Tanz Magazine 2018 Dancer of the Year Trajal Harrell is a star of contemporary dance, and much of it he owes to three theoretical components. One is postmodern dance, which, to simplify to a maximum, developed in the late Sixties as the next chapter of modern dance with the goal of giving dance move status to everyday, mundane gestures, making use of nonconformist techniques in composition and choreography. Second is the ‘obscure’ Bûto dance, where dancers strive to become something else – something animalistic, iconoclastic, and cursed. Third is voguing, a dance style developed in American gay clubs in the Seventies inspired by plastic poses, model poses, and fashion shows. Theoretically, dancers recognize and rediscover their gesturality and motions, themselves influenced by the surrounding environment. This is why Harrell prefers working where contact with the audience is easier, museums for example (from the MoMA to the Pompidou Metz).
In Venice, Harrell will present Maggie, the Cat, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1955 Pulitzer Prize-awarded novel. The piece is the third part of a trilogy on woman figures who have been treaded on, abandoned, torn apart, and who have been able to fight back with pride and determination. The first piece was dedicated to choreographer, anthropologist, and dancer Katherine Dunham, also an activist for Spanish freedom in 1936 and for racial justice. The second piece was a cinema-lik