In this episode of Trace Elements, we spend time with Jack Ferver in conversation with host, Jose Solís. Ferver shares stories of how the HIV/AIDS epidemic has influenced their work as both a performer, creator, researcher, and professor. Topics range from the impact of HIV/AIDS on NEA funding, the transference of arts knowledge, and on queer artists broadly.
In this episode of Trace Elements, we spend time with Jack Ferver in conversation with host, Jose Solís. Ferver shares stories of how the HIV/AIDS epidemic has influenced their work as both a performer, creator, researcher, and professor. Topics range from the impact of HIV/AIDS on NEA funding, the transference of arts knowledge, and on queer artists broadly.
Film referenced in the episode - "Nowhere Apparent" commissioned as part of ALL ARTS annual dance film festival, “Past, Present, Future” and available to watch on demand at AllArts.org/PastPresentFuture.
Information on the Culture Wars:
https://blogs.brown.edu/hiaa-1810-s01-fall-2017/files/2017/08/Katz.pdf
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-01-08-op-17769-story.html
INTRO: Welcome to How People Move People, a podcast about the impact that our words, art, stories, and lives have on each other. Each series' journey unfolds in a sequence of six episodes. This series titled ‘Trace Elements’ is hosted by Jose Solis, a Honduran, Madrid-based culture writer and researcher who explores the impact left by artists both dead and living, who were impacted by the AIDS epidemic that continues today. Solis traveled between the Americas and Europe to gather stories of men and trans women. We honor their stories in their first languages, offering half of this series in English and half in Spanish.
JACK FERVER: My name is Jack Ferver. I am a writer, choreographer, director, performer, and I'm also a professor at Bard College.
I start each semester at Bard talking about AIDS, and what happened in the reorganization of the NEA during that time, which is, because I try to explain to my students that the rage, the inequity, these concerns that they have, and their curiosity about why is this happening, is tracked to that. And that there are people in my Gen Y zone, the weird Gen Y zone, who, when we were eight. And I am speaking of queer specific, well, not necessarily just queer, but I would say artists, but if you were queer, and which I was this eight year old, queer kid in rural Wisconsin, with Newsweek, and Time Magazine, and these magazines coming out saying AIDS kills gay men. You know, first it was GRID, then it was AIDS. I mean, and having that happen pre even my, and it being so loud as I went in. It was like, as I'm prepubescent. And what that did mentally as well as this terror around it. And this, and so much that was unspoken, so many lies, as well as so much hidden, and so much covered, and so much not discussed and, and I, and really it remained so shadowy to me until I met someone a little older than me, who explained, when, I remember being in New York, I was probably 19 or 20. And I was on, I’d tell this story as well when I start teaching, I was on a panel of theatre makers. I think it was led by Theater Me Too at the time. I think Ruben might have put it together and Marin Ireland and I were the actresses on it and, because we were these, the act--like young actors, we played all like the drug addicts and workshops and stuff like that. And we were sitting there talking about why is it so hard? Why is this, why is this so hard to get new, not just in content, but in form, new performance forward? And this man stood up, and he yelled at us: everyone who would have helped you, died of AIDS. And he walked out. And I, and that was when, when I applied, when Jeremy and I applied to the Library, to be the AIDS Oral History Fellows, that was, I began by talking about that, and it's in the piece that we did for the Library. And I remember being so shook by, as well as thinking he didn't stay to talk to us about it. And what does that mean for him, and it shouldn't be up to him. And it shouldn't be, and a huge part of my research has been not wanting to press on survivors to retell their story. It's, it always costs something, I mean, I certainly feel that way for myself as a survivor of something else. But the cost of retelling is a cost and, and I also felt that in this particular case, it being such a governmental betrayal that would then also leach into arts organizations. And it simply did it, it I mean, when we think about the NEA Four, and what they went through, and then presenting organizations being afraid to present them, and being afraid to present there anyone doing work like that. All of which I knew, because I had done research. I, it's, for me, it felt very spelled out, and very clear in Karen Finley’s A Different Kind of Intimacy. Partly I mean, because for those who've read the book, or for those who know the story, or for those who don't, I mean, because her name came first in the trial because of it being alphabetical, the kind of, and being a woman, I mean, I, you, you're talking, you're talking about America, and you're talking about AIDS. And so we also have to consider this country and its bloodshed, and as puritanism and its evilness, it's a, it is a, as Freud said, I don't hate America, I regret it. And this is the country where we had witch burnings at the start of it, which the first thing to look for in looking for a witch was: Is she beautiful? And so I, the I, I always encourage that misogyny stay very forefronted in these conversations that it's not, it's yes, it's absolutely homophobia, but so much of that is femme phobia. And I, I'm trying to stay on one topic, but it's hard because we get, we get into the violence. That I feel, I don't I, it's anyhow, so I remember reading in A Different Kind of Intimacy when organizations were afraid to present Karen, and I remember that sticking in my head, especially as I went to make work. And I felt so confused as to why. and then it was made so clear, because I had some, I had friends, who left, who went to Paris, Berlin, Brussels, and who, I have a friend who has 100,000 dollar, 100,000 euro-working budget, you know. I mean, it's just, it's inconceivable to me as a performance maker in the States. But what I tell my students is up until that point where it's both, it is it's AIDS and also that time being used to, for the government to kill a group that they deemed unfit to live as well as attack the arts, which are a light bearer of what's going on. I mean, the arts [unclear word] would. is a way of getting to truths that aren't, that aren't a lecture, that aren't that aren't teaching, that aren’t a news blurb or a pundit moment, the arts are able to get inside the ecosystem. I mean, that's culture gets, the culture is the culture. It gets inside of the ecosystem. The culture, it has, it has such great change without being at, but it's not, it's not the same as a rally or a political demonstration. It's, and so in a way, I think it was something to attack. And they attacked it so incredibly. Because up until that point, an artist could get, a solo artist could get 12,000 dollars. When I interviewed Terry O'Connor for the podcast, I, I, the podcast “Dance and Stuff” is still going on. I no longer do it. But I ended my time with it at Episode 200, because I was just spread too thin and. We interviewed Tere O'Connor. And Tere talked about getting an NEA that was 12,000 dollars a year as an individual. Or you can think of other artists, Jack Smith, et cetera. Well, that's about equivalent to 24,000 dollars today. And having that removed, when these students are wondering, why is it so hard, and that what you'd have to do is get a board of directors together. But you'd have to incorporate, you'd have to become a business. And because capital is tied, especially in this country, to imperialism, and all of its threads of racism, misogyny, ableism, obviously, homophobia, that it's, it is, it was a really great way to get the capital closer to the Capitol. And it was this one-two punch that we will never recover from. You will never recover from it in this country, ever. It won't happen. Arts will always be damaged by it. And it's why we're so behind. We're so behind, and will remain behind.
JOSE SOLÍS: So I want to go back to I mean, you're the first person who's talking about, about funding. And that's, that's very interesting. And I want to talk about it a little bit more. But I want to go back to when you were growing up, and you were hearing all these things. I don't, I don't think I tell this very often to people, but the very first time that I heard about HIV AIDS, was when I was growing up. Do you remember the Lambada, the Brazilian dance? [Ferver: Yeah] Yeah. So when I was growing up in Honduras, they told us that if we danced to the Lambada we would become HIV positive and die. You know, they said, you're gonna get AIDS and die. They didn’t use like the correct language, but they were like, you're dancing the Lambada and you are getting AIDS and you’re dying. So it's this, you know, when, as growing up, I knew I was very gay, this is the moment that you know, I've always known obviously. And what I want to ask you is hearing what people said about queer people, about, about gay men, what people probably said about, you know, dancing, what people said about arts, why did you want to create? Why did you want to be an artist? Why did you want to pursue dance, knowing what people thought, what people said and how you know, how did you push against that?
JACK FERVER: Yeah, well, I have never been able to assimilate very well. It seems to be my nature that I won't, so when I was, I mean, my bullying began first because I told people I was half boy, half girl. And then it started right away. I think that's part, I think that's what It really took so long, even though I've been teaching a course called “Gender and Theater” for years, I think it's what took me so long to finally say, I am non-binary. It is they/them. Because that's when my bullying began. My bullying really began by me saying, I'm not I'm, I'm, I'm both. And it being. And so first I started getting bullied that way, and then because I was able, and it started so young, I mean, I started in kindergarten and by first grade, I had kids pulling my seat out from under me. I had, I'd get punched. I, I mean, I remember bleeding a lot. I mean, I was just, it was so, there was so much physical violence. And then by the time I was in middle school, I mean it, by middle school, it was definitely, I mean, it already, AIDS was being talked about. But then by middle school, I mean, I would get punched if I'd go to drink out of the water fountain. Because they'd say, we don't want to get AIDS from you. So by being exposed to so much cruelty in the society that I was being raised in, I just didn't, it, it meant that I felt that I didn't believe it. I thought this is, I don't believe these people, and I don't, and the only solace I had was in creating these worlds artistically, to go live in. I mean, either by myself, or then when I started acting, which I, I mean dance, it was easier to act than dance for sure. I mean, when I was the only male body, quote-unquote, male body in the in dance classes, and that was really, I mean, I, we I couldn't even remember doing one recital, and just, it just being so bad, the way what would happen when I'd walk off that stage and like, kids who'd be waiting for me and. But, I mean, art, I think generally for those of us who pursue it, who aren't from wealth, which I'm not, I don't think it's, it's kind of being queer, it's not a choice. I really wouldn't choose it. I wouldn't, I wouldn't advise it. I, it is a really, unless you have to. It's so hard. And the bullies continued on. I mean, I got to New York, but it didn't mean that I wasn't bullied in the press, and that I wasn't bullied in other ways by, by people not even wanting to understand what I was doing. I mean, I think that that's sort of the, the haunting of that. So I really felt it was a thing that (a) I didn't feel I had much choice about, (b) it was the one place that I felt joy, (3) I, I also felt that it, it meant resistance to the climate I was in that I just what I felt I wouldn't, I wouldn't let it kill my, the, the deepest part of me that my, that I could be physically and verbally attacked, that that there would be a part of me that could live. And that would happen through art.
JOSE SOLÍS: That’s a lot for someone so young. I'm very sorry to hear that happen to you.
JACK FERVER: I mean, I think I've said it on a, I did a podcast called “Living in this Queer Body,” and I, I mean, I had a suicide attempt at 9. And after that I, I think that I cont, I continued to live, and it was really through art, and it also because when I was young, I got feedback that it was something I was good at. And I, it's what I used as my ticket to get out. I mean, I got a scholarship to go to Interlochen Arts Academy because I, I was, I’d heard about the school and I was like, oh gosh, well, we won't be able to afford going. And I first went to the camp, and I met a professor there who taught at the school. I got a scholarship to go to the camp, and then I met a professor who taught at the school, and he helped me get a scholarship to go to the school. I mean, a lot of my, a lot of my, my escape from Wisconsin was very, like the beginning of The Bell Jar, where she talks about getting a scholarship here and there, and ending up in New York. Like she was driving around private car. But I wasn't driving anything, not even myself. It was really bad, I would find out by the time I got there. I mean, I got there so, so young. But yes, that's, that's how, that's sort of, that's how I went into it.
JOSE SOLÍS: I'm, I’m very glad that you mentioned The Bell Jar. Not specifically, not because it's a particularly happy book or anything. But because I got this like beautiful sense, when I was watching your film. I felt like I was watching you know, like one of those fabulous like Douglas Sirk movies, like a monologue by a Jane Wyman, or a monologue by like a Donner [unclear word] or someone like that. And I thought a lot about, you know, isolation and like not having anywhere or anyone to talk to about things like that. And I, I wondered clearly, if all this larger-than-life heroines in melodrama, were kind of your companions. This also, in so many ways, you know, like that men said, the people who could be your mentors and tutors were gone.
JACK FERVER: I mean, in my last piece I did in New York, Everything is Imaginable, I asked the, the 4 queer dancers, who their icons are, and then made solos for them. And then at the second act is me and mine, which was a Catwoman in Batman Returns, Michelle Pfeiffer. I mean, that changed my whole life. But I also feel she's, she is such an icon for so many queer people. Out of their feeling of being afraid, being nervous, being scared, knowing that they're smarter than everyone in the room and being bullied for it. And then she's killed. And she comes back. And as revenge. I mean, it's still is such a, it's honestly it's one of these performances where if it wasn't in that film, she would have, she could have gotten an Oscar. I mean, she delivers this Oscar-winning performance in a film that's just not, you can't, just couldn't happen. But I mean, it ends with her saying, you know, she has a, Bruce Wayne offers her a whole life. And it's, she says, I would love to live with you and your castle just like at the end of a fairy tale, but I just couldn't live with myself. So let's not pretend this is a happy ending. What a queer thing to say. That so many of us, in our coming from our trauma and our abuse, and a feeling that we will never be able to trust anyone ever again. Why would we? And I, and I get to see, I did I got to see that through women. I miss that still, I still see very little to no queer representation of this. I am, I'm disgusted and won't, will not be seeing whatever that M. Knight’s new movie is, that Cabin in the Woods. Sounds grotesque, and totally homophobic. And, and I'm continually presented with these characters I don't relate to. I mean, I also had to grow up watching Will and Grace, as if that had any representation in it for me at all. It's, and, and with all of you know, and for our trans brothers and sisters, and others out there who are so attacked, where I'm still, it's still lacking representation. It's lacking nuanced representation. And I can't think of a non-binary character. You know what I mean? And that's so part of, of course, narrative. Is narrative just simply can't imagine what that means? Narrative, of course, it's like, well, it has to go one way or the other. It is either femme or masc. I can't imagine this other zone that's not reliant on really what it's asking for, which is sexuality, while at the same time saying we're not going to talk about that. Which is so also perverse to me about this country. While saying it won't talk about sexuality, while showing these horrific, it's so weird. I mean, I, I have to be so careful, even an opening Instagram because it'll show you. And now it can either show you like a “for you” page or something, and it'll be something from a horror movie. But we can't show nudity. We can show someone's arm getting ripped in half, that like a kid could see while opening up their phone. But no nude? It's so perverse. It's really these people, it's this, this monstrous power that we're still up against. I'm sorry, I finally went on a really big tirade, but partly what that's from is the way in which, because when we're talking about homophobia, part of what I, something that I want to make clear, that we're really talking about as femme phobia. And the way in which sexuality and a femme's sexuality must be repressed and only objectified through the M-A-L-E gaze.
JOSE SOLÍS: That's, that's, you made me think about something that I realized until I started doing this, this work, specifically. And it is that it was so much, it's been so much harder to find stories about women. Whether it's women who died, women who are still alive. It's just and I didn't even think about it. like, you know, like, my own bias in so many ways, right? I never thought about like, I'm gonna try to find women. And then when I realized, hey, there's no women in the stories that I'm finding. Like it's been really hard to even know where to start.
JACK FERVER: Well, now's what was so amazing about the Library project is I mean, so when Jeremy and I did that the, the AIDS Oral History archive was begun by Lesley Farlow. So we were able to get in touch with her and interview her and people can, I don't know what episode that is from “Dance and Stuff,” but it's, it's, it's back there. And hearing her talk about, she says something, that she says many things that are so profound and so great, but also the way in which dance is so suspect, because it's from the body. Because of this, again, this puritanical landscape that we live in here. But you've told your own story here of them saying if, if you do this dance, you're going to, they say AIDS. And of course, that's what we grew up with. No one said HIV when we were growing up. Well first they said GRID, and then they said AIDS. I mean, I, we probably didn't even find out about HIV until we were out of high school, and, and from our friend, you know from like an older friend, who explained the process.
Anyhow, so Lesley Farlow. I mean, when we [couple of unclear words], we did the lecture presentation. Reading Arnie Zane’s material was the hardest for me. It was material I felt the closest to. Arnie talks about feeling that things are going too slow. He talks about his rage with Cunningham only partnering with women. He talks about his rage with Ailey. Ailey who will die and, and has it put in his obituary that it's from, ask the doctor to have it be called something else. And Arnie also talks about gender in his interview. And I, I feel that Arnie, I don't know what would have happened for Arnie if Arnie got to live longer. But my experience was that it was women who helped me at the Library. It was Linda Murray, with her whole, like, hugging me, ‘cause I would sob every day in there. And Cassie May, being there to talk to, and then we do this presentation. And I walked into a lobby of a lot of women who said thank you for naming my friend. Thank you for remembering my friend. Thank you for giving a memorial to my friend. I read criticism by some gay men at the time who, it wasn't just Arlene Croce, who called Bill T. Jones “victim art.” There were gay male critics who panned work about HIV, who also called it “victim art” interestingly. We can't forget how a traumatized community will traumatize its own because of its closeness, I mean. It's you know, and gay men don't have the foothold on that. But this is a case in which that also happened. And it was very painful to read. Made very clear, a lot of and you have to consider who lives through it, who survives. And in what way have they survived? When we meet someone who is cruel, whose a bully or was mean, something happened you know, something happened. And if you poke around enough you find out what has happened to them. And so that's a whole other part of this that's so sad. And, and then kind of imagining like what women do get erased from this and, and then what women didn't we're really out there? I think of Diamanda Galás whose, who you know, who was doing those interviews saying, I, I have HIV, I have AIDS. I mean, and, and her pushing for saying that. Yeah, but there's, there's a lot I think that's, there's many things to sort of branch out inside of there around women, their discourse and also where and how their discourse does and doesn't get put forward. I mean, also at the time, we're having Butler and Phelan, leading so much, and but that, then we have to think of whiteness and what about Lorde. And, you know, it's, I don't need to lecture I want to, I don't want to lecture more inside of that. I think it's, I, it's, I don't want to get too academic in this. Well I'm not, I mean, it's, I'm not, I mean, I’m also very political about these things. Which again, I think it gets to the relief of art where I feel I don't, I'm not coming, when I'm making art, I'm, of course, it's informed by my politics and my research, which is, I would say also is in terms of psychoanalytic because I've had to not just view people sociologically, but also try and get a better understanding of why people do what they do, which has led me into psychoanalysis, which is maybe will be my, my fifth reincarnation.
JOSE SOLÍS: I want to talk about the, about your movie is, you know, there's so much about what you show us and or apparent that about the, about the, I hope this makes sense about the presence of absence. And I couldn't stop thinking about, you know, obviously, you're doing dance pieces, and you're doing this beautiful, the monologue at the beginning. And you're, you're, you're doing your thing on film. But it's like, at the same time, you're reminding us to think about, you know, the people who aren't there, the sons of the mothers and the daughters of the mothers, whatever. The dance partners that you could have had, that you didn't, you don't have that you don't get to have. And also, obviously framing this work as something that happened, once COVID had started, like, it's like this extra layer of isolation. So can you talk a little bit about the parallels that, that came to your mind about, you know, absence due to both AIDS, the AIDS epidemic, and also COVID. And how all of that ended up manifesting in this movie that it was so sad, like, I couldn't stop watching, you know, like, usually, I'll just like, stop something when like, I know, it's over. But then I followed you down the road until, like, the very last second until like, the screen went black. And it just made me so sad.
JACK FERVER: Yes, I'm, I am sad. I, and in the making of the work, I think that I felt. So COVID as well, and the misstep with this government that, I mean, we are having these senators getting rid of their stocks while COVID is rolling in. You know, we had the senators who were moving their stocks around in February while it was clearly beginning to pummel America. And, and all of the lying that was just this is just going to stop. It's just gonna, I don't think it would have been that way if, I don't again, I don't think, and I don't think any of what we're in would be the way it is if AIDS hadn't happened, and hadn't been dealt with the way it was. I feel Reagan planted a seed that Trump grew into a beautiful rosebush of just, of, of real deceit and cruelty. And so we experienced this as a tremendous psychotic death that happens in this country that goes primarily un-mourned. If anything now we have an economy, that's, that's truly fake news, the economy, clearly since the one percent only got richer during the pandemic. I mean, it's insane. That's insane. It's a lie. And so it means that the parents that were left with their cruelty and their deception and their lies. And then are, because the parents that we could have had were killed. That's how it, that is it to me. There, AIDS didn't just take choreographers that could have been a mentor to me. I, in no way, think of it that way. I think of it is that it took writers and thinkers and yes, I talked about funding earlier, certainly funders and audience members and people which includes politicians and lawyers. And while also exhausting and traumatizing those who survive. So the, the, the penalty of that is something that I think you're, that we're, we continue to live in. And I think that that denial, and the sense of dead parents and being haunted by them, in the way that we are haunted here in this country. This is a, I mean, every, every place of bloodshed, which is every place that humans live, is a place of haunting.
Who better to be a journalist than the queer person? Because we are told that queerness isn't real, it's not natural. And we're told that we chose it. So by that logic, I chose not to exist. That's what I'm told is that I chose not to exist. So great. Okay. If I lean into that, and I am this being whose chosen not to exist, then I'm the very best person to look at this world and talk about it and show it and mirror it, for what it is. Because I'm not from here. It let, let’s me know, it let’s me know that on the daily. So that's what this movie is, is. However, there's a thing inside of the film that I think was less inside of the live performance, which is, I also became interested in, is there any way in which this person might go looking for themselves? This person who doesn't exist, is there some part of them that exists somewhere else? And are they looking for themselves? Is the part that I'm haunted by that is forever destroyed by what the government did in its casual genocide of, during HIV AIDS crisis, during the crisis of it, we're still in it, but during the crisis of it. The part of me that was destroyed, is there some part of me that goes to look for that? It's, for those of us, for any of us who are in trauma, and also ultimately, I mean, my work is, is about how we do or don't deal with trauma. And I, as an artist, I just don't want people to feel so lonely. I think that we do all of this work, we go to therapy, and so many people from trauma, go and do all the right stuff. They go to, they go to therapy, they, they try to be better, they try to be helpful. Look at us two queer people talking about AIDS, and talking about getting it out there and talking about how do we make it better? When we could just as easily go and work in systems of money and power and capital and pull the ladder up behind us into our cloud. Why aren't we doing that? So who are these selves? And that's what the movie is about.
And what I really love from art is it's a place that I can go and not know. Because I don't know, and I'm so, I think as a trauma survivor, I must continually think I know, I must continually be the child that keeps their hand on a piece of burning coal to remember that houses burn down. And art is a place where I can go and try on unknown. So the film is that as well. I'm so lost in that film. And I think that's so much of formally what Jeremy and I wanted to find was a continual sense of not knowing where we're going. I mean, the section where it's basically what I called “reading the news,” which is me doing that chair dance, that's dissociative and sexual and the music is Julius Eastman, who's my favorite minimalist composer. Who people who don't know, mainly, who was, was pushed out of the academy by John Cage, saying that he was too sexual in his work. This incredible black queer man who made this amazing, I mean, his work is so, I think Femenine came out during the pandemic. I mean but someone who disappears, and then his, his, his music starts getting found in upstate New York. I think Saratoga. No. Syracuse. I mean, it was an S. And it's unclear exactly how he died. But that's why Eastman’s work is in the film. Because we don't know what happened to him.
And this is what was so painful in reading Arnie's oral history, listening to Arnie's oral history while reading it because when I would get to read the, I would get to read the transcript while listening. And Arnie talks about wishing that he could be like this Lucinda Childs. Wishing he could make he says these obsessional, ice-cold, I think he says math [?] dances, or something like that, or at least, I don't think he says math [?], that's how I view it though. I mean, now when I think of friends of mine who have had these great successes at making math dance. Which because you don't, there's no, there's so accepted. Of course, a queer person want to make something like that, because it's so accepted by the Academy. And it's also really, it's certainly hard to critique. It's not vulnerable in any way. And yet, Arnie so I just can't help myself, and reminded me so much of Catwoman, reminds me so much of Michelle Pfeiffer. Like, but I just couldn't live with myself, I, I can't, I wish I could just make these formalist pieces that which is, which is really for me as an inside of my own perspective, I think a sense of to, to not be vulnerable. I'm so sick of people saying, oh, oh great Jack Ferver was finally vulnerable. I think I got some, I remember when people would say, I got Well, first I would get critiqued for not being, for using humor, I would get critiqued for that. And then I, and then I get positive critique if I if they felt I was vulnerable enough. And I thought, what queer person and what woman should be vulnerable on stage? What does that even mean as well? What does vulnerability on stage mean? What does that mean? It's so, anyhow. I don't even, it doesn't even, it's not even so much to discuss. It, just think about it. I am far more interested in, and glad that the haunting nature of the film came through. That's what I want. I want people to, everything that I've loved, I feel haunted by and solaced by at the same time.
JOSE SOLÍS: I'm also glad you said that because I was I was going to ask you. Yes, haunting is the perfect word. But also, I got the impression, they're also friendly ghosts. So can you talk about, you know, because carrying so much grief, and so much pain and so much loss, in a country specifically, that won't even allow you to have the, you know, I didn't even for instance, like I didn't even know I was grieving. And I was mourning until I left New York. And then suddenly, I was like, oh, wow, like I've been, [Ferver: Yes] I've been carrying all of this for so long, and I didn't even know [Ferver: Yes]. So how, how best that if you were carrying that all the time constantly, you would not be alive I would I would think. And what is it then too, the other side of the haunting, to have those conversations, because you are in conversation with the people who, some people you've never even met. And people who are no longer here, and yet you are in constant dialogue with them wherever they are, and you know, their energy turned to something else. And that's what you're, when you're talking to what, [Ferver: Yes] it's companionship in so many ways, I think.
JACK FERVER: What you just said. I mean, you articulated it beautifully. I don't know that I can articulate it any better than what you just said. I, I, I can second what you said in terms of look, I love New York. I love New York City. It's, what can I say? It's, it's, but I also it feels like these boyfriends where I've been like, I've got to get away and I can't. I, I where I've you know, where I've never felt loved like this before. I really feel like, you know, where I were wondering where your friends are like, why are you still with him? I really and you can't answer it to yourself. Like ‘cuz he's just so hot. You know? And and then like, what does that even mean? That is, feels like New York to me. And in my times of going to New York, I'm so aware of how much performativity is required in New York. And I think what that feels so safe for so many of us as well as we get to really perform out a lot of, of a way of being that perhaps we didn't grow up feeling safe being, but then they can harden into its own role. And so you're right when you leave you get to realize a role that you didn't even realize you were playing, and all the other parts of yourself get to come forward and, and yeah and grieve. Also capitalist business wants a singular sell, like everything wants to know what the thing is in one sentence, and you stand behind that and you sell yourself that way.
I just want a second everything you've said there as well as I have direct experience of women whose friends died in the AIDS crisis telling me that they, one of them had experience of hearing her friends talking to her while sitting with me. Another said that at the end of the piece I did at the Library, there was a dance movement I did at the end of that, and she said, I saw my friend standing on stage, holding hands with you. And I do believe that energy that is created cannot be destroyed. And so when we talk about talking with our ancestors, that includes our chosen family. That's not just my, my blood family, and that's my chosen family and calling them in. For me that is, I mean, it was so hard listening to Arnie, and I would say equally hard watching Harry Sheppard’s work. And you are correct, and that there's so much that can get done by now, just digitally. But also no, because you don't have, there's video archive material that you aren't able to view. You would have to go to the Jerome Robbins Library, the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts, to watch these works. And the works by getting to, there were pieces that I, it was so wild to watch Harry Sheppard’s work. I just, I can't I, it's really painful. Because it, one, one piece he did, Harry Sheppardizing [?], which he did at that point at DTW. There were movements in it that I felt looked like moves I did at the end of my piece that was what was DTW, that's now called New York Live Arts. There was a piece he did at Dancespace that, called Mother Tongue, that looked like it was made this week at Danspace. That is hard to watch. Because if we had that knowledge and acumen, I think, and it was more readily available, and who was teaching what I was able to show it and demo it, I think the form would be different. I don't think I would be presented or be asked to sit through certain things that I'm asked to continue to sit through at subscription audience theaters. The control that is still incredibly conservative on the forms. It's still, it's still happening. I feel grateful that I'm able to exist at all as an artist in how incredibly trenchantly conservative, this all still is. And I don't know that I've seen it improve that much. Because I think in the Trump presidency, there was so much polarizing. So again, people really needed to harden into a sense of self, and allowed for less multiplicity, less multi-valence. That doesn't make for good art. That makes for a really good political standpoint or a good place to protest from. But if art can't contain more, anyway when I teach, I say look, if you can give me mystery, you win. If you can give me humor, which requires a great sense of context, and you also will win. And if you can do them both, wow.
I mean, humor saved my life, but it's really it's hard. It's been a hard one to keep pressing forward with formally. But I find without it things can get so self-important so quickly. And I'm all for treating the work importantly, but I, really self-importance I find absolutely lethal.
OUTRO: How People Move People, is brought to you by The National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron, or NCCAkron. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Edwards, James Sleeman is our editor, theme music by Ellis Rovin, transcription by Arushi Signh, cover art by Micah Kraus. I’m Eduardo Vilaro, Artistic Director and CEO of Ballet Hispanico, and an NCCAkron Board Member. Special thanks to The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for their continued support of NCCAkron programming like this. To learn more about NCCAkron, please visit us online at nccakron.org and follow us on Instagram or Facebook @nccakron. We hope you enjoyed this episode and we encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcast streaming platform by searching for How People Move People.