Ron Brown, Brooklyn NY, cont.

4/7

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

RB: Ultimately, when I’m really connected, it feels like I’m in a zone—for me it’s the apex--where I’m improvising to the music, trying to get the image out. We start going, kind of warming up, and of course you think, “this step has to go here, the dancers are following me…” so you have to be in a certain place to keep track of that. But when you get to that other place where it’s more about your need to get the dance out, pulling on the images, the feelings, it’s not about the dancers following you or remembering the sequence of steps, you just dance. At some point you come out of the zone and say, “Okay, who has it?” and you go back and try to remember. The dancers are like, “oh, [the dance] it’s kind of set.” And it has to start over again for the next image. The zone is where I want to be on stage too. But to get to that place, while choreographing is divine.

AP: When you’re working that way, does it feel like you lose a lot between what happens in the zone and what actually gets put out there in the stage—from the process to the presentation?

RB: For the most part, no. That’s because I’m blessed with dancers who are dedicated to that and have it in their dancing. They want to get to a zone. And the other thing is that, for the most part, I have a real kind of attachment about the work. So once we make it up and I give it to, let’s say, Diedre (note 7), I don’t have to worry about it. I know what the movement is, I give her notes on it, fix this or that…she takes it and flies. Conflicts are rare. For example, I was working with two new brothers in the company who wanted me to hold their hands. I can’t get to the goal if I have to say “one…two…three”—if I have to count this thing out and have to codify it. You know, I’m just dancing, and I need everyone to be fucking this movement up! Isn’t that what your spirit wants to do when you hear James Brown (note 8) or Mary J Blige (note 9) or whoever?! I feel like that’s why most people dance, or I assume so. When did dancing become about being cute? I don’t understand that--I mean, I do--but it makes me not want to be in the dance world. I won’t be attached to the movement any longer. If you’re not aiming to get to that connection in terms of the spirit, in terms of the soul dancing, that’s when I get separated from the zone. My way of working isn’t for everyone. Some people don’t want to go there, or they may need more time to get there. And we don’t have a whole lot of time.

AP: In your finished dances does the movement reflect things that emerged from the process, or from ideas that you bring to the dance?

RB: Both. There’s a certain point where I may have made up the movement, and I have to tell the dancers, “Okay, now, you know this is not about choreography. You know, this movement is our language. And we’re going to use it to say x, y, and z.” So some of the resources, that you’re using, I have given you plus you’re bringing your own memories, imagery, resources to the process—images that you’re going to put into it.

The other thing I tell them is, “Okay, now we have to learn from the piece as we dance it.” Now we have to move out of the way and release all that we think we know. So, I have to figure out what is the character and quality of the movement. I’m not seventy; I wasn’t a slave; but what is that feeling in the body? It’s a learning process after that.

AP: Does this exploration make your dances an extension of what you started with technically and culturally?

RB: Technique just becomes the part that makes you a professional or a dedicated artist. You’re going to use all the technique that is at your disposal. But cultural information offers a really solid, vast resource, because those memories you have to pull up—to be those people that you’ve seen, that are in you, is possible. And you have to understand, too, that if you don’t know your culture or if you are closed off from other cultures, then you can’t really bring anything to the table.