Trajal Harrell – Deathbed

Presented as part of Edges of Ailey, Trajal Harrell remembers the African American choreographer, dancer, and anthropologist Katherine Dunham (1909–2006), who toured the world in the 1940s and ‘50s and developed a technique based on dances from African and Afro-Caribbean cultures as well as Vodun, ballet, jazz, and modern dance. Harrell wonders about Dunham’s relationship to the Japanese choreographer and dancer Tatsumi Hijikata (1928–1986), who is known today as one of the founders of the postwar Japanese dance Butoh and has been a major influence on Harrell’s work. Whether a meeting between Hijikata and Dunham took place on the occasion of Dunham’s performances in Tokyo in 1957 has not been studied. Although Dunham spent a year in Japan, this period is only mentioned in passing in publications about her, which contain little information about the influence of her Japanese guest performances on her own work. Did Dunham and Hijikata meet in Tokyo? Harrell is interested in such speculation. With his “historical fictions,” which include Deathbed as part of the Porca Miseria trilogy, he challenges conventional dance historiography. Other voices come to the fore; other networks, lines, paths, and ideas circulate and become visible. And a person stands at the deathbed of another person and forgets to ask a question.

On October 4, tickets are free in conjunction with the Museum’s Free Friday Nights.