It was exciting to be contacted in 2015 by a filmmaker doing a documentary on Louis called Up in the Air. We had several phone conversations and he let me know that Louis was doing well and living in the Amsterdam Nursing Home, across the street from St. John the Divine in New York City. Louis had told him about Let My People Go and he wanted some more information. Learning where Louis was, I resolved that I would go and visit him on my next trip to New York City. I let other Let My People Go cast members know that I would be visiting Louis and invited them to join me if they were able. So on a Friday afternoon in September of 2015, Newman Taylor Baker, Loretta Abbott and I had a wonderful visit with Louis.
One of the first things Louis asked was, “How is that little girl who did the article on me doing?” And he said how much he loved that article. Here’s what he was referring to.
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From Avodah Newsletter, February 1999 (by Kezia Gleckman Hayman)
INSIDE VIEW: AN APPRECIATION OF LOUIS JOHNSON, CHOREOGRAPHER
Avodah’s newest piece is Make a Change, co-choreographed by Louis Johnson and JoAnne Tucker. Ten years ago, this pair created Let My People Go, and it was my lucky privilege to be part of the original cast. JoAnne and Louis equally have shaped both these pieces, but for my limited purpose here (and with JoAnne’s encouragement), I have temporarily cropped the picture to include only Louis. Choreographers can sometimes adapt their working styles to suit each particular forum or group of performers; I have not had the fun of observing Louis in any of his other extensive and varied professional encounters, but please allow me to share an insider’s fond view of Louis Johnson as choreographer for Avodah. –KGH-
“It still works,” says Louis, sounding amazed each time he attends a performance of Let My People Go. His bewilderment would surprise anyone hearing him, because it is his own work about which he speaks. But then Louis is a modest guy. The community member chatting and laughing with Louis recently at Snug Harbor, and being praised for his gusto as a community performer with us, might have known that Louis is the Director of Dance at the historic Henry Street Settlement in New York City, but our conversationalist probably had little idea that he was talking to an artist who regularly sets pieces on the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and other dance companies of similar distinction. Could he guess that Aretha Franklin counts on Louis to stage her shows or that Michael Jackson does Louis’s moves in the movie The Wiz? Would he know that Louis was a pioneering African American male dancer to appear with the New York City Ballet in Jerome Robbins’s Ballade and on Broadway in Damn Yankees (choreographed by Bob Fosse)? No. Because Louis never boasts about his accomplishments, never “name drops,” never even volunteers information about his work. When Louis is talking to you, child or adult, his focus is entirely on you, whether he’s hearing about other work you’ve done or he’s worrying that you’re not wearing a winter hat. This complete attention to the present moment – this “commitment” – is precisely what Louis expects from his dancers and what makes Let My People Go“still work” after 10 years.
A young Louis Johnson in performance (note the arms and head!). Photo from http://iforcolor.org/louis-johnson/ [1]. (Photo did not appear with original Newsletter article; it has been added for this blog.)
The late choreographer Antony Tudor observed wistfully, about the generation of dancers who came after the early casts of his dramatic ballets, that the trouble was, one could hardly find “bad dancers” anymore. What he meant, Louis would understand. Neither, obviously, would want untalented dancers, but a Tudor ballet is not about how high a ballerina can fling her leg or how many times a male dancer can spin in a pirouette. Louis, I confess, has a weak spot for high kicks and multiple turns, fast feet and gymnastic feats, but he doesn’t tolerate any of that if there isn’t passion behind it. And more important, he can shape the proper intent, context and force that can make a low leg appear as spectacular as a high kick. Louis preaches sincerity, whirlwind energy, rhythm and dynamics, theatricality. He can demonstrate it, too. Belying his generously round appearance, Louis can explode from his seat and execute movement with a terrific quickness of feet, a piercing sharpness of focus, a beauty of timing and a ham-it-up grin that is incomparably endearing.
You can get a whole education in theatricality by watching Louis work. Whether it’s a small detail of pacing or spacing, an adjustment of focus, the insertion of a “trick” to make the audience smile – every tiny bit of molding makes a significant change for the audience’s eye. Louis may indeed be concerned with the guts of his dancers, but he is simultaneously able to view the packaging through super-sensitive internal opera glasses that transform him into an audience member seeing the piece for the first time. Allow me to share a glimpse of the way this approach actually presents itself in rehearsal, however.
Unlike some choreographers who enter the studio with a complete set of steps that the dancers are to reproduce, Louis does not. Unlike his co-choreographer JoAnne, who expects her dancers to collaborate in creating movement but who nonetheless enters the studio with a fairly clear structure and movement assignments to be fulfilled, Louis does not. Louis enters the studio, dedicates himself to the current rehearsal (he has invariably raced over from some other consuming appointment) and proceeds to balance himself at a point hanging between that audience’s eye and the soul of the piece. This most delicate perch is characterized outwardly by a faraway squint and substantial stretches of silence. Then there is quite a bit of vague blocking, during which dancers plot out designated spots like human chess pieces, usually with the assurance, “Don’t worry about how you’re going to get there.” Then Louis points to one dancer and directs, “Do some kind of big leap thing down to this corner.” The dancer, new to working with Louis, and having only one second to think, does a lovely traditional grand jeté across the floor. “It’s not BALLET class,” Louis booms. “Give it some dynamics! Get your arms UP! Look up! (He demonstrates strikingly.) Do it again, please.” Dancer goes back and does a magnificent, electrifying grand jeté with non-ballet arms.
This arm business is a signature trick of Louis’s, I’ve found. Louis is actually fond of ballet vocabulary, but his means of conquering its sometimes academic effect is to use the arms and head in an upward shout of exultant energy. This is so characteristic of Louis’s work that when I came into a rehearsal for Make a Change recently, I found Tanya, a dancer who at that point had only rehearsed with Louis a few times, reviewing material with another dancer and reminding, ”That leap is with Louis arms.”
But back to our modified ballerina who has just done the spectacular leap. “Gooood . . . that’s good” Louis murmurs. Pause. Long squint. Long pause. “Can you do that again and play a trumpet at the top of the leap?”
I am kidding about the trumpet. But the essence is accurate. Added to the first simple request, just when the dancer might be caught off-guard by Louis’s reassuring hum of “Good,” comes a challenge to do something the person has possibly never done before and probably never expected to do on a stage. Working with Louis, you learn to revel in the quick laugh of shock and then “go for it.” Trust is indispensable in this process.
After the “trumpet” scene will follow the putting together of one small phrase of non-stop, nearly frenzied movement. It will be triple-high energy and slightly flashy, and we will repeat it endlessly as Louis squints and refines details. The next day we will not be able to walk up stairs or sit down. At the end of the 2-1/2 hour rehearsal, when some choreographers would have set at least five minutes of constant movement, we have the dance equivalent of the 100-meter dash and lots of walking around. Are we worried? Not a bit. Besides appreciating the luxury of not being pressured to learn excessive material quickly, anyone who has worked with Louis has come to trust him entirely; by the performance (though perhaps not much before), we’ll have a finished piece, and it will all work theatrically. At the next rehearsal, Louis will claim, in partial truth, not to remember most of what was set. But at the change of one detail, he’ll cry out, “Didn’t you twirl that trumpet when you picked it up last time?”
Rehearsals will continue, a bit muddled, with thinking periods, and lots of squinting, and refreshing laughter, and eventually, almost magically, there will be a full piece. The completion of this stage is like the magic button on the pinball machine. Louis is catapulted to the “polishing” stage. Suddenly he is like a firecracker or the embodiment of an exclamation point, his arms shooting out right, left, up, as his voice punctuates, “Bop! Vap! MOVE, people. Make us love you!” And here we are at the core. Louis is not a choreographer enmeshed in movement studies. His choreography sets out to communicate. His movements speak.
Sometimes this means, for example, that the male dancer in Let My People Go must convincingly convey with his movements the panic of a slave trying to escape. But this is a basic example – even when powerfully done, it is only a generation or two beyond mime. The unique force of Louis’s choreography is that even when movement appears to be eons removed from gesture, it still speaks. In his movements, Louis captures the rhythms, the inflections, the pauses and overlaps, humor, compassion, confusion and speed of human conversation. When he tells a dancer, “Sell it! Take your moment,” he is reminding the dancer that for that brief paragraph of movement, he or she is the one having the most intense conversation with the audience. “Your movements have to SAY something,” Louis insists. The script is in the movements he has choreographed. But it is ultimately Louis’s gift as a director that clinches his talent as a choreographer, because it is through his extraordinary coaching that his dancers are brought to eloquent delivery of those lines.
Always, ultimately, the product is an entertaining presentation with an urgent soul. Yes, Louis can put on a gruff voice and say sternly, “People, don’t talk while I’m talking,” as we try occasionally to interpret pointed instructions that are in utter conflict with other pointed instructions. But five minutes later, he’ll say pseudo-confidentially, “You’ve got to let dancers solve these problems themselves – you know, dancers are smart.” And ten minutes later, this man of renown in the world of dance and theater will turn to his cast and with quiet seriousness ask each member, “Do you think this is working?”
Yes, Louis, it’s working. Ten years from now it will still work.
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Now back to the 2015 visit. We had planned to have lunch together and since Louis is wheelchair bound, I thought we would be able to find a place in the neighborhood. But that wasn’t what Louis had in mind. He definitely wanted to go to a restaurant that was a cab ride away on West 125thStreet, a favorite of his, and just like when creating Let My People Go, there was no way to say “NO” to Louis. So with instructions from staff at the Nursing Home, off Newman, Loretta and I went. Our first challenge was finding a taxi that would accept a wheel chair. Finally one stopped for us and it was with incredible determination that Louis was able to move himself from the chair to the cab’s seat. The driver was quite wonderful and told us how to call for a van cab where Louis would be able to stay in his chair. We did that after lunch and it made it so much easier for him. It was indeed a very special lunch and I am so glad to have this picture of us taken at the restaurant.
From L to R: Newman Taylor Baker, Loretta Abbott, Louis Johnson, JoAnne Tucker.
I had no idea that would be the last time I would see Loretta. Several months later she had a stroke. For a short while she was at the same nursing home as Louis (where she played the piano daily) before returning to live on her own. A true theatre person, she was already involved in rehearsals for a new production when she passed away on June 5, 2016. Kezia was able to get to a memorial held for her at George Faison’s Firehouse Theater, the very place where she had been rehearsing the new work. Later we would have our very own small and intimate gathering, put together for us by Jeannine Otis at St. Mark’s Church in New York in October 2016. Here we are gathered around Loretta’s picture. Missing from the photo is Beth Millstein Wish who had joined us earlier.
From L to R: Kezia Gleckman Hayman, Newman Taylor Baker, Larry Marshall, JoAnne Tucker and Jeannine Otis.
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