Choreographer Stephen Petronio was born to a blue-collar New Jersey family and discovered dance in college, while studying medicine. After dancing professionally for Trisha Brown, he quickly became a maverick in the New York dance scene, known for his sexy, aggressive choreography. Early in his career, he had a relationship with British choreographer Michael Clark, and together they created some of the most controversial dance work to emerge out of London in the early 1980s. In New York, Petronio became involved with ACT UP, and continued to make provocative work that pushed cultural buttons. Petronio and his company return to San Francisco to present two new works with music composed by singer Rufus Wainwright.
Joe Landini: What kind of work are you presenting in this program?
Stephen Petronio: BLOOM is kind of an abstract celebration of change, from one day to the next, drawing on that vibe of how something becomes something.
How did the piece develop?
I met with Rufus. I had the title, and I wanted to do something about innocence and youth. We began to look at poetry, we started with Emily Dickinson, some really beautiful Walt Whitman, and it went from there. For Whitman, we used two works. "Unseen Buds" is about something compact and folded, waiting to open. It's just this incredibly beautiful piece, about something surging and seething under the snow, about to explode. Whitman was writing "One's-Self I Sing" at a time when America was just becoming aware of its role in the world, discovering what we can do in the rest of the world. It's about the celebration of the individual, both man and woman, body and mind, soul and heart, and the complete visit of humanity in the individual. Then Rufus found this beautiful Emily Dickinson poem called "Hope is the Thing with Feathers." It's about the purity and innocence of opening, and the hopefulness. I just felt like it was the right time to do something that was about lightness, not darkness, and we both really jumped on that.
Do you see the work in a political context?
Absolutely, Walt Whitman is pretty political, very much male-female equality, and embracing humanness.
The work is really abstract, it's about the buoyancy of the moment of becoming an adult. I don't know if that's political or not. Rufus is who he is, and I'm who I am, and all of that comes along with us, but this piece is really about pubescence in a way. If you're used to my other work, maybe that work is more overt.
Is this a new creative trajectory for you?
Yeah, it is. You're getting a work from an elder of the gay community! I'm lucky, I had a very long career, and people have been reading my work for a long time. It's really exciting. I'm at a point of wanting that vibe of youth, of immature or premature energy.
The other work, Bud Suite, is very much in line with what I've been doing in my career, how people touch each other. There's a male duet, a female duet, a woman's quartet. The themes are physicality, sensuality, how people handle each.
These are recurring themes in your work.
Exactly. At the end of Bud Suite, I kind of got dropped off at a spiritual place. For BLOOM, I wanted to make it more elevated. The program [at Yerba Buena] goes from the physicality of touch and partnering to a more transcendent place that sort of leaves that behind. But it's only theatre!
Where do you see these works in the larger trajectory of your career?
I have certain things that I do. There's the angry, violent, aggressive work, there's the overtly sexual work, there's the violent and sexual work. There's the body of stuff that's abstract deconstruction, more about architecture of space. Then more recently, there's been more character-driven work, much more intimate. BLOOM is about the architecture of youth. It's a very abstract look at how I move space around, to try and give you that feeling of innocence.
How did you decide to work with Rufus?
His mother, Kate McGarrigle, sang a song in our last piece, Island of the Misfit Toys, which was written by Lou Reed. I didn't know that Kate was Rufus' mother, so when I found out, I thought I'm going to call him and invite him to the show. Then he came to the party afterward, and I was like, "Can we work together, please?" and he said, "Sure." That was 2003, and then he became gigantic and was incredibly busy. So I decided to use some music from a couple of his albums, and choreographed the first section, a male duet that I was really happy with. At the very least, I was choreographing to his music, and I got a really beautiful piece. Then in the end, he delivered the score.
As two gay men, did you find common ground creatively?
We're both gay, and that's just what it is. In a certain way, I was shying away from Walt Whitman, because I thought it was too obvious. I thought Emily Dickinson was a cuter choice, but more difficult. I like the idea of using the work of a woman that was never published, for him to be singing that work. Only a gay man would know how to sing that. We didn't sit around and say we're gay, how can we make this gayer? We're two gay men exploring a theme about youth, about hope and lightness. It's so funny, I finally get to work with Rufus Wainwright, who is this gay icon, and I've been dragging this gay poster-boy thing around with me my whole career. We finally get together, and here we are doing the most innocent project of our lives.
Stephen Petronio Dance Company plays YBCA, 701 Mission St., SF, February 9-11. (See website for times; family matinee on Saturday.) Tickets at www.performances.org or (415) 392-2545.