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What are they thinking? Choreographers an their dancers, their inspirations, and why na Piece is ever finished.

Article Excerpt
DANCE MAGAZINE INTERVIEWED 16 CHOREOGRAPHERS of different ages, styles, and nationalities. We asked four questions. What do you look for in a dancers? how do you know when a work is finished? When you think something is beautiful, what is likely to be the reason? What is your next project? Not every artist answered every question, but they didn't, they evaded the question beautifully.

DANIEL EZRALOW

Choreographer , Los Angeles

Interviewed by Darrah Carr

I look for a body intelligence, a way of moving that speaks eloquently, I look for that through improvisation. If the dancers do their own movement, then I can see right away what kind of body intelligence they have.

It is difficult to know when the piece is finished, because I usually only have four weeks. Sometimes it is time that tells me when the piece is done.

When I watch other work. I look for a sense of urgency and for the necessity for that movement to be there. I want to throw out the word "beautiful." Beauty is a judgment. When watching work, it is dangerous to judge it as right or wrong, black or white, or beautiful or ugly. Our world doesn't work like that and neither does art.

Next Project: I'm choreographing Across the Universe, a new musical movie directed by Julie Taymor. It's a 1960s love story featuring the music of The Beatles and is slated for a Thanksgiving 2006 release through Revolution Studios and Sony Pictures.

MEG STUART

Artistic Director, Damaged Goods, Belgium

Interviewed by Cynthia Hedstrom

My dancers are open for a process, not immediate results. With Benoit [Lachambre, co-creator and performer with Stuart in Forgeries, Love and Other Matters], I felt a trust that we could go to some risky emotional places. Forgeries developed in an organic way, although we knew that it would start quite dark and that we would merge with the landscape in the end. I look at the other side of beauty--at ugliness. My newest piece, Replacement, is about monstrosity--things we don't want to see, the grotesque. By going to the absolute depths of that, I have no fear of addressing beauty. I think beauty starts to seep in when someone can say, "I am present, I can accept whatever is here."

This month: Forgeries, Love and Other Matters can be seen at the National Arts Centre, Ottawa; Usine C, Montreal; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Dance Theater Workshop, New York.

LAR LUBOVITCH

Artistic Director, Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, NYC

Interviewed by Nancy Alfaro

In today's world, where cynicism is idolized, it's almost radical to see or define something as beautiful. Every artist's reality is governed by some unique sense of what is beautiful to them. It's a personal reality that's often opposed to the world's. When I see my own or someone else's work as beautiful, it's because all the forces that...

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