The Romeo

What if...?

With The Romeo, Trajal Harrell asks what happens when he tells a story without a clear source, a story that has “always been there”. Before Shakespeare wrote his Romeo and Juliet, many versions of the story already existed, all going back to the theme of impossible love as described by the poet Ovid. Harrell’s dance language harks back to the ancients as well and offers a glimpse of what ancient Roman or Egyptian dances might have been.

Harrell: “The Romeo is an imaginary choreography, a journey that takes us through generations and cultures, but without specific dates. Like the dance itself, the music and costumes travel through time and cultures. The whole thing is full of recognisable popular influences while being independent and creating an imaginary choreography. When I was younger, I was fascinated with how dance crossed through the entire United States to end up in our small town in Georgia. The dances that came to our town all the way from Miami or Atlanta... We learned them together, taught each other the steps...”

What Harrell finds appealing is that Romeo is a mythical figure. The name Romeo evokes an image of seducer and lover, together with the stigmas of patriarchy. And yet The Romeo is not a representational dance. It does not tell Shakespeare’s story but uses the Romeo character as an archetype. It is all speculative. Harrell does not wish to delineate which cultures the different elements or moves come from, not establish where and when something emerged, but rather aims for everything to exist in the imagination of the audience and the performers.

What if...?

The question “what if...?” recurs throughout Harrell’s work. He breaks open history and asks what might happen when you mix historical elements. What would happen if you mix very different cultures and dance styles together? If you take Shakespeare as a basis and turn it inside out?

Harrell’s The Romeo connects dancers and audience by having them consider that multifaceted question “what if history were different from what we tell ourselves?” This results in a sense of togetherness that can only be attained in the here and now of a performance, in the simultaneous presence of thirteen performers and the audience. It calls for a sense of involvement that connects us with what Harrell sees as the origins of theatre, or what the famous choreographer Martha Graham referred to when she said “theatre was a verb before it was a noun.” It goes beyond the linguistic and representational.

Butoh and voguing

Two forms of dance often recur in Harrell’s work: butoh and voguing. Butoh is a form of dance originating in Japan that emerged in the post-war years as a reaction to the traditional and formal dance and theatre of Japan. Butoh is characterised by its white-daubed dancers with their slow and controlled movements. Founder Tatsumi Hijikata originally called it ankoku buyoh, the “dance of darkness”, before settling on the more prosaic butoh, a forgotten word that refers to European dance styles. Butoh deals with existential questions surrounding life, death, illness, identity, self-expression and (homo)sexuality, which was taboo in Japan. Harrell has been doing research into butoh for over ten years, consulting the archives of founders Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-1986) and Kazuo Ôno (1906-2010) and regularly travelling to Japan. And yet Harrell does not engage in literal interpretations or references, but rather uses butoh as a starting point for exploring the body and these themes.

Vogue is a style of dance that emerged from New York’s black and Latino LGBTQIA+ scene in the 1980s. Based on poses from fashion magazines (like Vogue), dancers from different ‘houses’ ‘walk’ against each other in different categories of competition, like ‘Fem’, ‘Hands’, ‘Realness’ and ‘Runway’. For many people in the LGBTQIA+ community, these ‘houses’ with their ‘fathers’ and ‘mothers’ were a surrogate family and safe haven.

For Harrell, the vibe of the ‘houses’ and ‘ballrooms’, inclusive places where no one is refused, was critical. He observed the scene for ten years, and out of respect for voguing culture, he aims not to reproduce it but treat it as a source of inspiration for his work.

A third source of inspiration are the postmodern practices of New York’s Judson Dance Theatre, a group of choreographers in the 1960s whose use of everyday movements and witty, minimalist structures broke open traditional ideas on beauty and meaning in dance. The group emerged from a composition class in choreographer Merce Cunningham’s studio. Other well-known choreographers and composers involved with the group include Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown and Meredith Monk. Postmodern dance, voguing, butoh and the costumes inspired by a range of things: they all serve as starting points for his unique choreographies.

 
text: Helen Westerik