Published: April 8, 2010
THE word “platform” may not seem sexy, but Judy Hussie-Taylor, the executive director of Danspace Project, has given it a makeover. Or, more precisely, she’s given dance presentation a makeover with Platforms 2010, a splendid series of artist-as-curator programs shown mainly at the St. Mark’s Church.
Ms. Hussie-Taylor, a youthful 47-year-old with wind-swept blond hair, is inspired by the theorist and critic Okwui Enwezor, who has said that being a curator is not as much about being a tastemaker as providing context, about both the art and the world in which it is made.
Over breakfast downtown, she said: “That’s what I’m interested in. I feel I learn from artists directly.”
But this, perhaps, is essential: “I make events that I would want to attend,” Ms. Hussie-Taylor added with a quick smile.
In January, David Zambrano encouraged the audience to move in close as he and his dancers performed solos — by turn, witty, mysterious and ecstatic — set to soul music. The resulting “Soul Project” was a mesmerizing feat in which the combination of proximity and the daring of the performers made you feel alive.
That was one of the earliest entries in Ms. Hussie-Taylor’s initiative, which will continue through next year. She has chosen four choreographers — Ralph Lemon, Juliette Mapp, Trajal Harrell and Melinda Ring — each to conceive a platform: performances and ancillary events based on original concepts. Each platform features a catalog, which illuminates ways in which choreographers and dancers approach art making.
The series is part of a research project, Choreographic Center Without Walls, which Ms. Hussie-Taylor formed when it seemed that Danspace Project might relocate to Brooklyn. (Those plans have been delayed.) “I realized right away — and this was before the economy collapsed — that it was going to take years in the best-case scenario,” she said. “I thought, what are we doing in the meantime to prepare for an expanded program addressing choreography? So I looked at my assets: the church and many brilliant dance artists.”
Mr. Lemon’s platform, “i get lost,” focuses on his research into trance states and alternative forms of consciousness as it relates to dance and performance, and concludes with an anticipated collaboration between Maria Hassabi and Robert Steijn running Thursday through Saturday.
So far Mr. Lemon’s enthralling exploration, from “Soul Project” on, has dealt with heightened performance qualities — dangerous in their ferocity or subtly delicate — where the act of watching can even create trancelike conditions for the viewer. Reflecting on his programming, Ms. Hussie-Taylor wondered, “What happens in that charged moment when a dancer activates a space?”
“We’re not after final answers here, we’re after a process,” she added, “which allows us to ask questions about why people make dance and performance.”
Experimental choreographers often speak about dance in esoteric terms; while potentially alienating, it’s also fitting. The very nature of the art form relies on an amorphous, poetic logic, yet Ms. Hussie-Taylor has figured out a way to frame such intangible qualities for public consumption.
Like a chapter in a novel, the platforms can’t exactly be judged by individual performances (though many have been outstanding). Their true power comes in the way singular worlds are revealed through links established between artists and curators. In “Back to New York City,” which ended Saturday, Ms. Mapp, a downtown choreographer, dancer and teacher, explored, in part, such connections among several generations, from younger choreographers like Katy Pyle and Jen Rosenblit to the Judson Dance Theater artists Deborah Hay and Elaine Summers.
With her usual verve Ms. Mapp created a platform that was particularly poignant for its revelatory references. (Her catalog, featuring crisp and engrossing photographs by Ken Jarecke, includes a clever family tree of the platform’s participants.) Deftly she focused on life and dance — specifically how a life in dance is never static.
It’s a radical way of packaging art, because it doesn’t only work on a creative level: Ms. Hussie-Taylor said attendance was up at least 20 percent, and often more, depending on the seating configuration.
The series continues in the fall with Mr. Harrell taking charge; in January, Ms. Ring does the honors. In selecting curators, Ms. Hussie-Taylor said, she wasn’t simply focused on whom the artists would choose. “I was also interested in how they would use these platforms as a way to further their own research,” she said. “The platform is literally a jumping-off point, rather than a festival.”
Ms. Hussie-Taylor has plenty of experience with festivals too. Before becoming the executive director of Danspace Project in 2008, she was the director of the Colorado Dance Festival, where she first met Mr. Lemon.
After she and her husband, Steven Taylor, an ethnomusicologist who is a member of the 1960s proto-punk anarchist band the Fugs, had a son (he is now 13), Ms. Hussie-Taylor left the festival to develop an interdisciplinary performance program at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. She later was the deputy director of the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver.
Both her visual art background and her outsider status as a newcomer to the city inform her approach to programming here. When she arrived at Danspace Project, Ms. Hussie-Taylor was faced with 25 to 30 weeks to fill; she wanted to find a way to shape the schedule that would provide greater meaning than individual commissions.
“The other thing is that there’s a dialogue that goes on between artists privately,” she said. “It’s not visible, and I wanted to bring that to the public eye — to be a part of that or to at least eavesdrop on the conversation.”
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