Sarah Michelson is, in her own words, “in the thick of it, for sure.” Instead of reprising 4, which premiered at the Whitney Museum of American Art last year, she decided that she couldn’t step back. Or stand still. The result is new dance work tournamento. For the British-born choreographer, the premiere marks a return to the Walker Art Center where, ten years ago, she unveiled her spellbinding Daylight (for Minneapolis), inspired by the new Herzog & de Meuron building and theater. Then, the dance spilled into all of the space’s nooks and crannies; tournamento is a bit different. After several years of creating works for museums, she’s decided to return home: the theater.

For the new work, her main group is supplemented by students from Bard College, where she is currently a resident artist of the Fisher Center, and from Minneapolis’s Perpich Center for Arts Education. So what exactly does in the thick of it mean? Being driven by questions, not answers. It means she’ll know more about what she’s up to after she sees the work onstage. This is an important point in Michelson’s career; I can feel it. She’s at a crossroad; after these many years of Devotion–her 2011 work, which led to a series of bracing, exacting, exhilarating dances–it’s time to move on.

Gia Kourlas

Who are the dancers in tournamento?

Sarah Michelson

Let’s say “cast”: Nicole Mannarino, Rachel Berman, Jennifer Lafferty, John Hoobyar. And Madeline Wilcox, Danielle Goldman, James Tyson. The cast also includes seven Bard students from the four-year program. [For its culmination, Michelson will create a work featuring students from the class of 2017.] We’re in year two. They’re coming to Minneapolis [with support from the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College]. Gideon Lester, Bob Bursey, Caleb Hammons and Leah Cox all got behind it and somehow made it happen. They are amazing.

Kourlas

Are they dancers?

Michelson

I think five of them are dancers, and two are from other majors. I suddenly realized that I had to go to Bard in August, and that I had a show in Minneapolis, and I felt scrambled! I thought, split the day: I’ll work with the Bard students in the morning. And then I was like, no–they just have to fucking integrate into this work. That has to be how I work with them. I wasn’t expecting them to really become part of the work, but just to help me figure out how to work with the ten Perpich students who are in the cast. But it’s kind of amazing. This was the fifth meeting with them. Whatever my theory about why do this [residency] over four years is so proven. They could immediately be in the room with everyone. They just knew what to do and how to be there. It was super beautiful and impressive.

Kourlas

Because of their age or hunger or what?

Michelson

Because they agreed to be in my four-year project. It was really grueling. We would just stand around for a month last August focusing on what it means to be able to be ready to do something. To make a move. And the ones who could handle that are just totally awesome. And also to give up their summer to do it. So they’re coming, and they’re excited and their roles are funny.

Kourlas

Why are you showing tournamento only in the theater?

Michelson

[Laughs] Great question. I’m going to give two answers to your question. One is the anecdote, which is that Philip Bither [the Walker’s senior curator of performing arts] is the co-commissioner of 4 at the Whitney, and the original idea was that we were going to go to Minneapolis, and I was going to find a location at the Walker to do 4. I found one, and it was an exciting place. Meanwhile, all last year I had rehearsals for 4 scheduled. I was developing other things too. It was all blurring together, but with all the rehearsals for 4, in the end–the day of or the day before–I would just cancel them. I was finally like: Oh my God, I don’t want to do it. I can’t do this show.

Kourlas

What happened?

Michelson

I made a difficult call to Philip and said, “I can’t do it. I have to make a new show.” We have no funding to make a new show because we applied to MAP to re-house 4 and we got denied. So now it’s a new show. I don’t know how new. I feel like it’s the string-on end of Devotion. I feel like, come on, come on. Get away.

Kourlas

Is it like giving birth or something–

Michelson

And something has to die! It feels like a snake’s skin or something. I have to get out of here. How do I get out of here? The nice thing is that I’ve been here before so I recognize it.

Kourlas

It’s true. I remember the torture you went through when you were thinking about quitting dance-making during Dogs (2006).

Michelson

But now I know. What does that mean for Nicole? I don’t know. All that. So I made a difficult call to Philip, and he was great, actually; we have no funding, so that’s what’s really stressful right now. We spent commissioning money from the Walker on 4, knowing that it was going to the Walker. We don’t have that money. I’m fucking making it up, dude. I forget what the question was.

Kourlas

Why did you choose to be in the theater?

Michelson

At the very same time I knew I wasn’t going to do 4, Philip told me about this curatorial conference a September 28–29 invitational research convening on performance curation, and it was originally scheduled to be on the Saturday of my show week. He told me quickly in the car, and afterward I was like, what? The whole idea of going to Minneapolis is so that–

Kourlas

You’re escaping.

Michelson

Yeah! I’m working in a different place. Not so every motherfucker’s coming! He said, “Well, people came from New York before.” Yeah, because they chose to. That’s a very beautiful thing.

So then he was like, “Okay, we’re going to move it to the day after so at least you’ll be gone.” I realized the pollution that that caused me. Sorry to sound so pure. I was like, I know the answer to this: I’m going to the theater. Oh, you want to talk about art in the museum? Guess where I’m going? I’m going home where I started. And then I realized, oh right–actually the Walker was the first museum, and it was 10 years ago. So guess what? I’m going back.

Kourlas

You’ve only ever turned the museum into a theater.

Michelson

Totally. I make dance, and I don’t have that much to say about [curating performance in a museum setting], and I shouldn’t be the centerpiece for it. I feel like there are people who are really able to umbrella the discussion and provide a forum for the platform; because what they bring to the museum is this dexterity. Yasuko Yokoshi is a person who is able to do that. When she did Shuffle at [the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris], she had the ability to understand what that P.S. 122 work looked like in a different place in a real way, and she has massive confidence about understanding that. And I’m not that! I make dances in the theater, and I need the theater for a dance, and I’m good at making a theater wherever I go, but I’m not the apex of this discussion–and I’ve said it 10 million times. I’m not transformational, and I sometimes envy the people who are. It feels quite grown up, in a way, that I’m a child. Or I’m a farmer and a craftsperson and not a business owner. But that’s how it happened. It was a response to the conference–that was the catalyst.

Kourlas

Is the seating traditional?

Michelson

There will be some onstage seating–very different than Daylight. The house opens at 4 pm. Onstage seating costs $1, but if you want to just come into the auditorium and sit in the back, it’s free. At 7 pm is SHOWTIME, which is the ticketed performance for onstage seating, but you can also come and sit in the back for free.

Kourlas

Why a dollar?

Michelson

I just thought it had to be something. I guess you make a decision. Are you going to go there, or you can stay here? I don’t know how that’s going to go. I don’t want it to be a gimmick. It’s messy, but I’m really, really not cleaning it up. I don’t want to capture it all into the thing you take home, and that was the work.

Kourlas

Can you to talk about the dance itself, or the dancing or tournamento’s choreographic system? I don’t know what you’re working on. The title makes me thing of a contest. Are you doing Agon? [George Balanchine’s 1957 ballet Agon took its name from the Greek word for “contest.”]

Michelson

That’s funny. I wish I was doing Agon. Who did Agon? Oh, Silas [Riener]. The things that are the same and that are taken even further are the dancers on their own with this really intense, deep and fostered set of vocabulary based on them and conditions through which they have to execute the vocabulary. They’re more alone than ever before, and more autonomy is demanded of them than ever before. It’s really interesting what comes up. Crazy emails. Hilarious. So they have more autonomy and are more alone than ever before. Not meaning it’s not hands-on with me; we’ve worked hard.

Kourlas

How are they autonomous?

Michelson

In relation to other. They can’t be a group. The question is what is a dancer, what are you doing, what’s dancing, what’s excellence, what’s virtuosity? Is it possible to shift how you would look at a dance? What I just said is really reductive, but over the last year and a half, gradually–so gradually, even though we’re working really hard and focusing on it–we’ve been unraveling that for ourselves. What is it like if Nicole isn’t delivering beauty?

Kourlas

That’s amazing–it’s an obvious next step.

Michelson

It’s excruciating. I think that’s the way it’s going to go, and the only justification for that is integrity. I do know how to fix things, so if I’m not fixing it, it’s not going to be a mistake. It’s because it’s where it has to be. There’s no way to fix this thing, because if I fix it, then I’m fixing it to what?

Kourlas

And if you fix it, you make it like Christmas morning.

Michelson

Yeah. Like every other fucking thing. I feel no one is going to understand, though, except maybe you.

Kourlas

In the last work, I felt a connection among the dancers and between you and the dancers. I watched as you wrote down numbers–I didn’t understand the system, but I could feel it was driving the piece.

Michelson

The system’s different now, but there’s more transparency about that. Or it’s different. But they’re more autonomous now. I didn’t think so at the time, but 4 was contained by a kind of artful bind that they were protected by. They don’t have that.

Kourlas

Did you choose these dancers because they had the ability to be inside of that?

Michelson

That came in really recently. I was working with Rachel and Nicole. I felt like there had to be somebody else, so I asked Jennifer Lafferty.

Kourlas

Don’t you love her? I love Jennifer Lafferty.

Michelson

I’ve always loved her. I asked her because I thought she could hold her own. I think the people who are there are there for very different reasons. Rachel and Nicole were so locked into the fabric of 4, and Nicole is so into the fabric of Devotion that those two are with me–they’re fighting their way out of that. Madeline–I feel something very intense, potentially, for the future in that she has a very strange role in this show that she really hates. I think she likes it better now, but she really, really doesn’t like it. I said, “I don’t know what you want to do, but you’re so great in this role–it has to be this if you’re in it.” She got with it, and I think she’s incredible in her role, but I also have this feeling that my relationship with her has some real forward momentum.

Kourlas

I know who she is, but who is she? Do you know what I mean?

Michelson

She’s bright and breezy and cheerful, and she wants to be a dancer, and “why would I be doing this part if I want to be a dancer?” But I see stuff in her. I don’t know.

Kourlas

Do you see yourself in her?

Michelson

No. Let me think. I’ll come back to that. Jennifer Lafferty is for all the qualities you already know. I now think maybe I wanted someone who really had known my work for a long time and had seen it all. But I didn’t know that when I chose her.

Kourlas

She’s a grownup.

Michelson

Yes. It was like I wanted a woman and a man, and I feel like she’s really the woman in the room. That she could hold that candle. And then in the end, John I brought in last. There was a moment when I was like, maybe I just have to hire someone like Cunningham dancer Melissa Toogood or someone to come in and just kick ass. Change the dynamic in the room or something, but then the learning curve with what you have to do to be in the room with me is so intense. Oh my God. You can’t just get someone. It was neat when Jennifer Howard [an experienced Michelson dancer, who was in Daylight (for Minneapolis)] was there for a couple of days. She could really see what’s at stake with every single movement in a way that no one would. She was like, “I know what’s wrong with that.” She knew the gauge. So that was very beautiful. I didn’t have the time to take them into what it means to do this. John knows already. We needed someone who was going to come in and give it everything.

Kourlas

What’s the deal with the tournamento picture? It is amazing.

Michelson

Me. 1984.

Kourlas

Who is the guy?

Michelson

My boyfriend at the time. A German guy. We’re in Greece.

Kourlas

I wasn’t sure if it was you or if you were trying to make someone look like you, because it’s so much the fashion of today.

Michelson

Remember when we did Shadowmann in Frankfurt? The woman who took that photo lived in Frankfurt, and all her kids were in the show. She’s still my friend. I don’t know why I used that photo. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but I’ve been making dances for so long–I know I’m not making them like Twyla Tharp–but it feels personal. What did I know then? What do I know now? It’s like that. Same with the Walker. What did I know then? What do I know now? What am I doing? Why am I doing it?

Kourlas

Is this connected in any way to Daylight?

Michelson

Yeah, somehow. Daylight’s come up in one aspect to this in a big way, and I don’t know if that aspect will make it to the show. It’s not connected in a retrospective way. It’s just that somehow I’m really conscious of it. And it’s come up in literal ways, but like I said, that I don’t know will make it.

Kourlas

It was an important point in your career. Do you agree?

Michelson

Daylight was a weird one, because I proved myself twice somehow. I did Group Experience, got a Bessie, and then I did Shadowmann. And Shadowmann was Shadowmann and Daylight was the thing that a lot of people didn’t like as much, but the few people that I cared about really did like it. It was really post–White Oak [The Experts], post-Shadowmann. It was like the post-success show. I think Daylight was maybe the first one–and I don’t mean to say this because people like Sri Louise, who were in the very first things, or those in Group Experience, would say it’s not true, so I don’t mean to diss their opinion–where the movements got as much say so as the presentational structure. And so then I was finally at home in a certain way with that.

Kourlas

Why do you avoid the usual touring model? Why is it important that a work not live on forever and ever?

Michelson

I can’t do it! Clearly, I cannot do it. I’ve already moved on. There are so many massive questions in what we’re doing. There’s a presentation time in less than a month and there are so many massive questions and they’re not going to be answered by the time of the presentation. It’s the worst. I know I’ve said this to you a million times. In Devotion, when we made Rebecca [Warner]’s solo, I said, “I’m going to read the text,” and everyone was just like, “You can’t do that.” That’s like left, right, and center now. And as I was doing it, it became old news. It’s weird–old news, not talking about being ahead of the curve or something, but just being like it’s only not redundant for the moment the work is coming out, and then when you look back, it’s over. And you have to repeat it? I can’t. So this show–every show, if it’s Study #1 (2012) or whatever–the question takes me forward, out of that place. And it takes some time. It doesn’t take no time. I’m still there. But once I’m not, there’s no reentry, Ali Baba. There’s no fucking reentry. [Laughs] The password’s gone. Open sesame? No opening sesame.

Kourlas

Do you have a question for this one?

Michelson

The question in all my old pieces is what’s a dance, what could it be? Maybe because I traveled through the galleries and back, the question is, is making art–and within that, I’m a dancemaker–a self-congratulatory, redundant practice, or if there’s a real pursuit of the nature of the beast to ground level, knowing there is no ground? Is there some way that along the journey towards no ground, that the person who is in that pursuit is doing something that no one else would do? And therefore there’s a service involved and the soul of that service is the work? I guess that’s really in that work. [Laughs] I’m going to cry.

Kourlas

Me too! Do you think about an audience’s expectations? Does it matter?

Michelson

No. Which is why I can’t stand press releases or any of that shit. And do you know why I don’t? Because I know who’s coming. I don’t know everyone who’s coming, but I know mostly. All artists know who’s coming. All marketing people pretend they don’t know who’s coming. I don’t know why they do that, because all artists making work know exactly who’s coming. There might be a couple surprises and, of course, that’s so beautiful, but generally we know. In the Whitney shows and the MoMA show [Ralph Lemon curated Michelson to perform as part of 2012’s Some sweet day], I had a big learning curve about the passersby and Ralph Lemon bringing everyone in the bookstore [to watch from a different vantage point off to the side]. There were three days, and by day three Nicole and I were like, “Why is it so different?” And realizing it was the power of the viewer. In terms of what am I making now, it’s you, it’s Trajal Harrell, who never comes. It doesn’t matter who shows up. It’s Ralph Lemon. It’s Claude Wampler. It’s Eve, Moriah, Gillian, Matthew, Jay. And myself, mainly, but myself is y’all in my heart. And I do still think about Dover Beach (2009), and when I was in Cardiff. I’m so amazed at that three-night, 40-person show. I was insane, way more than BAM or anything, insane about what it meant to get that right.

Kourlas

Well, it was a big deal: it was such a shift for you as a choreographer.

Michelson

Yeah. But it’s so wild, right, because who was there? You, Parker [Lutz], Welsh mothers of the children, and their dance teacher. [Laughs] So when you ask me that question, I have to say that one I was probably more insane than any of them, honestly. I was pregnant, so I was probably loopy-loo, but I guess it was because it was the beginning of a new cycle. I stepped out. It was really, really great that you did come because I could sit in that hotel breakfast with you and go, “Is what I heard, right? What happened? What was it?” That was so fucking amazing and grounding, but I don’t know. At the Whitney watching Study #1, I was so stressed, but I have to say I was more stressed about Dover Beach with 40 people–10 friends and 30 Welsh mothers. When I get this question about audience where people think I’m being obtuse, it’s not. It’s real. That’s a long-winded answer.

Kourlas

It’s not the audience, it’s what’s there.

Michelson

It’s what I’m putting there, and how does that happen? Having someone who can read it is so helpful, because I’m like jitterbug. I think that’s real. I’m not making that up. I don’t care when people walk out of it. It’s electrical! A kind of weird vacancy or something. I’m an egomaniac, but not in that way. It really is about the question and does the question hold up in real time when you ask it publicly? Can you articulate yourself? Can you speak publicly about what’s bothering you by the way you live or what you practice? I did say this somewhere along the line after I came back, after I didn’t in fact quit. I wasn’t faking it. I now know that. I would think the same right now, to quit. But I know I’m not going to.

Kourlas

Is it a different kind of death?

Michelson

Yeah. It’s not that I’m quitting. I get that now. It’s the end of something, so I now know the question about that. It’s like, what’s dying? What’s going bad? But knowing that, I guess–it sounds so grandiose to say this shit, but dancing’s it. That’s it. I don’t care about much else.

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Gia Kourlas writes about dance for the New York Times and other publications.

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