In this episode, NCCAkron's Executive/Artistic Director, Christy Bolingbroke, enters the 'studio' with Brooklyn, New York-based Reggie Wilson, Executive/Artistic Director, Choreographer, and Performer with Fist and Heel Performance Group. Wilson's work draws from the cultures of Africans in the Americas and is combined with post-modern elements to create what he calls “post-African/Neo-HooDoo Modern dances.” Wilson has lectured, taught, conducted community workshops, and has been presented nationally and internationally. He is the recipient of awards, including a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and a Joyce Foundation Award.
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Jennifer Edwards: Thanks for joining us Inside the Dancer’s Studio, where we bring listeners like you closer to the creative process. Inside The Dancer’s Studio is a program of the National Center for Choreography in Akron, Ohio. This podcast was recorded as an ongoing documentation practice with NCC Akron visiting artists in 2024 and 2025. In this episode, NCC Akron's Executive/Artistic Director, Christy Bolingbroke, enters the 'studio' with Brooklyn, New York-based Reggie Wilson. Executive/Artistic Director, choreographer, and performer with Fist and Heel Performance Group, Wilson’s work draws from the cultures of Africans in the Americas and is combined with postmodern elements to create what he calls “Post-African/ Neo-HooDoo Modern Dances.” Wilson has lectured, taught, conducted community workshops and has been presented nationally and internationally. He is the recipient of awards, including the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and the Joyce Foundation Award.
Christy Bolingbroke: How or when did you know you wanted to be a choreographer?
Reggie Wilson: Ooooh, Hmm.
Christy Bolingbroke: Can you remember a time when you weren’t a choreographer? (Laughs)
Reggie Wilson: I don’t remember a time. I officially, if I can call it that, I officially became a choreographer in recorded (Laughs) print history, in when I was in the eighth grade. That would be the first, evidence of it, uh, when I was in middle school. Being a choreographer since that time has really been a strong part of my identity. That's how I, I feel like it's how I navigate the real world. It's how I identify, it's how I manipulate, uh, integrate, rotate. I'm trying to think of like what it's, it's a, it's a three or four or five dimensional kind of part of how I think of myself and how I navigate reality.
Christy Bolingbroke: Yeah. No, I mean there's so much inside of that. I often like to say it's all choreography, right? Work, life, art, how you talked about how you navigate the world, whether that's making sense of a moment, uh, whether it's also taking time to reflect and how you organize information.
Reggie Wilson: I would say it's, I don't think it's everything I do (Bolingbroke: Mm). I would, I would differentiate 'cause I get high, I sometimes I get like highly specific (Bolingbroke: Please. Yeah) about what it means to choreograph and the responsibilities connected to. So for me, I really do specifically think of choreographing as organizing bodies in space, in time, in action and movement. And, often for viewership. And so when I say I identify who it is, it's, everything is being processed in order to get to that end.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Reggie Wilson: As opposed to everything that I do is choreography.
Christy Bolingbroke: What particularly inspires you or what do you look that sort of drops in that you're like this, this needs to be a dance, this needs (Wilson: Mm-hmm) some bodies to be organized around it and to be viewed by people.
Reggie Wilson: I feel like I've said this and I've been criticized by, by folks that work with me, folks that love and/or hate me. But I, I hold to it and I don't believe our work from inspiration or waiting for inspiration. So I feel like there's a, a lot of craft responsibility I try to take ownership for in determining making decisions. I feel like there's a lot of decision making in choreographing, whether they happen instantaneously during performance or whether they happen over a much longer kind of timeframe. Where it usually comes a dance or a subject for a dance usually comes up, is I, I, my, attention gets, continues to be drawn towards something like I have an obsession about something.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mmm.
Reggie Wilson: And when that attention or obsession, you know reoccurs.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Reggie Wilson: I kind of want it to (Laughs) just stop, like intruding. And I feel like I need to give it appropriate amount of attention to sort itself out to, organize itself (Bolingbroke: Mm). And the best set of tools that I have to organize that, to research that, to think about that are, what I have come to know as choreographic tools. Whether that's, you know, it could be a color, it could be a pattern, it could be a dance somewhere on the planet, it could be a book, it could be a historical figure or an individual friend or relationship or dynamic. And if it keep, if my attention keeps, coming to it. I want it to be less random, (Bolingbroke: Mmm) I guess, or intrusive and disruptive, to me in my life. And I want, I, I feel like I owe it to listen to it and to play with it and to research it and to bring, um (Laughs), everybody around me into, into the, into the idea.
Christy Bolingbroke: I mean, that's another kind of organizing, when you're like, this thing keeps coming my way. And so then to sort of make space for it and organize resources, people, you know, and to be able to, to welcome it, so that you can exorcize it, if that's such a thing (Laughs).
Reggie Wilson: When I was working on this piece called Moses(es), since we started doing research on something called Zar (Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm). Z-A-R, which is a kind of widespread ritual practice, spirit practice, and some folks that wrote about it in the past in the 19th century and the 18th century, or you know (Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm) folks that outside of the practice kind of observing or thinking about it in these other cultures and stuff. Um they were just like, Oh, it's an exorcism. And what they came to find out once they actually talked to the people, they were just like, No, you don't exorcise the spirit, you actually marry the spirit. So if you feel like you're being possessed by a spirit, that seems to be disruptive to everybody around you (Laughs), you don't, get rid of the spirit. You actually call the spirit in, get familiar with it and, what they would call marry the spirit (Bolingbroke: Hmm). And it becomes part of your personality or it becomes a, it becomes like, another part of who you are and a way to kind of relate to the universe. And then, I don't know if I'd been thinking about myself as a choreographer or my choreographic kind of way that I organize and move through the world. So it's not about getting rid of the idea, it's about integrating the idea in a intentional, conscious way.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm. I mean, the, this, the sense of practice of embodiment, um, absorption comes to mind as, as how you describe it. There's something that I wanna go back to though, 'cause you talked about a series of decisions to be made with choreography. How do you name a dance? This seems to be like a whole other creative exploration for some people, and, and since it seems that you are less deadline-driven and more the performances, the deadlines are sort of interruptions of the process, I'm curious how and when you know what to call it?
Reggie Wilson: It's a crap shoot (Bolingbroke laughs). Sometimes it arrives. Sometimes the obsession or the thing is so tied to wording and linguistics that it's like, it's like it's just there. It's obvious and I don't have to struggle. And then when I call it the thing, there's no issue about folks when they come to see the work. Having to struggle with the title to get to understand the piece. It's just like, no, it's, it's like it's there, it's fine. It's one and the same. Other times it's out of convenience and I'll go through multiple titles because this grant is due or that somebody wants something. And then sometimes you're kind of stuck with the title (Laughs). I was just thinking I've never made, Hmm. I've never made a dance about my relationship to words. And I feel like I have such an antagonistic, or have had such an antagonistic relationship with what I used to call words, but then I came to start calling it the written word, and then what I came to articulate as the power that the written word has over the dance or the kinesthetic in the West, and so many of the cultures that we live in (Bolingbroke: Mm). At this current time, it's always a struggle with, like, if I say that word, can I give the person reading the program something that helps them in the process of experiencing the piece as opposed to defining, determining, and restricting the experience of the piece. Sometimes it's verbal, right? Sometimes you just need to be able to convince…
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Reggie Wilson: …a presenter or, um, an ally as the, as the young folks would say.
Christy Bolingbroke: Yeah (Both laugh).
Reggie Wilson: When you're trying to convince somebody to get on board with the project. But sometimes it's also when you're just trying to get it to the performers that you want to collaborate with or the other collaborators. When you're thinking about lights, when you're thinking about costumes, when you're thinking about (Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm), about set pieces or no set, do you, at the stage and you like how can you come up with another way to, language the piece, or when you come up with a title, is it something that those other collaborators can also go off on their own jaunts (Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm) um and directions that actually feed the process as opposed to distract or um dismantle?
Christy Bolingbroke: Enough of a, a portal process or prompt to invite you in.
Reggie Wilson: Yes (Bolingbroke: Yeah). Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And as much as I've struggled with my relationship to the written word, I've never landed on make it using, um, a dance piece to do that (Bolingbroke: To). And I feel I, yeah, and I, I'm rolling around, I'm rolling that around in my head now and I really don't like it (Bolingbroke: So it). But that doesn't mean anything. 'cause that's often part of the the struggle (Bolingbroke: You may). I've written about it, I've lectured about it, I've made PowerPoints (Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm) (Bolingbroke laughs) about it. I use it in my teaching. I use it in the studio with the performers. I just feel like the struggle of it, that somehow, it's so easy for the word, whether it's written or verbal, to get precedent over the moving, kinesthetic, doing, I've avoided that.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mmm. I’m prompted to go on a small tangent and ask, maybe you’ve covered this before in other interviews but, what, where does the term Fist and Heel Performance Group come from as a sort of umbrella for all of your work?
Reggie Wilson: Fist and Heel Performance Group, I first encountered it in a book by a professor, Hel Sobel?, I think that's how it's pronounced was writing about the Ring Shout, the kind of ritualized practice that enslaved Africans resorted to, used, in development of a type of religious practice in, I'll call it North America, but like a lot of the elements of it, and it was a derogatory term. (Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm). So fist and heel worship, they thought that they were, they were talking, it was like, it was a way of degrading, these folks of not worshiping in an appropriate Christian manner. They were worshiping with their fists and stomping with their heels (Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm) (Clapping sounds). So they were clapping and shouting. Basically what we would understand is shouting. And what is the um arguable kind of, beginning of the Black church. And so it has call and response. It has, ecstatic moments, it has rules and regulations. It moves into counterclockwise kind of circle. It's rhythmical.
Christy Bolingbroke: I love that.
Reggie Wilson: So hat, that, that, that, that's, that's where I came, that's where I came got it from, , was from that book, talking about Afro-Baptist practices, during the slaving period and post, uh, slaving period.
Christy Bolingbroke: And, and just to hear more of it. Because given the longevity of your career and the work that you've done that is, uh, fits within that world that you've named, but also is not limited by it.
Reggie Wilson: I, I, that's why I really liked it. When I first came across it, I was just like, Ooh, I like it. I'm like doing this, research, this is back in the early nineties when I came first, came across it and I was just like, Oh, and a ring shout. And the research I was doing down South where my family was from and in Milwaukee, where my family was from, it was starting to go down to the Caribbean to Trinidad and Tobago. I was like, Oh, this is exciting, this fits, and then I was like, but if I move away from this dance thing, it also sounds like a little bit more political, but it's also kind of, you know, um, it's anatomical. So it could be theatrical without necessarily being dance and it's kind of theater. It could be musical, it could be performative, or it could be something else. Talking about that relationship to titles (Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm), you know, I had started, quote unquote, started the company before I found the name for it, the company. And then it was just like, I thought I'd be, I thought it would be cool to be a group as opposed to being a dance company (Laughs).
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm. No, absolutely.
Reggie Wilson: But there, there were, but there were a number of folks who had groups at the time. I think Mark Morris had started. He was, they were a group and I think David Gordon, they were a group. I feel like there were a couple…
Christy Bolingbroke: They were the Pickup Performance Group. Yes (Wilson: Yes). Yeah.
Reggie Wilson: So this idea of, I don't wanna say a collective, but a group of individuals coming together, to investigate and make something performative. (Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm), I thought was interesting. And I thought that that would definitely last, whether what I was doing was more dance or less dance.
Christy Bolingbroke: You talked about the importance of a, a title that could be a prompt to your, your performers and collaborators. What do you look for in, and especially dancers as well as collaborators?
Reggie Wilson: The more I learned about Central African and Congo kind of culture, like the importance of containers. And being able to hold something and, being able to hold a liquid or fluid or water and that the water, the shape of the water can change or fits itself to the shape of the container. So I feel like (Bolingbroke: Mmm) there's something in that. For performers, what I've learned to look for or require or cover my ass is having, um folks that are interested in the work (Laughs).
Christy Bolingbroke: Not just a job. Yeah.
Reggie Wilson: Yeah. Well, yeah. Whatever, what, depending on the context of their place, not just for whatever, some other reason. But they want to be there because they're interested in the work. And not to say that it's not a job, right? But, um, so that. And folks that are attracted to the work. I think that's what I mean by that. I feel like if I make a checklist, it tends to be that they have had some, I don't like calling it formal training, but like having some kind of focused, articulated, I'm using finger quotes, training, experience, discipline over a period of time so that they have some sensibility about what it is they're doing. And that tends to be with some type of ballet training, some type of what we'll call modern dance training. Folks will call those things kind of technique. But I also find it's also super important for folks in, I was gonna say in the company or that tend to want to work with me, they also have a consciousness around. their folk, traditional or kind of pop dancing, not necessarily all three. And in different places those things mean different things. But they need that. They need. just because of the content that I tend to stick together, 'cause I often use found material that jumps from one idea to another idea. And they have, they have to be a little bit of a smarty pants, on multiple different ways. So like a kinesthetic, smarty pants, as well as questioning and being able to respect other people and other bodies while we're working. And so finding folks that can be with each other and work with each other and tolerate each other and help each other, share with each other. I feel like that's as important as the first stuff that I listed.
Christy Bolingbroke: I mean, hearing you think, and, and talk about that out loud for anyone who hasn't been able to see your work, I might be reminded like that training in air quotes that you talk about translates into a, a really strong sense of self-awareness of how, you know, one moves biomechanical kinesthetic intelligence (Wilson: Mm-hmm), so that they actually can do less, if that makes sense (Wilson: Yes). There's such a distillation to not overperform to, to do the thing. And that actually reminds me, I was such a, a treat to get to see you work with the UA students, uh, this past fall and I loved the question that you asked them after a run through and you asked every single performer, how was that for you? And if they said, good, bad, or the same (Wilson laughs). You ask them to qualify it too, like good, like it was the same as yesterday, or considering that you feel like crap today, it was pretty good (Wilson laughs). Um, and it just, it's something that has stuck with me because of the importance of language, because of what it can mean(Wilson: Mm-hmm). And so I, I'd love to dig in a little deeper and ask you to describe or define virtuosity in dance. Given the rigor and practice that you've developed over decades now, how do you describe virtuosity in dance?
Reggie Wilson: I don't think I would ever use that word for my dance. However, I think I definitely do believe in it. Thinking about it, like in terms of generally speaking and then like in terms of my work for, in terms of my work, I need you to be able to move through, um, like a ridiculous number of vocabularies (Bolingbroke: Mm). And we kind of do that by grounding ourselves in what we call our pelvis (Laughs) and, the directionality. And so there's ways that we kind of work with that in the studio. Um but for me, virtuosity would just be being able to, Hmm. I, I, I want, I want to say control, like, I feel like I'd have to fight, I have to fight with this word a little bit more. Be having a deep, gigantic control, sense of discipline in being able to articulate specificity with the body. And I, the qualifier would put on it would also be like, I don't wanna say repetitively, but um I'm having a hard time separating in general to what I would take when I think somebody is virtuosic in my work.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm.
Reggie Wilson: And but I feel like it's being able to have control over articulation. I think that that's it. And I think there's a lot of different manners of that. And for my work, I think being able to be virtuosic in a number of different languages and vocabularies and intentionalities and meld them together, in one body, in a limited amount of time.
Christy Bolingbroke: What I'm struck by as someone who entered the, the workforce right at the turn of this century, it was what I felt as a dancer, that perhaps in the 20th century you specialized in a single form, a single technique, study, you know, studying and working under one choreographer. In the 21st century, we know it's more prevalent. I think at least 80% of the field, if not more, who are working on a project basis, which means that they're working for more than one choreographer.
Reggie Wilson: I think at least I'm thinking about like, quote unquote Western dance or dance in New York. Like there was a lot of, um, like you really did work under somebody or with somebody in a particular style or technique or type of choreography, for long periods of times, whether that was 10, 15, 20, even 30 years. Right?
Christy Bolingbroke: Wow. Yeah.
Reggie Wilson: And, what was going on? I feel like it was really going on in the eighties, nineties. was a shift in that was kind of multi, multiculturalism. But there was also, economic shifts that were going on besides global economics. There was also economics of maintaining a group of individuals for a livelihood for that length of time was even less sustainable and less moral (Laughs), than it might have been in earlier parts of the 20th century. Definitely for like, say like the last 20 years, it’s been such a, a plethora of individuals making work, but also the range of work or how people are trying to fold into their work. And then I feel like the internet has just like, , exponentially exploded that (Bolingbroke: Mmm) to the point of it almost becoming, I don't wanna say meaningless. It makes it that much more difficult to kind of pinpoint and hold something (Bolingbroke: Mmm) for longer than a millisecond. So that one can have some type of virtuosity, even if the virtuosity is not in being virtuosic.
Christy Bolingbroke: Well, when you talk about that control of articulation, when there's so much information on the internet, you know, and especially as far as movement references, it does require more effort, I think, to really focus.
Reggie Wilson: And then it becomes impossible because it's, it's to some degree depending, it can trigger, and it's, to me, it can be wonderfully inspirational, but the amount of knowledge gathering that has to go in to find out what is that thing? Is that a thing? Did that just happen on that one meme or reel? (Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm) Or is there a whole part of the globe or a community or village or a nightclub or something that they've been doing that for like 20 years, a hundred years, 5,000 years? And you find out, Ooh, just to make that finger do that, or just to make that elbow, or those shoulders do, and it's, that, that's exciting. But it also points to, well, who is, whose accountable and who's taking responsibility for being accountable to asking the question? And asking the questions that you don't even know that you're not asking.
Christy Bolingbroke: Given the longevity and ebbs and flows, in your own, choreographic trajectory, what is the best piece of advice that you've received and might be willing to pass on to someone who is seeking a life in creativity? Or if you'd like to make up your own piece of advice for someone who thinks they want to be an artist.
Reggie Wilson: The first thing that jumped into my brain is I heard from two, possibly three directors, choreographers. And the advice was, hold onto your checkbook (Laughs).
Christy Bolingbroke: Hmmm (Both laugh). Okay.
Reggie Wilson: Do not let go of your checkbook.
Christy Bolingbroke: Wow. Just…
Reggie Wilson: And now, and that, those came at some earlier times, but it was really, sometimes it's a little bit more metaphorical now since the idea of an actual checkbook is less and less for some of us, of an experience. But just really keeping your eye on, on the, on the economic responsibility (Bolingbroke: Mmm) that you have as a company director or a choreographer or a project coordinator, maker. It also means that, you know, that the responsibility effectively is yours. And to find the people that can help support you with that. And, folks that you can trust. But it also means that there needs to be enough checks and balances, no pun intended. There needs to be, multiple levels of covering your backside to be, responsible to the folks you're working with as well as protecting your future and your legal or non-legal status and/or ability to kind of like continue finding out. Like as much as I'd love to not think of what I do as a business, it, you know, it keeps, knocking at the door to have to mind that. And you need to have oversight and because there's so many turns and there's, I don't like saying it's a, um, culture of poverty or some of the other things we'll call it in the dance world, but I think it's an expensive field. It takes a lot to cover what the type of, the types of support that we need. To get to the places that we'd like to get to, in the ways in which we'd like to get there.
Christy Bolingbroke: Well, what I appreciated about what you offered in that too is not just to get the thing done, but it also is because of the relationships with the people that you're trying to bring along with you to do this work too. Um you know, and, and, you know…
Reggie Wilson: Or the people that you want to be able to have clear (Laughs) severances with (Both laugh), you wanna be able to pay them and be done.
Christy Bolingbroke: There you go.
Reggie Wilson: …Have you still like, well, so and so never paid me.
Christy Bolingbroke: Right.
Reggie Wilson: They think they stay, they promised me.
Christy Bolingbroke: That's the sort of social responsibility Yeah. And contract (Wilson: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah). Absolutely.
Reggie Wilson: That you're, and it's, it is definitely about relationships and navigating those relationships (Bolingbroke: Hmm). Some of those relations, all of those relationships have financial responsibilities. And being able to articulate those clearly (Mm-hmm), so folks that are um collaborating and working with you, have, options.
Jennifer Edwards: Inside the Dancer’s Studio Conversation Series is produced by NCC Akron and supported in part by the University of Akron, the University of Akron Foundation, the Mary Schiller Myers Lecture Series in the Arts, and Audio-Technica, a global audio manufacturer with U.S. headquarters in Northeast Ohio. Our podcast program is produced by Lisa Niedermeyer of Handmade Future Studio. Rahsaan Cruz is our audio engineer, with transcription by Arushi Singh, theme music by Floco Torres, and cover art by Micah Kraus. Special thanks to Laura Ellacott, Sarah Durham, Christi Welter, Nakiasha Moore-Dunson, and Dante Fields. To learn more about NCC Akron, please visit us online at nccakron.org. And follow us on Instagram or Facebook at NCC Akron. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and we encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcast streaming platform by searching for Inside the Dancer’s Studio. Thanks for listening and stay curious.