Deborah Hay is a dance icon and one of the world’s most influential choreographers working in experimental form today. Her recent solo performances are subtly clever, humorous explorations of the very notion of moving one’s body, and dancing for an audience. ‘Alignment is Everywhere’, a new film portrait of Hay, is out now.
Each month, MOTTO asks one exceptional artist 20 or so short questions, and gets 20 or so short-ish answers. This is Deborah Hay:
1. What is the Deborah Hay Dance Company: I am the Deborah Hay Dance Company. You’re looking at it (laughs).
2. Describe your art/dance with as many keywords as you like: Dance, for me, is how i practice relationships. With my whole body, in relationship to the other people with whom I’m dancing, in relationship to the time in which we are dancing together, in relationship to the space in which we are dancing, in relationship to an audience.
3. My favorite color: Well, right I away i want to say purple.
4. What’s your Motto: No big deal.
5. Favorite animal: If it has to be black or white, I’d say cat rather than a dog.
6. Place I’d like to visit: I travel a lot… the places that most appeal to me are Vermont, and the state of Washington. The North East and North West corners of the United States.
7. Cities I’d like to live in: I don’t have an answer…
8. Artists that influenced me: John Cage. Robert Rauschenberg. Merce Cunningham. That’s my top tier.
9. If I wasn’t a dancer: I would work at the post office.
10. Where do you feel you or your soul is from today: The North East. I’m a New Yorker.
11. If you had a time machine, what year or place do you punch in: I think it would be now.
12. What is most missing in the world today: Intelligence.
13. Character trait you hate most: I’m just trying to think about Rush Limbaugh… what character trait would he represent… or let’s just say Rush Limbaugh.
14. Drug of choice: Right now, today, anti-inflammatory.
15. Your fictional heroes: I can’t say I have any.
16. Real-life heroes: Somebody just died, and through this become a hero to me, Nora Ephron.
17. Whats most important to me: Hmm.
18. What’s your ideal day: My ideal day is when I’m doing nothing.
19. My greatest fear is: My complacency.
19. My greatest extravagance is: Body cream.
20. When do you lie: I just started lying lately… when I’m trying to get out of something I don’t want to do.
21. What I dislike most about my appearance: My chin. That’s also a Nora Ephron reference…
22. When and where were you the happiest: When i lived in Vermont.
23. What is Dance: Dance is how you choose to see it.
9. If I wasn’t a dancer: I would work at the post office.
