A PASSIONATE ROBERT HENRY JOHNSON:
ARTICULATING DANCE
By Linda Ayres-Frederick
In an interview, Robert Henry Johnson spoke passionately about dance and his life in the arts. His work will be featured in the upcoming Black Choreographers Festival in The San Francisco performances at Dance Mission Theater on February 19 ,20 & 21 (www.bcfhereandnow.com). Now, in its sixth year, it is honoring the legacy and celebrating the next generation of the African American Dance Diaspora.
LAF: What do you love most about dancing?
RHJ: The impartation…things one can impart through dance…when I was a child it always did something for me…I’ve been thinking a lot …about this lately ..why I’m so passionate about dance to the point that It can bring me to my knees and weep. From the beginning, when I first saw it…it was so spiritual…how it presented to me…it was something particularly very beautiful…the beauty of the form, the gracefulness. I just wanted to do that…I wanted to be a beautiful vessel…I remember watching people dancing on stage..not knowing their names..especially the persons who didn’t have solos…the ones .in the back who weren’t even in the program…coming on stage and doing this amazing thing with their body and then going off stage and disappearing into the night …uniquely creating wonder on stage...leaving behind a trail of hope. If I am successful that is what I would want to do. Leave behind a trail of hope.
LAF: In the dance, I’ve seen you do that…
RHJ: Really? I think what I was trying to do was pray…my spiritual instincts were to pray for people who could not. And to dance for people who could not. That’s what I love the most about dance.
LAF: When did you first begin dancing? And Choreographing?
RHJ: I think I was 3 years old…or 4 years old…no 3. There’s this legend of “Bobby” in my family. …On my 3rd birthday, I woke up about 6am and started dancing. It was a dance called the Hammer from the 50’s …I’d never seen it before it…and I wouldn’t stop and my Mom got scared …She called her sister, my aunt, “Girl, there’s something wrong with my son”. I danced right through the morning in my bed clothes across the courtyard to my Aunt’s house and I danced all day long….till I got this filled up feeling and never stopped ‘til the day was over. The dance wanted to come through me. In my journey there have been some forces to stop me…but not for long. People’s opinions like boys shouldn’t dance and that kind of thing.….none of that happened to me. I had a positive and supportive journey from my community and family. That part of it is like a perfect journey…
LAF: Sound’s like you were born a dancer.
RHJ: The Dance, said, “We got him. This is what he’s gonna do.”
LAF: Were you surprised?
RHJ: I wanted to be an actor and a writer. The first idea of my identity was that I was going to either write plays or be an actor…When I was on stage, my fellow actors would say I upstaged them. I didn’t mean to. I had the audience in stitches…just by the way I’d lift a leg. I still make the audience laugh. I don’t think I’m funny but…I fixed it…and
somehow I always managed to dance during all this time.
LAF:When did you realize you wanted to be a professional dancer?
RHJ: The first time I connected with it…I saw a PSA for the musical Timbuktu with Earth Kitt…an African version of Kismet..Jeffrey Holder, tall, bald, black man…he’s a hailed choreographer…this tornado of a production came to San Francisco. In the PSA I saw there were two guys dressed as birds. It looked like Paradise. I remember seeing them do something with their feet and their arms out in a gesture spread out to the side …it was glorious like Paradise I remember thinking, “I want to do that. Be in that world.” I’m definitely an escapist.
LAF: What do you consider to be your strengths as a performer?
RHJ: I’m comfortable on stage….If I could live and sleep on stage--and this is stolen from Michael Jackson--I would do that. Also to completely deconstruct my process and share it with the audience. My journey from the time I get on stage ‘til the time I get off stage.
LAF: Could you say more about that--how that evolved?
RHJ: I spent many years on stage in big halls…with people who spent a lot of money for their tickets and were all dressed up…who then went home after…I felt disconnected being at such a distance from the audience. I was uncomfortable with that. I wanted to connect with the audience. I was creating a community but didn’t know who that community was. In my shows now, I turn the houselights up. I talk to the audience. There are no wings. I change costumes on stage. The spaces are intimate. It’s a different kind of performance. I found my niche again. I found my home again. For me I think that’s what it should be: a literal conversation. People leave saying “Wow, Robert! I learned so much.” Everything is art…art is about process. The challenge is to bring it out of your head--out to where people can see it. That process is very special and important to me. As you can see, I love talking about dance.
LAF: When you run out of ideas, if ever, where do you seek inspiration?
RHJ: I go to my dancers. In the generation I’ve come up with…there is the notion that the choreographer has all the answers. The choreographer really guides this lab of exploration. Yes, with decisions and an eye for editing. What will make the piece work dynamically…shaping it so the audience knows where to look at what and where. The way we learn…what form of dance we learned…each kind of dance has its own hierarchy. In Ballet where you are confined to the studio, you don’t speak or talk to the Choreographer. There is give and take…but hardly any talking….in African dance, people show up late with babies, food and dressed in glorious colors. In Modern, you’re expected to have a brain. Dancers might be asked by the Choreographer to explore the color yellow in 64 shapes and come back in an hour.
If you asked a ballet dancer to do that, they would go nuts. Because they wouldn’t know how to think outside the box. When I turn to my dancers, they have a lot of interesting ideas if they are open to it.
Or I turn the piece inward and ask questions about the concept that we are working on. For example, for the piece about the transatlantic slave trade involving the passage from Africa, there is lots of information but a lot of that information was not written down. Of the human cargo who were shipped, over 100 million people died in that forced migration. And each year the numbers are growing. Gone is that hole in history. We put questions in that hole. We deal with the question. Is it going to work? in the body? and how is it going to work? It’s an interesting process. The piece is called the “Safety of Abstraction” I think a lot of our history is talked about abstractly.
because it’s too difficult to talk about by the teachers and for the students. There’s this uncomfortableness but history must be taught how it went down. I feel like we’re just scratching the surface of it:
How humans become cargo, dollars become numbers.
So many were thrown over board when nothing was wrong with them because the captains of the ships could collect insurance. To commit such inhumane acts of murder..because that’s what it really was..murder…something must have separated in their brain. That’s where we become volatile and emotional because people begin to think we can’t coexist and that one has to die in order for the other to exist.
LAF: If you were to give advice to someone wanting to be a dancer today what words of encouragement and/or warning would you offer them?
RHJ: If people want to dance, they shouldn’t do it on some reality TV show like “So you think you can dance.” Being a dancer, it’s like a priesthood. You must love the blood and sweat of it. If you take care of yourself and play your parts right, you’ll receive the reward on your level. Wanting to be a film star is fine…but I’m not chasing that. It’s not my arena. My place is in the studio and being pleased with the house and the process.
LAF:What’s up next?
RHJ: Trying to figure this new piece out..this experiment…trying to institute a new protocol of the way pieces are made. It’s a really quiet piece.
LAF: What about it works?
RHJ: The experimentation of it works. It’s not a match piece work. It’s a little thing I hope is interesting…This new system of creating work …like building a new philosophy of how to move through space…both frustrating and rewarding and personally I feel successful….a bunch of questions about experimentation have been answered.
LAF: Who would you say has influenced you most professionally?
RHJ: My Mom. My first memory of her was her leaping through the air in a huge grand Jete as the black cat in the play The Black Cat at Civic Auditiorium in San Francisco. There was a freedom dance at the end…the American flag billowing behind her…and her dancing through the air. She grabbed the American flag, and threw it on the ground and danced on it as an act of freedom. My mom was the most beautiful person to me in the entire world.
I haven’t always been successful living up to that beauty and grace and mercy…if there is such a thing as a person as Robert Henry Johnson.. if we go into that world.
LAF: You are also a playwright, yes?
RHJ: Yes, I was working on the Othello papers in July in an amazing workshop at SF Playwrights…so there is something there for me as a writer. It’s a monster of a piece which was commissioned by the Afro -American Shakespeare theatre. I’m working with them on setting a date for the show. I’m also working on getting a play reading series…sharing experimental literature written by African Americans…I’m tired of seeing the same images and want to speak differently in a language that may be unpopular but that is true to us. Things have opened up in San Francisco. It’s opened us. It’s key for us in terms of forward movement to institute the performance of our history. I’m drawn to the work of Suzan-Lori Parks and Toni Morrison and the rigorous, powerful and insightful work of Ishmael Reed, Laurie Carlos. John Pringle, Giovanni Johnson--Is anybody going to understand this besides me?--experimenting with form and history and the idea of the avant garde. This is the work I’m attracted to.
LAF: That’s all we have time for right now, Robert. Thanks so much. It has been inspiring talking with you and I look forward to seeing your work in the upcoming festival.
RHJ: Thank you!
Events and performances of the 2010 Black Choreographers Festival are February 12, 13 and 14 at Oakland's Malonga Casquelourd (1428 Alice Street); February 19 ,20 & 21 and 26, 27 & 28 at San Francisco's Dance Mission Theater (3316 24th Street). Friday and Saturday performances are at 8pm; Sundays at 7pm; Family Matinee, Sunday, February 14 at 4pm. Post-performance curtain talks take place after the Sunday evening show on February 21 and Friday evening show on February 26. Tickets are $15 general advance, $20 at door; $10 children 12-and-under and $5 tickets to Family Matinee. Tickets may be purchased online at www.brownpapertickets.com or by phone for the following locations: Oakland's Malonga Casquelourd Center (888) 819-9106 / San Francisco's Dance Mission Box Office (415) 273-4633. For more information go online to www.bcfhereandnow.com