Sister or He Buried the Body

Four questions to Trajal Harrell about Sister of He Buried the Body.

You gained international recognition for creating a series of works that bring together the tradition of voguing – a modern dance style developed in the late 1980s from the Harlem ballroom scene – with early postmodern dance. In Sister or He Buried the Body you combine voguing with gestures that derive from Butoh dance, which was conceived in Japan during the late 50s and early 60s. How did this "encounter” come about? What kind of research or need inspired it?

„Sister“ is more about addressing butoh and early modern dance. This is the research of my second period of work. I started this in 2013. I had a residency in Tokyo and I went to Hijikata’s archive. I was amazed by his work. We never saw it in the West. He never toured beyond Japan so we saw his dancers choreography and the subsequent generations. I was also interested in the fashion of comme des garçons and when the Japanese designers of that generation first came to Paris. The way they spoke about the aesthetic was similar to the way we in the west often spoke about butoh- post Hiroshima aesthetic, but they were different generations. So I was also interested in researching if Rei Kawakubo had been influenced by butoh.

Hybridising cultures, steps, music, even clothes is a very powerful artistic gesture in your work. Can you tell us more about this idea of the circulation of aesthetics and references? What you call a choreography of imagination.

Well I do not do hybrid and fusion. I research certain fissures or impossibilities in dance history and that impossibility generates the imagination. So not to copy or imitate but to produce something in the here and now out of how you would imagine it. Sometimes the speculation is not at all representative. Like would Joni Mitchell open for Keith Jarrett. That’s „The Köln Concert“. But it’s not a story about that. It’s us dancing to the music. I like to research. But when I get in the studio I don’t have a formula. I try to always work with myself and the dancers in the imagination.

This work is conceived as a speculative remapping of the history of contemporary dance. You put the body at the centre of your research, exploring the ways in which it becomes a receptacle of memory, the past and historical characters who have inspired this work. How do you translate that to the public?

I don’t think it’s translated literally. In „Sister“ it’s Hijikata and the African American choreographer Katherine Dunham. Through a residency I had at MoMA, a scholar writing about my work discovered they shared a studio in Tokyo. After that Hijikata’s research becomes similar to hers. So I was just thinking of them when I made the piece. Not trying again to represent them coming together to make a dance. I first wanted to make a dance I could dance until I was 70. So it’s mainly a sitting dance. There are lots of facial expressions you could say this has been influenced by butoh and there’s African American vocal music. But I feel it’s mainly about what you can do with limitations. As I’m in a territory of research I have inspirations but not representations. I try to make a work of art that people can go into with their own imagination. If you think this is Katherine Dunham dance and Hijikata dance put together, you will be lost. It’s a different form of presentation for the body and the relationship to the audience is thus different.

The "stage” of Sister or He Buried the Body is a proper installation. What’s the conversation that the space (es: theater, museum...) has within your work? What is the relationship between the installation and the performance?

 The original piece was made for Gwangju Biennial 2021 but because of covid only the installation went. The installation was made as a traveling stage. First I had the idea of a traveling runway, however with the age requirement I felt a sort of delicate space for sitting was needed. It was thus made to be mainly performed in visual art settings.