The sex pistol

How did you approach reviving these ’80s works?
It was confusing at first because I didn’t know: Should I be slavish to the original and just absolutely try to reproduce it as authentically as possible, with every step; or, as if you were editing a book the second time around, make little adjustments? I went, “I should make little adjustments.” [Laughs] It’s not like Henry James—who totally rewrote the early novels—but you have skills that you didn’t have when you were first starting out. I couldn’t help but employ them a little bit, to just tighten, make spacing better, give moments more rhythmic drive. And then the other thing is that you have a generation of dancers who have no information about that era. New York is completely and totally a different universe. Then, it was cheap. There was no idea of celebrity. It was all about working together because it was fun and lofts were cheap; you just kind of went to a friend’s loft, plugged in a guitar and played around. No one can live like that anymore. I had been through Balanchine and Cunningham. In the Cunningham company, we shared the whole aesthetic experience of years of dancing together every day with a very specific philosophy. Everyone in Cunningham was basically a WASP. It was one very unified, Protestant sort of puritanical culture: How do you bring all of that information to people? And try to re-create the same feeling of what liberation from that was? I don’t know how to do that exactly. I just felt I had to really work with the people I had and not be artificial. I want to bring who they are into the pieces. Which I think dance always does. Of course, if you think of Balanchine, he would make different steps to the same music. That is going on, too—absolutely being sensitive to, and excited by, the dancers who are performing the works now.

Did people really not care about celebrity and success then?
I don’t think so. I was really naive, but it wasn’t like it is today. I don’t think people were as self-conscious. The culture was less success-oriented and there was still a counterculture, so to be marginal meant you had a role in society, whereas it’s much tighter now. It’s either you’re successful or you’re not. It’s not like, “Oh, we’re part of a group that lives in a different way.” I am a rebel at heart and it’s just so strange in this country to be marginalized. It feels bad, rather than as if you’re doing something interesting. I guess you see some people make decisions based on box-office reasons and celebrity, and people just have to because they’re scrambling to survive. But I don’t think it’s ideal.

It’s important that these works are going to be revived for another generation—not to dance, but to watch. That was the other thing: There’s already no history in dance, but in our society history just evaporates. And memory and history are so important to making society change and for creating a better world. If you don’t know the past, how can you understand how power is being used? Again I thought, It’s just good that the U.S. becomes more conscious of the importance of things over time and not just the new. I mean, that wasn’t in my reasoning, but let’s just say that I think that is an important factor now that I’ve done it; I’m glad to be thinking about history.

How do you pass on this material, which as I understand it was raw and so suited to your own dancing?
It’s working on the rhythm, working on the shapes, talking a little bit about content—not too much because you want people to also find it for themselves. But guiding them with that; it’s just the well-placed word now and then. I guess it’s what directors do in theater, to help develop the character, really. I believe in not saying too much, because I certainly don’t want it to ever become actory or trying to be overly one thing. I really want the dancers to feel spontaneous and alive; they have to really find it for themselves, but then be very secure in the music and the steps and the structure. I think it’s really getting dancers to the point where they’re incredibly free. I was a little tough on a couple today because they just have to go further. We haven’t had a lot of time, so I’m asking a lot of them, but they have to be as interesting as possible. That’s just the job.

Did you talk to the dancers about the time in which the works were made?
A little bit. I tried to explain a little bit about what the world was like then, but I think it’s possible that I should have done more of that. I don’t know. That’s what’s all confusing to me about this whole process, because dance, in a funny way, is in time and out of time at once. It’s still built on classical ballet technique; then, it’s how you take that and warp and massage it and make it into something, image-wise, that’s very different than how people think it looks. But still using all of that knowledge and concept. So, in a way, it’s not as much about the times as it is about my own thinking about how the evolution of dance can work. The dancers have been confused. Are they supposed to be ballet dancers? Are they supposed to be Billy Forsythe? I think they’ve gotten over that, but it was hard for them to come up with an image at first; when I made these dances, they were barely born. In a way I’m trying to get them to understand the time and culture more through dance than through talking about the cultural moment.

What do you have in common with Forsythe?
I think, basically, we had the same idea and developed it in slightly different ways. There were a lot of parallels. I wanted to be very off-balance, adding warping and twisting to movement. Nothing about being placed; putting a rock & roll energy and punch and just a wilder intensification of accent. So it’s like drum beats with your body rather than a harp; that was really very similar. What I think was partly different is how he, being a man, approached a lot of that through partnering—how to get a girl off balance in that way or how to whip her around. I was thinking about it more from the ballerina’s point of view: What you do with your own body to create new shapes and new rhythms? [Mutters] Boy is that ever masculine and feminine psychology, too. It’s just a different way that we are more introspective, probably in general. I believe there is just a huge difference between the sexes. [Laughs]

Did you care about Twyla Tharp when you were younger?
It was her earlier work that I felt really interested in. When that success thing—she was like, How do I survive, how do I draw a bigger audience?—was more prevalent, it wasn’t the thing that I was most interested in. Basically, I’m just a marginal, intellectual sort of rebel. I really am. I’m not a mainstream kind of person. [Laughs] Ultimately, that’s a gift. Here I am doing two Broadway shows in a row [Passing Strange and Hair] so it’s pretty contradictory, but I’m doing my thing and not trying to conform to an idea of what is “successful.” I’m not interested in success from that point of view. And it’s just who I am. It’s not a value judgment. I’m enjoying doing these Broadway things: They’re great and interesting, but I wasn’t setting out to do them; people selected me for being who I was. I think that’s the way I’ve always chosen to live and I just think probably, as an artist, it’s a better way because you get to do what you want to do! [Laughs]

You’re rehearsing Hair now, right?
Hair in the morning. Punk in the afternoon. It’s pretty funny.

Is the label punk ballerina a burden or a point of pride?
[Shrugs] I say use it. What I still like about it is that it has that wonderful contradiction in it—the punk and the ballerina—and that’s not wrong. If there were a new counterculture, it might be nice to have a different name, but there isn’t one really. Right? There’s no thing like punk even. There was hip-hop but everything gets sucked up by the advertising game so quickly that you can’t even be a counter movement until it’s immediately digested and part of a jingle. Things move too quickly now or it just disappears. I’m really excited to be doing this show. At first, I just didn’t know if I could pull it off. That’s what I was most scared about: Can I do this? And now I know I can.

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