Archiving Black Performance
Memory, Embodiment, and Stages of Being
Archiving Black Performance
Memory, Embodiment, & Stages of Being
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Choreographer Paul Taylor
Runes excerpt
Restaged by Carolyn Adams & Michelle Fleet
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“Learning from Carolyn and Michelle, there were moments when they actively remembered the dance as if to reteach how they were taught. Then there were precise moments where they both needed to move their bodies in “auto-pilot” mode and call up the dance. Their blood memories filled in the gaps of what their minds could not recall.
As a performer & learner, you must stay flexible, read through the lines a bit, and see where the re-stager is going with the work. It may even cause some learning and unlearning of movement. But this is also where having clarity to the intention and story is so important.
Making a personal connection with the work and the work’s purpose is far better in one’s service than exact foot placement, and both are important!
When executed correctly, the audience will feel a dancer’s connection with a piece; no words are needed.
When we bring work back to life it is not just the movement, the counts, and music. We are sharing pieces of past lives. The mind, artistry, body, skill, and craft of ancestors. Their intention and story is being retold. That’s the real key”
Quianna Simpson MFA 20237
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“In this residency, particularly in Runes, the specific movement of the upper back, detail of shapes, and counts for the music were incredibly important in the movement.
Besides the physical movement priorities the legacy, stories and energy are needed by the performer to fuel the meaning and arc the work takes on. Even within a two minute solo. Runes was created in the mid-nineteen seventies and since then has been re-constructed many times over many generations within and outside of the Paul Taylor Dance Company.
Working with both Carolyn Adams and Michelle Fleet you can see how a work can have a life of its own that continues to grow after it’s premiere. Hearing the story of how it was created for a dancer who was great at quick detailed movement you see where the impetus comes from”
Maddie Denman BFA 2023
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“In going through this process of Runes, we often repeated the same movement multiple times in order to really dig deep into the feeling of the movement. I began to admire this moment and find more things about particular parts of the choreography that I hadn’t found the first few times I did it.
It felt like every time the movement repeated. I found something new to focus on. It became more of a discovery process in seeing how much was available to decipher.
Cools-Larigue BFA 2022
I began to wonder how deep I needed to go in order to truly understand the movement that I was doing”
Thaliyah
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Runes (Excerpt)
Choreographer
Paul Taylor
Restagers
Carolyn Adams & Michelle Fleet
Cast
Thaliyah Cools-Lartigue
Maddie Denman
Isaiah Harris
Forrest Hershey
Kara Komarnitsky
Andrea Moses
Rosely Polanco
Yukina Sato
Quianna Simpson
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Faculty
Professor Crystal Perkins
Professor Valarie Williams
Archivists
Forrest Hershey
Kathryn Logan
Berry Nickell
Yukina Sato
Clancee Synco
Riccardo Valentine
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Runes (Excerpt)
Choreographer
Paul Taylor
Restagers
Carolyn Adams & Michelle Fleet
Cast
Thaliyah Cools-Lartigue
Maddie Denman
Isaiah Harris
Forrest Hershey
Kara Komarnitsky
Andrea Moses
Rosely Polanco
Yukina Sato
Quianna Simpson
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Faculty
Professor Crystal Perkins
Professor Valarie Williams
Archivists
Forrest Hershey
Kathryn Logan
Berry Nickell
Yukina Sato
Clancee Synco
Riccardo Valentine
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