In this episode of Trace Elements, we spend time with Juan Michael Porter II in conversation with host, Jose Solís. Porter, talks about his work as a dancer, educator, and activist, living with HIV.
In this episode of Trace Elements, we spend time with Juan Michael Porter II in conversation with host, Jose Solís. Porter, talks about his work as a dancer, educator, and activist, living with HIV.
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 Hounduran, 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.
JUAN MICHAEL PORTER II: My name is Juan Michael Porter, the second. I am a dance theatre and HIV activist as well as journalist, educator, and producer.
JOSE SOLÍS: Thank you. Well, Michael, I'm not sure if I have ever asked you that, but what made you want to fall…sorry, but what made…I'll restart, sorry…you're making me nervous. Okay, sorry. I'm not sure if I've ever asked you this. But I, what made you fall in love with dance? Why did you want to move your body as a way to express, I don't know, everything that's going on inside?
JUAN MICHAEL PORTER II: It's silly. Michael Jackson and ninjas. So okay. Whenever I would see Michael Jackson perform, I'd go, wow, he must have so much money since he can put on these concerts. And my friends would be like, what? And then one day someone said, no, no, no, he gets paid to do that, he doesn't spend his own money. And I was like, Oh, well, I can do that. And that's ridiculous. Because the idea of like, oh, you can be paid to dance, I'm going to be a dancer. It was really that simple to me. And the other aspect of it is I've always loved ninjas. And I've always wanted to be one, and the closest you can go to be a ninja is being a dancer.
JOSE SOLÍS: Did you ever try martial arts though? Did you ever sign up for like jiu-jitsu, or like karate or anything like that?
JUAN MICHAEL PORTER II: I studied Kung fu when I was younger. And I grew up in the Asian diaspora. And so I really had a lot of access to many different art forms and literature and cultural understandings of things. And what I came away from it was, it wasn't about expression. It was about a discipline. And once I tapped into dance, I saw that there was much more to it than the simple fighting that I saw going back and forth in different dojos. For instance, I actually am a soloist. I don't necessarily like dancing with other people. And in Kung Fu, you know, it's all about sparring. And yes, you do the individual exercises, but you're never going to get to that point of showing who you are in the same way, the same way that one can while performing dance.
JOSE SOLÍS: So interesting that you mentioned that a preferred dancing solo, because I think one of the things that makes you so great at everything you do is the sense of wanting to build community that you have. So can you talk a little bit about how, you know, for someone who prefers to dance by themselves, how is it to teach then, and to choreograph, and to work with a group of students?
JUAN MICHAEL PORTER II: One of the things that I don't talk about a lot publicly as the fact that I'm, I don't really like many people. It's not that I'm shy, it's that I would just prefer to be alone. And yet, I also recognize that it's not about me. The world is much more than me and my preferences, and the only way for the world to be a place where I can stand to live as if it's alright for everyone to live and to exist. And a part of that comes from, that manifests in my teaching, from the perspective that I've had a lot of opportunities and privileges that many of my students haven't had. Sometimes that’s a privilege of exposure to different thoughts, of freedom to read encyclopedias all day long, so that I know what's going on in the world or have a certain understanding of how things work. Sometimes it's actual access. And when I go into a dance studio or into a classroom, I always recognize that I am very much so different from everyone in that space, and that I have something to offer them. And they also have something to offer me. So I think it's understanding of equivalent exchange, and that a transmission will take place between these bodies that have decided to show up.
JOSE SOLÍS: Do you remember when you first became aware of HIV? When did you first hear about HIV? Probably when you were very little, right?
JUAN MICHAEL PORTER II: Yes. Having been born in the 80s, growing up in the 90s, the most, this is again, silly Captain Planet, on the cartoon, there was an episode about like, there's a rat monster who was spreading evil rumors about this kid who had, who was living with HIV, and of course, people are bullying him in the Planeteers or like, you can't get HIV from sharing water or this or that. And it was very much so kid’s television, public messaging, but it resonated with me because I, I knew what HIV was from hearing about in the news. And yet, I didn't understand how it worked. I just knew it was scary, and you didn't want to have it. Even though I have a lot of people in my family, who are doctors and nurses and whatnot, that wasn't something that we talked about. And it's always sort of hung over one's head of like, you don't want to get it. Like you don't want to get the cooties when you're a kid. But if you got HIV or AIDS, you would die. So that was the worst form of cooties.
JOSE SOLÍS: So, once you go into the world of dance, did people have conversations about, you know, this generation of people that we lost in dance and, well all the arts, I guess, but dance specifically?
JUAN MICHAEL PORTER II: Absolutely, absolutely not. Absolutely not. There is this fear and trauma, understandably. It's almost like people who are veterans who survived World War II, they don't want to talk about the war. People who survived really traumatic circumstances, they don't want to talk about those painful things. And I would say that, in my life, in my career, I was maybe the only person who talked about HIV, ever, among my peers and colleagues. Sometimes it would come up from like, oh, so and so was so wonderful. Of course, they, they died from this, and then that was it. [Solís: Oh wow]. Sorry to interrupt you. Even once I acquired HIV, you know, I became quite vocal about it. I tested positive for HIV, after having produced this huge month-long concert, and I was very sick. Didn't know why I'd had a concussion, so I thought that was it. But then I lost all this weight and was like, you know, from a certain perspective, it's like, wow, you look great. You're a dancer, you're so skinny. But then I was too skinny. And I took a friend to get tested for HIV. I'm an STI escort, which means I take people who are afraid to go by themselves to get tested. And I get tested as well, because I know it's good for the numbers. I was in what I thought was a monogamous relationship. And my doctor said, You came back positive, you have HIV. And more than shock, I was like, No, I don't. I'm the most boring person in the world. I have a partner. And, of course, I did have HIV. And soon afterwards, I was at a dance studio. My former business partner and one of my best friends is Lakey Evans-Peña, who is the rehearsal director of Ailey II. I was at the studio, and I heard these people up front talking about a friend of theirs who wasn't there. And they were joking that he was at home dying from AIDS. And so I rushed out and was like, get from underneath our awning like get out of here. He's not like dying, he's living with HIV, and how dare you. And I immediately came back inside, went to my computer and wrote on Facebook, what had happened. And I said, If you want a judge someone living with HIV, you can judge me, but you won't, because I will kick your ass. And that's, I think that what I'm trying to get to is that I knew that HIV was a thing. I thought that we were better along, and I didn't know that HIV stigma was still a thing. I thought we were well past that. And we aren't.
JOSE SOLÍS: How were you able then to incorporate this part of your life into, I guess, everything else that you do? Because one of the things that I admire the most about you is precisely this: how you're so outspoken about, you know, your HIV activism and living, you know, being a person living with HIV. And how do you bring, you know, was it [?] a no-brainer to bring this into your work as well and try to communicate that message through dance?
JUAN MICHAEL PORTER II: You know, we started off by talking about the fact that I actually am a soloist. And the last thing I ever wanted to do was to talk about my life in this way. You know, there are people who I'm very close to who didn't know that I was married at one point. There are, there are people who have no idea about any of my relationships. I've always been very, this is my life, and this is my public- facing persona. And yet, when I heard those people speaking, after I shared on Facebook, what happened, I immediately started researching about HIV and AIDS stigma, and saw how much of it there was. And it again became this, I don't want to live in a world where this exists. And the only way that I can participate in undoing that harm is by talking about the things that none of my peers will ever speak about. No one around me was speaking about HIV. Yet I was living with it, and I've thought, If those people can joke that way, that means that someone else in my life can joke this way. And I can be in that room, where they’re joking to me about someone dying from HIV to get home. And I just, I couldn't stand that. And so I said, Well, you're all going to know about it. And I'm going to do everything that I can to get rid of this. My, my life as a dancer started from a perspective of extreme whimsy and like, Oh, isn't this charming. And I was very lucky, I had a great career of doing what I wanted to do. When I didn't like dance, I quit performing and went an became a model in Paris for five years. Then I came back and was like, oh, I want to choreograph. And like I got commissioned work with all these different people. And I was doing my thing. It maybe, it wasn't as big or as important as some other people, but it made me happy. And it was sustaining me financially and spiritually. And to suddenly come into a space where I might be judged, not because I was queer, or Black, but because of a health condition just seemed so unacceptable to me. And unacceptable to people who I knew had way fewer privileges than I did. So, one of the other things is that when I started to share the fact that I was living with HIV, I became unemployable to a number of people. And I'm not going to name names. But I will say that I, I went through a thing of thinking like, oh, I can't dance anymore. And then going back into dancing and almost having a sort of full revitalization of my dance abilities. And like, oh, I can do this. Going to auditions and having people like, hey, heard this, you look great. This and that. Hope you're okay. And it almost being this acknowledgment that they were not going to hire me. It's not fair for me to say that that was going on. But it's very odd to be in a dance audition and to be singled out by people, company directors in that way, unless they're going to hire you. But to be singled out from the perspective, like, Hey, you look great, heard about what's going on, and you're not hired is a completely different thing. So I became a critic, a theater critic, and a dance critic, because I didn't like the way that people spoke about dance, similarly, to how I didn't like the way that people spoke about HIV. And because I do articulate my thoughts well, or what I feel very well, that worked out great for me. I'm, I was one of the few black dance critics in the world who had his own byline. I was able to talk to many different people about all sorts of things. But I still wasn't talking about HIV, because it wasn't something that those around me wanted to speak about. Yes, there are charities, like “Dancers Responding to AIDS” and whatnot, but that's, that doesn't get to the lived experience of the day to day and what it's like. Having been to those concerts, I can tell you that, that those concerts are put on by people who are survivors of people who pass from HIV. They're not necessarily led by people living with the virus. They're not necessarily led with the perspective of like, how do we advocate for changing this system that continues to harm our community who we love so much? And I love “Dancers Responding to AIDS” and all these other organizations. But I would say that they don't do enough or go far enough. And neither was I. I wasn't going far enough. And so in 2020, moving along, you know, I've developed my career as a writer.
And I started to write about HIV in the arts that started with these two choreographers.They have a group called Brother(hood) Dance! And they did a piece called how to survive a plague, which was actually the name of the, you know, the documentary How to Survive a Plague. But what they observed in the documentary is that there were almost no Black people. And for me, seeing that piece and not knowing what it was about was so traumatizing. It's so beautiful, because it was saying all of the things I felt and wanted to say, but didn't quite have the vocabulary to articulate, and yet they were doing it through movement. And so brilliantly. They actually die on stage from HIV complications. And then they are revived later on and by people love to dance with them. And it becomes this sort of fusion of people who don't have HIV and people who do have HIV reveling in the same space, spaces for many people acquired HIV. In the clubs. And so it goes beyond that transmission of death, to a transmission of life and affirmation. And I thought, I want to be a part of this. I don't want to just watch this from afar. And that led me to writing about Donja R. Love, his work, starting with One in Two, when he first was working on it at Signature Theater. I was one of the few people who profiled him on it. I profiled him for the body.com which is the most important or largest organization dedicated to reporting on HIV and AIDS in the world. And that sort of tuned me into the fact that I can actually talk about the arts and HIV, and do everything else that I want to do, without feeling as if there isn't a space for, for us.
JOSE SOLÍS: You jumped ahead to the question that I was going to ask, and I was going to ask, why be [unclear word], you know, the so cruel, and so vicious? That's the point that you just jumped ahead and answer that already, basically. So Michael, what do you feel when you're dancing? Because you look, so you know, like, I don't know if joyful is the right term, but there's such grace, and also joy, and also resilience and so many things. And have I ever asked you, what's going on inside you when you're dancing?
JUAN MICHAEL PORTER II: You haven't. And it's probably kind of crazy. It takes me back to being a ninja. People, people have told me they're like, you just, you look like a cat who's mischievous and trying to figure something out. Or you look like you're on this epic adventure. And like, the stories that I have that are going on inside of me when I'm performing are, I will say out of this world, because they have nothing to do with the actual plot of what I'm doing. If the dance is about going to the grocery store, for me, it's about defeating the ultimate villain, and like bringing candy to the princess at the end of the rainbow. Or sometimes it is about being a cat and like trying to get the, the cheese to lure the mouse over so that we can have a tea party afterwards. It's bonkers town. And I think that's why I love it. Because things don't have to make sense. What we can do with our bodies is alchemical, it is magical. It is literally overcoming things that are physically impossible, and making them real in real time. And a lot of times it's based upon your physical emotions. You know, you can practice a dance move as many times as you want to, and there are going to be times when the simplest thing will simply fail. And it's like, but How was this possible? How are you able to do that crazy stuff that you can't do this very simple thing? And I love that. That even when it doesn't work out, you can move through it spiritually in such a way to overcome what isn't happening physically. You know, I skipped something that you asked me answer, you asked me earlier about teaching. And so whenever I teach anyone, anything, I always introduce myself and talk about my limitations and the fact that I'm living with HIV. And I say to them, I want you to know that I'm living with HIV, because I know that you're afraid of it. And you have this idea of what that might look like. And I want you to know that while it can look very bad, it can also look this. And I look damn good. And you know, it's sort of the spells things. It's the icebreaker, it's talking about the elephant in the room and saying to people that it's okay. It is actually scarier. But it is no scarier than you having to go across the dance floor. So 5,6,7,8, go. And it also allows me to be the advocate and ambassador in a way that others who are absolutely living with the virus and living beautifully, aren't able to because they're afraid of losing their jobs.
JUAN MICHAEL PORTER II: Whenever I introduce myself to anyone, anywhere, whether I'm producing a dance concert or teaching a dance class or giving a lecture on Zoom at a university, I always say I want you to know that I'm living with HIV, and I've mentioned that because it's scary. But here's the thing, while HIV can look bad, it can also look damn good, just like this.
OUTRO: How People Move People, is brought to you by The National Center of 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 a 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.