Neil, Moving

By Richert Schnorr

“It was pretty much the perfect experience.”

Neil Greenberg and I are on the phone. He’s just moved to LA, I’m still in New York and I’ve just asked him what it was like to revisit Not-About-AIDS-Dance twelve years after it’s premiere in 1994. Neil’s most celebrated piece was also my first experience with his work – not the live performance but a mediocre recording of one, dragged out from a college video library.

Since then I’ve studied with Neil at Sarah Lawrence College and was lucky enough to see the previously mentioned remounting of Not-About-AIDS-Dance alongside Quartet With Three Gay Men. I am familiar with his process, but when we sit down to talk it seems like a necessary place to start.

“I began working from taped improvisations in 1990—”

“—and copying it verbatim,” I finish.

“Well, no,” he corrects me. “Copying verbatim probably started by 1991 though.”

Sixteen years later, Neil’s process still revolves around these taped improvisations. He begins by video taping himself improvising in the studio, then carefully relearning every detail. Not-About-AIDS-Dance was constructed with this method and also incorporated his signature use of projected text. Floating, ghostlike against the black brick of the stage wall, the words contextualized Neil’s abstract movement with specific context.

This is the first material I made after my brother died.

The work is deeply personal for all involved. Beyond that, its subject matter and aesthetic perspective have cemented its place in a long discourse of great dances. When I say this, Neil isn’t so sure he agrees, but is nevertheless aware of the work’s power. “It was really a gift to be able to return to that piece and, in a way, return to mourning,” he tells me. “I think that for many…it brought back a lot of memories… And then of course there were the sold-out houses…that wasn’t so bad either.”

Though we laugh about this, Neil is quick to note that without those sold-out houses, he would have lost a great deal of money remounting this work. Few contemporary dance makers have the opportunity to re-present past work, as granting institutions are pointedly focused on funding the next best thing, rather than revisiting old gems.

But despite the economic obstacles, the experience was both gratifying and eye-opening for Neil. Beyond the personal fulfillment of having a past work receive such a warm reception, the re-visitation has brought up fresh perspectives on his process.

“It was a reminder that I’ve done that before, that maybe I can go somewhere else now, that I don’t need to repeat myself.” It illustrated that despite the ephemeral and time-based nature of dance, the work never really goes away. For Neil, this experience has unearthed a desire to deviate from his fairly specific approach to choreography.

“Quartet With Three Gay Men was the first time I started creating movement material from others’ improvisations.” Previously, Neil’s dancers all had to be “very good at being Neil.” In Quartet With Three Gay Men, however, the movement material was taken, verbatim, from all four dancer’s improvisations. Now everyone, including Neil, had to learn to be everyone else.

The process of reproducing an improvisation’s every detail is meticulous and complex. Neil’s movement is influenced by his time with the Cunningham Company; simultaneously steeped in post modernism and ballet. Fidgets and stomps mix with sweeping arcs and turned-out feet. To decipher his movement Neil’s dancers need ballet and modern training paired with keen eyes and brains. They need a particular body type and proportion. They need to be strong where Neil is strong, flexible where he is flexible. They need to live in the movement as Neil does. Without these qualities the details are lost.

Neil also has a particular interest in the body’s organs and their potential for affecting movement. A sequence may not look right until the liver is taken into consideration. Perhaps it was the lungs that were motivating that action. As we talk, Neil confesses that this kind of specificity has created an almost “fetishistic” use of dancers in his work. Very few dancers in New York have all the necessary prerequisites; even fewer can be found in his new home of California.

“There is just not as big a pool [of dancers] here” Neil says, “and if I wanted to continue my fetishistic specificity, I would probably find one or two.” Neil left New York to take a position at the University of California-Riverside. It is a research institution where he will have few teaching requirements and ample time to develop his work. He will also have a spring quarter with no teaching responsibilities, which he intends to spend creating and presenting work in New York.

He is currently developing a new project entitled Really Queer Dance with Harps, which will premiere at Dance Theater Workshop in June 2008. The development of the piece is yet another step away from his familiar way of working.

“The word ‘queer’ definitely refers to sexuality… but it also refers to the decisions I’m making. I’m trying to do things in ways I might have avoided before, things that might seem odd to me.”

It is a general theme for Neil at the moment: embracing new things, unknown things, like moving across the country. The only place he has lived outside of New York is his home state of Minnesota. He lived in his last apartment for over 20 years. Clearly, this change is significant for him, and the exploratory mindset behind all of this change affirms itself when I ask what he sees for the future.

“You know, I don’t know…I may continue to split myself between New York and California, but it’s also possible I just won’t be able to keep that up. It’s been my experience that many of the artists who’ve decided to relocate here, really have relocated.”

It’s a calm answer for someone who has just uprooted, for someone on the verge of a new life. So much of Neil’s current circumstance centers on exploration and broken routine that I wonder how he’s dealing with all of it.

“Of course there’s anxiety!” he laughs. “What’s funny is that people keep wishing me ‘good luck with the transition,’ and to me that means sex reassignment surgery! No, thank you…plus the boyfriend wouldn’t really approve.”

“He likes you the way you are,” I offer.

“Well…my sex at least,” he quips, and after a short pause, “I think I have enough change on my plate.”

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Richert Schnorr was born in Northfield, Minnesota, began dancing at the Perpich Center for Arts Education in Minneapolis, and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 2006. He has danced with Team Djordjevich, Jennifer Monson, Lala Ghahreman and Laura Manzella. His current project entitled “regularmotion” involves issues of performance, the body, the internet, and film: regularmotion.net. Richert is the Artist Services Associate for Dance Theater Workshop.