This week, curatorial advisor Anna Drozdowski interviews Red Thread co-choreographer Lisa Kraus with dancer Meg Foley, offering an inside peek into the creative development of both artist’s work.
Anna
Drozdowski: Why did you choose to sew several generations
together for this project? Lisa Kraus: It came up because I saw
how the Gee’s Bend quilters pass on their ways to daughters and nieces. Also,
if you ask what it means to be dancing as an older person, you end up
contrasting that with what it’s like dancing in your twenties or thirties. Meg,
Michele and Gabi are around the ages Eva, Vicky and I were when we first met.
It made sense to see how the two kinds of energy and ability and interest work
together.
Tell me about the things you’ve learned
from your younger contemporaries in this process.
Lisa: We’ve gone into using movement language you don’t usually associate
with older people - moves from hip hop. Meg and I captured some of her improve
and we’ve scored some sections around that quality. It’s segmented and small,
interesting in contrast to all the flowing Brown-esque quality we know so well.
Gabi is very offhand with her humor and her presence magnetizes me. I’m
studying it. And Michele, who is delicate physically but has the capacity to be
gargantuan and thrilling has us thinking about how you light fires and spark
abandon…
That really goes for everyone. When the form of it was developed first by us
older folks, we’re looking at how to have everybody be completely full and
individual. In some spots we handed the form over to be crafted in a new way,
like a quilt pattern made anew. Gabi, Michele and Meg have a working connection
kind of like us older ones - they’ve been dancing together already in other
pieces and have a great rapport.
Tell me about the things you’ve learned from Lisa and her contemporaries, and
yours, in this process.
Meg Foley: I think Red Thread is an amazing study in
collaborative art building. When we are in the studio, there are a lot of
cooks in the kitchen so to speak; we’ll run things multiple times just so that
everyone can watch and then give their opinion about ways to craft
it.
In light of the Local Dance History
Project, what were you doing in 1980?
Lisa:
1980 was the year that ‘Opal Loop’ was made in the Trisha Brown
Dance Company. Eva and Stephen Petronio and I were dancing with Trisha on muggy
afternoons in Soho, making a piece to take place in a sculpture of fog. They
are reviving it this year. I met Sally Silvers that year in a writing class
that Simone Forti taught. We were both working on one-minute dances and decided
to join forces [which led to some weird and quirky stuff and my first time
performing at Danspace. NY was great at that moment, easier than now.] 1980 was
also the first year I went to Holland and that connection’s been very
important. We worked last summer in Arnhem; it’s offered a good artistic hothouse
for me and for Eva too.
You and Lisa have been working together
for a year now, what would she say about your collaboration? Meg: I think she’d say that our collaboration was about listening and being
open and that it was a supportive process to enable the growth of Red Thread instead of being super
pressured. I’d think she would say it was a playful but challenging process
that was really about seeing what is and being open to play with new ideas and
to the unknown and intuitive in art making.
What do you think Meg would say about
your collaboration? Lisa: Meg and I have very
intentionally tried to walk right on the line between what is your art and what
is your life. It makes a different atmosphere in the studio. All of yourself is
included all the time. That’s how the “kaffeeklatsch” section
developed, through noticing the necessity to “unburden” before
“doing” anything. Then shifting focus so the unburdening itself
becomes the thing you pay attention to. Meg has told me that she appreciates
researching together and having her contributions valued a lot. And I am happiest in the studio when I love someone’s way of dancing and
thinking and I think Meg feels us working from that ground.
Describe your evolving multi-decade
partnership with Eva & Vicky, as a haiku.
Lisa: It’s hard not to get corny but
here goes-
Through birth and through death
My lifelong dancing sisters
Dance floor’s our true home
What is in your purse? Meg: Always - a pen, my journal, cell phone, cash/ID/etc, lip balm, (in the
winter) hand moisturizer. Right now: all the above things plus a
ridiculous number of pens, dance clothes, an extra shirt, The New Yorker, make
up, gum, various pieces of fruit.
