Kevin Ward, Dayton OH, cont.

4/4

AP: What is compelling to you about dance as a mode of expression?

KW: I like that it is temporal, and that there's a certain limit on its shelf life, although that's a blessing and a curse. It's only going to speak for so long to so many generations, and then it will cease to speak anymore. It's really tied to the performer. I guess I'm old-fashioned. I'm a choreographer, but I don't exist without a dancer-I might as well be an accountant. But because dance uses the whole body, and bodies of several people, recognition is so immediate. No matter how abstract you might try to make your message, you're going to get people. On some level, the humanity of it is always accessible. Because I wasn't a physical child I didn't do much physically. I was always sitting and reading or playing. But when I did discover dance in high school, it was a revelation to me to move my body and throw it around. And even feelings and emotions can cause the body to jump, throb, vibrate, loll, roll-whatever is moving it at that point. And I guess a lot of dance does that for me; that's what compels me about it. I feel like dance is open, particularly modern dance, in terms of how much it can contain and express. I feel like it can bring in the multimedia game, it can bring in a gaggle full of musicians, it can bring in, oh, you name it, just a whole flock of folks from wherever else, even a nursing team from a hospital.

AP: Is there a story, ideological message, or experience that you most want to bring to life in your choreography?

KW: There is a story that I've always wanted to do, somehow put into movement. Yet I don't know how. It's just going to take me a while to figure out how to do it. It comes from when a friend of mine was very ill. (note 6) I read all four of Anne Rice's books on vampires. I would read them to my friend in his hospital bed, and read them to him at night. We'd sit up and read them together all throughout his illness. And then when we finished the last book, we needed another book to read. But I didn't know this was his last time. Well, we couldn't find another book, and he died shortly thereafter. So somehow I want to put that into a dance. I don't know. Maybe it should be in a novel. What appealed to me, is that it's kind of a reverse "Scheherazade" story. (But I wouldn't use the music by Rimsky-Korsakov.) It's a story that somehow I'd like to treat in terms of movement.

AP: Do you think your work reflects the values or morality that you live by?

KW: Yes, and it reflects the questions that I have in my life as well. It reflects it all. In Tracings I was trying to work through caring for someone with an illness. And in the process of putting the piece together, you know, we talked to the dancers about what it means to care for someone who is sick, and how do you care for that person without compromising his dignity as a person? And what does it mean to both the ill person and the caregiver? How does the person who's being cared for feel? What's going through his mind? I was wrestling with those questions, and so we wrestled with it in the choreography. This new piece I'm doing is to a Bach cantata, and a lot of it deals with questions I have about religion. I want to have this talk with God.

AP: Are you working out issues related to the recent acts of terrorism?

KW: That was the prompt, but it's really not about the terrorist acts. We're building the piece as we speak. I had some ideas of having other folks onstage as part of the work, that we would rip up words. I'm still thinking about how to go about that. So it kind of reflects my values. Yes, my choreography-to return to your prior question-does reflect my values, my morals, and also a lot of my questions.