In this episode, NCCAkron’s Executive/Artistic Director, Christy Bolingbroke, enters the ‘studio’ with Columbus, Ohio-based choreographer and founding artistic director of dance theatre X, Charles O. Anderson. Known for his rigorous kinetic storytelling and commitment to dance as a tool for social justice, his work explores Black identity, resistance, and radical imagination.
Jennifer Edwards: Thank you for joining us for the seventh season of Inside the Dancer’s Studio where we bring listeners like you closer to the creative process. Celebrating a decade of rigorous play and positive failure, NCCAkron is an incubator and hub for dance research and development and serves as a connector, a catalyst, and a cultural matchmaker. Inside the Dancer’s Studio is recorded as an ongoing documentation practice with NCCAkron visiting artists.
Jennifer Edwards: In this episode, NCCAkron’s Executive/Artistic Director, Christy Bolingbroke, enters the ‘studio’ with Columbus, Ohio-based choreographer and founding artistic director of dance theatre X, Charles O. Anderson. Known for his rigorous kinetic storytelling and commitment to dance as a tool for social justice, his work explores Black identity, resistance, and radical imagination.
Christy Bolingbroke: I'm really excited today because I get to work with a longtime friend. It's been, uh, you know, seven years.
Charles O. Anderson: Yeah.
Christy Bolingbroke: And NCC Akron artist alumni, who we are getting to work with a second or third time around Charles O. Anderson. Charles, welcome.
Charles O. Anderson: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to see you again.
Christy Bolingbroke: And for all the times that we've gotten to connect, this is only like the second or third time we've gotten to be in person.
Charles O. Anderson: I know. It's literally the second time in real life [Laughs].
Christy Bolingbroke:Yes. All right. To more in real life conversations.
Charles O. Anderson: Hear. Hear.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm. So this podcast Inside the Dancer’s Studio is all about navigating a creative career, whether it's a dance maker or anyone who's had to face the, the quote unquote blank page.
Charles O. Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Christy Bolingbroke: I'm really curious to start in your own words, what is choreography?
Charles O. Anderson: I think in part because I came into dance and choreography at the same time at 19
Christy Bolingbroke: Mmm.
Charles O. Anderson: I've always sort of seen it as sort of, um, movement design. I think I told you that my, my college years I was a mechanical engineer,
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: So I, I've really always been interested in that notion. I call it movement. I really call, what I do is kinetic storytelling, and I see it as sort of like ritualized logic, um, sort of thinking about the idea of conjuring is creating living code in some ways.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm mm-hmm. Oh yeah. I mean, so many different directions. We could go from there. I was gonna say like, oh, so you know, you were almost an engineer. It sounds maybe if you had continued down that path, you might have become a, a coder or a software developer…
Charles O. Anderson: Maybe.
Christy Bolingbroke:….or programmer. Just how you're approaching the kinesiology and the kinetic storytelling from that very scientific mindset.
Charles O. Anderson: Yeah.
Christy Bolingbroke: What do you look for in a collaborator, a, a dancer or a, or you know, elemental collaborator that you might work with?
Charles O. Anderson: It's funny you should say that I, as I'm thinking about this new project that brings me here, I've really been reflecting on my previous collaborators who are all wonderful, and it was super generative. I think this time around I am actively seeking co-conspirators, with certain skill sets. I mean, not to go Oceans 11 or anything about it.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: I'm thinking about the idea of folks who, who are seeing aspects of the world from a similar perspective with, with their own unique abilities and skill sets and how we can come together to, for lack of better words, rupture, destabilize, reimagine, reconvene, certain histories and ways of being that have always been there. But because of the nature of our work and our, the industry, we often sometimes get detoured to try to satisfy other things.
Christy Bolingbroke: Hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: So yeah, I'm, I'm really trying to build a team of co-conspirators this time.
Christy Bolingbroke: Okay. I just, I love the idea. Allah, Oceans 11, that art making is actually putting together the perfect con [Laughs].
Charles O. Anderson: Yep, yep, yep. There it is [Both laugh].
Christy Bolingbroke: And is that similar in what you would look for in dancers?
Charles O. Anderson: Absolutely. I mean, I, I consider dancers to be collaborators in a lot of ways. I think, you know, and, and it's probably 'cause I, I definitely know I work in dance theater more than say, pure quote unquote dance.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: I'm always interested in folks who are interested in, um, not only in, how do I put it, um, interpreting or manifesting what we're making, but also the ability to self-reflect and to be in the moment as they do it. So what they, they see and feel, they're also thinking about why they see and feel that in real time.
Christy Bolingbroke: One of the things NCC Akron really tries to focus on, is building a bridge from what I call the 20th century dance ecosystem…
Charles O. Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Christy Bolingbroke: …into a 21st.
Charles O. Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Christy Bolingbroke: One of the things that was more typical in the 20th century was a very hierarchical…
Charles O. Anderson: Yeah.
Christy Bolingbroke: …single choreographer approach. And the training…
Charles O. Anderson: Yeah.
Christy Bolingbroke:…dancers would often train in a single technique or specialize in that.
Charles O. Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Christy Bolingbroke: So I'd love to talk a little bit more about what you look for in dancers and also how you would characterize what virtuosity
Charles O. Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Christy Bolingbroke:…in your work looks like.
Charles O. Anderson: Yeah. I mean, again. I can't help but sort of reference back to myself just starting at 19 where I was a little more formed as a human being…
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm. Sure.
Charles O. Anderson:…than a lot of the folks I was dancing with. I came into it understanding that I was, um, excited by the possibility of manifesting or, or addressing things that don't necessarily have words so that that notion that the body carries a wisdom….
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm.
Charles O. Anderson: …which actually comes from my childhood, uh, growing up in the South and, and you know, through the church like there, there's certain things that words will never capture. And so I think I, I lost the question.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm. How do you define virtuosity?
Charles O. Anderson: Thank you.
Christy Bolingbroke: In, in your work?
Charles O. Anderson: Yeah. I mean, I think I tend to think of virtuosity as truth telling. So I, I definitely am a physical choreographer. I, I like to move. I'm working in a lot of African diasporic movement, aesthetics and idioms, but I'm, I, I do that to get to testimony, to the idea of understanding dance is both the sign and the signal.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mmm.
Charles O. Anderson: So in other words, knowing that what we're trying to do is create a sacred covenant with those we're dancing for and with, and for me, particularly that covenant is around social change.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: Like how can this moment in time bring us a little closer to a, uh, imagining a world yet to be?
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: Even if we're in the past, how can we collapse this, this sort of linear narrative of time and see that the past is always in conversation with the present and the future. And so it's a, it's a constant continuum. And so the virtuosity is allowing the dancers and the audience to, to feel themselves being moved…
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson:…as opposed to sort of the passive observation in like…
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson:…well that was pretty.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You talk about doing more than words. Can we talk a little bit about how would you characterize your choreographic point of view relative to sound and, and at what point does music or soundscaping work its way into your process?
Charles O. Anderson: Yeah. I mean, it's funny at Cornell where I started dancing at and Steve Reich went there also...
Christy Bolingbroke: Oh, wow.
Charles O. Anderson:…who was a major sort of, uh, component of (Re)current Unrest, and it's also gonna be a part of the second act. I think I've always understood that. I don't see sound as accompaniment for lack of a better word. I see it as a counterpointing contradiction and what my relationship to sound is especially layered, where I'm trying to juxtapose what, what the composition is doing with what the moment is doing and what the dancers and myself are experiencing in that doing. So I always often call it, weaving. So it's sort of like you're trying to conjure a very specific moment in time
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: Rather than dance to the music.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: And that doesn't mean I'm not using the formal compositional tools available to me, but, but it's…
Christy Bolingbroke: Oh, it's very rhythmically-driven sometimes too.
Charles O. Anderson: Exactly. It's kind of like me in life. Like I, I sit with it and you know, we're hanging out and we may not talk for one rehearsal and then I may let the music start the conversation and respond or vice versa, with, with dancers, and I mean, I tend to play a lot of different sonic sort of prompts. I love Beyonce, so I tend to go to the social dance first and then bring in the more, um, abstract musical or, uh, soundscapes that, that I'm developing. I say it that way because I feel like it is relational. So we've come to an understanding over a period of time. I rarely, I mean, I can do it, but if I'm commissioned to just make a piece to a piece of music.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: You know, I'll do that. But I don't think it, it's as successful for me as an artist. I can do it in to help us hear the music better, but I think I'm always interested in trying to shift how we understand this music to have meaning. And to recognize our own sort of complicity and the assumptions we might be making around that. I think my load stone is, I'm always thinking about rupture, like how can I crack open the sort of object or the the egg that we, we assume to be one thing? So like for instance, (Re)current Unrest came out of literally the debates on being woke…
Christy Bolingbroke: Hmm.
Charles O. Anderson:…and thinking about growing up, knowing that people used to say stay woke, even in the seventies, and understanding how that lived in my body in terms of. You know, I was stressed, intense.
Christy Bolingbroke:Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: So, you know, it's that constant agitation. So I'm trying not to go super nerdy, but it's like a lot of the dramaturgy…
Christy Bolingbroke: Bring on the nerdy.
Charles O. Anderson: Well, you know, I think it's, it's the dramaturgy, like for instance, the significance of water as a symbolic system in African American history.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: Like that was informing the choreographic process.And as I kept thinking about time, I started. Thinking about current and then, you know…
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson:…current events and then current unrest and then recurrent unrest to sort of help us to see what was happening in the 21st century, it happened in the 20th century….
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson:…it happened in the 19th century, and it's all still now. My titles tend to come from either something that's happening in conversation or from what I'm reading and I'm seeing almost, you know, like James Baldwin's Fire Next Time is coming from a biblical quote. And so I think I've always been influenced by the fact that, oh, if something's jumping out to me, even if it's not what the book is about, or the essay or the movie's about, that's a truth that I can latch onto and explode open so that perhaps we see, not just my perspective, but we see the multitude of perspectives that can be had said in something. So that's how A Three-Fifths Proclamation.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: You know, obviously riffing off a three-fifths compromise, thinking about the agency of making a proclamation around this oppressive doctrine.
Christy Bolingbroke: And A Three-Fifths Proclamation is a reference to the current piece that you're developing.
Charles O. Anderson: Yes. Yeah.
Christy Bolingbroke: And then there's something in hearing you talk a little bit about your process, just, just in the idea of naming, that's also reminding me, how historical, like the looking back and forward. I often say arts administrators are time travelers.
Charles O. Anderson: [Laughs] Yeah.
Christy Bolingbroke: Uh, I know that there's a, a little bit of Afrofuturism…
Charles O. Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Christy Bolingbroke: …Uh, that's informing, uh, the Three-Fifths Proclamation…
Charles O. Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Christy Bolingbroke:…As development too. How do you navigate as the time traveler that you are between sort of like new and old movement vocabulary as tools? When are you pushing yourself to find that like new movement that maybe you've never seen or never done in your own work before, and when do you rely on the ground that's already been tread and the work that you've already done, um, that you've accumulated over time?
Charles O. Anderson: We're touching on, I guess, the other part of my identity. That's where being an educator has been a privilege for me in terms of,
Christy Bolingbroke: Hmmm. Say more about that.
Charles O. Anderson: Well, you know, as an educator, well, at least for me as an educator, I have to let go of my expectations and be present to, to what's what's, what's what the room is saying. What the, read the room [Laughs].
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Charles O. Anderson: And I say that, um, in the sense of, you know, it, it is, it's a generous act, but it's also such a reciprocally. Satisfying moment to sort of like remember like, oh, this is only my perspective. That perspective's valid too…
Christy Bolingbroke: Hmm.
Charles O. Anderson:…because this person exists. So I say it that way because between that and the fact that, you know, my work does sit firmly within the Afro diasporic continuum. I, I let go of the anxiety of new and like what's next…
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson:…to understand like, well, we never paid attention to what came before.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mmmm.
Charles O. Anderson: So my job most of the time is excavating reappropriating, re-imagining the thing that we see all the time, or literally aren't making, making the ordinary extraordinary. So…
Christy Bolingbroke: Yeah.
Charles O Anderson: A tendu is a tendu until you put a tendu in terms of a thematic context where we're thinking about stepping off a precipice that's no longer a du, it's something else.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: So, I mean, I think that's what has always kept me from having the anxiety on what's new and also why I have such a sort of economy of vocabulary.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: Meaning, how do I put it? I see a lot of artists and you know, we often can identify them through their, the signature movement. I have movement that I often reference, but that's, is it just abstract until we start thinking about why are we referencing this? What is it evoking? How does it speak to this particular moment that we're, we're exploring right now. So you can see the same movement in three different pieces and not even realize it, which I only discovered through audiences [Laughs]. And it's like, it didn't look like the last piece at all. I'm like, funny.
Christy Bolingbroke: Yeah.
Charles O. Anderson: 70% of it, it was using similar movement, so, yeah.
Christy Bolingbroke: Well, and until you said the economy of movement, I hadn't really thought, and I don't, I don't know. This is, you know, loosely based on my ability to recall. I don't know that I would say your work has a lot of stillness, but I immediately understood what you meant by economy of movement. There's such a context that you create with the production design, (Re)current Unrest. The, the audience was in the round.
Charles O. Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Christy Bolingbroke: And that's what I mean by the endurance of time. That you aren't going to overly fill, at least in my experience with your work. It's not overly filled with steps. But it actually gives a lot of space so that the audience can receive the context around it.
Charles O. Anderson: I have to shout out Dr. Kariamu Welsh, who was one of my mentors in graduate school, who introduced Africanist Aesthetics.
Christy Bolingbroke: Hmmm.
Charles O. Anderson: So I rely a lot on repetition as intensification and signification.
Christy Bolingbroke: Nice.
Charles O. Anderson: So when I say economy of movement, it's doing something. Many times, but not in a monotonous way. It's, it's giving, it's almost like an interesting sort of semiotic game where you see it.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: Then you see it again and it starts having more meaning. Then you see it again and it has a different meaning. But all through that process you are, you're actually, for me, oh, my hope is that the audience is seeing all of the multitudes of possibilities in the same step and not, and I, and this is not a dig, you know, like I, Lucinda Childs, I think…
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson:…works very similarly in her work, similar to Rites (?) I think it's about the form of that…
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: and I'm much more interested in the Ashe of that, like…
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson:…what does it, what's manifested from seeing something over and over and knowing that time in bodily soul spirit shifts how that actually happens, even if you've seen it 20 times in one performance, it's not the same thing.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: It's always different.
Christy Bolingbroke: How do you navigate a rut, right? Like you know do you have any exercises or modes of self-care to sort of jumpstart something?
Charles O. Anderson: I have to say at, at a certain age now I, that my relationship to that has shifted. I would, if you would've asked me this, like in 2018, I would've said, oh, I usually go back to how I came into all of this, like the social dance practice…
Christy Bolingbroke: Hmmm.
Charles O. Anderson: …like social dance unlocked so much for me. I feel like it was a greater teacher than any of my formal training.
Christy Bolingbroke: Like ballroom or line dancing or, um…
Charles O. Anderson: Well, like, um, Ballroom in terms of Black gay culture.
Christy Bolingbroke:Yeah. Yeah.
Charles O. Anderson: Clubs. I, I, I was definitely a club kid [Laughs].
Christy Bolingbroke: Yes.
Charles O. Anderson: In my youth. So that, that is definitely something. But now, I've really come to see it all as sort of spiritual practice. And a rut for me is not self-theorizing, but I know something else is blocking it. Something's blocking my soul.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: It's not, not my creative inspiration. It's like I sit with that because, you know, in some ways it's. It's the necessary work understanding a priority I always have in my work is to not make it about me. I, I'm always interested in something bigger than me, but something that I can live in. I, why did that make me like, I, I want to find a world that I want to live in.
Christy Bolingbroke: Hmmm.
Charles O. Anderson: I wanna, I wanna belong.
Christy Bolingbroke: So there's a seeking that's, that's a driving force inside of that. And I also appreciate your description of it as a spiritual practice that when a, a rut presents itself, it actually might not be anything about the task at hand.
Charles O. Anderson: Exactly.
Christy Bolingbroke: Wow. Yeah. Ooh, I mean, you've dropped so many knowledge nuggets today… [Anderson laughs]…but I, I have one last question for you.
Charles O. Anderson: Please.
Christy Bolingbroke: You, you, you've already mentioned a mentor, for you to pass on a great piece of advice that continues to feed you or for you to offer a piece of advice? 'cause like you said, you are an educator and now you have, you know, you have the receipts [Anderson laughs], you've earned the wisdom, being a, a person of a certain age. What advice would you like to share?
Charles O. Anderson: I'm gonna unpack it, but I mean, it's something that has been shared with me through, from my parents to Dr. Kariamu, Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Ron K. Brown, they all have said the same thing to me, in, in a gentle way of like, just do the work.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm.
Charles O. Anderson: And you know, every time I've heard that, I usually bristle, but I realize what they're saying. Like, stop trying to project to the finished product. Live in the work, live in what, what you're trying to do. And trust that, that it'll arrive. It'll arrive to where it needs to be.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: And I say it that way 'cause I found myself saying it to students a lot, especially nowadays with. How quickly they can generate between TikTok and everything else. I'm like, yeah, that's great. You're still in the work.
Christy Bolingbroke: Yeah.
Charles O. Anderson: Like that's not the work itself, the those, those are all beautiful ingredients that are helping you to go into the work.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: Just do the work.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Charles O. Anderson: The accolades, if they're gonna come, they're gonna come. But the reward is actually what comes from the doing not, not what you receive from doing.
Jennifer Edwards: Inside the Dancer’s Studio Conversation Series is produced by NCCAkron supported in part by 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, Nakiasha Moore-Dunson, Dante Fields, Jen Garlando, and Mariclare Hulbert. To learn more about NCCAkron, please visit us online at nccakron.org. And follow us on Instagram or Facebook at NCCAkron. 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.