From c9817950f13c744118370b0e20a835803610c46e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Nathan Schneider Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2026 22:02:10 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Albuquerque edit at narrator request --- content/interviews/albuquerque-contemporary_dance.md | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/interviews/albuquerque-contemporary_dance.md b/content/interviews/albuquerque-contemporary_dance.md index dc673f3..91b540f 100644 --- a/content/interviews/albuquerque-contemporary_dance.md +++ b/content/interviews/albuquerque-contemporary_dance.md @@ -125,9 +125,9 @@ No, I'm not telling a story. I don't like stories with dance. I think it's too b So with my dancers---I told my last dancer, Maija, "Listen, I want you. But I also need a monster. I don't want a dancer, I want a monster." -I had one process of creating a piece where I was teaching them what it felt like to be in a psycho dance situation. I was throwing things at them in the rehearsal space. I was turning the music on and off. I was turning the lights on and off. I was getting aggressive with them. And then when we did the show---it was at a club called Zebulon---which is a very special nightclub---I really loved my main dancer's body movements but her face was frustrating me because she kept doing this little emotional eyebrow thing. +I had one process of creating a piece where I was teaching them what it felt like to be in a psycho dance situation. I was throwing things at them in the rehearsal space. I was turning the music on and off. I was turning the lights on and off. I was getting aggressive with them. And then when we did the show---it was at Zebulon, which is a very special nightclub---I really loved my main dancer's body movements, but her face was frustrating me. -I was doing the piece to Pharmakon, which is super, super gnarly music. There's a section of it where she just coughs for the whole thing, and I came out dancing during the cough, and then the dancers come out, and I had them representing "Liberty, blood, land, justice." It was about immigration, but in a very abstract way. That was the one when my dad played saxophone at the end. He played free jazz and I danced to it. But the woman who was playing me as the Statue of Liberty when we later did this piece at Zebulon---she was doing that eyebrow thing. So during the show, I drank an entire bottle of water and spit it in her face, and she looked at me with an honest expression and I said, "That's the face I want!" She kept going. It was incredible. She tells me, years later, that that moment changed her life in a lot of ways. +I was doing the piece to Pharmakon, which is super, super gnarly music. There's a section of it where she just coughs for the whole thing, and I came out dancing during the cough, and then the dancers come out, and I had them representing "liberty, blood, land, justice." It was about immigration, but in a very abstract way. That was the one when my dad played saxophone at the end. He played free jazz and I danced to it. But when we did the piece at Zebulon, the woman who was playing me as the Statue of Liberty kept doing this eyebrow thing---an overly dramatic face that I disdain in contemporary choreography. So during the show, I drank an entire bottle of water and spit it in her face, and she looked at me with an honest expression and I said, "That's the face I want!" She kept going. It was incredible. She tells me, years later, that that moment changed her life in a lot of ways. I don't know what I do to my dancers. I try to give them enough space that they can translate what's in their heads. But we're meeting at some sort of middle point in the music. I'm giving them movement and sometimes I give them a little bit of a backstory. Like for this last one I did about birth, I showed them what it felt like to be in labor. I screamed. I got on all fours. I ran around. I also had them put the fake bellies on. What does it make you feel like to be pregnant? These were all women who had never had babies. It took 30 minutes of them walking around the studio with their bellies, experiencing that. I asked them, "What do you care for most?"