Louder Than ​“A Thousand Words”

Wendy Whelan and Brian Brooks have a message for New Haveners: Reinventing yourself should never stop, and should never feel completely comfortable. For Whelan, who gave her pointe shoes to Brooks sometime after retiring from the New York City Ballet (NYCB) two years ago, that sense of self-renewal is vital — and she wants to share it widely, through movement.

While that phase of her career began long before New Haven, there’s now a chapter of it in the Elm City, where she and Brooks arrived earlier this week to familiarize themselves with and rehearse on the Shubert Theater’s well-loved stage. Thursday and Friday night, they will appear there in the world premiere of Some Of A Thousand Words, a collaboration with the New York-based quartet Brooklyn Rider that takes off where Whelan and Brooks’ 2012 project Restless Creature ended. Where Restless Creature, a series of sketches, was danced to Brooklyn Rider’s take on several 20th-century composers, particularly Phillip Glass, Some Of A Thousand Words includes an original composition from the group’s violinist, who will perform onstage with the duo. The performance takes place as part of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. 

For the two, the project’s merging of creative, propulsive worlds — Whelan was the principal dancer for the NYCB, and is classically trained; Brooks is a contemporary choreographer; Brooklyn Rider pushes the concept of stringed classicism to its breaking point — personifies the way each of them want to be moving toward ​“a more human” form of movement in the dance world, and the world itself. Tuesday morning, they sat down with the Independent to discuss the project’s conception and genesis, conceptual hurdles along the way, and where Some Of A Thousand Words might lead and leave New Haven audiences later this week. Excerpts of that interview are below.

I’m interested in how Some Of A Thousand Words fits into the framework of collaborative dance that we’ve been seeing at Arts & Ideas and in the dance world at large recently. Let’s talk a little bit about the project. You’ve said it was a lot of mental work — but people don’t always think about dance as an inherently cerebral activity. 

WW: Right. When I got into dance, I didn’t think about that as a kid. And then as a professional I learned that the brain and the mind and the power of those two components with your body were equal to, if not more, to a career, to attaining and containing the material. I learned that and I’ve enjoyed that.

Well, I think some people, viewers, equate dance to memorization by rote: You have this vocabulary, you memorize it and then you execute it perfectly. But you’ve both shown that it can break from convention. Is Some Of A Thousand Words just going to that place?

BB: As far as the overall project goes, it’s quite an extensive collaboration … in that way there’s a directorship, I’m directing the project in a sort of way. But in the guts of the piece, in the dance work, Wendy and I are utterly intertwined. Literally intertwined. In my history as a dancer and choreographer I’m very interested in exploration, experimentation, discovery. So the vocabulary for the dance piece comes from the studio, the investigation of a concept of a given piece. The physicality comes out of an investigation. So we’re trying to physicalize a concept.

With Wendy, we’re generating the movement in the moment in the studio. I’ll send her a sequence, or start with a movement … and then her response, her physical response, informs me about what the dynamic level of the dance is. So we’re co-creating really, and discovering with a sense.

WW: Well, you come in with a concept. It’s a lot more discovery.

BB: Right. Wendy’s working in a very foreign territory … for me that’s the main inspiration and main challenge of the project — how do we both try to venture into some new, honest and authentic movement?

When you’re involving collaborators, it’s exciting — but the more potential the project has of getting away from you. How much of this has felt organic?

BB: Well there’s a history of our relationship and all our collaborative team’s relationship — in that way we’re building on the history, and it doesn’t feel like it’s getting away from us. We’re not trying to figure out the new piece and the new relationship. At this point, it’s quite beautiful … and it kind of swerves on and off stage. It’s a process. Part of that is letting it getting away from you.

And do you see it as a continuation of Restless Creature? A pendant to Restless Creature?

WW: We’re trying to think of it that way. We’re trying to think of an arc with the Restless Creature piece, First Fall — we’re trying to think of it as a story.

BB: We’re starting to think of it [Some Of A Thousand Words] as a piece, and of the sequence of a piece. First Fall seems like a resolution to all the conflict in the recent work I’ve created. There’s tension in each of the solos and duets in this piece, so you see different sides of tension, constraint, texture. First Fall, when placed next to these newer works, seems like the final support … like we arrive somewhere. It worked backwards creatively.

Was it important to you to have that sense of resolution, though? It seems like people are always trying to suss out a narrative from dance, and sometimes there isn’t one. 

WW: Well, there’s no narrative — but there’s a beginning, middle and end. So we think that’s important.

BB: Generally I think I like to work in a modular sense of construction. This piece is really a series of solos and duets … it’s a little bit like compartmentalization. Each individual moment, work, statement is kind of opening a lens on one aspect of us or of movement. As the evening goes on, you start to make sense of all the parts. So at the end of it you can start relating it to themselves and to each other.

There’s this question in more contemporary dance about identity politics and gender playing out. Kyle Abraham, with whom you’ve worked, Wendy, was just here last week. Do you feel that Some Of A Thousand Words does that? Do you feel that it needs to?

WW: At moments it’s lit that way, I think, internally in the work — but I think that we’re just two people … but you can see it however you want to see it!

BB: There’s a few different ways you’ll see us in the piece — side-by-side, executing the same exact tasks. I’d like to suggest that we are the same. There are some indications of effort and strength and support that are interchangeable … there’s a camaraderie between the two individuals in this particular piece. We happen to be male and female, so I’ve thought about that idea of male-female for my work, in the sense of opposition, of dynamic and of energy. But honestly … the understudy for me for this piece is a woman, Carlye Eckert, and I would put her onstage.

It’s not a totally neutral thing — I’m a minimalist and a formalist, and there’s some of that in there — but there’s also a little bit of heart. As I’m aging, I’m being encouraged to be more personal and human. I’m letting down my guard. So in this show, even though I really spin difficult sequences … there’s definitely a human side of it. It suggests that the mechanics and the formalism of it are suggestive off life, of day to day, of the mundane.

We’re also at this time where we’re sharing our bodies — specifically sharing images of our bodies. Do you think we’re at a point where we’re thinking about how we move through space any more than we have ever been?

BB: I would say the opposite actually. The virtual reality that we live in and the social media lens that we live in has pulled us further, further, further from our body than ever in history. I think we have an imaginary sense of our physical engagement in the world.

And what do you want viewers to take away from this collaboration, whether they’ve seen Restless Creature or not?

WW: Well, I hope that people who know me as a dancer, and know my past, see me very differently. That‘s what I hope, and that’s what I really want to offer wit this project with Brian. I want them to see a higher level of development between he and I as partners and players together.

BB: I support Wendy’s transformation. I see it in the studio, and I believe that it’s present in this work. It’s quite an achievement, quite an exciting endeavor to see in dance in America. Dancer retire, generally at 30 (Whelan retired two autumns ago at 47). So to have a revered dancer entering a new phase of artistry and going into …

WW: A strange land.

BB: Yeah! And really talking about physics and movement in a different way … and then doing it, it’s remarkable. On the purely artistic level it’s profound and beautiful. A lot of the conversation around the work we’re doing together is: What is it when a contemporary choreographer works with a classical ballerina? That was very interesting [with Restless Creature], but I think with this show, things have shattered. We’re closer to a middle, and I would hope that through the techniques and the form of the piece and the aesthetic of the piece, there’s something that resonates on a more human level. The mix of formalism and humanity with me is in an effort to portray a sensibility and a physicality that becomes familiar to people watching. We’ve shattered our histories and our forms and our bodies a little bit more with this project in order for you to not have anything in the way to get to your own place in the work.

And Wendy, is that sense of reinvention, of regeneration vital for you?

WW: Absolutely vital, and I’m absolutely committed to it. I don’t wear pointe shoes anymore. I don’t even think about it. I have no interest in that.

And do you think for dance moving forward … It’s not this monolithic thing, but I think a lot of people, and particularly a lot of young people, think that it is. String quartet music too — which brings in Brooklyn Rider. Do you want to see more experimentation? Do more experimentation?

WW: Well I think that it’s happening already. I want people to do what their heart wants them to do, and if that’s the same thing as what I want to do — awesome. I want to do what makes me happy. I want to work with the people that I want to work with. When they inspire me, and challenge me, and make me laugh, it’s all I could ask for as a human being alive right now.

BB: Well, we always need a reference point. As the choreographer for this piece I’m always thinking about: What are we holding onto? I guess there’s some references of shared experience that might be seen as historic, or familiar, or pedestrian — so I think about that. For example we all know a grab. In placing some of these relationships within my work, with Brooklyn Rider’s playing, I think about the assumed context of who is watching, where I’m meeting you to open the door a bit. There’s a bending of it, a pushing of the boundary.

We’ve hardly talked about Brooklyn Rider’s involvement. How collaborative was Colin [Jacobsen]’s new piece (which will be played during Some Of A Thousand Words)?
 
BB: Aaah! I’m so excited about Colin’s piece premiering here! Fricking nervous and so excited. He had a few versions and I was able to respond to it choreographically and sort of make my work to his score. That was the direction … to perform a new piece with the composer playing it live on his violin is a first-time thing for me. I’m thrilled about it. Sometimes the physiology of it is a little more rough-and-tumble than what you might assume when you’re hearing a Philip Glass score — simple, dynamic relationships that I’m playing with in this piece. I think in some ways it’s a somewhat cinematic piece. We talk in the studio about foreground and background a lot — there’s a zooming in of a suggested lens on us. There’s other things that are kind of sweeping.

But filmic more than photographic? You were describing it as such a series of vignettes. 

BB: They are. If I had to choose, I would choose film because it’s a moving image. But I also might choose that new Burst thing on the iPhones, almost a combination of the two, where you can get the singular image — the essence of the idea, the brushstroke in a photo — but if you push on it and it bursts, you see you have 18 images. That’s the show. Each of the sections expands.

We actually saw a Marcel Duchamp picture in a studio we were rehearsing in the other day … Nude Descending A Staircase. We talked a lot about that in relationship to the work. The idea of the moving image in dance is huge for me. It relates to how I dissect time — something that’s momentous and sweeping, I would do in 99 different positions. The idea is to arrest you every second or two in a momentous way. It’s flow that has a hyperactivity to it.

Do you see this as something that is going to change? It’s in your hands, but it also must take on a life of its own. 

BB: They all do. As a choreographer I’m very responsive to the creative process, and performances are part of the process. At this point every performance and every rehearsal day — they’re not interchangeable but sometimes they are. It’s become about the daily practice of our work and of the dance. It’s the day to day that makes up the piece. We’ve generated a lot, and then you select. If you’re making an album you select the 10 songs and then you keep four.

Has the cutting room floor been important to you, then?

WW: Yes, yes. [To Brian:] You’ve pulled stuff off the cutting room floor — things that I forgot from a month age — and then it becomes a major part. There’s a lot of stuff stored away that we started with. 

BB: Yeah. I create lots of material and catalogue it. Dance is invisible unless you have people in the room deciding to do it — it’s based on the decision of people willing to move through space and give it time. I work in a very nonlinear fashion … so I create, create create, and then I edit, insert, delete, expand and compress all the things that have been created.

WW: I look at him as a visual artist with this, the way he puts things out on stage.

BB: If it’s too comfortable I get very nervous.

WW: Exactly! I’m slightly terrified [for the premiere], very excited. It’s really pushed me a lot, and I’m really grateful for that. And I know I have a lot more. 

Some of a Thousand Words runs June 23 and June 24 at 8 p.m. at the Shubert Theater. Visit the Arts & Ideas website for more information.