Kevin Ward, Dayton OH, cont.

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AP: In your choreography, what is the influence of dances you see in the theater compared to movement that you see in other places?

KW: I'd say that those influences, they're probably fifty-fifty. I use a lot of theatrical movement, but I think my best movement comes from when I'm out at a club. I put myself out there, and I just get goofy. Anybody who's seen me out dancing doesn't want to try dancing with me again because I'm just a fool. But that gives me some great material. And so often I'm looking at that; I use that stuff in my own work.

AP: Do other art forms influence your work?

KW: Yes, definitely music. It influences my work more than just in the musical choices I make. I used to have a real problem with choreographers excerpting classical musical pieces, and then patching them together with other pieces. I used to grimace when I heard stuff like that. I vowed I'd never do it. So I've had, maybe, too much integrity about my musical choices. I was raised playing classical music, and I listen to a lot of classical music, so I have to push myself away from that to create some other things that are interesting. Music that I wouldn't normally choose or wasn't necessarily interested in from my upbringing, but I now find interesting. Still, I haven't done a piece with James Brown, and I have always wanted to do a piece with James Brown and Motown. There's other music that I want to use and just haven't been able to figure out the best way to do it, like Sly and the Family Stone. Love their stuff! And Ray Charles-we grew up on the Country Western album. There was one piece of mine, Promontory (note 2), which started as an assignment at a choreography conference. When I finally got it back here and began working on it, setting it on the company, I wasn't too crazy about the music I chose to set it to, Songs of the Auvergne. I tried using another one of the songs as another section of the work, but a little bit goes a long way. So along with Lloyd Bryant, who does a lot of our recording, I prepared a tape loop of one of the songs. We also looped in a Schubert song and jazz piece; it's all being played throughout. That was the first time we'd ever done anything like that and I really liked the results. It was a new way of using the music, a new way of playing with sound. I did a similar thing when I did this awful piece about Mozart-that's another story-with trying to put together looping and patching, getting it all from different sources. I used all these different musicians' takes on Mozart, including Dave Brubeck and others. Music has been very influential for me. In some works it has defined the structure; and then sometimes I have to throw away the musical structure and force myself not to let it define the piece. Go someplace else with it.

AP: What are the most memorable aspects of the dance-making process for you?

KW: Well, I think number one is that it does finally come together. That moment when you look at it, and you go, "Oh? Wow! It fit. It actually worked!" Because I'm not dancing much anymore, before I go in the studio to choreograph I'm just thrown and I don't know where the movement's going to come from. What am I going to do? Then when I finally do it, before I know it, there's a whole dance in front of me that I've created. It's amazing. And the people that I work with are always an important part of the process, I'd say the next most memorable part of the process. For example, in a work as early as Introduction and Allegro (note 3) -that was done way back in the eighties-I can't get out of my mind working with Blaine Evans and Eric Miles on the piece or with Sheri Williams and Dawn Wood and Calvin Young. You know, those people will always be the piece to me. And there was also the triple duet that I did for the DCDC second company maybe six years ago, Silent Backwards Tracings. (note 4) Tracings was really connected to what those dancers were doing. And when we worked it out, you know, at certain points I gave them the license to let loose with how their characters went with the material. Those points are always like having your firstborn child over and over again. It's certainly a very memorable experience.