San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
A tale told in dance Jeremy Mcqueen’s
S.d.-born choreographer film ‘Wild: Act 1’ seeks to give voice to young men caught in criminal justice system
Aboy alone in his room imagines sailing the seas in a paper boat. It could be a moment from Maurice Sendak’s classic “Where the Wild Things Are.” Except this boy is 14, and his room is a cell in a juvenile detention facility.
The scene is from “Wild: Act 1,” a new dance film by San Diego-born choreographer Jeremy Mcqueen. An installment in a larger project, the 50-minute film (available through next Sunday on Mcqueen’s website, blackirisproject.org) seeks to give voice to the experiences of young men caught in the criminal justice system.
The project was in fact inspired by Sendak’s book and its fantasizing protagonist, Max. “It’s a favorite of mine,” Mcqueen said in an interview. “I love how even though Max is in his bedroom, sent there for being a terror, he’s able to use his imagination and think beyond his walls and his circumstances to create a world for himself where he’s valued.”
Mcqueen, 34, said the book reminded him of his own childhood in San Diego. When his mother took him to a touring production of “The Phantom of the Opera,” everything about it gave him “a chilling feeling,” he said. “I wanted more of it.” So he started taking performing arts classes — a Black male teacher introduced him to ballet — and he would lock himself in his bedroom for hours, playing cast albums and imagining himself as a choreographer.
For “Wild,” though, Mcqueen had a different kind of room in mind. While visiting the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., he got that chilling feeling again when he came upon a photograph by Richard Ross of a Black boy in juvenile detention. In the photo, the boy stares at the concrete walls of his cell, which are covered in writing and drawings left by previous inhabitants.
“I thought of the number of young people who had lived in that room and contributed to those walls and what it means for him to want to break free,” Mcqueen said.
Bringing new people to the arts
He had already been thinking about “Where the Wild Things Are” for a work that Nashville Ballet had commissioned him to make. The Ross photo focused the idea. But the pandemic put the project on hold.
With filmmaker Colton Williams, Mcqueen had already converted one of his dances, “A Mother’s Rite,” about a mother whose son is killed by a White police officer, into a film. (It was nominated for an Emmy Award.) If theaters were closed for performances, why not start “Wild” as a film?
“I’m always trying to find ways to bring new people to the arts,” Mcqueen said, “especially Black and Brown audiences that may not have access or exposure to the arts or ballet. That’s the core of my mission.”
Mcqueen has pursued that mission since at least 2016, when he founded the Black Iris Project, a New York-based ballet collaborative of mostly Black artists telling Black stories. This project, too, has its origins in Mcqueen’s response to a work of art — Georgia O’keeffe’s “Black Iris,” which gave him the chilling feeling when he happened upon it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.