\n<\/p>\n
The American choreographer Trajal Harrell<\/a> has a rule. Though he lives between Switzerland and Greece, he tries to make it home to Douglas, Ga., to visit his mother every three months.<\/p>\n Not this summer, however. \u201cI really had to decompress,\u201d Harrell said recently in Geneva, where he had just resumed touring with his company, the Schauspielhaus Zurich Dance Ensemble.<\/p>\n Call it the price of success: His schedule for 2023<\/a> lists 46 engagements across Europe and the United States. In July, Harrell took on France\u2019s biggest stage, the open-air Cour d\u2019Honneur of the Avignon Festival. A debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music<\/a> will follow in November, with his 2021 work \u201cThe K\u00f6ln Concert,\u201d set to Keith Jarrett\u2019s landmark 1975 performance and a selection of Joni Mitchell songs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Harrell appears onstage in all of these productions. The Paris retrospective showcases his ability to deconstruct existing styles and mold them to his \u201cimagination,\u201d a word he frequently returned to in an interview. <\/p>\n Unusually, this late starter \u2014 he turned to dance after graduating from Yale in the 1990s \u2014 has never taken formal classes in any of the techniques that have most influenced him, which include vogueing and Japanese Butoh. Instead, he observed them from the outside, and took from their \u201ctheoretical underpinnings,\u201d he said, rather than copying what he saw.<\/p>\n In his sprawling breakout project, \u201cTwenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church<\/a>,\u201d initiated in 2009, he dreamed up a choreographic encounter between the early postmodern choreographers that worked at Judson Dance Theater, in the 1960s, and the Harlem vogueing ball scene.<\/p>\n Since then, Harrell has refined a stripped-down approach to movement, featuring the signature tiptoeing, he derived from runway walks. \u201cHe has a minimalist approach that is so deep in references,\u201d said Maria Ferreira Silva, a dancer at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. Yet she was also drawn to his warmth, she added. \u201cHe just goes full-hearted onstage, and he brings everyone along.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Harrell\u2019s imagination was shaped, he said, by his \u201cvery idyllic Southern upbringing\u201d in Douglas, as part of a well-to-do Black family. \u201cMy grandfather was the patriarch of the town. He came of age in the \u201950s, and managed to buy land,\u201d Harrell said. \u201cThere was a certain kind of poetry to language, to eating, to being. My grandparents were always using metaphors, like: \u2018There\u2019s more than one way to skin a cat.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The academically gifted Harrell was pushed to be ambitious by his college-educated parents. A self-described \u201cdrama kid,\u201d he considered a career in acting, but after being introduced to the Six Viewpoints<\/a>, a movement-based theater practice in college, he said, \u201cI came back to my body, and all of a sudden, I just wanted to move.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want to speak anymore,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n After years as a freelance choreographer, in 2019, Harrell was invited to form a permanent dance company at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, one of the German-speaking world\u2019s most high-profile theaters. It allowed him to work on a more ambitious scale, and with a full-time group of dancers: \u201cIt was a turning point where we began to share a movement style, a philosophy of movement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n His next production, \u201cTambourines,\u201d will be loosely inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne\u2019s 1850 novel \u201cThe Scarlet Letter.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about how to reclaim this idea of the fallen woman. What if there had been like a community of people to support her?,\u201d said Harrell, who studied with the feminist thinker bell hooks<\/a> at Yale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Yet this new work, and the Festival d\u2019Automne\u2019s \u201cPortrait,\u201d come as Harrell faces unexpected change. Last winter, the city of Zurich declined to renew the contract of the duo of artistic directors<\/a> that brought Harrell to Switzerland, Benjamin von Blomberg and Nicolas Stemann. When they leave in 2024, the Schauspielhaus Zurich Dance Ensemble will fold.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will leave, but there are still some talks to go. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen to the repertoire,\u201d Harrell said. <\/p>\n He was philosophical about moving on from such a demanding schedule. \u201cYou get a lot from it, but after a while, for me, the cost is too high. I need more freedom,\u201d he said, adding that he hoped to keep working with a company in Zurich.<\/p>\n And he is also making plans for a future away from the dance world. \u201cI want a second act,\u201d he said. \u201cI love what I do, but it\u2019s a very specific lifestyle. I have an inkling of how many more years I can do \u2014 but certainly not for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n He was already considering a master\u2019s degree in disability studies, he said, inspired by growing up with a sister who had cerebral palsy. \u201cAnd I really, really want more time with my family and my loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI love making art,\u201d he said before heading out to warm up for a performance. \u201cBut, you know, it\u2019s not the most important thing in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n