Trajal Harrell

For Trajal Harrell, dance is a question of impure mixtures and spectral projections. After The Return of La Argentina, which vogued Kazuo Ôno voguing La Argentina, he continues to probe the vein of butō, this time examining the figure of Tatsumi Hjikata. Weaving together ever more prominently the analogy between voguing, a dance that attempts to reach “realness” or authenticity, and butō where the body seeks to link the darkness of the interior with that of the exterior – he digs up genealogical lines and buried cultural crossings. As an adept of historical hypotheses that bring out unthought-of sides of modernity – just as he did with post-modern dance in Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church – he poses a “what if” which is rich in interpretative routes: what if the hidden sister that surges up in the gestures of Hijikata was in reality the African-American choreographer Katherine Dunham, with whom he shared a studio before inventing butō? Between fantastical origins and the truth of fantasies, Trajal Harrell’s body draws out a pathway which departs from Haitian voodoo to arrive in post-Hiroshima Japan, during which combinations unveil the multiple layers that make up the history of dance.