Rennie Harris, Philadelphia PA, cont.

2/9

Photo by Bob Emmott

AP: So you're not conditioned in the western concert dance tradition?

RH: Not when it comes to dance. I don't have a value system that makes me compelled to respond to a particular institution that's supposed to be great or that makes me feel something toward a particular choreographer—as defined by the dance world of western culture—who is supposed to be phenomenal. I have nothing to compare with. To me it looks like they’re doing what everybody else is doing. I feel that I'm able to stay true to what it is that I know. Western dance culture has no idea what it is that I'm doing. They have no understanding of the history of what I'm drawing from or what my conditioning was and is. And, you know, they don't have to know what it is. They think they know what it is or they define it for what it needs to be for them. And in one way that’s okay, that's fine. Western culture has taken a hierarchical perspective. They're still trying to figure out jazz music. They think they've got the formula because it's being taught at Juilliard. But how do you properly teach someone to be improvisational? You cannot teach improvisation. You can only make the person aware of his or her improvisational understanding in accordance to divine law, universal law. Every day of your life you experience improvisation—even if you go to the same job, drink the same coffee—every part of your movement in every day existence is improvisation. Right. Already.

The issue is: can you understand how to go with the flow of what is divine order? Can you move through that space and not deny what is law, from a humanist point of view? How many times has there been some great movement material lost as part of the western dance making process because it wasn't part of the plan of the choreographer or the director? Western choreographic techniques attempt to impose a design on the universe, but you can’t design this universe. You can only be the vessel through which it passes. You have to be willing to understand, to be aware of the things that are coming through the body and then pay homage to that. The only thing we can ever hope for is to be aware that when our conditioned linear selves kicks in, that we are aware that it's kicking in and to be okay with that, to say, “let me back up a little bit—I'm forcing this, let's just stop. Go home. Send everybody home.” There's no reason to even keep going because you're just bullshitting. And that's the difference between linear thought and the circle which is a whole. I would challenge artists to see how much control they really have. Choreographically you may control it to the point that you create it as a work. But then how sincere is that work? Is it moving people? Are the people really moved or are they conditioned to be moved?

Most of the audience probably doesn't know what an arabesque is but they're conditioned to certain expectations—oh, this is great, this is dance. But take that same audience and put them with a different culture of movement and they might have a better reaction or even an inspiration. They might even want to get up and dance. And I say this because I run into presenters with whom I've had conversations who say, "Well, my audience—" They address the people who are their regular audience that goes to their theater as if they're children and they know them. I don't know what's going on or will happen in their life. I can only be a guide. You know, presenters are orchestrating the dance in a weird way. And so those two people, the artist and the presenter, they're very important because they bring work to the community to inspire other people. Whatever inspires them might inspire someone else—to give them thought, to provoke, to make them angry, or to make them deal with their anger, whatever. It is all these things that artists do. And the presenters who really get it provide this function, too. But there are those who don't open themselves up to everything; they only present work according to what's hot and what's not.

In the 1980s, I sent out packages for a hip-hop dance company and theater. We have gone back as Puremovement now and have performed at these places. They don't even remember that I sent them a package. We've got the ‘decline’ letters. We have a declined file where everybody who declined us in the very beginning is kept on record. They lacked a vision of what it was that we were doing because they're following the structure and the western projection.