{"id":35668,"date":"2018-05-07T14:10:24","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T20:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=35668"},"modified":"2018-09-09T11:05:23","modified_gmt":"2018-09-09T17:05:23","slug":"when-dance-is-a-drag-a-conversation-with-emma-wilson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/when-dance-is-a-drag-a-conversation-with-emma-wilson\/","title":{"rendered":"When Dance is a Drag: A Conversation with Emma Wilson"},"content":{"rendered":"

LoveDANCEmore journal editor Samuel Hanson, a Utah native now based in New York City, speaks with Emma Wilson, a dance artist from Houston who completed a BFA in Modern Dance at the University of Utah, minoring in Environmental Studies as well as Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. She is the resident choreographer and co-director of the Deseret Experimental Opera Company. This article represents the beginning of a new format for the loveDANCEmore performance journal. Each month they\u2019ll be posting a new interview, essay, poem or other piece of original creative content related to dance-making in Utah.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Samuel Hanson:<\/strong> Tell me a little bit about what you\u2019re working on these days.<\/p>\n

Emma Wilson:<\/strong> For a lot of last year and the year before I was consistently performing as LadyPrince, who has another alter ego named Yung&Bizzy. I think those have come to a close for a bit, but they\u2019re still with me as I work now. I have become attached to having some kind of persona or name. So right now I\u2019m working with Ew! The Dancer.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> As in E.W., your initials, but also eww, yuck, the dancer…<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> Yes. I\u2019ve been wanting to maximize the potential of those initials for a while.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> I like that a lot.<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> I\u2019ve had some feelings of frustration with dance that I am trying to own.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> What\u2019s your biggest frustration with dance?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> One of my mentors came up with this metaphor I\u2019ve been obsessively telling everyone about. I guess it\u2019s a similar frustration to the one most people have with their parents or whoever raised them, as in, I am perpetuating these things. With dance, there\u2019s this inferiority complex we have as an art form. The metaphor my mentor presented is that dance has built a freeway to the destination of legitimacy already claimed by institutionalized music and visual art. But there are a lot of people that can\u2019t get onto the freeway if, say, you have a different body type, or you\u2019re non-binary, or you\u2019re not a gay white male that fits a certain type. Anyway that\u2019s something that really resonated with me. As I\u2019ve been repeating it, I\u2019ve walked it back a little, there is maybe more room for difference in the dance world that the analogy initially suggests, but I think there\u2019s still a lot of truth to it.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> I do, too! It\u2019s interesting to compare the mythologies of, say, the early years of modern dance in NYC with all the masochism and cult behavior with the academically oriented world we live in now. Sometimes I feel like we\u2019d be better off if we hadn\u2019t colonized academia.<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> Maybe academia wasn\u2019t really the key to growing as an art form. But again, saying \u201cas an art form\u201d performs this strange operation of turning everyone into this unified front\u2013<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> The so-called avant-garde\u2013<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> Yeah…<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> So, tell me a little bit more about where these characters come from.<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> LadyPrince was born in the bedroom, in role play with a partner. At some point I guess I decided to bring them\u2013they go by them and sometimes he\u2013\u00a0into the larger world. Last year was really exciting because I got to do a LadyPrince series at this monthly queer dance party called Moth Closet that was started by Bradley DeHerrera and Emmett Moxie. I had this epic of LadyPrince that lasted about 30 minutes in which Yung&Bizzy greets everyone and flies everyone around the room as a flock of birds who get launched into space to LadyPrince Planet, where Yung&Bizzy transforms into LadyPrince, with many costume malfunctions which explore the identity crises I have when I\u2019m getting dressed in the morning.<\/p>\n

Anyway at this monthly dance party I was able to do smaller episodes of the LadyPrince story, which is highly influenced by The Little Prince<\/em>. I was interested in putting more femininity in that (my interpretation of that word) and just basically making it more gay.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> In a way, the metaphor your mentor posited could also apply to a certain academic version of queerness. One of the things I like about your work is that it has a queer aesthetic that doesn\u2019t feel dressed up in academic drag. You\u2019re not militantly going on about the cyborgs. I relate to your vulnerability, which I feel is often absent from that discourse.<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> Actually, I recently read The Cyborg Manifesto<\/em> and there was a lot more humor in it than I expected. I am pretty inspired by that part of the\u2013\u2013 I actually hesitate to use the word \u201cqueer\u201d because it gets used so much in a way that renders it meaningless to me. It\u2019s this field of academia that is now legitimate but the word itself, for me, when I originally learned about its history, it felt subversive and constantly changing. But I feel like academia has calcified it or something. I am wondering about the word queer. Lately I\u2019ve been more inclined to just call myself gay or use LGBTQ even though it\u2019s more of a mouthful. Queer is becoming like that freeway. You have to be thin and androgynous and have money to go to school to learn about queer theory…<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> Was that something you encountered at the U in dance? In my day, we weren\u2019t there yet in terms of queerness being either visible or trendy…<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> Yeah I think that\u2019s part of why I\u2019ve been getting into doing drag, albeit non-conventional drag. There wasn\u2019t so much visibility for that sort of thing at the University. I think that\u2019s changing now partly because queerness is trendy. I remember in dance history getting really excited about Valeska Gert and Jill Johnston and other small whisperings of subversion in American dance history. Gert danced in cabarets in New York and scandalized everyone by performing an orgasm and other parts of reality like tropes of the working class that weren\u2019t visible. I am really attracted to the literalness of that, as much as I love Merce and Release technique, etcetera. Even people like Kurt Jooss…<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> Who inspires and feeds your intellect outside of dance?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> Who feeds me? Let\u2019s see.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> That\u2019s a terrible question to ask anyone.<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> No, no, I go to sleep at night trying to answer that hoping someone will ask me. But the crickets start chirping now! Musically, and a propos of cyborgs, I\u2019ve been listening to Janelle Mon\u00e1e\u2019s new singles that seem to be riffing off of Prince and Michael Jackson. And also Prince Rama. They sound a lot like Animal Collective but they\u2019re all gals. I saw them here a couple of years ago and the lead singer had a voice altering mic that deepened her voice\u2013\u2013 a sort of lo-fi cyborg effect. It was kind of surreal to see this typically feminine looking person with such a deep amplified voice\u2026<\/p>\n

Also Laurie Anderson is my idol. And I\u2019ve been reading Jeanette Winterson.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> Oh god, I love both of them!<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> I took Re-Imagined Anatomies with Nate Dryden at the U. And he had us read an excerpt from Winterson\u2019s Written on the Body<\/em>. That\u2019s an example of a moment when the University didn\u2019t totally erase me. Right now I\u2019m reading Sexing the Cherry<\/em>…<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> I have that in the giant pile of books by my bed! I haven\u2019t gotten around to it yet but I\u2019ve read Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Art & Lies <\/em>and The Passion<\/em>.<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> I started The Passion<\/em> but it didn\u2019t snag me.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> It\u2019s very much a period piece about France and Venice around the time of Napoleon. I read it on an airplane in one go. It\u2019s always a luxury to get to read for eight hours without being interrupted by other people or phones.<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> I\u2019ve been reading a lot of comics for that reason. They\u2019re easier to sneak more of them in in smaller periods of time.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> How do you get around Salt Lake?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> I had to leave my car in Houston this past winter. The engine was flooded, or at least that\u2019s what the computer inside of it thought. In the meantime, I\u2019ve been biking a lot more and pretending our public transit works as well as the subways in New York.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> Actually the subway system here is falling to pieces lately. But what\u2019s going on in Salt Lake?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> Tonight there\u2019s this weekly dance party called Operation Gender Juice. It happens at the Art Hub on 100 South and 600 West down the block from Metro and the Sun Trapp. It\u2019s in the Arts Alliance Building with Samba Fogo and the SLC Capoeira group. It’s a small room, it almost feels like a middle school party at someone\u2019s parent\u2019s basement. It\u2019s very intimate and strange. The walls are carpeted. Tonight\u2019s theme is John Waters. Hopefully there will be a whole fleet of people dressed as Devine.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> What John Waters character are you going as?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> I just watched Multiple Maniacs<\/em> and I really like the religious lesbian character in that who makes love to Divine with a rosary. I\u2019m not sure I want to wear a turban like she does though. We\u2019ll see what happens.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> Are there other parties like that in town?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> There’s a lot of party planning drag groups. I\u2019m a part of Forbidden Fruits organized by a prolific \u2018drag-thing\u2019 and dear friend, Meli Penfold aka Dream Meli. She also started Operation Gender Juice, but delegated each Friday to a team of drag and performance art people. There were the Bad Kids…<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> I saw them once at the now defunct Burt\u2019s Tiki Lounge, where my friend Alex Ortega used to sometimes play. It was down on State Street by the old Sears.<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> The Moth Closet happens down there too now. At the Beehive Social Club at 666 State Street. The Bad Kids disintegrated into a few different contingents. The Haven of Hues (HoH) is one. The Bad Kids used to host this night called Weirdo, which didn\u2019t have a through-line, it was just a mishmash\u2013\u2013 HoH hosts it now. There are all these names but a lot of them turn out to be comprised of the same people. There is another group that I don\u2019t know as much about that performs at Triangles, a divey gay bar. They\u2019re called Those Bitches, they\u2019re more theatrical but they do some impressive stuff in a classical drag and lip-syncing vein. It’s a new set of people to me so that\u2019s exciting.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> Do you have peers working along the same margins of drag and dance like you?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> Something what I love about drag is that people get into it without so much training. It can sometimes be working class in a way dance usually isn\u2019t. Meagan Bertelson did do a piece with me. She was The Rose in LadyPrince. There are a lot of people with a theater background but I can\u2019t think of anyone with a dance background, or, complex…<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> What about other dancers from your era? Is Amy Freitas still making work in that space on second south just west of thirteenth east by the gas station?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> Yeah. We\u2019re still jamming on Monday nights. There\u2019s less contact these days just because of the size of the space but Amy\u2019s definitely still rustling things up. I am a part of a collective called Moxie Arts. Last year Breeanne Saxton and Eliza Tappan presented a lovely piece with us. We also featured a solo by Yaya Fairley who recently moved back to the East Coast. She is sorely missed here.<\/p>\n

I take class with Ballet West and RDT. Hannah Levine recently asked me to drop in on a class with her up at the U. But there aren\u2019t a ton of other options for class for contemporary dancers in Salt Lake.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> It\u2019s funny because we talk about that a lot in regards to what might be improved about the infrastructure of dance in Utah. But here in New York, I rarely take class, and when I do I hardly ever see people I know. It\u2019s just not a major source of community the way I think people think it will be. I do much more dance socializing at shows. Maybe that\u2019s just my experience.<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> There is a contact jam happening regularly on Thursdays at Sugar Space. Cole Lehman is facilitating it. He just recently, in the last couple years, found contact and is really excited about facilitating this jam. I hope he doesn\u2019t burn out because I feel a similar connectivity with the people in that room to what I felt taking class in college. Michael Wall played at one of the jams and he seems excited to do things outside of the University. I really miss Wachira Waigwa-Stone.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> Did he move away?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> No but he\u2019s pursuing a master\u2019s degree right now at the U so he\u2019s not doing as much with Amy. I actually just went to one of his recitals. He did \u201cBlues for Gilbert\u201d by Mark Wentworth and a bunch of other later 20th<\/sup>-century percussion music pieces. He played vibraphone, marimba, snare drums, exiting after each piece. It was very formal, but very strong. He\u2019s one musician that consistently works with dancers.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> He\u2019s brilliant and a lovely person. We were in CDT together as kids. I\u2019m glad to hear he\u2019s still around Salt Lake. Are you working on anything else we should know about?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> I do intend to keep working on A Solo is a Lonely Dance<\/em>, the piece you saw when you were last in town at 12 Minutes Max. I\u2019m also a part of Desert Experimental Opera. We\u2019re in the process of becoming a nonprofit and we\u2019ve conceived of a show called Non-Profera<\/em> where we use the paperwork for applying for nonprofit status as the libretto for the opera. It might be excruciating, but we\u2019re digging in. The dancers in DEXO are Jasmine Stack, a recent grad from the U, Meagan Bertelsen and Carly Schaub. Some of the librettists are a part of The Wanting To Die Poetry Club. We\u2019re sort of artistic cousins.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> Do you think you\u2019ll stick around in Salt Lake?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> To some degree. I have this seasonal job here as a community garden coordinator at the downtown library that allows me to leave Salt Lake during the worst part of the winter. I will be here seasonally indefinitely. There are a lot of people I am excited about working with here. Even though there\u2019s not a lot of money around there\u2019s a lot of interest and catharsis to be had.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> So you\u2019re going to be one of those fancy people that splits your time between Salt Lake and wherever…<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> Yes. Like you! You summered in Salt Lake last year when we worked together on Those With Wings<\/em>.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> True enough! Liz Ivkovich is still making work in Salt Lake and I guess Alysia Ramos is now pursuing her academic career in Brazil.<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> There\u2019s so much interesting art going on in Brazil. I minored in Portuguese and I did a study abroad in Rio and stuck around to work on a farm in the mountains to the west of the city for a while after that. I didn\u2019t do much dancing down there but I did learn a dance called jongo; it\u2019s a celebratory dance that can be done solo or in partners. I took a summer workshop in Colorado from this Brazilian dancer named Rosangela Silvestre. She has a background in Horton but also works with the orixas and other parts of Candombl\u00e9. She\u2019s incredible, she teaches really dynamic movement phrases and then sings while people move across the floor\u2013<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> It’s amazing when people can sing and dance at the same time. It really puts the rest of us to shame. Are you familiar with Jasmine Hearn\u2013\u00a0actually she\u2019s from Houston, too, no?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> Yes! She\u2019s an idol of mine. The freeway mentor I mentioned earlier is a teacher we shared named jhon stronks. He\u2019s an inspiration to me; he has a drag alter ego named Miss Understood. Like Jasmine, he works a lot with text and singing and dancing. He\u2019s someone who maybe accidentally tipped me off to drag. He directed this pre-professional company Jasmine and I were in. He taught us modern dance basics but also has a rich personal practice I feel lucky to have been privy to.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s still wrestling with things in Houston. I got to spend time with him this last winter. He\u2019s working on this \u201870s-themed disco piece in which all of the performers are disco goddesses more or less. He\u2019s also into astrology. I hope to get to be in some iteration of it if I\u2019m in town. He works a lot in art galleries in Houston. There are oil barons there who fund the larger institutions but it’s hard to survive there on the margins. He\u2019s in residence at this new space called the Rec Room in downtown Houston that I hope survives. He also teaches at the University of Houston and Rice, so he\u2019s able to present work at those places too. I\u2019ve been seeding the idea of bringing him out to Salt Lake.<\/p>\n

Another Houstonian to watch is Koomah. They put on a show called the Rainbow Unicorn Cabaret. Winter of 2016 I performed a LadyPrince piece there and jhon actually happened to be the MC that night\u2013\u2013 we were delighted to finally be in a \u2018secret\u2019 gay underground together. Dream Meli was moving back to Salt Lake City from New Orleans and stopped in Houston to perform as well.<\/p>\n

Anyway Koomah does a lot of activism on behalf of trans and non-binary people. They\u2019ve been published in I think Cosmo<\/em> magazine with advice on such issues as how to have sex with people with very small phalluses or with intersex people. Aside from that they also do a lot of art-making and performance. I saw them perform with this pop-up group called the Feral Choir. They do all kinds of wild things with their voices: singing, screeching, something that sounds like throat singing. They even do an experimental improvisational form of conducting.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> Do you see anything like that going on in Salt Lake?<\/p>\n

EW:<\/strong> Nichelle Van Portfleet\u2019s partner and composer, Casey Van Portfleet, did something very similar at 12 Minutes Max recently. Eliza Tappan and Jordan Simmons and a few other dancers vocalized and moved under his direction. I feel grateful for programs like 12 Minutes Max and the public library in general. I wouldn\u2019t have a job OR as many artistic outlets without it! I feel strongly about diversifying creative outlets and I\u2019m committed to keeping the groups I\u2019m a part of and the ones I\u2019m not a part of alive as much as I can, fostering growth and flux and all of those platitudes, making them more than platitudes. I am in love with the creative community here.<\/p>\n

SH:<\/strong> Salt Lake City and the dance community in general are both lucky to have you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This article is published in collaboration with loveDANCEmore.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LoveDANCEmore journal editor Samuel Hanson, a Utah native now based in New York City, speaks with Emma Wilson, a dance artist from Houston who completed a BFA in Modern Dance at the University of Utah, minoring in Environmental Studies as well as Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. She is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3064,2141],"class_list":["post-35668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance","tag-emma-wilson","tag-samuel-hanson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ladyprince-1.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 03:11:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35668"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36311,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35668\/revisions\/36311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}