Meet the American choreographer fusing vogueing with postmodern dance and Japanese Butoh

What would have happened if someone from the voguing ballroom scene in Harlem had gone downtown to meet the postmodern dancers at Judson Dance Church in the early ’60s? This was the question that renowned American choreographer, Trajal Harrell asked himself to prompt the creation of his series of seminal works Twenty looks or Paris is burning at the Judson Church. “I was working a lot in minimalism and conceptualism in terms of the dance that I was making [at that time] and also thinking a lot about early postmodernism in dance,” Harrell tells SLEEK. “Then a friend invited me to a voguing ball, and I went and thought it was much more postmodern than what I was seeing in the theatre.” The result was an explosive series of performances where Harrell imagines “what didn’t happen” in a showcase of juxtapositions. A runway setting is fused with the calm tracks of smooth jazz and minimalist piano, his attire is a mishmash of high-heeled leather boots and Adidas sportswear, and his choreography flits between the intricate armography and hand gestures of Harlem’s ballrooms and the pedestrian movement language of ‘60s postmodern choreographers.

Berliners were treated to an insight into this hypothetical fusion of voguing and post-modern dance recently, as Harrell brought his performative exhibition hoochie koochie to Akademie der Künste’s Bauhaus Club – an event seeking to reimagine the infamous 1920s Bauhaus parties for the twenty-first century set as part of the 100 Years of Bauhaus festival. The festival curator stated in an interview that she chose Harrell to perform due to parallels that can be drawn between his choreography and that of ’20s German choreographer, Oskar Schlemmer. Harrell, however, says that this connection to Bauhaus was not a conscious decision. “When people say it you see it,” he admits, recognising that his desire for his audience to see the process and craft behind his work “is really Bauhaus.”

The process of creating hoochie koochie was a long one, as it contains a variety of short works from throughout Harrell’s career. “I had a residency at MoMA for three years and … one of the pieces that came out of that thinking was Caen Amore [which was about] hoochie koochie dancing,” he explains, referencing the erotic, sensual dance scene. This piece became one of the central performances of hoochie koochie – a “performance exhibition” which is more like a series of curated artworks that a traditional dance show, one which shines a light on the effectiveness of dance in a gallery setting. “I’ve been showing work in museums for a number of years, since the beginning of my career. But lately the idea of showing dance and performance in the museum has gained significant traction in the visual art world,” reveals the choreographer. “For me the biggest benefit is scale. In a theatre people are generally more concerned with how long something is, and the amount they see often in relation to the price of the ticket. [But] generally in a museum, people see multiple shows and artists, [so] they don’t mind seeing an 8-minute piece among the many things.”

hoochie koochie was first shown at the Barbican Centre in London in 2017, before it came to the Akademie der Künste for its downsized German premiere. “The Barbican was huge and that exhibition was four weeks. This was a one-night event in a kind of club environment. So, it was an experiment to see if I could do a mini version of it.” But this mini version still packed a punch, as the exhibition space at the Akademie played host to a rotation of short vignettes, from postmodern, performance art-esque scenes of dancers quirkily munching on blue string, to pieces from Harrell’s voguing days, such as the strutting, stand-off of two performers in Wall Dance, and the explosion of two male dancers in Let’s Get Sick, intermingling with the audience in the foyer, sassily stomping and flailing their arms to the sound of electro punk band Mu. Creon’s Solo was also a stand out moment, as nearly nude male performer emerged, barely concealed in some intricately knotted silk scarves. His mesmeric, gliding limbs were intended to reflect the character of King Creon from the Greek Tragedy Antigone, showing that Harrell does not just borrow from voguing in his work, but looks to a variety of sources.

In addition, Harrell melds these already diverse interests with the Japanese dance style of Butoh — a hyper controlled genre defined by slow movements and often grotesque imagery. Since 2013,  he has been researching the work of Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, the co-founders of Japanese Butoh. “I was researching voguing and looking at the appropriation of fashion forms, [so] I thought one way to shift my work was to shift its relationship to the fashion spectacle. I began to look at the period [in the ‘80s] when the Japanese – Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo – came to the Paris, and they brought this new aesthetic, which people called post-Hiroshima. It was very monochromatic, and seen as kind of a monstrosity. According to Harrell, people used the same kind of vocabulary to talk about Butoh, so he tried to figure out whether they were directly influenced by the movement. This led him to embarking on an extensive Butoh research project that led him to visiting Hijikata’s archives in Tokyo. “Hijikata’s work had never really travelled to the west, he never left Japan. So, I felt that was something missing in my education, and I needed to just focus on it.”

And Harrell has done exactly that, with one of his most recent works, Morning in Byzantium– which is in the repertoire of Munich Kammerspiele and scheduled for two performances in February – being the latest addition to his Butoh-infused routines. “What’s really interesting about Morning in Byzantium is that the star of it is an 80-year old man who’s dancing. It’s quite a multi-generational cast, but in Butoh this is irrelevant. Kazuo Ohno danced till he was 103.”

So, what’s next for Harrell? Will he continue to reimagine dance history with his theoretical fusions? “This idea of speculative history or imaginative history is definitely something that continues to be a part of my work.” Currently in Abu Dhabi creating a new piece based on the Greek Tragedy Medea set to premiere in May, he explains that he’s going to continue exploring Butoh for some time to come. “So much of my work is playing with this appropriation of fashion, which is associated with beauty and glamour whereas Butoh can be the opposite because it’s associated with death and decay, and ugliness. It’s creates a really interesting tension in the work.”