a tremendous amount of support and a tremendous amount of emotion.
 

I always think it’s great to see a bunch of different companies doing something together because the sum is usually more than its parts.

Well, it talks about the community also and it makes you really understand how broad the dance world is. I went and saw a studio showing at the Limon Company recently and there were dancers I had never seen before in New York. It just reminded me of all the small little pockets. You know, we think we live in one world, but how many different pockets of dancers are drawn to specific work or specific styles? Their bodies fit into specific philosophies that they believe in. You forget about that and it takes something like a dance festival to remind you. Or even what happened on December 2nd at St. Marks [The Remember Project, a 12-hour dance marathon to remember dancers living with and lost to AIDS], to really understand that there are a lot of visions out there: good, bad, fabulous.
 

Getting back to your new work “Neither,” what inspired you?

I was given a key to the museum early on in the process and I just went and sat there for hours at night and creeped myself out. And still, I’m the last one left in the building. I find it haunting to be there. And I’m one of these kids who wouldn’t go down to the basement when it was dark. I kept feeling these spirits of people that lived there and I kept thinking, ‘What if some of these people never found their way out?’ That was the starting point for me, to find a way to take one of these spirits through the point of finding their way out. That was always my starting point and my ending point. The next job was to figure out how to make it a compelling journey for people that are going to watch it because I just didn’t want to make a bunch of dance scenarios that took you from room to room and then it was over. I wanted there to be meat to it. I wanted it to be an emotional experience. I wanted people to feel what I felt sitting alone in those rooms, so I had to build a character that had a life and we had to explain what that life was.
 

Well, it’s also very funny.

You think so? [Laughs.]
 

In parts, yes, which is really amazing to me because you do hit that eerie tone early on and really maintain it, but at the same time there were a lot of parts where I was laughing. I mean, Nancy is just so funny in the beginning when she’s asking, “Is this where I stand?” There are those self-aware moments like the line at the end, “We’re not actors, we’re dancers.” There are a lot of light moments to it. And it’s amazing to accomplish all of that in the space of time that you had. Now, you’re a real palpable figure in it, at least last night, I was wondering…

You will not see me.
 

Okay, because seeing you last night was really interesting.

That’s a really, really good piece of information because I have to figure out how to view this work in the first week without being noticed [Laughs].

 
Well, good luck. I would glimpse you at times last night watching us, controlling the music, controlling everything really, and it lent to that eerie tone. I mean, you have the interviewer and then almost a step behind her was this big sort of figure kind of running the show. It was one of the things that I wrote down as soon as I got home, you know, was that the finished piece? Are you going to be in there? Because it almost seemed intentional to me. In a way, when the interviewer pops up in the beginning and says, okay, I’m running this thing, there’s this moment of “Wait, is this actually a rehearsal?” And you really build off of that feeling, that uncertainly.

Well, that’s very interesting and I’m really glad you shared that with me because it’s a concern of mine and that puts some interesting thoughts into my brain right now. I’m glad you felt manipulated because the whole idea is for the dancers to try and manipulate Nancy and her emotions so that she will reveal something at the end. In the process, I’m also fucking around with your brain because you’re standing there crying and you don’t know why.
 

Well, that’s the thing, I didn’t really feel manipulated until it came up in the text and then it kind of forced me to think about it. I don’t know if it would have occurred to me if that line about sentimentality wasn’t in there. It could be because I didn’t feel manipulated. I was really, genuinely swept away in what was going on. So anyway, the practical question, I was wondering how the hell you get insurance for this, a building that you said yourself was, “Falling apart in a really evocative way.”

Um, we sign our lives away [laughs]. Yeah, it’s all entirely part of the contract.
 

So I found myself last night, much more than in a traditional kind of theater, really anticipating movement. It’s one thing to sit in a theater and think, ‘Oh, I wonder what a dancer’s going to do next?’ But it’s another thing entirely to wonder, ‘Am I going to trip this dancer?’ Is that part of why you wanted to do this?

Nyman’s got some amazing music from movies that have come and gone.

Well, I think so too. I think one of the reasons why I was drawn to this particular score is I feel like the best and worst of him is about manipulating and I needed it for this. You can sit and listen to his music and cry and that worked to my advantage in terms of what I’m trying to do for this project.
 

So, tell me about the differences between having a piece of music already extant and inspiring the work as opposed to commissioning a piece, which I know you’ve done as well. How does that serve as an inspiration?

Well, I am always inspired by musical choices that I make. I will be drawn to a piece of music that makes me want to make a dance to it. From that point on, I begin imagining. That’s the way that my brain works at its most successful. When I don’t have that music in front of me, it becomes a very different process, which I am not used to, but I am becoming much more comfortable with. I use to commission a lot of music and then I stopped and began using existing scores. When I started doing that I became a better choreographer because I was able to hear the structure of music and find a way to creatively match that so I became a better choreographer and I also became a better musician.
 

Are you sick to death of the Patrick Swayze question?

[Laughs] No, go ahead.
 

Well, I guess that’s the question.

You mean what’s going on?
 

Yes.

Well, it’s a project that’s been in the works for about two or three years. It’s in various stages. We’ve actually been in the studio making work for this film. Dancers have been hired and it’s in the process of getting ready to be filmed this winter. It’s called Without a Word.
 

It’s exciting. In reading your clips, I noticed MGM musicals were a big inspiration for you. I always wonder what those MGM musicals are for the generation coming up now. I guess there’s stuff like Center Stage, which I actually liked and you mentioned Dancer in the Dark last night, but do you think that MGM’s a lost tradition?

It’s interesting because yesterday I put this little—I don’t know if you picked up on it—I put the theme music to Mame in the piece.
 

Oh really?

Yes. And when I was teaching it in rehearsal…Okay this is the first little bit [He begins to hum the score]. It’s when she talks about childhood. I wanted something that was kind of showy and flashy. Nobody had heard the music before except for the other gay man, of course. We were like, “Fag? Fag!” [Laughs]. And then, of course, we went on to sing the whole show. But I found that fascinating. I find that’s a generational thing that I’m going through right now. Nobody knew it had been turned into a crappy movie with Lucille Ball and that it had been based on this amazing film that Roz Russel was in, but I think that the creative world of MTV, I hate saying it…
 

I’m glad you’re saying it.

MTV is the MGM musical of the last 20 years and I think in many ways that’s the reason why going to see it in a movie house, unless it’s done really creatively, isn’t as intriguing because people can get it 24 hours a day. And you have to admit—did you see Dancer in the Dark? I like the way this man makes movies, there’s not doubt about it, but could they have hired a choreographer, please?
 

It’s interesting you say that because their choreographer is actually in the movie. He plays the choreographer in the movie. It’s Vince Patterson, who, it’s funny you should mention MTV because he was the guy who did that dancing Pat Benetar video and Michael Jackson’s videos.

Well, that’s fascinating, I kept trying to say to myself, well, maybe this is just dramatic. Maybe because she’s going blind this is the way she imagines it to look, but I couldn’t get to that place. Actually, I just kept thinking, “Hello? We don’t need to be in unison now!”
 

So getting back to your piece, that sequence where your dancers are kind of exhaling their prayers, that really spoke to me like a sledgehammer. It made me wonder if you grew up Catholic?

Ohhhhh yeah!
 

Where did you grow up? This is the boring stuff, we should have done this first, but we’re having so much fun, Doug.

Syosset, New York. Exit 43, Long Island Expressway.
 

So tell me a little bit about working with Limon and Lubovitch? Where did you come from?

Well, I think I was one of the truly fortunate people in the dance world. I went to SUNY, Purchase. I graduated with my BFA. I graduated on a Monday, auditioned for the Limon Company on a Wednesday, and was in the company on Friday. I have never done anything with my life except have a dance career. It’s astounding. I have always felt really fortunate and spoiled because of that. I’ve never waited a table in New York. I’ve never seen the other side of that life. You know, because of it, I feel as if when I first started my company, there was a certain sense of naïveté. When you’re in a dance company, you’re almost treated like a child because you’re told where to go, what to do. When I left Lars’ company after being there for eight years, I was out on the street and I thought, “Holy Cow, who the hell am I?” And I felt that all of my peers, who didn’t go through that, were in an immensely richer place in their life, even though they didn’t have that daily dance experience. I was in the Limon company very shortly, only for about a year. And it was a transitional time for the company. I wanted to work for someone. I wanted to have dances made on me. I was always drawn to Lars work and I found my way into that company and stayed there for eight years. It was at a wonderfully creative time for Lars. I learned a great deal. When I left that company, I was interested in making work, but I wasn’t interested in having a dance company. I think that there are far too many people who think it’s the next thing to do, regardless of whether they have talent or not. I knew how to make dances, but I didn’t know what I wanted to say. So I just started out slowly and over the course of the two ensuing years things just started to snowball. By 1988, two years after I left Lars’ company, we were touring pretty consistently.
 

Your career has really spanned a lot of different outlets for dance: Opera, Broadway. Is there any point in comparing those, do you find differences, is there one that you prefer?

I find similarities. That always surprises me. Because I believe so much that structure organizes things, particularly when you’re making a dance, it’s easy for me to see how similar structures of other art forms are. And that’s always my starting point. From that point, everything else is different. The Broadway scene is an incredibly, and sometimes frustratingly so, collaborative effort. When you’re used to being in charge of your own event, figuring out how to give over and be collaborative can be incredibly difficult. Especially when a lighting designer is telling you which steps to take out. I found that an incredibly challenging place to be. I’m eager to do it again, knowing what I know now. And I have done a lot of theater since that point and in a vastly different way. So, it’s all a learning process. I love taking from other art forms, learning from that, learning from the directors I’m working with and bringing that back to the dance world and hopefully letting that change my own dance-making. It has. I’ve learned a great deal about making a different type of dramatic work by the really talented directors that I’ve been working with.
 

Well, then there’s this whole spectrum, even within the dance world, of uptown/downtown.

Yeah, I’ve never fit into anything. And that has always been a blessing for me, I think, but it’s also been tough. Because I danced in Lars’ company, we performed at City Center. I wasn’t living in the downtown world. Yet, when I left that, I didn’t know where to go. I started doing concerts at PS 122 because that’s the venue that I chose at that time. Was I making downtown work? No, because I’m not from that world. I don’t have that information in my body. I don’t have that philosophy in my head. So I’ve always been a fish out of water. I also think it took time for the work to mature to where I knew who I was as an artist, what my point of view was and what my voice was. Once that became clear to myself, and perhaps to other people, then I didn’t need to fit into any world, I’d created my own.
 

I just have one more question and I wanted to thank you for taking the time to do this.

Oh, this has been fabulous.
 

I hate asking this question, especially so soon after seeing something as amazing as what you did last night, but what’s next for you and when do you start thinking about that?

Well, I’ve had to start thinking about it. I normally I never know what’s next, but my timelines for the creative process have changed wildly since I’ve become more involved in doing larger projects. I am choreographing and directing Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice out at Opera Colorado, which is going to feature the company. I need to be so specific with the set designer with the costume designer, with the production elements right now, even though it’s happening in May. That’s a very different timeline for me creatively because I work intuitively. And I’m not going to be able to, so that’s fascinating for me. My mind is already in that world. We’re beginning a new commission in January which is going to be set to George Antheil’s1925 masterpiece entitled Ballet Mechanique.
 

Okay, one last question and a followup: is Ballet Mechanique based on the movie?

Well, it was a movie. It was a Leger film, actually. And it was the score to it, but I’m going to be making a different visualization of it. I’m going to be working with a woman named Wendell Harrington who is a visual projectionist. She’s done a tremendous amount of work on Broadway. Practically everything that you’ve seen from Ragtime to Tommy to Master Class was all her. We worked together on an opera at Minnesota Opera a few years ago. I’ve been trying to find the project to work together within the company’s schedule and this has become it. I’m thrilled with it because single-handedly she can change a point of view that an audience is having by just changing the visual. In other words, you can all of a sudden be dropped into a new scene and for the novice filmmaker in me, I am excited about what that can do to my dance-making.
 

Well it’s very exciting to hear you call yourself a novice filmmaker, that makes me all the more anticipate what’s coming up next for you. I just want to thank you again for doing this.