In this episode, NCCAkron's Executive/Artistic Director Christy Bolingbroke enters the 'studio' with Jesse Factor (Slippery Rock, PA). Factor's growing repertoire of solo work has been presented in North American venues such as TQ Live! at the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), OUTsider Festival (Austin), Milton Art Bank (Milton), RADfest (Kalamazoo), St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery (NYC), and Fierce Queer Burlesque (Toronto).
In this episode, NCCAkron's Executive/Artistic Director Christy Bolingbroke enters the 'studio' with Jesse Factor (Slippery Rock, PA). Factor's growing repertoire of solo work has been presented in North American venues such as TQ Live! at the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), OUTsider Festival (Austin), Milton Art Bank (Milton), RADfest (Kalamazoo), St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery (NYC), and Fierce Queer Burlesque (Toronto).
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ARTIST BIO
Jesse Factor's (Slippery Rock, PA) growing repertoire of solo work combines a speculative view of queer histories and the archive with contemporary composition practices. He has created Mommie Queerest, presented at Queers in Revolt at Sam Houston University in 2019, Kween Kong presented at the Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival in 2017, and Marthagany: the Spectre-Acle series, which continues to tour at dance festivals, performance events, and nightclubs. Jesse Factor’s studied channeling of divas in exile–from time and body–hauntingly reflects the impressions they’ve left behind.
Awards include the Twin Cities Arts Reader Critics Pick and Minnesota Fringe Staff Pick for RELIC at the Minnesota Fringe Festival and Outstanding Dance Performance for Marthagany at the Fresh Fruit Festival-NYC. Jesse received the Kelly Strayhorn Alloy Studios Freshworks residency grant (Pittsburgh, PA) for a collaborative work with multimedia artist Scott Andrew.
Factor’s work has been presented in many American and international venues including TQ Live! at the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), OUTsider Festival (Austin), Milton Art Bank (Milton), RADfest (Kalamazoo), St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery (NYC), Fresh Fruit Festival (NYC), House of Yes, (NYC), and Fierce Queer Burlesque (Toronto).
Factor received the Iowa Arts Fellowship (2015-2016) and an Obermann Graduate Institute Fellowship (2017) at the University of Iowa. Jesse danced professionally with the Martha Graham Dance Company and Graham II, received a BFA in Drama with honors from Tisch/NYU, and an MFA in Dance from the University of Iowa.
INTRODUCTION: 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 at The University of Akron, as part of our Ideas in Motion initiative. This episode was recorded in the presence of a virtual audience in the Spring of 2021. Today we join Christy Bolingbroke, our Executive / Artistic Director in conversation with Slippery Rock, PA-based choreographer Jesse Factor, a former member of the Martha Graham Company who now creates solo works through which he mines hidden queer histories in dance in order to re-imagine possibilities for the future.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: How or when did you know that you wanted to be a choreographer or just make a career in dance, theater, and performance at all?
JESSE FACTOR: Yeah, I think there were a lot of moments, but first I always laugh at the word choreographer. It reminds of when Martha Graham said, ‘it’s a big, wonderful word that can cover up a lot of sins.’ And so I’m like, it is, it’s sort of like this big monolithic word, but I love it, and it’s a challenge, the challenge of choreography and making dances. But I have these great memories of being a kid and just dancing around my backyard to the soundtrack of ‘Cats.’ My friend and I, at summer camp, we had this magic rock that we would go to and, like, reenact scenes from ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ reenact scenes from ‘Labyrinth,’ all these dramatic scenes. And I think that sense of play, sort of stuck with me. I was very active, my parents put me in little league, and I was in the outfield, and I wasn’t interested in the game at all, I wanted to put the baseball mitt on my face and sing Masquerade from ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ maybe I’d throw in a cartwheel or two. Anything but the game. So that didn’t last very long. I loved gymnastics and I loved physical activity. Physical engagement with myself. And then I grew up overseas, so I remember being really inspired by this sense of a world that was vast and large. And one moment in particular that sticks out to me was seeing the Ramayana, the dance drama in Bali, Indonesia. And it was so beautiful and magnificent and the idea that the dance had been passed along from one generation to the next, and that this dance was a vital part of the community was really moving to me.I don’t think I fully grasped that aspect, so that, I think as a moment, sort of a watershed moment, for me. And then just continuing on, following this passion. I remember reading ‘Blood Memory’ by Martha Graham and feeling really inspired by this individual who kept moving forward and was told ‘no’ so many times, started late, and had so many roadblocks, I was really interested in that. And then the last thing, this is also kind of funny, I remember seeing Vogue on MTV. And Madonna, I, I don’t think I paid much attention to pop-culture or music at the time, but something about that really stuck with me and I was like blown away by all these figures moving together in space and they looked like they were having a tremendous amount of fun. And so for me that sort of opened the door to dance as well because I found out that Martha Graham studied, sorry that Madonna studied at the Martha Graham school, and so that made me start thinking as well, like, ‘oh, this could be something that I’m interested in. That seems, that seems fun.’ I, I thought it was a great way to access joy, looking back. It was a wonderful way to play.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: I love that, I, and so many of your references I think reveal that we’re contemporaries of each other too. I also danced around to the ‘Cats’ soundtrack in my backyard and anywhere else. It, it sounds like you’re such a sponge as well as such an active, you know, little sentient being from the beginning. So now, when you go to make something, where do you begin? Like, what inspires you when asserting your own voice?
JESSE FACTOR: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Lately, I’ve been finding inspiration often comes from reading, the things that I’m reading and the ideas that start to sort of, the questions that I start to ask myself. Why is this this way? Why am I interested in this? Or why do I think this is so fabulous? Then for me that allows a question that I can maybe use dance practice to answer or complicate or write my own embodied essay that might sort of parallel, steal from, or reinvigorate the ideas that I’m reading about that interest me.So that I’m able to tackle those ideas on my own terms. So for instance, I think, I’d started reading a lot, I was just really interested in the figure of the diva, what that is, why it exists, and sort of why it continues to perpetuate in Western culture, right, in some way, shape, or form. So I read a book called ‘The Queen’s Throne: Homosexuality, Opera, and the Mystery of Desire’ by Wayne Koestenbaum. And Wayne had so many thoughts about his own life and his own connections to these larger than life creatures, that really got me thinking about, well how could I approach these ideas in, through dance, through making dance, through my own body. And then there were other books, ‘The Archive and the Repertoire,’ by Diana Taylor, thinking about performance and then the fixed record, or the historical record and how those two things are in flux, I was really fascinated by that. And then there’s a book, it’s a funny title, but David Halperin who’s a professor at University of Michigan wrote a book called ‘How To Be Gay.’ And it was about, like, well, why are these icons, like, oh, like, ‘why, why is Joan Crawford a queer icon?’ And I really did not know the answer to that, and so I wanted to make a dance about that. About Joan Crawford, I did not understand that relationship, and then I thought, well, what am I missing? So, for me, my own interests, and my own curiosity become the focal point of the dance making. Because then I feel like it’s really in my world and I’m able to then react, respond to, complicate things that are already out there through my own dance practice.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: That questioning, not only the personal questioning, it sounds like there’s a constant dialogue between your like, yourself and the world that you live in. And, and particularly this idea of questioning or the why, like, how, how do these figures, divas become gay icons? It reminds me that we witness this. And there’s a lot of talk right now that we are witnessing history on many different fronts, but with the conclusion of Dan Levy’s series ‘Schitt’s Creek,’ they did a special series and talked about how the character Moira has become this gay icon, and just, just having someone name that, it, I think it’s such important in, input and feedback. About like, wait a minute, it’s not always looking back, but also looking around you in the moment and sort of clocking that as, as timely research, certainly, around that. Because so much of your, your movement and joy came from dancing around to music, I’m curious how do you characterize your relationship to sound or at what point in the process do you navigate bringing music into the work?
JESSE FACTOR: Yeah, I’d say that relationship is a dangerous relationship. You got to be careful.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: In what way?
JESSE FACTOR: This, I, I find sometimes I’m easily seduced by sound. I’m easily drawn into, you know, sort of like the lusciousness of a sound and I’m constantly bringing myself back into the idea, and this is the idea that I’m, that I’ve been trying to articulate more clearly and more, more clearly on. But that the dance and the sonic element, the visual and the sonic element compliment each other, amplify each other, and highlight each other so that there’s more of a give and take. So recently, I’ve begun, you know, generating a phrase or a motif and then just allowing time with different soundscapes that then teach me actually clearer what that movement actually is. And then I’ll have a clearer picture, and then I’ll go back and, you know, work with a collaborator on fashioning sound that will compliment the visual aspect. So that the two, the dance is the anchor and the sound is intrinsically related to it.So they can’t really exist without each other. And for me then that opens up to the visual, the mise en scene, and the costuming, and all of those things that those are on par with the dance, the dance is not separate from those. The sound is the dance, the dance is the sound. So that, and that’s an evolving sort of process, I’m still figuring out the best ways to do that for me.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: And so, then, so much of this sounds like it’s an iterative process. It is ongoing, but how do you name a dance work? Like, how do you title something? Especially if it’s going to be an experience over the course of an evening.
JESSE FACTOR: Yeah, how do you name a dance work, great question, and when you know the answer, please email it to me, text me and let me know. I’d, I’d love to know. That, that is a really fascinating, and I see, I think I see naming as an evolving process as well. That maybe the first title is not the last, but that it amplifies the dance in some way. It amplifies the visual, it has a relationship to the visual, it gives some type of legibility, so that it can situate or anchor the piece in some way. And for me personally, I’m a huge fan of like, the one word, very simple, boom, title. So that the dance can speak for itself. That the dance can really, you know, live.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: That, I mean that sounds like it’s a great challenge to write to, to the, the form, the dance may be the sort of long form version of the title, but then to give yourself an alternative challenge, to say, like, ok how could I say this in five words or less, or five characters or less.
JESSE FACTOR: Yeah, yeah, and that’s a skill that it seems crosses over when you’re talking about your work, you know, you, you're sometimes required to, to do that, right? To say, well, tell me what this is about in two sentences. And so that’s a great exercise. And sometimes what it’s about, like the aboutness of the dance is evolving, so it might be this in the first iteration and then switch to this for the second, and third, and keep evolving.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: So, talk about evolving and, and your own training and you’ve, you’ve referenced Martha Graham as a figure, and of course there’s a codified Graham technique that predominated most of the 20th century and a lot of dancemakers after her that then worked in response, but how do you navigate in between, like, new and old movement vocabulary? When, when are you giving yourself permission to repeat because you know, like, people are gonna know this step, or know, or, or even repeat yourself. And, and where are you challenging yourself to refresh and seeking out that, like, what have I never done before? That seems to be an inherent tension for makers.
JESSE FACTOR: It is, yeah, and so I guess the first part is, I always love returning to the known. I actually see the returning to the known as a generative process that will yield me, yield results that go in a new direction. It almost reminds me a little bit of the Derrida, the archive fever of returning again and again. Or the revenant in my work for me it sort of seems like there are these themes that keep returning and I feel a responsibility to listen to those and continue to return. Because in the returning, I’ll learn something new about what it is. Giving myself that freedom. Things deepen, and, you know, the other day I was thinking about, you know, I could make dances about Joan Crawford for the rest of my life and it’s just so rich.You can always ask the question and there’ll always be a different answer, I love that. And then in the craft, to get a little bit more nitty gritty, I find that that’s when the generative and the sort of new frequencies, new textures really come into play because once you start building, your, something I often do is say, ‘ok, well what does this need now?’ I’ll try to find the exact opposite of what I’m doing to then partner with that. And then that will yield something else. Or I’ll say, ‘oh, like, you’ve been sitting here on this bench for 20 minutes, get up and go somewhere else.’ Maybe just try the same phrase, but standing. Or try the same thing on your back. So and for me, anchoring in the safety of what I know actually allows me to be more free with, with the movement. And that’s for, that’s in my, my own work and in my solo work especially because, you know, you have the time to do it on your own.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Yeah, we do have a, a question, I’m gonna response in, in the moment here because someone from our audience questioned, like, why is movement old or new? And, and I’ll accept some of the responsibility for that clarification too, or categorization as it is because I feel I, certainly before Covid our field definitely was sort of obsessed with the new, with the, how are you innovating, what’s the next thing, what’s your next work. And if there’s anything that I hope we sort of learn from Covid is broken our fascination with the new, with the always obsession. Because some people have revisited some of their archives or older materials and said, like, look how is this. And so much of, of what you offered in that Jesse with like revisiting something to see what else you could learn from it, already refreshes that it, that it’s not old, it’s just something that’s available to you. And you can continue to learn from something. So I hear so much of that, wanted to acknowledge it in the chat. You also got a shoutout, ‘living you, loving you Jesse, xoxo Francesca.’ So that seemed very apropos for Valentine's weekend. I love that too. Continuing on this sort of line of inquiry about definitions, I, I might also offer this whole series and you actually guest talked this week virtually for the University of Akron dance students on something that we’re calling ‘21st Century Dance Practices.’ And this largely was conceived because a lot of University programs are, you know, sort of rooted in, in, you know, a, a way of thinking the binary. It's ballet or modern. And we are trying to expand that definition that it’s larger, it’s a spectrum of what dance can be. But I think part of this challenge with students who maybe have come up through a studio system, maybe they, they’ve only ever taken ballet and so they have been focusing their, their life to be able to do those 32 fouettes center stage, like, as a singular definition of, of success or virtuosity. I’m curious, with a broader sense of thinking, how would you define virtuosity in dance and Jesse I just want to also acknowledge, we see that there is a video disabled due to internet quality issues, but we should still be able to hear you.
JESSE FACTOR: Oh, ok, can you hear me?
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Yeah so I’ll restate the question. Yes, yes we can.
JESSE FACTOR: Super, ok.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: How would you describe or define virtuosity in dance?
JESSE FACTOR: Yeah, virtuosity can mean so many things and I really don’t think that it’s the idea that it can be quantified how many, or how long. I find that that’s not productive. Rather, in retrospect for me, I think in my own personal experience that performances that I continually go back to in my mind that haunt me, for me that’s virtuosity. The idea that performance was so haunting I can’t forget about it. Think about, you know, one of the last seasons that Dudley Williams was dancing at City Center with the Ailey Company. I mean, the world that that man brought onstage was, doesn’t get any more virtuosic for me because there was a whole person there and for me I, I’ll never forget that. That’s virtuosity to me, or I remember sitting in the wings offstage and the curtain coming up and the opening of Clytemnestra. One of Graham, I think Graham's only full length ballet, and Miki Orihara and Katherine Crockett, both of them I saw do the role from the wings. And they’re just standing there and all they do is move their hands across their body very percussively, opening up the space, just moving their hands. For me, I will never forget the hair on the back of my neck is standing up thinking about that. That’s virtuosity for me, the idea of performance that you’re generously inviting the community into your experience.There’s a generosity there and a risk of being vulnerable. Or seeing, I remember seeing Joey Arias in New York City, a performance artist, and being blown away by the generosity, the risk of the performance. Trajal Harrell’s company, ‘20 Looks at Paris is Burning’ that to me I will never forget that night as long as I live. Kazuo Ohno. So for me I think the virtuosity is really about the performance and the, the idea of generosity, and the idea of ability to the community that’s witnessing.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: What comes across even in your answers, and I know I think also what our students experienced this week, it is passion. Is a sense of, of pursuing joy and play, and, you know, just how you, hearing how you talk about other artists. There’s such generosity in how you bring that through too. It sounds like such a beautiful place to, like, live and operate in, but we also know that there’s real challenges and, and sometimes you have to make things and you’re up against a deadline. How do you get out of a rut, you know, or, you know, in that where you’re not finding the joy, but yet you have to persevere? Do you have a ritual or things that you do for yourself as a maker to sort of, you know, get over that hump or get through it?
JESSE FACTOR: Well sometimes I just imagine that it’s my turn to lip-sync for my life and I’ve got to make it happen. Just putting myself in that position it’s, you know, of raising the stakes for myself, but also, this is more of a nuts and bolts kind of thing and this really works for me, I don’t spend a lot of time in one sitting working on something. I’ll spend maybe an hour and I’ll get done what I get done and I’ll write a lot of notes and that really helps me to remember, if I don’t record, sometimes I’ll record the sessions and that will help me to record. Ok, I did, I did half a minute of a phrase. It looks like shit, but I can make it into something. And then I’ll write down a couple of the things that, like, sort of came up for me, and then done, and then done. I’m not gonna waste three hours of my day on something that is not working, but then I will go back every day for an hour on just that. So for me it’s cutting it down in pieces that helps the rut feel less like a rut. That’s a technical thing. And then the other thing that I found really helpful is just to continue to go, to go back to those things that really ignited the spark in me.So what about going back to one of those books, or finding a new book I’m reading, this great book called ‘Glitch Feminism’ right now by Legacy Rusell. Amazing, looking at the glitch, the idea of the glitch, the virtual glitch as a space of possibility, it’s fan, fantastic. So those things, right? Just like going back and then finding like, ‘oh this person on the back of this book cover wrote an intro to this. I wonder what their thoughts are on that.’ But the rut is real and sometimes you’ve got to, you’ve got to hold your ass to the fire and say, ok it’s your time to lip-sync for your life, you need to do this.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Yes, oh, so, some great chat comments responding to that I, I want to acknowledge Christine offers, ‘I love separating out traditional aesthetic visual values from virtuosity and tying it more into community connection and generosity of performance.’ I think you’re, you’re giving people a lot of fodder and things to think about this weekend. I might ask you one last question before we go. In making a creative life, what’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received and would you mind sharing it with us now?
JESSE FACTOR: That is, like, such a good question and there’s so many mentors that come in my mind and that I think about, but it’s the idea that you can’t be afraid to make a mistake and I think that’s, I’m still learning that and I have to go back to that and not be afraid to be vulnerable. Those are the two things that I think reinvigorate the process and that if you don’t say it, if you don’t make it, who’s going to? Who’s gonna do it if you don’t do it? And so I return to those, I have to remind myself of those things as well, but, I thought those were all really great. And then more on a technical level, I’ll never forget, I was one of Pearl Lang’s last students at the Graham school and she would always say this, but I’ve really found it helpful and this is particularly for the proscenium, but I think for any space, you know, they have to, they have to see it all the way in the back row. And that doesn’t mean you have to do it bigger or be dishonest, but it means you’ve got to vibrate on the highest frequency that’s available to you in the moment and arrive. Because if you’re not vibrating on your frequency, then, then there’s more that you, you can, you’re capable of. And I really love that, that always inspires me of, like, ‘ok, I’ve, I’ve, you’ve got to fill the space, they’ve got to see it in the back.’ I love that.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Oh, I love that too. I think we definitely feel your frequency even through our digital platforms and I also appreciate the willingness to make mistake of where you started our conversation. Choreography being, you know, a, a, you know, helping to mask a bunch or sins or mistakes.
JESSE FACTOR: Right.
CHRISTY BOLINGBROKE: Right? And the audience sometimes never knows as long as you’re being an honest performer and putting that forth so thank you. Thank you so much Jesse, thank you to our friends, 26 people tuned in and to join us in real time. We’ll be recording this and publishing it at a later date. Thank you all for continuing this journey, staying curious, please stay safe, be well, and dance on. Bye y’all.
JESSE FACTOR: Bye.
OUTRODUCTION: Inside the Dancer’s Studio lunchtime talk series is supported by NCCAkron, The University of Akron, The University of Akron Foundation, and the Mary Schiller Myers Lecture Series in the Arts. Our podcast program is produced by Jennifer Edwards, Ellis Rovin is our composer and editor, transcription by Madeline Greenberg, theme music by Flocco Torres, cover art by Micah Kraus, and Julian Curet and Kat Wentz are our artist coordinators. 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. Thank you for listening and stay curious.