From the United States: A conversation with Clare Croft, curator of EXPLODE! and Queer Dance.

Clare Croft, a US-based scholar and curator, noted the invisibility of Queer dance in her investigation into who is making dance that is Queer. This investigation led her to curate the performance series EXPLODE! and compile a collection of essays by artists and dancers in her anthology, Queer Dance –Meanings and Makings. Her anthology and performance series caught the attention of The New York Times, which prompted EXPLODE! to go on tour from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where it began, to New York City, Chicago and California. I chatted with Croft about EXPLODE! and Queer Dance.

Stephen Low What inspired the Queer Dance project, both EXPLODE! and the anthology?

Clare Croft Queer theory and performance, which Dr. Jill Dolan introduced me to while I was studying dance in graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin, was an important foundation for this project. And as you say, there is a thriving Queer theatre and performance art scene but not much specific attention paid to Queer dance. This prompted me to translate the idea of ‘Queer’ into dance, importing theory and scholarship as I worked through this process. Robust conversations with other people were also an important point of inspiration. I was continually asking, ‘What does dance bring to ideas of Queerness?’ but I was kind of alone in asking it.

SL How do you define Queer?

CC ‘Queer’ in Queer dance, in addition to focusing on LGBTQ identity and community, also draws on a more expansive notion of Queer, a broader challenge to social norms. As I say in the introduction to the anthology, Queer dance refuses monolithic signification and instead forges a politics from the productive fictions among identities – gender and sexuality, yes, but also race ability, nationality and diaspora. No one thing is the thing. The thing, the ‘Queer,’ is what emerges among, across and between. In Queer Dance, Queer emerges from specific contexts.

SL So, in your experience with EXPLODE! and Queer Dance, what political contexts does Queer dance respond to that might be US-specific?

CC I am a historian of US-based dance. This has shaped this project in ways I don’t fully grasp. In this history, the ways in which the federal government attacked Queer and feminist artists during the culture wars has definitely shaped things. In addition to this, the murders of Black men by police has become a substantial thread in the work, with specific attention to Black mourning. This work, of course, is responsive to the moment we are in and the place we are in. In our contemporary moment, we were reckoning with the fact that police officers could murder Black people without consequence. Along with the horrors of police brutality, the work also consistently invested in Queering nation. It imagines that the nation is not a monolithic place.

SL When encountering Queer dance in non-US-specific contexts, such as the work of an Irish dancer, Chinese choreographers, or the Desi Drag performer LaWhore Vagistan included in EXPLODE!, what emerged that was not present in US contexts that inspired Queer perspectives?

CC My curatorial approach is to invite artists to perform or write in a Queer context but then not to take ownership of what that means to them. This often means that I leave the decision to define a work to the artist themselves. For example, the West African dance company Ayodele included a lesbian-identified person and they defined their work as Queer. By inviting diasporic or non-US citizens to participate, we were asked to reconsider what Queerness is or could be. Kareem Khubchandani, who performed and hosted an iteration of EXPLODE! as his desi drag aunty alter ego, LaWhore Vagistan, brought a transnational and diasporic lens to the conversation; Nic Gareiss, an Irish step dancer, challenged gender norms in Irish dance and was attuned to Queerness in rural spaces. All this then resulted in learning experiences in and through performance. On one hand, I’m curating these performances, but on the other hand, I know very little.

SL What were some of the Queer audience moments you experienced when you’ve presented EXPLODE!?

CC To feel in a theatrical space that we all showed up for this thing. It was kind of hot that we all showed up for this. Especially seeing so many Queer women show up. It’s not as if they weren’t in audiences before, but we all showed up and the space became ours collectively. And that was really moving. This was a bit of fucked-up nostalgia for the AIDS crisis because of the community that coalesced in that crisis. Dance and theatre created a space to come together, and celebrate, and mourn. In my experience, I have never had the experience of dance for and with this community. I got to have pleasure with a bunch of Queer people at a dance concert. Pleasure is central to the audience experience: joyous and porous space. Even, of course, if not all the work is about pleasure.