Easter Eggs: a Narrative Chronology

EASTER EGGS: A NARRATIVE CHRONOLOGY Adrienne Edwards and Thomas J. Lax Collaboration is a touchstone for Ralph, who has turned family members into participants and made lifelong artistic affiliations with strangers. As a young girl, Chelsea Lemon Fetzer, the artist’s daughter and one of his first collaborators, remembers methodically taking a bite out of dozens of apples used as props in his Wanda in the Awkward Age, of 1982. Twenty years later, her video documents of his Living Room Dances—in which Lemon cold called the oldest living descendants of blues musicians, showing up to dance in their living rooms and record their reactions—are fruits of an exercise in supreme observation. Under the auspices of the Ralph Lemon Company, founded in 1985 and dissolved in 1995, and of Cross Performance, Inc., founded in 1995 with the support of Ann Rosenthal and MAPP International Productions, Ralph has worked with movement artists and storytellers across the places he has traveled and then stayed: Minneapolis; New York; Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; Accra, Ghana; Nrityagram, India; Nagoya, Japan; Kunming, China; Little Yazoo, Mississippi; and many more. It seemed only fitting that the story of Ralph’s work be narrated by those whose words, gestures, and likenesses have helped to make it. What follows is a roughly chronological, wholly partial account of Ralph’s forty years of art making, compiled through in-person, telephone, and email conversations conducted on the occasion of this publication. It is an imitation of Ralph’s work, which, as Kathy Halbreich told us, always walks that very fine line between the carefully crafted and the amateur, engaging muscle knowledge so sedimented it looks untaught. His process is like a drug, a spirit, or an erotics that allows his dancers to access movement and submit freely in ways unavailable to those who are fully conscious. Then Ralph siphons the most salient parts of these experiences from the real world (whatever that is) and sets them into an artificial one: art. Ralph’s particular alchemy of reality and fantasy mines other people’s histo- ries—of dance, of love, of loss—as a way of showing us our own put-on selves, and by some refracted extension, his, too. It is, in this way, a kind of myth making or ethnography. The memories that follow lie somewhere between the warped and 1. Ralph Lemon in rehearsal for How Can You Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere?, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2010. Photograph by Cameron Wittig the true, holding out information like an Easter egg waiting to be found. 70 71 Cynthia Mayeda, 1976 bite taken out of each one, scattered along Wally Cardona, 1987 called “danger pay.” He pushed us toward a Ralph and I both grew up in Minnesota, the floor. Saxophonists lay on stage and Ralph and I met for the first time at Jacob’s more and more intense physicality, and it got and it informs the way I see his work. moved about. The work was called Wanda Pillow Dance in the Berkshires. We were harder for me, frankly. He was interested in Ralph founded Mixed Blood Theater, in in the Awkward Age. The beginning featured participating in Benjamin Harkarvy’s ballet defying gravity for longer and longer periods Minneapolis, with Jack Reuler, whom he a duet with Ralph and a female dancer. He project—me as a student, Ralph as a chore- of time. In Sleep (1989), we performed the had met in college. Reuler has remained came out in this green linen skirt and danced ographer. I was in my first year at Juilliard. same repetitive phrase over and over. At the the artistic director throughout all of these around the apples; this bizarre piece of mixed The students were told there would be end we would be physically exhausted. He years. Mixed Blood took Martin Luther imagery totally decimated me. opportunities to perform at the end of the would take us to the wall to see what would King’s dream and made it true for the project in one of three dances. I got into happen. He also managed to synthesize theater. Back then, Ralph was also a mem- Mary Good, early 1980s Ralph’s piece, Les noces. It was performed movement with his personal narrative with- ber of the Nancy Hauser Dance Company. As a dancer, Ralph’s work felt passionate yet en pointe. In one scene, I had to run at my out being self-indulgent. Hauser was a disciple of Hanya Holm, abstract, unscripted, improvisation based, partner and hug her to death. Her job was to herself a disciple of Mary Wigman. Hauser and intrinsically linked to whatever music go limp; my job was to try to keep her up for Bebe Miller, 1986 was very dramatic. I don’t really remember Ralph was immersing himself in at the as long as possible, eventually leaving her on Liz Thompson from Jacob’s Pillow intro- the other men in the company because time. His direction evoked a wide range of the floor, and walking away. She would stand, duced me to Ralph, presumably because the work was so female centered. That was physical and emotional intensity from his and I would run at her. We did this again and we were two African Americans in the field Ralph’s first serious training. dancers. The movement ranged from long, again, past exhaustion. Ralph’s company later of postmodern dance. I don’t think we lanky, lyrical gestures to quick, frenzied, performed a reworked version of Les noces would have worked together otherwise. But Meredith Monk, 1978 full-body outbursts to moments of complete that wasn’t en pointe. abstraction turned out to be our common I met Ralph in August 1978 at Naropa stillness intently focused on some simple, I graduated in 1989 and immediately bond, and we made our first work together, Institute where I was teaching a series of minute movement of the head, hand, finger, started working with Ralph’s company full Two (fig. 2). We initially worked separately. I workshops. He told me that he had seen my shoelace. It often felt as if he intended to time. Hetty King, Kelly McDonald, Nancy would develop some phrase or material, and Minneapolis production of Quarry: An Opera offer his audience a glimpse into the dynamic Ohrenstein, Michael Nolan, Ted Marks, and Ralph, independently, would do the same. in 3 Movements (1976) at the Walker Art intimacy between individuals—to show the I formed the core group of dancers. The six Then we’d come together. Through improv- Center, the winter before. I was beginning blurred lines of complacency, complicity, of us had a healthy, long run. We worked at isation, we found hooks and actions that to work on material for what eventually camaraderie, and companionship, and their the Dia Center for the Arts, which became seemed conversational. For example, if Ralph became my film Ellis Island (1981). I noticed consequences on the individuals who expe- Joyce SoHo. Occasionally, we rehearsed at made a physically strong statement, I would the clarity and elegance of Ralph’s presence rience them. Eden’s Expressway and Pineapple Dance circle him in response. We weren’t seeking and encouraged him to come to New Studios, also in SoHo, but Dia was our a common language so much as finding a York and work with my group the House. Hetty King, 1985 long-time home; we worked there daily point, choreographically, where we moved He came in the fall of 1979. I asked him Ralph and I first met in my last year as from two to six in the afternoon, right after together. The piece ends a little enigmatically. right away to be in the cast of Recent Ruins a college student. He rented one of the Molissa Fenley. The music stops. We’re out of breath. He (1979), which I was rehearsing at the time, studios a lot of us used down in SoHo. I bites my hair. I pull it back and turn away. and which we performed in Milan and remember he wanted to know how flexible Hetty King, late 1980s The lights go out. Paris. We had many adventures. I was—not just physically, but how I would Ralph’s process was always very collaborative. It’s surprising now that the piece was as interact with him. In college I had learned Often he asked us to do exercises around dramatic and domestic as it was. I wore a Ishmael Houston-Jones, 1982 big repertory pieces but hadn’t really group cohesiveness. I don’t know if he was skirt; I was the female. He wore pants; he was In 1982, I organized Parallels, a series at worked in a partnering context. just making them up, or if he learned them the male. It was tense: the dance included Danspace Project with black choreographers We danced for a while, and he invited me from somewhere else, but having been a signifiers of what I recognized as being in who weren’t coming directly from the to join him that summer at the American teacher for many years, I now realize that the realm of the black storytelling traditions, Alvin Ailey tradition or what was thought Dance Festival. Ralph was transitioning they were theater games, or even psycholog- but I don’t think we talked about it in those of at the time as “black dance.” I used the from Minneapolis to New York and didn’t ical games. For example, he would have us terms.

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