The Power of Weakness: Trajal Harrell in Conversation with Philip Bither

By Walker Art Center

Walker Publishing Filed to Performing Arts · Part of Conversations on Black American Dance

Trajal Harrell, The Köln Concert. Photo: Reto Schmid.

Dancer and choreographer Trajal Harrell’s unique work confronts the history, construction, and interpretation of contemporary dance. Originally from Douglas, Georgia, Harrell first gained recognition for his exploration of early NYC postmodern dance and the voguing ball scene of Harlem in Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church. He returns this fall to the Walker Art Center with a new work, The Köln Concert, a response to Keith Jarrett’s best-selling 1975 solo jazz piano recording of the same name and Joni Mitchell’s masterpiece Blue. In advance of staging this new work in America, Harrell sat down with Philip Bither, the McGuire Director and Senior Curator of Performing Arts, to explore working in Europe, Japanese butoh dance, and the vital importance of presenting weakness on stage.

Philip Bither

I’d like to just start with your letting us know where you are and what you’re focused on right now. I know you’ve got a big production coming at the moment.

Trajal Harrell

I’m in Avignon, France, at the Festival Avignon, with a new piece called The Romeo, which we premiered in Zürich in May. We’re getting ready for that. And like with many productions, there are always things that come up at the last minute that you have to deal with, so I’m in the middle of that circus.

PB

We are thrilled that your work, The Köln Concert, will be coming to the U.S., and specifically to the Brooklyn Academy of Music [BAM] and the Walker, in a couple of months.

You’ve gotten so many wonderful opportunities in recent years, such as Festival d’Automne's nine-part Portrait Series happening in Paris this fall, but also the Barbican Exhibition and the MoMA Annenberg Residency. What does your current position, say, in comparison to seven or eight years ago, mean for you? Is all this attention a good thing?

TH

That’s a very good question. I think I have to contextualize a little bit because, of course, the last four years I’ve also been the director of the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble, and my company moved into the Schauspielhaus Zürich. That has had a huge impact on my process, my practice—everything.

I try to just get up and go to the office every day and go to work. Whether my work is happening at MoMA, or it’s in a small place in Geneva, or if it’s in L.A., I try to really maintain my equilibrium. It’s something that I didn’t think a lot about, and now with people like you are asking me about this, I can feel that the work is being canonized, and I’m being framed.

In some ways, it’s really wonderful and not something I’ve done alone. I’ve had people like you who’ve supported my work for a very long time. I’m lucky because I’ve had a lot of support in the U.S., Europe, South America, and in Japan. I’ve always wanted my work to be international.

On the other hand, a career is not the only thing I want to do with my life. I hope to have a second act. At some point, I will probably stop dancing and probably stop choreographing. I would like to have a second act. Honestly, I’ve been on the road touring now for 16 years. I’d also like to have more time with my family, with my friends, and with my loved ones. I do see a time of slowing down and it ending. I’m very much aware that there’s less time in front of me than behind me.

PB

I was curious about your relationship with the Schauspielhaus Zürich these last few years. How does that change your work? And what does that mean? It seems like it provides a lot of great support, but I know it’s an ensemble that’s based in a big art center. Did that change who you were able to work with or anything like that?

TH

We have a structure: the Schauspielhaus Zürich would ask me to bring my company there, so I was able to bring six dancers on full-time salary. Then, for each project, I could have guests. The ensemble included people who were on permanent salary and people as guests.

This meant there was one base where we were making the work, and that’s what really changed. Instead of making work in many different places, we made the work in our studios in Zürich with the team there. There are 330 people working at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. There’s a costume department, a technical department, and a lot of things at your disposal when you want to make a piece. There’s a lot of support in that way.

What you decide to use and how much it costs still gets negotiated, but it’s different than my independent company, where I had to go to various institutions in order to pull together the money through co-production or co-commissioned support. We still have some of that, of course, but for most of the projects we didn’t have to worry about that.

Another big difference is that it was first time in a long time, since when I was based in New York, that I was embedded in the local community. That was very new for me. You get used to a local community, who really begins to feel that they own the work, and the work is for them. That was really interesting. But my directorship there will end this July because they will change artistic directors, and we’re part of the old artistic team.

PB

Will that come as relief, challenge, or both?

TH

Five years was a good amount of time for me. I think I made some really good work while I was there, but, right now, I would like to have more flexibility. I would like to be able to work on different kinds of projects, and it is a very demanding schedule when you have to fulfill a repertoire in a city theater. That has to take precedent. For me, five years was a good amount of time. I wouldn’t say that I wouldn’t do that again if another opportunity offered itself, but for the next couple of years, there are a number of projects that I’m excited about that wouldn’t fit into that structure.

PB

In some ways I think of your work as sort of archetypically American: your influences, your upbringing, and what you draw from. You are also an international artist. How does it feel and what does it mean to be an American in Europe for now almost a decade or more and making work? What do you lose and what do you gain? Does your Americanness change?

TH

There are so many more touring opportunities in Europe, although I think the networks in the U.S. are always growing. It’s just very different. There are so many little towns that have theaters which show contemporary dance.

Since we don’t really have that dense of a network in the United States, [in Europe] you gain the ability to be able to really make a living in performing. It’s not that there aren’t people who can do that in the U.S., but I think there are more practitioners who can make a living from it in Europe.

When you’re away from something, you become more in touch with it because you have a distance from it. For instance, my next piece I will do in Zürich will be based on an American novel. I didn’t plan or think about it, but there are things that float up. I guess those things in my subconscious waiting to be expressed come from growing up in the United States. I was also an American Studies major in college. I did cultural studies specifically about the United States of America.

PB

Right.

TH

When I was in New York from ’99 to 2007, it was eight years with the community of makers who were investigating questions so intensely with so little resources. That kind of community conversation was so vital to me, and you don’t get to be a part of that when you’re touring around. I don’t know if that still exists in New York anymore.

PB

Here in the U.S., we think it’s rather tragic that some of the most brilliant artists end up having to relocate to Europe because there’s just much better support. Do you feel like you’re kind of an expatriate, following in this lineage of American artists abroad like Meg Stewart, William Forsythe, or Art Ensemble of Chicago?

TH

Not really, because I never took residency somewhere. My residence is still in Douglas, Georgia. Maybe this comes from being an American, but I still feel that I have to fight to have a place in the U.S. Most of my contemporary dance field business is in Europe, but I will always try to build more and more place for the work in the U.S. I think it’s very important. In so many ways, I’m trying to have my cake and eat it, too.

But I’ve not benefited from getting European state funding. It is something I struggled with because it would be a lot easier for me if I did, but I’m not a resident of multiple countries in Europe, so I’m not eligible. However, even if things change, I’m committed to having a place in the U.S., and I would never give that up.

PB

I wanted to ask if you could talk about your earliest memories of hearing the recording of The Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett, and also the beautiful four songs you’ve drawn from Joni Mitchell’s Blue, which opens up the program, and what your personal relationship is with that music.

TH

The first time I heard The Köln Concert was at Tower Records, on one of those CD players in the store where you could listen to music. I just didn’t know music like that existed, and I remember being so overwhelmed with something I couldn’t describe; it was like joy, melancholy, and I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I was just so happy because I didn’t know that existed, and it was something like coming home somehow. I understood this music so viscerally, and I knew it was a mix of something that I had never heard before.

I kept listening to it and knew I wanted to make a dance to this, but there was no way I was ready. There was no way. I held onto it for a long time, and it just became one of my very, very special pieces that I just kept listening to throughout life.

In Zürich, it was the second season, and we were bringing a lot of my pieces back—Antigone Sr., Maggie the Cat—a lot of them were going to come to Zürich, but then Covid hit. Since during Covid everything had to be socially distant, they asked me to make all those pieces socially distant, which I didn’t feel I could do because I didn’t want people to see not the actual live, in-person pieces. They countered by asking me to make a new piece. I thought, “Okay. Well, I’ll have the dancers sit on a piano stool. Each will have their own piano stool. They’ll be socially distant.”

At a certain point, it popped in my head: “Piano, piano, piano stool. Oh, okay. Maybe it’s time to think about The Köln Concert.” I told the dramaturge, “I’m thinking about The Köln Concert, but I cannot commit to it yet. I need to listen to it. I need to think about it.” I really didn’t feel I was ready. I just knew something was not right, to put on The Köln Concert and dance.

Then one afternoon I was sitting alone at home listing to Joni Mitchell, and I said, “Oh, wow.” I could feel the connection between Joni and Keith Jarrett, how they’re both influenced by the blues. I thought, “What if I don’t put on The Köln Concert and just press play? What if we frame The Köln Concert as a concert, and Joni Mitchell opens for Keith Jarrett?” Then I felt that I could do it and we could tackle it.

It came out of love, a lot of serendipity, and time alone during Covid. It was also knowing that The Köln Concert is something very big, and I wanted to respect it. The best way to respect it was not to try to match it, but to try to frame my admiration and love for it.

PB

Now, around a year and a half has passed since the Covid vaccine marked the beginning of the end of the pandemic. But the Covid traumas and other traumas still live with us. I wondered if you feel like this piece spoke to that loss, and that sense of mourning all that was lost, during this time?

TH

There were two things happening. One is that I was really going deeper into this idea between butoh language and the runway. That was the first time I was sharing my language, my personal dance language, with my dancers.

This was probably the biggest thing that people see because, previous to this, I would have solos, and then there would be the group stuff. Or I’d make solos, but I never shared the way I was dancing with the dancers. I didn’t want to because politically I was against it. I thought my generation, we didn’t want this kind of [Merce] Cunningham or Martha Graham. We didn’t want to be like we’re making Mini-Mes.

PB

Of course.

TH

Finally, I felt that, through butoh, I was able to consider how we can be in the same frame of mind and way of thinking about dancing. That, maybe, if I share that, then the dancers could become more themselves, but stylistically we share something. That is what you will see on stage, the same style of dancing, but everyone interprets it differently.

Butoh by its very nature is a lot about giving presence, giving representation to fragility, to sickness, to people who are on the outskirts of society—whether they are people who don’t have homes or people who work as sex workers, people who have addiction problems, or people who have diseases. As opposed to theater being only about showing noble people, perfect people, the royalty, or mythical fairies, butoh wanted to show the people who were down and out. They wanted to get back to the original folk dance and theater of rural Japan. They were interested in those kinds of people. Covid destabilization and the resulting suffering is a subset of this general group, so you could project that onto it. But it was really starting from that core of butoh; it wasn’t starting from Covid.

PB

As the audience comes into this work, the house lights are up and you’re on stage. Standing right at the lip of the stage, you’re looking directly at the audience and at times greeting people as they come in. Could you talk about those choices?

TH

I do this in a lot of the pieces. I’m usually there, or sometimes me and the dancers are there, trying to treat the room like we are here together. I found that it’s nice to say hello to people. It’s a strategy I use often. I found I enjoy it, and I don’t need to be hidden before the show.

I really value the time I have with the audience. My whole life has been built around these moments. For me, it is like I’m squeezing everything I can out of it. I want every drop of juice from this lemon.

I want to spend time with the audience. I want to see them when they walk in the room. Who’s here? What do they look like? How are they feeling? I want to be with them for as much time as possible. Oftentimes, I’m there in the beginning and I might come back at the end and say “goodbye.” For me, it feels like there’s so much to give and to receive.

PB

Even though a lot of the traditional theater world has not had its audience fully come back post-Covid, there is a sense of ecstasy in the house as people return to the live, in-person experience. I wondered if, post-Covid, you felt a heightened level of connection, liveness and joy about being together, experiencing something.

TH

There’s a new appreciation for being together. You don’t take it for granted, and I think that theater gained a new value. Before, when people were all on the computer, on Netflix, maybe we didn’t appreciate what the theater meant. Now, they understand it is something important when you come to be together in a room and watch something live. It’s very different than watching your TV at home.

PB

There was a lot of stress and struggle when Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert was first performed in 1975. Then I think about Joni Mitchell’s emotional duress during writing Blue. They both surmounted obstacles, and I wondered if Covid was a parallel for you. You seemed to have surmounted and made a beautiful work.

TH

The show is about survival. That, despite the suffering, I’m still here. I’m still walking. I’m still trying to dance. I’m still trying to move through life.

This is always an aspect of my work. I’m a tragedian. I work a lot with tragedy, so I didn’t need Covid to give me that. Right now, I don’t have a perspective on it yet. I think it’s going to take a number of years before we can really look at it or really examine it.

For me, dance has so much been about strength—these strong, powerful bodies. I’m trying to show weak bodies. What does it mean to be weak? That’s what’s very important to me, and that’s what I’ve been investigating. Whether you call it fragility or vulnerability, it’s a weakness, and the work is giving space to that.

We’re always told to be strong, and I wanted to say, “But sometimes I’m weak, and I just need to be okay that I’m weak.” For me, that’s very important to show on stage, because I think it hasn’t always been there.

PB

That is beautiful. When I saw your piece, I hadn’t listened to the record for a number of years, and I forgot how it seems to be drenched in the music and history of American Black church.

TH

You hit the nail on the head. There’s the blues, gospel—it’s all there. In American studies, we know that these things are part of the American culture. This is in Leroi Jones’ (Amiri Baraka) Blues People.

It’s the Americanization of the blues and the blues influence in America. It’s a back-and-forth conversation. It certainly is not the only way.

PB

When we last talked on camera seven years ago, you mentioned that as an artist gets older, it is important that they get better and go deeper. How do you see that going forward for yourself, and are there any inspirations from history or from other cultural elements that you’re drawn to that you expect will influence your future work?

TH

It goes back to a person getting more opportunities, but even with those opportunities it doesn’t get easier. The performing doesn’t get easier, and I want to be a better performer. I want to be able to give more. I feel like I give 200 percent, but I feel like, to really master this, you have to give 500 percent. How do you get up there?

This might take a little bit of time yet, but I do feel like my current period of research into butoh will end. Previously, I did ten years of the research into early postmodern dance and the voguing dance tradition. After that I began my current period looking at butoh in early modern dance. I think I have about two or three more years in that and then I will change periods. I’m not quite sure what I will do, but I will make another change in the work. Maybe it’ll be the last period of my work. I don’t know, but I can feel that I need and want to make a change. ▪︎

Experience Trajal Harrell: The Köln Concert for yourself at the Walker Art Center Nov 7–8, 2023.