In this episode of Culture in a Time of Crises, Trajal Harrell, the American dancer and choreographer, talks to Shwetal A. Patel about how the lockdown has influenced his working practices and ideas. Harrell also discusses his childhood in Georgia and how he ended up at Yale, as well as his epic series entitled “Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning” at The Judson Church in New York City.
“When I look at certain dance forms or certain cultural phenomena around dance, I’m not interested in replicating them or learning them and mixing them in a certain fusion way. I’m more interested in a theoretical structure underneath. Then I can look at and see how that theoretical structure is related to other things that I might be interested in and how to put those things together in a way that brings up a new kind of problem or a new kind of an aesthetic interest.” – Trajal Harrell, Artist