Art Happens

In the dance solo Dancer of the Year, we see Trajal Harrell repeating gestures to store them in his body, revisiting movement material and choreographic strategies from earlier work, and arousing and bringing together different emotions. In an intimate setting, Harrell shares his work with us and offers us his dance as a gift. Harrell re-examines his artistic pedigree and the choreographic strategies he has developed over the years to express himself and his (own) identity. His work reveals hidden or traditionally less theorised connections – across time, place and cultures – and opens up spaces for the creation and representation of alternative dance histories. His research focuses on the politics of performing one’s own identity and of “the other”, on Orientalism and the role of cultural appropriation in modern dance, and on the historical connection between, for example, dance and exoticism, eroticism and prostitution. The influence of the Japanese choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata, for example, who asked his dancers to work in nightclubs to make money, is not far off. Harrell’s speculative history allows other bodies, identities and voices to become part of the conventional story, and to disrupt it.