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 histories—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. The dance was physical; we banged phrase “beyond the mainstream” to describe have dancers—there was only Veta Goler, watch one another and then relay what we into each other. I remember, at one point, working beyond the mainstream of modern from Minneapolis, and me. We made Forest noticed about everyone else’s movements. he just lifted me up and dropped me on my dance and of black dance. There were no with a live goat. I wore this crazy unitard Sometimes we would have to say unpleasant kneecaps. That hurt. But I figured out how to tappers or ballroom dancers, no Lindy wrapped in spandex straps. It looked like things. Ralph wanted that friction. He do it, and we kept it. We had this push-pull hoppers, for example. The series offered camouflage. I also had a bow. The piece wanted to draw us closer even if we didn’t dynamic that came up subcutaneously; it was an intentionally narrow view—my own started, the curtains opened, and I was want that. not necessarily something we articulated. Tw o personal view. sitting there near a baby goat that was sup- Ralph would make up words. We would won a Bessie and was well received. I had never heard of Ralph. I contacted posed to walk to center stage. Of course the call them “Ralphisms.” He would ask us to him based on Blondell Cummings’s recom- goat went instead to the stage edge to smell do something using his invented language, Ishmael Houston-Jones, 1987 mendation. Ralph presented a piece that the orchestra. I worked with Ralph after and we would say, “Ralph, that’s not a word!” We worked together again on the Parallels included a film and one hundred apples, a that for almost seven years. Other times we would ask for what we in Black tour, traveling to Geneva, Paris,

72 73 director in 1986, Ralph was the first artist Ann Rosenthal, 1995 I presented. A friend who was the direc- When Ralph approached me in February or tor of Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, March, he had recently decided to dissolve his Connecticut, asked me to organize a perfor- dance company. A year before, I had started mance series on the top floor, and I asked my own organization called MAPP (MultiArt Ralph to be in it. That’s when we first started Projects & Productions). Ralph wanted working together. During those years, I feel someone to help him transition into working like I worked on a new piece of Ralph’s in a more focused way, project by project. He every year. We also did a book with the already had ideas for four projects, each a differ- photographer Philip Trager called Persephone ent art form with a mix of collaborators. These (1996) at the end of my time there. works were deliberately not for the stage. We were a team: while he was finding Wally Cardona, 1991 new artistic partners, I was finding new In Folkdance: Sextet, there was nothing but organizational partners. I couldn’t go to the six bodies on stage dancing. It premiered at usual funders for support because there was the Joyce Theater, New York, and was a big nothing to present on the stage. I set up new hit. Certain people began to notice Ralph’s relationships with collaborating organizations work. He had been accepting a lot of com- that could get behind this way of working. missions for ballet companies, including the I also implemented a structure where we Boston Ballet, the Ballet du Grand Théâtre would work with people who had expertise in de Genève, and the Lyon Opera Ballet, different areas—book keepers, grant writers, which meant he was spending time with publicists—but only as we needed them. This people aiming to do different things. From allowed Ralph to let work develop over time 2. Ralph Lemon and Bebe Miller in Two, a dance they cochoreographed, at the American Center, Paris, as part of them, Ralph learned and brought back a without rushing toward a premiere. Ralph has the Parallels in Black tour, 1987. Photograph © Geneviève Stephenson/SAIF, Paris/VAGA, New York newfound interest in a certain kind of physi- continued to make work in this way ever since. cal virtuosity. The company began to change. His interest in extremes continued. Cynthia Mayeda, 1995 When Ralph disbanded the company, I Judy Hussie-Taylor, 1991 don’t remember him making an official Certain ideas and movement phrases recur announcement. Instead he told us he wasn’t and London. In London, we got embroiled make variations on them, take them apart, do in Ralph’s work. In the 1980s, Marda Kirn going to make dances for the stage with six in a conversation about funding for black them backward and forward and rearrange (who was my mentor and the founder of the dancers anymore. I think if ever you were to dance. People were saying that what we them. We were always reworking material. Colorado Dance Festival) saw him perform ask him—and this is my impression—he’d say did was not black dance. Yet we were black, Sometimes these reworkings wouldn’t be a duet called Folkdance (1988). In 1993, she he never actually closed the company. It just we were dancers, so we called it “black used, and other times they would go verba- asked him to perform it again; Ralph said became something else. dance.” We also shared lineages in common, tim into a piece (fig. 3). no and offered to make something new. This whether personal, historical, or artistic. The became Folkdance, a solo buck dance. With Robin Schatell, 1995 Londoners’ reaction seemed to have been Hetty King, late 1980s his hands behind his back, Ralph performed It was radical for an independent choreog- related to Britain’s colonial histories with In one work, Ralph would veer toward to LaVaughn Robinson, a great tap dancer rapher with a successful company to decide Africans, and the privilege of the colonizer to narrative or theatricality, and in the next he from Philadelphia who had talked to Ralph not to work in that model anymore. Ralph name the activities of the colonized. This was would retreat into abstractions like exhaus- about buck dancing on the street. Years later, influenced our understanding of what a also true in America, but in a different way. tion and recuperation. He did the same thing the buck dance showed up again at the end choreographer can do; that choreography is I also remember the critic Elizabeth when creating a single dance. We would learn of Come home Charley Patton (2004). not limited just to making dance for dancers Zimmer writing that Ralph was black and led one phrase, A, then another, B. After we per- on a stage. Part of what motivated him was the an all-white company. Why would a white formed AB, we would repeat it, in retrograde. luciana achugar, 1992 perception of funders and critics. He didn’t critic feel the need to describe his company in He wanted to see what would happen. We I first met Ralph at California Institute of want his funders to continue saying things those terms? It was weird to see this kind of were his guinea pigs, and our cohesiveness the Arts when I was a student. He taught a like, “Where’s your dance for the stage?” So he analysis in a review of artistic work. specifically came out of that. composition workshop as a visiting artist. helped all of us rethink what dance meant. His teaching approach felt really open. We Wally Cardona, late 1980s Sam Miller, late 1980s spent a lot of time with our eyes closed, not Sam Miller, 1995 Ralph had a method in place. He made Liz Thompson was the director of Jacob’s swinging our limbs around, jumping, or run- Ralph was clear about what he wanted to these mini phrases that we called “mother Pillow and a firm supporter of Ralph’s. When ning. Instead we practiced a lot of different do, and what he would need to do it. Yale phrases.” We would each take these phrases, I came to the organization as managing approaches to improvisation. Repertory Theatre supported developmental-

74 75 stage work. So Cynthia and I introduced him powerful first chapter of the trilogy, we com- technique, right back to African dance. Ailey down the barriers between various disciplines, to Stan Wojewodski, Jr., who was Yale Rep’s mitted to the next two projects, whatever had signified black modernism, but Ralph, in this case, dance, video, film, installation, artistic director. Then, Ann Rosenthal stepped form they would take. like myself, didn’t come from the Ailey and photography. The duet was shot entirely in; she helped produce his works for the next Ralph brought together a remarkable school, even as we honored and appreciated at the Cloisters in New York by cinematog- twenty years. But of course, his works were group of artists and creators. Negotiating that legacy. As children of postmodernism rapher Ellen Kuras. It adopted the sepia very different to think about than to make. the coexistence of all these voices was we were more invested in deconstructing tone of Trager’s photographs from the book We used to joke that we were all part of a challenging. We hosted a weeklong spo- and reconstructing notions of “blackness” Persephone. Cinematically, I was influenced pre‑ and post-trauma unit. ken-word residency with Tracie Morris, as both limiting and historically relevant. by the work of Maya Deren who created a bringing together musical and poetic design It’s a conundrum that the term “post-black” choreographic vocabulary for the camera. This Cynthia Mayeda, 1995 for the show with the whole company. can only begin to address. Geography took project was my closest collaboration at that In 1995, the same year he disbanded the During the residency there was tension us all by surprise because Ralph seemed to time with a choreographer, and collaborations company, Ralph did a concert. I’d met him, in the group around trust and agency, and be resetting a missing link right in front of with dancers were just developing in contem- but we were not friends at that time. It was there were concerns around who had power our eyes. That Ralph made this link on his porary art. I edited the film over a couple of the tenth anniversary of his company and in relation to creative acts. Making the work own dancing body, and in a community with years, applying for various grants during this the Joyce gave him a season, a big coup for raised questions about the nature of global other dancers, was seminal. In that moment, time. It was the first work I showed at the any choreographer in New York. With Viola exchange and collaboration. While many the acronym “BAM” was superphonic. Victoria Miro Gallery in London in 1999, and Farber, a legendary Cunningham dancer, he artists wouldn’t dare travel a road so full of my first three-screen film installation. performed a duet called Threestep (Shipwreck). buried explosives, Ralph has an ability to Okwui Okpokwasili, 1997 My practice at that time was also deeply I remember crying and not really under- channel these questions into the work itself, I first saw Ralph perform after he had dis- indebted to the work of Derek Jarman, standing why. There was something so stun- rather than letting them freeze his creative banded his company. I watched him in a dance where the creative process is documented in ning about the two of them on stage. They process or lead to intense insecurity. that I recognized as classical and rigorous, but the work itself. It also involved a conversation shared a reverence for each other, but more also something more than that. At the time, I between analog and digital filmmaking tech- than that, they were really dancing together. Joseph V. Melillo, 1997 was writing plays. I remember being astonished nologies, and I wanted to expand on that in I met Ralph in the late 1970s when he was by the curtain of colored glass bottles; by the gallery presentation. Djédjé Djédjé Gervais, 1996 a waiter at Miss Ruby’s, a restaurant on 8th Ralph’s body against other West African bodies, Ralph, Bebe, and I were all mediating Ralph came to Côte d’Ivoire and saw the Avenue in Chelsea. My relationship with who were at times performing traditional different disciplines as a way of making space company I was working with. We were him at the time was purely social. I began movements and at others moving in ways that was not just stage space. My interests rehearsing material to Michael Jackson. We my artistic tenure at the Brooklyn Academy unknown to me. I was moved especially to see and theirs converged, taking the world outside knew Ralph was there to look for some of Music (BAM) in 1983 with the inaugural West African dance framed in a concert context the studio as a space for experimentation. performers. He saw the show and chose four Next Wave Festival, a contemporary nontra- instead of, say, in a circle, somewhere outside. people: two dancers, Nai Zou and me, and ditional performance arts festival. I monitored Cheng-Chieh Yu, 1998 two drummers. He told me straight: “My Ralph’s artistic growth in many different Bebe Miller, 1998 In the late 1990s, Ralph approached me about work, everyone has not accepted it yet. I performances in and around New York, and, To prepare for Three, ten years after Tw o , Tree (2000). Ralph’s physicality, his ideas about came here to work with different ideas. What in 1997, BAM presented Geography in what we worked well over a year, on and off. We falling and the body at risk, attracted me. does it mean to be black? To be African? was then called the Majestic Theater. We’ve talked to bell hooks about writing a text. She Everything in my training is about control. We’re going to do something together.” This presented several of his works since. agreed to meet with us, and then I realized Ralph’s work is much more dangerous—you turned out to be Geography (1997). she thought I was Blondell Cummings. have to survive in the moment. Ishmael Houston-Jones, 1997 She quietly backed out. Ann Rosenthal, of I watched the casting process. One by Nari Ward, 1996 When I first saw Geography, I was admittedly MAPP International Productions, helped us one, he brought together performers from Ralph asked if I would design the sets for a critical of it. I felt that postmodernism had get in touch with Isaac Julien. We wanted India, Taiwan, Japan, and China. He was big project. He had seen my work in the 1996 won, and Africans had lost. I was confused by him to help with the language and film the interested in how environments influence Whitney Biennial. I was really apprehensive the work, by Ralph’s intent. The dance was work. Isaac helped transform the piece into dance culture and how the people who about being a set designer because I felt it was really beautiful, and Nari Ward’s set was gor- more of a story. By then we had publicly practice certain forms of dance pass it so removed from my interests as a sculptor. geous. But I questioned the value of seeing performed some in-progress improvisations. down. The project also emerged from his But he broke it down to me by saying, “I’d contemporary dancers from Africa. I felt like Then we brought in Cleo Sylvestre, a British long years of practicing yoga and Buddhism, like for you to create a world.” Ralph was putting a postmodern veneer on actress, who triangulated the relationship, and of reading Eastern philosophies. them, which might be false or misrepresenta- forcing the question, Who’s with whom? It Ralph was particularly interested in Phillip Bither, 1997 tive on my part. That was my feeling then. was wise to call it Three; it really was about natural disasters—in how people are influ- When the Walker first supported Geography three characters with history between them. enced by damaged environments and the during a residency for Ralph, we quickly Trajal Harrell, 1997 body at risk. He was interested in my native discovered that he was planning a three-part Geography connected the legacy of the jan- Isaac Julien, 1998 Taiwan, a volatile land where earthquakes trilogy and had already mapped out its gling, sliding, and tossing in Trisha Brown’s I was teaching at New York University when I and typhoons are common. People have to conceptual construction. After presenting the aesthetic, and her ideas around “release” made Three. I was most interested in breaking survive in those environments. The whole

76 77 creative process of Tree was about crashes— against its disciples going out, engaging in room with two little beds. At the end of every if we wanted to meet Walter Carter, who at about understanding and misunderstanding, commercial interests, and cashing in. But day, he’d write or draw. He would tune in. I ninety-five was the oldest living person in gentle confrontation, and what were some- Ralph, somehow, after several conversations don’t know if it was a kind of meditation or a the area. My dad was like, “Yeah, sure. Why times very heated encounters. with Mano, convinced him to join the cast. I way of thinking about the day, but he would not?” Jimmy somehow got Walter to come to was surprised. Ralph had a way of honoring spend quiet time at the table in whatever cheap the juke joint another day. David Thomson, 1998 Mano. Ralph pushes, but he also shows a lot motel we were in. He would not want to talk When they met, my dad listened to a With Geography, Ralph ripped down the of respect. much about what he was writing or drawing. bunch of Walter’s stories, and at a certain walls a bit more. I think he had to; the walls Then at some point he would read to me the point asked if Walter remembered any old were in part his own. But he was willing Phillip Bither, 2001 things he’d written, and I would almost always dances he used to do. Walter showed us the to die at the walls—in the work, there’s a To make Come home Charley Patton (2004), say, no, that’s not exactly what happened. slow drag. He was a beautiful man with beautiful image of him against one while Ralph returned to the United States. He We would listen to blues music everywhere these thick, elegant eyelashes. He’d take some somebody’s throwing stones. The idea of applied the same research methodology he we drove; Charley Patton and all of Delta’s shuffling steps, then drag one of his feet; take sacrifice became crucial to the process. had used in Africa and Asia to his own history. blues men and women became the soundtrack more shuffling steps, then drag one of his In Tree, Djédjé runs through a roster of He balanced his search for roots in the South to all these landscapes. It was a saturation. feet. That was his dance. It was love at first dance types found in West Africa. The perfor- by also acting as historian or sociologist, exam- sight. From then on, Walter was the muse that mance, though virtuosic, creates a container of ining with critical distance the region and its Kathy Halbreich, 2001 my father circled around. He was in excellent Africanness around him. When Ralph jumps history. He then animated the experience with I desperately wish I had been a fly on the condition for his age. He could move. on Djédjé, who continues to dance, it’s a colo- living testimonials, visiting various sites and boom box for one of Ralph’s Living Room Each time my dad visited, he’d give Walter nial act, placing postmodern concepts directly offering private performance tributes. Dances. Ralph pulls up to a house anony- these very coded instructions. I’d film as Walter on top of traditional, regional ones. But it’s During one of the Walker residencies, he mously. He knows that a relative of a famous carried them out. The instructions were very also, literally, one human weighing down and his daughter visited the site of a lynching musician lives there, but the person is oth- odd, like: bang on this, then walk on this, then another who nevertheless continues to move. in Duluth, Minnesota, on a Sunday morning. erwise unknown, except by reputation. He climb this ladder, and then knit this basketball There’s this beautiful but also dangerous Chelsea video recorded Ralph laying on knocks on the door and says, “Hi, I’m Ralph hoop. Walter would always mess it up. I told section in Tree, where the dancers on stage the empty street—this sunny, peaceful day Lemon, I’d like to do a dance for you.” To my dad that Walter’s mistakes were for the perform choreographed material, while in a small city in America, part of its history knock on somebody’s door that you don’t better; that his messing up the instructions was backstage, on either side, the rest of us charred and hateful. know—that’s bravery. Or foolishness. You the film. Releasing control of the situation— tossed rocks across the floor, creating a kind don’t know if you’re going to get laughed at. throughout the trip, we both had to learn and of rumbling or earthquake effect. We tried Chelsea Lemon Fetzer, 2001 But he was finding a kinship artistically and, remind each other to practice this. not to hit the dancers but weren’t always My dad mentioned the possibility of trave- maybe, racially. successful. This pushed us to negotiate with ling with him to do research for Patton and Darrell Jones, 2003 one another. That act of negotiation is what’s there was no question in my mind that I David Thomson, 2002 Patton contained a section called “Ecstasy.” It really interesting to Ralph. would join him. He gave me a job as his vid- I don’t want to say that the shift in Ralph’s was three minutes long and highly rigorous. eographer. I always had a camera in my hand. work was merely one of content. Partially, it At first I felt that there wasn’t a logic to what Cheng-Chieh Yu, 1998 When we would fall into conversations with was his age, and the process of working with he was doing; he was just trying to see how far We were workshopping Tree with a full strangers along the way, he’d tell me, “Film his daughter, and of going to these places we could push our bodies. I felt angry, and I cast when Ralph was introduced to this, film this!” and talking to all of these people. His body would direct that anger, not necessarily toward Asako Takami, a Japanese dancer living in We retraced the Freedom Rides, went was transforming. He was beginning to see Ralph, but toward what he was pushing us San Francisco who had practiced Odissi down the Delta, performed Living Room mortality in a changed way. His daughter to do. The pain got me through it. I stopped for more than eighteen years. Dances in the homes of the descendants of was growing up, becoming a woman, and by caring about Ralph’s logic because performing When Ralph asked Asako to join, the old blues musicians. I would film the people working together, their relationship changed the sequence felt like a personal goal. Going dance already included a number of different watching him or some empty bleachers or his work on another level. When you get to through that with somebody breeds a certain movement vocabularies. Asako was fine with whatever, but never him. We also went to a a certain age you realize you hold various type of love and admiration but also resent- the mélange of all these different practices. lot of the civil-rights museums and memori- histories. You yourself are an accumulation ment. It was like what he calls a koan—a par- Then Ralph brought in Manoranjan Pradhan, als along the way. of archival material. Ralph is very much adox that, in one’s attempt to resolve it, hones another trained Odissi dancer. At one point For my dad, research and travel are often interested in sourcing that material. It’s part the mind. Zen Buddhist masters give them to Ralph had one of us doing some modern the point of his work, more so than the out- of translating and recombining ideas from the their pupils in order to understand the world. and postmodern movements while Asako come. His work includes the product, what past. That material is not done yet. I came to consider Ralph’s instructions to be performed traditional Odissi dance. Mano comes before it, and what comes after it. questions of the universe that I could take on was not at all happy about the mixing of I had written in a notebook a series of Chelsea Lemon Fetzer, 2002 and try to answer for myself. styles. He resisted, claiming his guru wouldn’t interview questions, and every day I would ask While my dad and I were shooting Living It was an interesting way to work with approve. Madonna had also worked with him a question and videotape his answer. The Room Dances, we came to this juke joint him. It didn’t feel like there was a hierarchy Odissi dancers, and Mano was reacting to questions were about our family, about him. just outside of Yazoo City. The owner of the because he, too, was researching his own this. He said the Odissi community was I made it my own project. We’d share a hotel juke joint, Jimmy Duck Holmes, asked us body. His presence has been very different

78 79 in each of the works I’ve made with him. We ended up doing the workshop in out in the trees and things, in the back of the in the mid-2000s—at Danspace. He didn’t With Patton, he never demonstrated the several places. Eventually he handed the reins house, and all that. answer me for a few weeks. Eventually he movements; he practiced them. It’s as if he to me, but in Yazoo City we worked together. said, “It’s the one-year anniversary of Asako’s were asking us to do things so that he could Each day we would figure out our curricu- Louis Sparre, 2006 passing, and I would like to do something get his ass out there and do them too. lum. He would be really abstract, because he is We were filming Walter and his wife, Edna, with an invited audience in the church.” And abstract, and try to steer the workshop toward who was in her eighties, and their friends and I said yes. This became Untitled. Nari Ward, 2003 his work and interests. Then I would offer community building a spaceship out of found For Patton, I wanted to use wooden pallets insight into how the kids would benefit. What objects. Ralph had a vision, and he needed Louis Sparre, 2009 to build the “Attic Space” with a wall and is relevant to them? How can we explain this someone to operate a camera. That was me. I Ralph prepared scene lists for How Can You Stay mirror. I thought of the pallets as metaphors in a way that matters to them? We tried to kept wanting to make the situations and the In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere? for movement and globalization. Ralph was find a good balance. He brought the frame- people look more cinematic, more romantic. (fig. 1, see p. 70); he was really academic about into them as everyday accoutrements. But the work and artistry, and I grounded it all. But Ralph was not interested in production it. He sent me references ahead of time for films stage director said that wooden pallets would At the first workshop, there were a lot of value; he really wanted the footage to look by André Tarkovsky and Jean-Luc Godard. weigh too much, and suggested we make kids. Then people started saying, “What are natural. He didn’t want the cinematography There were specific scenes he wanted to rep- imitations out of foam. The foam pallets these guys doing? They’re weird.” Parents to produce the content because, for him, the licate, and he wanted the camera to mimic the looked amazing. If you were ten feet away, started pulling their kids. One day, only one art existed in what was happening, in the framing. Our work directly referenced those you could not tell the difference—the fiction kid showed up. I remember my dad sitting at interactions between people. films but with different content: instead of fea- was real. From then on, anything, everything the table where he was doing his writing and Ralph always had a schedule, the whole turing a young couple in Paris, for instance, we seemed possible. Once I realized that I didn’t drawing, and he was drinking this Martinelli’s week planned out. Everything was ordered focused on an old couple in Mississippi. have the burden or luxury of the viewer’s apple cider from the bottle like it was whis- and organized. That’s, like, 50 percent of him. I always felt like Little Yazoo was a home body coming close to or touching the mate- key. He was like, “It’s a failure. It’s awful. This And the other 50 percent was completely for Ralph. I’d meet him at LaGuardia rial, as in a sculpture, I understood that we was a terrible day. I just don’t know what’s open to improvisation and happy accidents. Airport, and he’d be metropolitan artist could resort to insinuation. going to happen tomorrow.” I was cracking He would give Walter directions, Walter Ralph. We’d get down to Mississippi, and his up. You can’t foresee the outcome of that would do something completely different, accent would change slightly, his body would R. Eric Stone, 2003 kind of project; it was beyond our control. and Ralph would be ecstatic. be more relaxed. He slipped easily into Patton was cosponsored by Krannert Center Southern Ralph. Traveling to Little Yazoo for the Performing Arts in Urbana, Illinois, Ann Rosenthal, 2003 Lloyd Williams, 2006 seemed for him a mix of going home and where I was head of scenic design. My job In retrospect, the most exciting works Ralph and Walter come and talk to me arriving on another planet. was to figure out how the show would were those where I witnessed Ralph shift about building a spaceship. I got it built Ralph would incorporate anyone who was work in all the different venues. The project toward a new way of working. In Come for them and everything. Ralph drew me a around. I don’t remember him ever exclud- was expansive: the stage cascaded forward, home Charley Patton, the final section was an little picture showing me how he wanted ing anyone. Ralph would find a way to bring undulating onto, in front of, over the seats— ecstatic dance during which form dissolved. it and everything. He gave me an idea of in whatever elements were available. it broke into the house, deconstructing the It was challenging for me when I would see what he wanted it to look like. He just told boundary between audience and performer. it in rehearsal. I was just like, what are you me whatever I did, it’d be fine with him. I Darrell Jones, 2009 The “Attic Space” was skeletal and con- doing? But when I look at it now, I see he found a boat. I got one of them old fishing Ralph removed his body from much of the tained a sense of historicism. For instance, was trying to move off the stage and create a boats, and I cut it in half, closed up the back creation processes in How Can You Stay. He Ralph didn’t want to use reproduction form that didn’t have a structure. In the next end, put all the design on and everything. had personal reasons for this. He was in too wallpaper; he wanted real wallpaper from the theater piece, How Can You Stay, he moved I put a wheel on. The design’s like an much pain—not necessarily physical pain but mid-1940s. Where does one find wallpaper even further from what you would expect airplane. I took the boat, cut it in half, and emotional pain—to be effective at using his from sixty years ago with the glue intact? But to see on the stage. What excited me most put a lot of wood lights and stuff on it, and body in the ways we were being asked to. He these kinds of details lend authenticity, which was looking to his past work to inform my got it looking good. Ralph was real pleased never showed us what to do using his own is something specific to the vernacular of understanding of the new work. Ralph’s with it when he seen me, real pleased with body, or even talked to us about it; instead he sculpture in the art world. work has a through line: process, collabora- it. Ralph said he was going to put it in a asked us what we needed. tion, and thinking about new forms. museum or something. His show came to He’s not verbose. He’ll distill instructions Chelsea Lemon Fetzer, 2003 New Orleans and me and my wife went into a sentence that appears simplistic but My dad and I organized a series of creative Edna Carter, 2005 down there and looked at the spaceship. It in fact is quite profound. For example, in workshops with kids called the Memory I first met Ralph when he was working with looked good to me. How Can You Stay, we created a score called Project. We started at this little community my husband. I fell in love with Ralph. It’s “Wall/hole,” its intent to reanimate the center in Yazoo City. We asked the kids to like I’ve known him a lifetime. My husband, Judy Hussie-Taylor, 2008 “Ecstasy” section from the end of Patton. The collect their family and community histories he knew how to two-step and all of that. Just I asked Ralph if he would perform some of score describes what we’re going to do. At and share them through the arts—learn a make it up as he went along. I can’t do noth- his memorial dances—the private dances one point David Thomson catches Okwui dance from an elder or make a portrait of an ing else. I’m not a dancer. Ralph would take he calls Living Room Dances as well as the around the waist, and this acts as a catalyst elder or a community member, and so on. Walter and his friends all out there outside, lynching-site counter-memorials he made for Okwui’s solo exploration of “joy.” Ralph

80 81 used words like “joy” and “ecstasy,” that for the fourth position, and I was like, “Woah,” me, as a performer, are very hard to achieve because of the presence of form in some- physically. I was always trying to research thing that might appear to be formless. these motivating ideas through physical form. As dancers, our charge to Ralph was that we Bebe Miller, 2011 needed structure. Ralph realized what he was Ralph and Okwui share physical acts. There’s doing, and that we were going to have strong a push, an insistence, a violence in their reactions. He played the edge. He joked exchange that I felt I also agreed to as a through the process. He negotiated all the female partner in a duet with Ralph. When way down to the bitter end. you work to create that state, it’s important to consider how you both then can take care of Simone Forti, 2010 it. It’s a very particular kind of experience. My first response to seeing How Can You Watching the duet with Okwui, I Stay? Wild energy. But not just that. A feeling thought she was responding to Ralph in a of interest. Later, talking with Ralph in the way that I never did. I was more reactive, lobby of REDCAT, I remember genuinely whereas she seemed to be resistant. She telling him I liked the piece. Bodies and would come back at him—not in an angry, colors of shirts, pants, flailing on stage as on a biting way, but rather calling for more, rectangular page. more, more, more, more.

Kathy Halbreich, 2011 Maria Hassabi, 2011 Ralph performed with Okwui in MoMA’s As a mentor and friend, Ralph has com- 3. From left: Wally Cardona and Ralph Lemon pissing on a tree, 1989. Photographer unknown Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium. pletely spoiled me. Every time I present my He redid Untitled, a mourning performance work (even a short work in progress), shortly he and Okwui had made for a private audi- after I’ll receive an email with his thoughts ence at Danspace in 2008. Connie Butler, and an invitation for conversation. One thing the former Chief Curator in the Department in particular I remember him telling me: “A of Drawings, had invited Ralph as part of performance shouldn’t smell like one.” her exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the improvised with the sets and the space, as acting out. I was interested but also wary Twentieth Century. Connie, a dancer earlier Ishmael Houston-Jones, 2012 setting it up in different ways. The transitions because I find experimental dance, and the in her career, and her curatorial partner In 2012, thirty years after the first Parallels, made for interesting, sometimes awkward, yet explicit nature of some of the material, chal- Catherine de Zegher were both interested I organized a series under the same name at always productive moments. The one I most lenging. I’m really cautious about how my in performance and conceived the idea of Danspace, this time inviting dancers beyond remember occurred when David Thomson body is presented and used; what’s read on it drawing in space. my own constellation of contacts who were replaced Okwui. David was wearing a black and what it says. I’ve always been very careful Unlike at Danspace, the MoMA audience troubling the idea of black dance. In 1982, latex mask, a white linen dress, and black about how much I use, and how I show, my was large and made up mostly of strangers. audiences came out of curiosity, because they high heels. Okwui wore a long, dark-colored body on stage. At the same time, I took off I remember Ralph telling me that he could didn’t know who we were or what we were dress, and she had been singing, vocalizing. my pants during the Parallels performance. feel, for the first time, the breath of his audi- doing. In 2012, people already knew this When the two of them came together, they It’s always an option, but I want to control ence. There was no seating and the audience other dance universe existed. More people of looked explosive. that option. members moved with him, stayed close to color came. Audiences included more African him. He described it as Armageddon. Americans than in the downtown dance April Matthis, 2012 Kathy Halbreich, 2012 world in the 1980s. Ralph asked me to do An All Day Event. The idea for Some sweet day, Ralph’s Judy Hussie-Taylor, 2011 Ralph came to me with an idea for the I wore one of my long, stupid wigs and performance series at MoMA, followed When Ralph told me he planned to perform final piece in the series: An All Day Event. glasses, and I had a bag full of crap that I just an ongoing conversation with Bennett Untitled at MoMA, I was surprised. Because The End, a twelve-hour durational piece for dumped on the floor as soon as I walked on Simpson, when he was a curator at the the work is a radical, wrenching, public act twelve artists interacting with a set made by stage. He later stole that for Scaffold Room Institute of Contemporary Art, in Boston. of private mourning. It’s a beautiful piece, Nari Ward. I immediately embraced the idea, (2014). I started singing Beyoncé’s “Party” Simpson was beginning to work on what but also difficult for him, and for Okwui. with the caveat that all the primary artists a cappella and it caught Ralph’s attention. would eventually become the exhibition I thought he was crazy, and I was nervous had to be black. Each artist was allowed fifty Later he talked to me about Scaffold Room; Blues for Smoke, which ultimately didn’t when I went to see it. minutes, with an additional ten minutes over- he said he was interested in Kathy Acker and include the idea he and Ralph had been In the Atrium, unlike at Danspace, I was lapping with the subsequent dancer. Ralph Beyoncé and archetypes of femininity and working on. Jenny Schlenzka, who was actually able to see Ralph’s form, and that had the first hour; I had the last. None of the sexuality. I think he was also talking about Assistant Curator at MoMA at the time, was interesting. Sometimes he would be in performances were planned. Most people Moms Mabley back then. The pornographic curated Some sweet day with Ralph. Ralph

82 83 is a remarkable person to have working with as the idea for the transition. Ralph asked me, April Matthis, 2014 Ralph wanted her to stop. He was sending her an institution because he asks questions that “If I can build my own theater and make my For Scaffold Room, Ralph didn’t use the same time signals. But she was going someplace she somehow make us all nervous—nervous own work, what do I need the Walker for? vocabulary as a theatrical director. He would wanted to go. He had pushed her to the edge, being a good state of affairs. Why should I bother with all of your bureau- say things like, “That was good”; or, “Can and she was damn well going to take her time cracy and rules and all the communication you be sad?”; or, “Why don’t you cry?” But to find her own floor again. That’s how they Deborah Hay, 2012 required?” He offered this provocation with he’d never try to explain what a character play with each other, and it’s great. He gets When I was shown the Atrium at MoMA as great glee and a twinkle in his eye. was experiencing, or how the audience his performers to move in ways they never the site for the work I would do there a year Curatorially, Scaffold Room was a difficult should feel. His directives were less psycho- imagined moving, visit psychological places later under Ralph’s curatorial authorship, project—four curators ended up being logical, more cosmetic. There were questions they never thought they would visit. immediately I noticed that he was the only involved. But it made us think more deeply he could have been asking but wasn’t—either person of color in that very white space. about performance in an open-platform setting because he didn’t have the vocabulary, or Okwui Okpokwasili, 2014 like a gallery. We realized that, for provocative he just wasn’t interested in that stuff. But In Scaffold Room, we didn’t explode the Judy Hussie-Taylor, 2012 work, we need to build community conver- because I considered these questions, I felt I text the way we would explode movement Ralph kept calling Some sweet day’s organ- sations into the project’s development. Does had an advantage, and it gave me a sense of phrases. At a certain point the text remained izing question—What is black music?—the an institution like the Walker have the right to agency, a sense of power. It was also freeing in what it was. It was sacred. Ralph would take Easter egg. So I asked him, “Why the ‘Easter explore questions of the female black body? that I didn’t have to adhere to any particular pieces of text, and then we would design egg’? Why would you hide this question Does Ralph as a male artist? Those were big through line or character development. movement phrases for them. I would create a from the audience? What’s your curatorial questions for us, and for our community. A phrase, then Ralph would look at it, and then responsibility?” He answered with something month and a half before the show opened, I Okwui Okpokwasili, 2014 together we’d shape it. We’d explode it, or like, “It’s too easy for people to go there, to asked Ralph to meet with some of the com- To build the text for Scaffold Room, Ralph distill it, or invert it, or reorient it, or perform think they already understand the perfor- munity’s African American and feminist leaders would read me something that he’d written, it backward. The movement phrases always mance being about race in a specific way, and and discuss aspects of the work. For example, and I would try to transcribe it as quickly ended up far from where they began. then think they know what it is.” why would he include Amy Winehouse in a as possible. Obviously I would get it wrong. work about great black artists? These conversa- Then I would write something from what April Matthis, 2014 Ash Bulayev, 2012 tions, along with the community and curatorial I’d transcribed, which was two degrees of We were rehearsing at the Curtis R. Priem 4Walls was a live multimedia dance instal- dialogues emergent throughout the project’s wrongness. That’s the first part of my scaffold. Experimental Media and Performing Arts lation that provided four points of view on run, brought greater understanding and owner- We were reacting to a combination of Kathy Center; it’s such a huge space, and we had it one dance, giving new shape to what Ralph ship around the project and opened many new, Acker and—maybe I’m making an assump- all to ourselves. One day, on a break, I started calls a “dance with no form,” a movement fascinating lines of inquiry. tion—Ralph’s shit. skipping through the space because that’s that began in 2003 with short sections origi- The work contains a sense of the power what my twelve-year-old self would have nally titled “Ecstasy” and “Wall/hole.” As with R. Eric Stone, 2014 and submission, and the deep love that comes done. Ralph was like, “Let’s keep that—the many of Ralph’s projects, 4Walls emerged Ralph initially contacted me a year after with them. Can you open yourself? Can you skipping thing.” I was just doing it for fun, from years of artistic inquiry. The work was Patton with an idea of making a kind of let someone fill you? How overwhelming and I wasn’t wearing heels. But in Scaffold sited in a giant black cube and addressed the bunk-bed ladder unit. But it wasn’t until is it, and can you come back from it? Ralph Room, I had to do it in heels. new interest among visual-art institutions Scaffold Room that he followed through with projected onto me a part of him that I then One night, a lot of Minneapolis’s black in courting and presenting the performing the idea. Ralph wanted the exposed skeleton projected back onto him. There’s a part of women performance makers came out, by arts, and specifically dance, often within the of the “Attic Space,” but without the histori- him that wants to be filled. It’s a weakness, invitation, to see the show. Afterward they framework of institutional critique. cism of its interior. Once we knew the show perhaps, in a certain model of masculinity had a kind of informal powwow in a differ- Ralph and I decided to combine the would open at the Walker, we thought about in western culture that makes it the ultimate ent space. They were like, “We have to talk premiere with an informal dinner inviting the unit in relation to the size of the gallery taboo for a man to release and open like that. about this right now. We have to call a quo- colleagues and peers from both the visual and and its ceiling height. What’s the relationship rum and discuss.” They isolated that moment performing arts to reflect on the institutional, of an object to the space it’s in? Thinking Kathy Halbreich, 2014 of me skipping. I don’t remember perfectly, infrastructural, and conceptual implications about this question as a spectator in an art Ralph and Okwui have a sadomasochistic but it was something about my shadow of collaborations and coproductions between context provoked more discussion than relationship. There is something so intense against the vast white wall. A woman told performing-arts institutions and museums in it would as a spectator in a theater-for- and apocalyptic about the way they push each me it was striking to see a body like mine (I the United States. entertainment context. Spectatorship is so other, allow each other to be pushed—it’s didn’t ask her to define that) glorified in a fraught in the work, particularly the way it’s almost brother-and-sisterlike. They call each space like the Walker. She didn’t use the word Phillip Bither, 2014 mixed with surveillance. For example, Ralph other out in very profound ways, but they’re “glorified,” either, but something to that Ralph let go of one version of a successful created an amazing library of video footage blood, and they’re not going to separate, no effect. I got the sense it was powerful for her. career—the one where he’d make big shows of Okwui exhibiting various emotions—fear, matter what he tells her to do. That was what There were several discussions about own- for BAM and other large festivals—and instead love, laughter, hatred, and so on—that he was so beautiful about Scaffold Room. At the ership of the work throughout the process. Yes, created work that was unpresentable in a per- integrated into the work. The technology Walker premiere, Okwui hadn’t finished Ralph’s name is on the wall. His name is on forming arts context. Scaffold Room emerged exacerbates the feelings and vice versa. performing when she was supposed to have. the program. His stamp is on the work. But,

84 85 for me, there’s little or no conflict—it’s Ralph’s The Collaborators ishmael houston-jones is an acclaimed okwui okpokwasili is a writer, performer, and work because he asked me to take my time to luciana achugar is a Brooklyn-based cho- dancer, choreographer, and activist. Jones choreographer who has appeared in several of think about these things for a little while. reographer from Montevideo, Uruguay, and invited Lemon to participate in his 1982 Lemon’s works, including Come home Charley Lemon’s former student. series Parallels, at Danspace Project, as well as Patton (2004), Untitled (2008), How Can You Stay Kathy Halbreich, 2015 phillip bither is the William and Nadine its reprise in 2012. In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere? Ralph inspires loyalty. Look at the number McGuire Director and Senior Curator, judy hussie-taylor has served as executive (2010), and Scaffold Room (2014). of people who have traveled with him Performing Arts, at the Walker Art Center. director of Danspace Project ann rosenthal is the founder and former a great artistic distance. Because of the He has been the organization’s senior cura- since 2008. executive director of MAPP International intimacy he’s bred, we can draw patterns, tor of performing arts since April 1997. darrell jones is a dancer and choreographer Productions. meaning, and history out of circumstance ash bulayev is an independent curator and who has performed in Lemon’s Come home robin schatell is director of public and movement. Ralph is most generous producer. Previously, he was curator for Charley Patton (2004), How Can You Stay In programs for the Madison Square Park where cultures overlap; he’s interested not in dance and theater at the Curtis R. Priem The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere? Conservancy. From 1992 to 1995, she segregation but accumulation. Experimental Media and Performing Arts (2010), and 4Walls (2012). was managing director of the Ralph Right now, he is trying to put together a Center, New York. isaac julien is a London-based filmmaker Lemon Company. small group of likeminded souls to boycott wally cardona is a Brooklyn-based chore- and artist. He directed the film Three in louis sparre is the creative director of Tweed dance for a year. He has been wondering ographer, dancer, and teacher, and the artistic collaboration with Lemon and Bebe Miller Video and traveled three times with Lemon whether MoMA could umbrella him, of director of the dance company WCV, Inc. in 1998. to film in Mississippi. course. Only Ralph would come up with He was a member of the Ralph Lemon hetty king is a dancer and, from 1985 to r. eric stone is a scenic designer based in this idea, which basically asks how we might Company from 1987 to 1995. 1992, was a member of the Ralph Lemon Iowa. He developed the design for the “Attic all reclaim time to think. It’s the central ques- edna carter lives in Bentonia, Mississippi. Company. Space” and “Roving Screen” in Come home tion of our moment. We are all inundated She and her late husband Walter collaborated april matthis is a New York-based actor, Charley Patton (2004) and Scaffold Room and depleted by the constant rush of words, with Lemon on works and exhibitions includ- singer, writer, and member of theater group (2014). fragments, requests, and questions that take us ing (the efflorescence of) Walter (2006), How Can Elevator Repair Service. She has appeared in david thomson is a dancer and choreog- out of truly creative acts. You Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Lemon’s An All Day Event. The End (2012) rapher who has collaborated with Lemon Ralph is always on the edge of trying to Anywhere? (2010), 1856 Cessna Road (2012), and Scaffold Room (2014). on works including Tree (2000), Come home find that very fine line between something and Scaffold Room (2014). cynthia mayeda has worked in philanthropy Charley Patton (2004), and How Can You Stay crafted and something amateur—his muscle chelsea lemon fetzer is a poet and and arts administration for over forty In The House And Not Go Anywhere? (2010). knowledge is so deep that it looks untaught novelist. years, most recently as deputy director for nari ward is a sculptor known for his somehow. This is one of Ralph’s real contri- simone forti is an influential artist and institutional advancement at the Brooklyn systemically composed installations made butions to the idea of deskilling (which is an choreographer who has been making work Museum, New York. from found materials. Ward created the sets illusion, like affectlessness). He is searching since the 1950s. joseph v. melillo has been executive pro- and props for Geography (1997), Come home for what comes before habit; it’s almost like djédjé djédjé gervais is a dancer , chor e- ducer at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Charley Patton (2004), and An All Day Event. he’s giving a drug to his dancers to help ographer, and teacher of contemporary since 1999; he has worked there for over The End (2012). them find some movement and freedom that and traditional West African dance. He thirty years. lloyd williams lives in Bentonia, Mississippi. you can’t find when you’re fully conscious. was featured in all three parts of Lemon’s bebe miller, a native New Yorker, is the The spaceship he built has appeared in But then he siphons what’s most salient from Geography Trilogy (1997–2004) as well as artistic director of Bebe Miller Company. With several of Lemon’s works including How Can that experience and puts it into an artificial How Can You Stay In The House All Day And Lemon, she choreographed and performed the You Stay In The House All Day And Not Go one: art. Not Go Anywhere? (2010). works Tw o (1986) and Three (1999). Anywhere? (2010). kathy halbreich is the Associate Director sam miller is the founder and director cheng-chieh yu is a choreographer and Wally Cardona, 2015 and Laurenz Foundation Curator of The of the Institute for Curatorial Practice dancer who performed in Tree (2000). Ralph is at his best when he’s able to take a Museum of Modern Art, New York. From in Performance. Previously, he served as particular person, set up a particular situation, 1991 to 2007, she was director of the Walker president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural and then sit back and watch it play out. I also Art Center in Minneapolis. Council and president and executive director think it’s what brings him the most pleasure. trajal harrell is a dancer and of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. As long as that same person in that same sit- choreographer. meredith monk is a composer and artist who uation continues to be dynamic and fucking maria hassabi is an artist and choreogra- has been making work across disciplines since struggle in it, have fun with and be confused pher. She is Lemon’s former student. the 1960s. Lemon has worked with her group by it—as long as the person doesn’t give deborah hay is an Austin-based choreogra- the House and performed in her works Recent up—Ralph is loving it. I can see the smile on pher who has been making work since Ruins (1979) and Ellis Island (1981). his face. It’s a kind of fuel for Ralph; it’s the the 1960s. motor of his work.

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