Kevin Ward, Dayton OH, cont.

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AP: You've stopped performing; has that changed the way you approach making dances?

KW: It is different, because when I was dancing I had more access to my body. I could call upon it at a moment's notice to just get up and do a step. Now I don't have that direct access anymore. The completed piece is an extension of what I bring to it technically, what I am able to describe, define, or illustrate. Sometimes I think of one of my teachers, Leslie Anderson Braswell. Often at the end of her class she would thank the students, saying that it's through them that she continues to dance. Which I always thought was a lovely thing to say. And even more nowadays, I think it's absolutely accurate.

AP: Does your choreography ever depart from what you started with?

KW: No. It doesn't end up being a departure because I'm-what, a control freak? You know, I pull the reins in. I'd say ninety percent of the time, early on in the creation of a piece, I know where it's going, even if it has a large amount of space in which it can roam. But the borders are still defined. So I like to keep those borders in there. Although I do take suggestions from the dancers-do you want it to go there? Do you want us to go over here? Emotionally, dramatically-whatever.

AP: Everyone brings something different to the viewing, but how would you like audiences to relate to your aesthetic? What do you want them to see?

KW: This is a tough question. I think I want people to see and then to feel-in that order. And then let that be the path to understanding. One thing I want them to see is people moving. And I want them to recognize that it could be them onstage. I want identification. I stay away from the idea that we're dancers, that we're experts on the body business. When somebody watches my work, I want them to see and to feel that it's a person they're watching-doing that movement, doing those gestures, crossing that space. It's another person, and maybe that person is doing it for me. I'd like people to see the relationships between the people onstage. I'd also like them to experience that movement to music, although I'm not saying I want them to come away saying, "Oh, music's real important to Kevin."

AP: Can you identify a work or a moment from a work by a black choreographer, past or present that has moved you, or that you think exemplifies a quality that you identify as particular to African-American choreography?

KW: I want to say there's one in Donald McKayle's Rainbow 'round my Shoulder-that moment before the men break out when they're all stomping the floor and massing together upstage. (note 5) I mean that moment comes together for so many reasons, you know. You've got this great image, this powerful image of people overcoming adversity-or attempting to overcome it. You have this great song that's behind you, a work song that is a part of that history. And you have these very simple movements that Donny put together which express all that: the frustration, but at the same time a feeling of power-that we're going to overcome, we're going to do this, we're going to make this happen. That moment comes in my head and speaks to me about the strength needed to overcome some of the obstacles. And it also distills into a moment a lot of what choreographers, before Donald created that piece, had accomplished. If you could boil down the essences of all of them, it's just boom! And then, when they break out of that clomping stuff, leaping to get offstage, or to get out of prison, it makes me think of this forward thrust towards future generations.

AP: Do you consider your work to be connected to the body of work of black choreographers?

KW: Well, your questions presuppose a monolith-that there can safely be called a body of work by black choreographers that exists distinctly away from the work of non-black choreographers. And I don't see it as a monolith. I can't see that you can say stylistically that all these African American choreographers are connected together. I don't know if you can even say they're connected together culturally. I wonder about that. That's an old, old debate, you know, at panels at the American Dance Festival, folks just arguing over that idea. What is that? What is black choreography? During the time when we were talking about the "black tradition in American Modern Dance," we should have been asking "What is that black tradition?" We assumed there were common elements. A lot of African American choreographers did draw material from spirituals, music and movement, religious movement. A lot of them drew good material from plantation songs. But there were others who didn't. So personally I tend to want to see myself as connected to the people I've actually worked with-Black choreographers I've worked with-like Donald McKayle, Talley Beatty (1923-95), and James Truitt. I've performed some of their pieces and they all influenced me greatly. I don't know if it was the message of blackness. No, it wasn't necessarily that; I don't think it was that at all. It's that these choreographers came in here, and they were good at what they did. They were damn good at what they did. They knew how to put movement together and how to make movement sing, soar, express. They knew how to get the movement out of the performer to make that happen. And that is more of the connection I feel to them, and that's how they influence and inspire me. It's more about that.