Robert Battle. (Photo by Nan Melville)

Robert Battle, a member of the Parsons Dance Company since 1994, has been commissioned by numerous companies to create new works. The Parsons’ 2000 season at the Joyce included the premiere of his Dementia, with music by John Mackey. Most recently, Battle was commissioned by Evolving Arts, Inc. for a new work, Isolation, with music by Steve Reich, which was featured on Channel 13’s Metro Arts in New York City.

Benjamin Harkarvy, director of the Dance Division, recently sat down with Battle and Goines to talk about about how this project came about, and its significance for the Juilliard community. Following are excerpts from that conversation.

Harkarvy:
When I first joined Juilliard, I had the idea of doing a collaboration like this one with dancers and live jazz music; the creation of a jazz department brought that idea back to the surface. The first person I thought of was Robert Battle, a Juilliard graduate, who immediately understood that I wanted a serious approach and envisioned a large, extended piece and began collaborating with Victor last summer. The resulting work, while not a narrative, captures something about the present atmosphere of much of New York. It is very much influenced by the events of September 11. The way it found shape, the way images kept appearing, its emotional coloration—all this was a surprise to everyone, including him.

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Battle:
When Mr. Harkarvy called me and told me he wanted me to do something with jazz and we started to talk about it, I realized that we were on the same wavelength. I have always been curious about the discrepancy between jazz dance and jazz music. Often, I find the music aspect much more interesting than the dance. I listen to a lot of jazz, so I was so happy that he asked me to do this.

My favorite singer is Sarah Vaughan. I always thought, ‘If only I could choreograph the way she sings, the way she improvises, the way she phrases.’ So, I thought of this project as an opportunity to try to physicalize jazz music the way I hear it, and not just do something cliché. I have seen many dance performances using jazz music, but they are nearly always happy and upbeat. But I find, looking at the musicians who brought jazz to the forefront, that their lives were pretty complicated. When I look at Miles Davis, there is a lot of mystery that comes through in his music. Even Louis Armstrong, who is sometimes criticized for being too light, has more to his story. He still dealt with the same harshness that a lot of those people at that time dealt with. He overcame it in his music.

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There is something in the syncopation of jazz that is the pulse of life. When you hear a steady beat, it can drive you crazy—or it can be something that keeps you from going crazy. I went to that level of abstraction. When I pat my foot to that beat, there is something urgent about it; I think of rush hour. So jazz is not necessarily happy, as much as it is a pulse. I have always wanted to see something done that was a little deeper, that took the music seriously—dancing not just to tunes, but sophisticated music. I was happy to try to tackle that.

When I started working with the students, I started teaching them phrases that I had heard in jazz. And when I watched them as a group, I saw a restless agitation, especially when all of those bodies got close together. I pictured them in a club, and abstracted it from there, taking people out and looking into the interior of their lives. That is how this piece came to me. I liked the idea of being restless.

We started rehearsals September 10—and then, of course, the 11th is when everything happened. By the time we got back, the piece took a turn and went a little darker. I didn’t intend for that to happen, but who couldn’t be influenced by such a catastrophe? On the one hand, I was sitting in this studio two days later choreographing a dance, and for the first time, it felt a little trivial. But then I thought that it was a testament to the human spirit to get back to your work, your dreams, no matter how small or large, and to be fearless. I let myself feel what was happening, and the tragedy really did come into play.

Robert Battle rehearsing Juilliard dancers, November 2001. (Photo by Nan Melville)

The dance piece itself is a collection of scenes: a love duet gone bad, a solo of a person being chased, a sextet celebrating death in a strange way, as a dirge in which people become almost savage. The last scene is like the first club scene, but everyone has changed because they have tasted blood, and this is not untrue of our society: the weakest one gets pushed aside. Even after the World Trade Center attacks, we still have to deal with things like unrequited love. I think that this is what the piece is about: the moods on top of the heaviness.

Goines:
I was excited by this project because of the opportunity to collaborate with the Dance Division for its 50th anniversary, and to write music specifically for dance. All of the positive things I’ve heard about Robert as a person, dancer, and choreographer sealed the deal. Besides, I am always interested in being a part of historical events.

One of the challenges that came up with this piece was that I didn’t get to see the dance before I began writing the music. Robert and I spoke about the type of themes that he would be dealing with. Later, as I began to see more of the dance, I was then able to focus more on what I think Robert was looking for.

Battle:
Victor is a body of knowledge. He is brilliant at picking up a mood and taking it into this deeper place. What he has shown me in doing this is that there can be more than just one idea about what jazz is. It can sound very much like Stravinsky, it can be much more mainstream, or it can be something in between. I tell him things, and I am thinking to myself, ‘How is he going to do that? It has to be jazz, but it also has to be as strange as what I am looking for.’ And it’s there. That has been a learning process for me, as well. Collaboration is ideal, and the more the disciplines can cross, the better. Having listened to jazz my whole life has really helped my choreography.

Throughout this process, I have gained a newfound respect for Mr. Harkarvy’s creative mind and his guidance, because I am still learning. It is good to have a mentor, so I am grateful to be back and still to be a student. I think the students are loving it, and dancing to this music in a different way. As a choreographer, I am constantly looking for that dark/light contrast, and I hope that it is inherent in the work. I hope it shows that the possibilities are endless within jazz and dancing to jazz music.

Carolyn Appel is an assistant in the Jazz Studies office.

		Throughout this school year, The Juilliard Journal is running a series of articles in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Dance Division. Recent articles are available online. Juilliard Dances! Video clips from past Dance Division performances, including excerpts from Parsons Etude (David Parsons, choreographer); Intimate Voices (Igal Perry); and Rapture (Lila York), can be seen on the Juilliard Web site.