Interviews from the world of dance!

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Daniel Arsham – Ground Breaker

Written By: Michael D. McClellan | Daniel Arsham is a busy man.  The multidisciplinary artist is also prolifically multithreaded, his work ranging from his Future Relic series of mini-movies to his Rules of the Game stage collaboration with Pharrell Williams and choreographer Jonah Bokaer, to his ever-expanding universe of installations and exhibits.  His fascination with modern-day objects, specifically with how these objects might be perceived as if unearthed on some future archeological site, has captivated imaginations worldwide.  Arsham reimagines basketballs, cameras, teddy bears, and boom boxes as future relics, collapsing and expanding time by injecting decades of wear, neglect and abuse into familiar items from popular culture.  Nothing is off limits: An eroded American flag, tattered an worn; an eroded DeLorean, in the color of volcanic ash, scarred by the passage of time; Pharrell’s 1980s Casio MT-500 keyboard and drumkit, a fossilized relic of a bygone past.  Arsham explores all of it, playing with conventions of time and space in installations that infuse architecture and archeology with a surreal, paradoxical flavor.  That the items are uniformly white or grey and crumbling is in itself a paradox, given that the the man behind the art is equal parts Average Joe and Andy Warhol.

Daniel Arsham’s Crystal Toys, 2017.

“The further you get from a moment in time, the more closely things connect,” Arsham says, “so, 500 years from now, an iPhone and a phonograph will seem much closer together and relate more.  I try to think about all the objects in the show as if I could forget what they were, what they were used for, and try to imagine approaching them like an archaeologist would.”

While Arsham gets plenty of critical love for his work, he’s also developed some serious street cred.  When your films star actors like James Franco, Juliette Lewis, and Oscar winner Mahershala Ali, and you’re designing shoes for adidas, there’s little doubt you’ve transcended the traditional art world and cross-pollinated with pop culture.  Not an easy ask, especially given the art world’s tendency to snub its nose at other mediums.

“Pop culture is in some ways far more egalitarian than the art world,” Arsham says.  “I’m trying to investigate our current moment in time and the big ideas within our civilization.  I’ll do that through as many mediums as I can.”

The artist Daniel Arsham (right) and actor James Franco on set Photo: courtesy James Law

The Miami-raised, New York-based artist graduated from Manhattan’s Cooper Union in 2003.  While the private college at Cooper Square helped fuel Arsham’s inquisitive nature, his fascination with time crystallized when, at the age of 12, Hurricane Andrew destroyed his house and much of the community around him.  The disaster forced him to think about impermanence, the idea that everything is transient, that we are all essentially fossils or artifacts in waiting.

“Seeing architecture in a state of flux and movement, and in a state of decay and rebuilding after the storm, has influenced much of my practice – both in Snarkitecture and in my own work.”

Snarkitecture, a design studio co-founded in 2008 by Arsham and architect Alex Mustonen, reflects the artist’s appetite for interdisciplinary collaboration.  The name is drawn from Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of The Snark, a poem describing the ‘impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature.’ The aim of Snarkitecture is to subvert existing materials within a space to find a new and imaginative purpose for that space.

“Snarkitecture fills a personal artistic need. There are some artists out there that can sit in a room and work and not care who ever sees it, but I am not that kind of artist,” Arsham explains. “I want to make work that people can engage with. The work is completed by people engaging with and experiencing it.”

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Interrogating, disrupting, and transcending time is key to Arsham’s mission with 3018. The show’s items, each selected for its tie to a particular era or moment, have been dislodged from the past and projected into an imagined future – the eroded DeLorean from Back to the Future, the ‘60s Ferrari from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a pile of random objects which includes electric guitars, microphones, cell phones, cameras, tires, phones, and more – hallmarks that have become a defining characteristic of his practice.  For Arsham, his sculptures are ‘future artifacts,’ each appearing to be in a state of erosion, with wound-like craters disrupting their pristine facades.  A ball rack of basketballs made out of glinting crystal?  A McDonald’s sign cast in obsidian?  A pyramid of baseballs, each ball formed from a different material (volcanic ash, steel, and glacial rock dust, much of which he orders on eBay)?  It’s all part of Arsham’s authenticity.

Daniel Arsham’s Eroded Delorean, 2018.Photo by Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of Perrotin.

“It’s not a trick,” Arsham says. “Let’s say a camera gets calcified over a thousand years in crystal. It would look just like the one I made, and the materiality will be the same.”

Arsham’s fascination with time is the strand that connects his multidisciplinary art.  His production company, Film the Future, is home to a nine-part series of short films collectively titled Future Relic.  Future Relic 01 was scored by hip-hop producer Swizz Beatz and has costuming by fashion designer Richard Chai.  Future Relic 02 stars actor and director James Franco, who plays the role of a worker who spends his days underground indexing and destroying objects from past society.  Future Relic 03 premiered at the 2015 TriBeCa Film Festival with music by Alexis Georgopoulos​, and stars Juliette Lewis in costuming by Richard Chai.  Other projects include a short film for Hennessy 250, and a short film for Jefferson Hack’s MOVEment series, shot in collaboration with fashion designer Calvin Klein, choreographer Jonah Bokaer, and ballet dancer Julie Kent.

“Working with film is similar to dance in some ways,” Arsham explains, “but film is infinitely more complex because you can watch it over and over again. You can pick things apart.”

The creatives behind Rules of the Game: Pharrell Williams, Daniel Arsham, Jonah Bokaer

Arsham’s collaborative spirit is reflected in a recent project, Rules of the Game, a multidisciplinary production with Pharrell and Bokaer.  Two years in the making, Rules highlights three mediums; art, music, and dance, all of it working and interacting with one another to assault the viewer’s senses.  Painstakingly ambitious, Rules of the Game is loosely based on Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 absurdist play Six Characters in Search of an Author.  It combines Arsham’s explosive visuals and design with Pharrell’s music, and dancers choreographed by Bokaer.  As grueling as it might be to get three distinct creative visions to work cohesively in one production, Rules is another example of Daniel Arsham’s cross-platform domination and resolute fearlessness.

“We worked on this project a very long time, so we had the time to experiment to see what might work and what wouldn’t,” he says.  “We all understood that this project would be a risk, but that’s part of creating art.”

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Arsham’s profile leveled up with his Past, Present, Future adidas collaboration, moving him closer to pop culture icons Usher, Kanye and Swizz Beatz. The first release – a pair of trainers designed to look like they were chipped away at during an archaeological dig – were hugely successful, and coveted by collectors. The shoe features frayed sections, while the rubber sole appears to have been chipped away and left with jagged edges. Its white laces are finished with painted metal tips. The final installment in the series – the adidas Futurecraft 4D, which reveals hidden lettering under black light – generated a flurry of pre-release buzz, the hype culminating with a launch event, scavenger hunt, and the release of Arsham’s Hourglass Part III: Future short film.

The adidas Futurecraft 4D – Designed by Daniel Arsham

“Working with the adidas design team, we went back and forth on a number of iterations, slowly honing and simplifying the design,” Arsham says of the Futurecraft 4D. “My studio made a large contribution in the design of the packaging, socks and gloves as well as the sealing of the actual box.”

Now that the Past, Present, Future series with adidas is complete, will Arsham fill the hole in his busy schedule with some well-deserved R&R?

“I enjoy what I’m doing to much to take a break,” the multidisciplinary artists says with a smile. “I don’t look at what I do as work. Whether it’s sculpture, stage design, film, or footwear, I’m most content when I’m working on the next big thing.”

Good news for the rest of us. And spoken like a man who has no interest in becoming a relic himself.

You grew up in Miami.

I was born in Cleveland but moved to Miami a short time later. Miami was a great place to grow up, because I like to swim in the ocean. And to this day I really like Disney World. I try and do a regular pilgrimage to Disney World.

Who – or what – has had the greatest influence on your work?

Architecture as a general overarching theme is something that I am very interested in. Film has played a big part in my work. In terms of people I have been fortunate to work with many different talents across multiple disciplines. Choreographer Merce Cunningham is someone I worked with when I was very young. He gave me the chance to explore theatre, which is something I hadn’t worked in previously.

How did you meet Merce Cunningham?

Merce had seen an exhibition that I did at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami. This was like right before I left for New York. It was an exhibition of paintings, which is why it came as a complete shock that he would ask me to do a stage design. He got my number from the museum’s director, called and said, “I’m Merce Cunningham, are you familiar with what I do?”

From a practical standpoint, how did the two of you collaborate?

Merce had this very unique way of working. He would separate each portion of a performance into their own respective parts, allowing each person to work independently. He would make his choreography, I would make the set design, an artist would make the costumes, a musician would make the score, but none of us knew what the other was doing. I never knew what the dance was going to look like before the premiere. I could basically do anything I wanted. It was amazing and sort of terrifying at the same time. Also when I first started working with him, I was 24. He was 84.

You’re a multidisciplinary artist. What’s it like to venture into areas where you might not be completely comfortable?

When Merce asked me to work on my first stage design, he kept encouraging me. It was a large scale project, the largest I had done up to that point, but Merce gave me the confidence to pursue it.  A lot of other things I’ve worked on, the creation of the films, working with architecture, all of these things, they seem difficult from the outside – and they are – but often, the things I’ve pursued outside of my own practice are in collaboration with other people. In dance, stage and film, I’ve been able to find people who really know what they’re doing, and they’ve allowed me to make these things.

You mentioned film. Let’s talk about your Future Relic films.

Film for me encompasses all the things I’m interested in – architecture, performance, sculpture, and photography. People kept asking me questions about the work I was making, and that was really the trigger point, so I wrote a treatment for a film titled Future Relic, with nine different parts. The stories are all linked, but it feels like they’re very disconnected. The story jumps around in time and spans about 500 years. Each segment takes place in a different time period. It’s intended to be disorienting, but in the end it will all make sense.

Juliette Lewis – Future Relic 03

I’ve watched the first four. These films have a big-budget feel.

People often think that if an artist is making a film that it’s going to be some sort of art film with no story or very abstract. There are elements of Future Relic that are like that, but there is a story that is closer to a Hollywood style thing.

How difficult is it to create these cinematic vignettes?

It’s definitely a learning experience. Film, more than anything, is the most difficult thing I have ever tried to accomplish. If I show work in a gallery or museum I can easily control everything from the light, the way people enter, and obviously what the work looks like. In film, you have to control everything, every last detail. Everything that you place on the screen means something.  To achieve the mood or emotion that you’re trying to create is far harder than it looks.

Give me an example.

The creating or building of light. Light, in the Future Relic films, is as much of a character as the actual characters themselves. Trying to make light work in that way is far more difficult that it appears. There’s a scene in Future Relic 04 where the characters are in an airplane cockpit. We constructed the entire cockpit, and lighting was placed on the character’s faces to make it appear as if they are moving through clouds. Pulling that off was extremely difficult.

What inspiration did you draw on in order to create the world within Future Relic 01?

The visual language draws from Lawrence of Arabia. The film was shot entirely at dawn, which is the same technique that was used in the 1962 film, which helped us achieve this day-for-night quality. So we shot everything in the day and then the color was adjusted so it appears like moonlight.

Hip-hop artist Swizz Beatz did the score for the film.

This was something that was very outside of his normal way of working, but I think he really made a beautifully subtle piece that was very much in key with what I was looking for.

Future Relic 02 stars A-List actor James Franco. How did you end up working with Mr. Franco?

I’ve been fortunate to develop some great relationships through collaborations with my work. I wrote the entire treatment with a colleague of mine named Timothy Stanley. Most of the actors so far have come through my relationship with Al Moran, who is the co-founder of the OHWOW Gallery in Los Angeles. Al Moran has worked with James many times, so we were introduced. I spoke to James about our project and explained that I felt he was perfect for the role, and it turned out that he was interested. The role is challenging because there’s no dialogue at all. Everything is conveyed by the expressions on his face, and his movement.

Future Relic 03 stars the lovely Juliette Lewis.

I’m friends with her brother, who convinced her to see the film with James. She liked it a lot, and agreed to sign on. Having those connections helps, but there are still challenges that come with putting a film together. Being sensitive of their time was a prime driver; it was much easier to shoot these as vignettes because all the actors and talent are friends and are donating their time. I’m working around their schedules. And having the films made in short bursts is easier than dedicating months to work on it.

Let’s talk about your art. When did you become interested in the concept of being an “archeologist from the future?”

The summer of 2011. I was in Easter Island, which is a very small island in the South Pacific, and I was there making paintings that were later made into a book published by Louis Vuitton. There were also some archeologists working there at the same time.  They were excavating some of these famous statues and found objects left behind by previous archeologists that had excavated the site about 100 yeas ago. Looking at this gave me the idea of collapsing time within those two separate objects—the sculpture from 1,000 years ago and the more contemporary pool of artifacts. When I returned from Easter Island, I started making fictional archeology objects from our present – cameras, phones and things like that – that looked as if they had been reformed with geological material and uncovered at some point in the distant future. The decision was made to use geological materials, like volcanic ash, crystal, to convey this sense of time.

The Future Was Written falls into the categories of sculpture, architecture and performance. Photography courtesy of Daniel Arsham

What does the idea of “fictional archeology” means for you?

When I take a simple object – a Walkman, for example – that we all have, or used to have, and make it look like a fossil or an artifact, this makes us rethink our inscription in time. It challenges the ideas we have we constructed about time. To what extent do we believe, unconsciously, in progress, and linear development? It’s towards these kinds of questions that I want to lead my viewers. In placing them in the future, where the familiar objects of their everyday lives appear to them as though from an ancient moment. I want them to experience what Freud called the Uncanny.

Give me an example of your work that reflects this.

My 3018 exhibition at the Perrotin Gallery in Paris is based on a notion of fictional, archeological objects – objects more or less directly related to music. These are familiar objects presented as though they’ve come from another era, in the past. Although they would normally pass by unnoticed, they take on a new consistency. It’s the idea of the flow of time that is being called into question, because most of the objects I’m using are things that don’t exist in our everyday lives. They are things that are just slightly past, yet they already feel like they are from the past. That bridge in time is important in order to imagine these things as relics.  This archeology is based on a simple principle: Take a familiar object and make it undergo a treatment, and then finish the object so that it appears as something strange, something surprising.

Tell me about your treatment of these objects.

When I started these works, I could have taken a camera and painted it to look old, but something about this kind of alchemy—this shift of material—gives a greater weight to the objects, and gives a kind of truth to them that is more powerful. It was the only way to achieve a true authenticity.

Do you have a favorite material to work with?

Materials are always as important to the concept as the visuals they create. When you look at the car and it’s made of crystal, it isn’t as if I painted it to look degraded. Its material is something we associate with a geological time frame.

3018 has some very recognizable pieces.

Two of the pieces are cars. I always look for multiple entrance points so viewers can recognize them, and these two happen to be props from films: The DeLorean from Back to the Future and the Ferrari from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Pharrell Williams is a friend. How did you meet?

Emmanuelle Perrotin, who represents me in Paris, invited me to dinner at Pharrell’s house a number of years ago. There was a lot of conversation, and at some point he had someone from his team pull up my website. We were in his kitchen at the time.

Daniel Arsham unveils a full body cast of Pharrell for the G I R L exhibition at the Galerie Perrotin

It seems like the two of you hit it off.

Pharrell’s an amazing person on so many levels. I see someone who is engaged in so many disciplines, so there are some direct parallels with what I’ve pursued in my own practice. I would see him at Art Basel in Miami, and I would immediately notice that he wasn’t just content to be there. He was engaged. He would talk to the artists and designers, and not at a superficial level He would intently listen and ask questions, so that he understood what they were doing.

Daniel Arsham unveils a full body cast of Pharrell for the G I R L exhibition at the Galerie Perrotin

What’s the first thing your worked on together?

I asked him to tell me about something that was really important at the beginning of his music career – something that he made music on but didn’t have or use anymore. He then described his first keyboard that had these drum pads on it. I did a bunch of research and found out it that it was a Cassio MT NT500. That became the first piece, a relic of the original machine he made music on, and then I was fortunate enough to bring him into my world to create music for Rules of the Game.

How did you approach the stage design for Rules of the Game?

As an artist, if there are rules, I’m going to figure out how to break them. This project was heavy on the idea of mythology and legend, and so much of my work relates to archeology and history, so I set out to integrate those two things. Having objects shatter and then come back together is a play on the stretching out of time, and doing it with Greek and Roman masks and busts helped to heighten the effect. That’s what I was trying to get to with the scenography.

On Rules, you collaborated with Pharrell and the incomparable Jonah Bokaer. Did you work together, or independently from one another?

Both. With Jonah, I would usually present him with an idea: “There’s going to be thousands of balls, or a giant roll of paper, and I want it to form these giant icebergs on stage.” Then he develops the choreography and he uses the material as a way to motivate movement. The rolling of the balls, the masks, the shattering of these things as content in the work. So I’d throw out an idea and he’d come back and say, “I like these things,” or “Maybe this would work better if we did this.”

Let’s talk Snarkitecture. How did your partnership with Alex Mustonen come about?

Snarkitecture started when I was making pieces in public space that manipulated architecture. In a museum or gallery, I usually have carte blanche but my gestures are temporary. Public space requires a different knowledge base, so I hired Alex to help realize my pieces on a larger scale. We discovered an area closer to architecture than my own practice, so Snarkitecture emerged from that. It ultimately became its own entity with its own language.

Snarkitecture – Light-filled cave

Your latest exhibition, Moonstone, wrestles with concepts of space, exoplanets and time, all of it woven into Japanese gardens.

I was invited to spend some time at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where I was allowed into a creative studio whose mission it is to communicate to the public some of the more complex discoveries they make. That could be anything from ice on Mars to exoplanets with multiple moons. So I started to integrate some of the forms I saw there, one of those being these exoplanet moons, which are kind of like invented planets.

You’ve spent some time in Japan. How did this inspire your exhibition?

I’ve spent a lot of time in Japan over the last decade, and this repetitive act of raking the sand has always fascinated me. These gardens are fixed in time, in that they have been generally unchanged for hundreds of years, and yet they are remade every day. As I approached the exhibit from an early conceptual position, I envisioned the moons like some distant solar system or collection of planets, and the sand representing space-time or a ripple in a plane of space.

Japanese architecture has a certain timeless quality to it.

There are many buildings and temples that have remained unchanged for hundreds of years. The tea houses or temples look the same now as they did five hundred years ago, and maybe will five hundred years from now.

You recently released a monograph through Rizzoli.

My Rizzoli book reflects on the last 20 years of my work, all the way back to my thesis exhibition at Cooper Union. It’s one of the earliest things I created using architecture as a medium to play with –manipulating and creating a disconcerting, uncanny architecture.

Tell me a little about your Futurecraft collaboration with adidas.

When I approached the design of the Futurecraft sneaker, I was thinking more about the tools and materials that we use within the studio. The outfits we wear and the equipment that is related to the production of artwork. The tonality of the shoe is based on the green color that is used in the branding of the studio. This color is derived from many of the works that I was making, which use crushed, broken glass that becomes green – if you look at the edge of a sheet of glass, and you’re staring across it, you can see this greenish color. This comes from iron impurities in the actual glass, but if you look at the glass straight on it is completely clear.

Daniel Arsham

Final Question: If you had one piece of advice for other artists, what would that be? There are no shortcuts. Following your passion means doing the hard work and seeing your art through to its inevitable conclusion.

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Jonah Bokaer – Body Language

Written By: Michael D. McClellan | Jonah Bokaer’s roots are in dance, but the world in which he lives is hardly confined to a single category. The son of Tunisian and American parents, Bokaer abandons traditional dance and theatre elements, his choreography spilling over into the visual arts, the objects onstage anything but props or eye candy. 35mm cameras cast in chalk? Large cubes suspended in nets overhead? Lines drawn in the grid of an athletic field? All of it, in one way or another, is interacted with by the dancers who breathe life into Bokaer’s inventive choreography. It should come as no surprise, then, that the New York-based dancer/choreographer/media artist is fast friends with contemporary visual artist Daniel Arsham, whose appetite for interdisciplinary collaboration has become a defining characteristic of his practice. Or that he hangs with the likes of Pharrell Williams, the multi-talented Renaissance Man who, along with Bokaer and Arsham, collaborated to create the worldwide toured piece, Rules of the Game, a multi-disciplinary work that brings together dance, visual arts, and music.

That Bokaer’s choreography resists easy classification and tends to require explanation is part of its allure. His dances can be playful, devilish and self-referential. He’s unafraid to take risks, the virtuosity in his dancing on display in the 60+ original works produced since leaping headlong into choreography back in 2002. Bokaer’s fascination with the melding of dance, music, and design helps explain his collaborative efforts with artists like Arsham and Williams.

“I’ve worked with Daniel for more than ten years,” Bokaer says, his soft voice as fluid as his dancing. “We collaborate in a way that that allows us to feed off of each other. With Rules of the Game, for instance, Daniel would present me with an idea – the types of things he visualized on the stage, like thousands of balls or a giant roll of paper – and I would develop the choreography in a way that uses the material motivate movement.”

Bokaer, who trained in dance at Cornell University, graduating from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and also receiving degrees in Visual & Media Studies at the New School in New York, is considered one of the mystery men of American dance. In 2000, he joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as a teenager – the youngest performer in its history – and immediately rose in the ranks of the professional world.  Bokaer and Arsham actually met working with Merce Cunningham, the dancer/choreographer himself known for rule-breaking and collaboration with cutting edge visual artists.

“I worked with Merce for eight years, as well as with choreographers John Jasperse and David Gordon,” Bokaer says. “I think that what they all have in common is the conceptual aspect of their work, and that definitely influenced me. In my works I usually begin with the concept. My choreography always deals with moving images, and always requires a very physical performance. I think that the real difference between me and them is that my works are very interdisciplinary.”

Today, the newly minted Guggenheim Fellow is as busy as ever – touring, collaborating, and choreographing on a grand scale. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jonah Bokaer to talk about his amazing career, working with Arsham and Williams, and the always important question: What’s Next?

Please take me back to the beginning.  On a continuum, when (and how) did you fall in love with dance, choreography, and the other multi-disciplinary areas that drive your work?

Jonah Bokaer: I started choreographing in my backyard at age six.  It just happened.  I would create routines for my siblings that lasted for hours.  As a teenager I would do a few auditions, but my professional career really started at the age of 18, when I was hired by Merce Cunningham as his youngest dancer.  Working with Merce was an unforgettable experience, in which we became very close.

Your work incorporates various interwoven elements of graphic arts, drawing, animation, choreography, performance, and projection, depending on the project.  When you are working on a project, how do you move in and out of these spaces?  Does one take priority over another when all elements are being incorporated into a project?

Jonah Bokaer: While dancing as a young man, I used my per diem from touring to pay for art school The New School, and Parsons, attending by night for seven years.  My degree is in art.  But because I am known as a choreographer and stage director, I need to have a good understanding of all parties involved in the production of a performance.  There is nothing more inspiring than working with all different fields.  I work with architects, fashion designers, landscape designers, scenic designers, composers, and sound producers.  I work very closely with each of them, and there is always a moment in the creation when all efforts merge.

Jonah Bokaer – Making His Own Rules

Your work is constantly evolving.  Please provide an example of how enhancements in the tools that you use have led to (or played a part in) creative innovations that show up in the finished product.

Jonah Bokaer: I have always been extremely interested in new digital tools.  The development of VR and AR, and every other integrated and interactive design option that are currently flourishing, offer enormous potential to choreography – and to live arts in general.

Let’s talk collaboration.  What do you enjoy most about working with a broad range of artists, performers, composers and designers?  Is there a particular way that you prefer to collaborate?

Jonah Bokaer: It should be known that there are a lot of people involved in the creation of a performance, besides the artists there are often many producers and curators involved.  Sometime I am invited for a project, and the curator or the co-producer would offer to put artists in touch.  It happens often on my end, as I work closely with a dear curator of my work called Charles Fabius.  Together we have produced incredible performances for theatre – and many museum spaces.  I would say that I like to be surprised.  There are collaborators I work with on a regular basis, such as Daniel Arsham, and others such as Pharrell Williams or David Campbell with who we had to meet artistically.

Please tell me about your creative relationship with Daniel Arsham and Pharrell Williams, and how the chemistry between the three of you translates into Rules Of The Game.

Jonah Bokaer: The story with Daniel started ten years ago in 2007, which is also the year we began collaboration on a short performance at Galerie Perrotin in Paris that December.  We were both young, and we were both on the same page.  We both had the same visions, and ambitions, the same desires to make something to surpass our own limits and to challenge our peers, artistically.  After a few years of collaboration, and when Daniel moved to New York from Miami, we began to contribute our own voice on the New York and Paris art worlds, and internationally through touring dance.  We also share the same sensibility for some themes that are recurrent in our work:  The ideas of disappearance, altered space, time, movement, and the correlation between time and space are themes that we both have been working on for many years, and that we also explore together in many productions.  Because our creative outputs are both very prolific, even nonstop, we have defined a visual and choreographic language which includes my dance language, and Daniel’s design brilliance.

Pharrell Williams, Daniel Arsham, Jonah Bokaer

You have worked with Mr. Arsham on other projects, and the two of you always seem to explore the boundaries of what can be done on stage, and how this space can be re-imagined in ways that takes the audience where they’ve never been.  Please tell me a little about the creative process between the two of you – how does it vary from project to project?  Can you illustrate with an example?

Jonah Bokaer: We generally start with exploring visual materials as movement motivators.  Then we split off, and we both work on our own craft – and then we go back and forth a lot.  I often meet Daniel at his studio, and we sit together and talk for a good deal of time.  Once we have a structure, a foundation to work with, I start directing and choreographing.  We both might suggest sound composers, designers, technicians, lighting designers, but there has been extraordinary continuity with our creative teams.  Sometimes Daniel suggests costume designs, most of the time they are fashion designers, or sometimes I do – it really depends on the project, and the texture of it.  I enjoy working with fashion designers for my costumes, because they always bring a certain acuity that is very contemporary, and reflects real life very well.  Most recently, I have worked with Azzedine Alaïa on Shahrazad with Royal Ballet of Flanders – which is a new version of Schéhérazade – and Narciso Rodriguez on Triple Echo, two projects I created independently.

Rules of the Game was two years in the making, and the production highlights three mediums; art, music, and dance.  Take me on the creative journey; how did the project change from inception to realization?

Jonah Bokaer: Daniel and Pharrell have been working together since a few years, I believe beginning with a very special project in 2013.  They did a few collaborations before Rules Of The Game was even a project.  The story of Rules Of The Game begins with a dance commission from BAM next wave festival, and around the same time, a Dallas Symphony Orchestra SOLUNA Festival commission.  We combined the two into what is known as co-production, in the performing arts.  In February 2015, I was invited to Los Angeles to meet with Pharrell and Daniel.  It was understood that we would work on a project together.  I presented us all with a structure, and, by August, Pharrell had produced extraordinary demos, nearly album-length.  It was really a short amount of time, given the fact that we all started from scratch, and that none of us had worked together as a trio before.  Then I started to work on the choreographic phrases with the dancers, in the Dallas Arts District.  Daniel and I met frequently during this time, and David Campbell joined the team about four months before the premiere – his role was pivotal, as arranger, orchestrator, conductor, and eventually co-composer.  With the dancers I had worked all this time on the demos, which was of course a bit different than, the final music, but which helped considerably, as we kept the essence of the score until the live Dallas Symphony Orchestra performance. Pharrell, Daniel, and I met less frequently – but I remember a great meeting with him about two months before the premiere, in which Daniel, he and I went over the full scope of the project with a digital mock-up of the score by David Campbell.  It was an intense and interesting meeting, about 5 hours – we were all very excited.

Please tell me about David Campbell’s work, and what the composer’s contributions mean to this project.

Jonah Bokaer: David Campbell is extraordinary.  He was the biggest asset of the collaboration in terms of the final result by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.  He certainly took us to the next level, and through a different scope, in terms of musicology as well.  His acuity on scores, orchestral arrangement, and music, is truly unique. It was a privilege to get to work with him so closely.

Rules Of The Game is incredibly ambitious. If you could describe it another way, how would you do so?

Jonah Bokaer: My experience is that all performance productions are ambitious, in their own capacities.  Doing a drawing by yourself, in your own studio, can be very ambitious, too.  In Rules Of The Game, yes the orchestral size and popularity of the music and the scope of the project was challenging, in terms of production.  Artistically I feel challenged every time I start a new piece though.  Every single time I set the same high standards for myself.  In this area, the dancers should be credited, too.  One could describe Rules Of The Game in many different ways, it contains so many mature, masterful contributors – how does one even write about it, and who would be that very well-versed critic?  Would they from dance, from art, from music – and what genre? It has been an exciting project since day one, a true adventure.

Looking back at Rules of the Game, what did you learn that you may not have expected going into this project?

Jonah Bokaer: I think we have all learned how to produce a performance of this scale together – and how to tour it worldwide.  Again, much credit to the dancers, producers, and Technical Supervision experts, who make this possible.

If you could offer advice to other aspiring artists, what would that be?

Jonah Bokaer: I would tell them to love what they do.  To work hard, and to stay focused.  It takes a lot to succeed, in any discipline, in any country or any culture.

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Big Daddy Kane – BDK Style

By:  Michael D. McClellan | Spending time with Grammy-winning rapper Big Daddy Kane is to spend time at the feet of hip-hop royalty.  He’s recorded with Tupac, posed nude with Madonna and Naomi Campbell, and mentored a gifted young rapper named Jay-Z.  His breakout hit, Ain’t No Half Steppin, ranks No. 24 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 50 greatest hip-hop songs of all time.  Cited by many as one of the greatest lyricists ever, respect for Kane is everywhere:  Eminem raps on Yellow Brick Road that “we was on the same shit, that Big Daddy Kane shit, where compound syllables sound combined,” while Ice-T flatly declares that he would pit Big Daddy Kane against any rapper in a battle.  Legend has it that the ‘80s greatest rapper, Rakim, turned down a challenge to go mic-to-mic with Kane.  So when the opportunity to interview Kane presents itself, you jump at the chance – and you do your homework.  There are the obvious nuggets – his tight friendship with fellow rapper Biz Markie, the velour suits punctuated by his iconic high-top fade and those four-finger rings, and that racy photo shoot for Madonna’s controversial Sex book – but to climb into the ring without fully immersing yourself in all things Kane is to do so at your own peril.  BDK doesn’t do fakers.

“I like working with people who are committed to their craft,” Kane says, the words delivered with the same richness that fuels his records.  “Everything else is a waste of time.”

Born in Brooklyn, Kane’s fierce presence behind the microphone was honed during his early years as a battle rapper.  His reputation as an MC later opened doors, while his nonpareil lyrical ingenuity set the bar for others who followed, including Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar (whose earliest exposure to hip-hop was listening to Big Daddy Kane as a newborn on his way home from the hospital).  Kane’s tight friendship with Biz later led to a stint in the Queens-based Juice Crew, a collective headed by renowned producer Marley Marl.  It turned out to be his big break.

“Before I had a record deal I was going from project to project, block party to block party, battling other rappers,” Kane says, “and I’d perform at parties in Brooklyn as well, so I was already quite experienced by the point I got involved with Juice Crew.  Marley Marl, Roxanne Shante, MC Shan, TJ Swan, Kool G Rap, Biz…Juice Crew was groundbreaking, ahead of its time.”

Kane would soon break off on his own, signing with Len Fichtelberg’s Cold Chillin’ Records label in 1987.  The 12” underground hit single Raw was released a few months later, followed by his debut album, Long Live the Kane, in 1988.  The video for Ain’t No Half Steppin introduced the world to the Kane high-top fade and helped propel Yo! MTV Raps into the mainstream.

A year later, Kane released his most critically-acclaimed album, It’s a Daddy Thing, which included 1970s sample throwbacks like Smooth Operator and the Teddy Riley-produced track I Get the Job Done.  A red-hot Kane was also sought out by Prince, who asked him to guest rap a verse on the Batdance remix for the ’89 blockbuster movie Batman.

“Prince loved it, Warner Bros. shelved it,” Kane says.  “They thought it was too different, and not commercial enough at the time.”

In 1991, Kane won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for his performance on the Quincy Jones collaborative track Back on the Block.  He also posed for Playgirl and appeared in Madonna’s Sex book during the ‘90s (we’ll get to that in a bit), and hired an unknown rapper named Jay-Z to tour with him.  Those crowd-pleasing freestyle raps during costume changes sold Kane on Hova’s vast potential.

“By that point, we were trying to shop Jay-Z to get him a record deal,” says Kane.  “In the middle of my show I would leave stage and have Jay-Z and Positive K come out.  They would rap on stage while I was changing clothes.  He wasn’t a hype man; he was part of the show.  It was clear back then that he was going to be a star.”

Tight: Big Daddy Kane and Jay-Z worked together in the early days, and remain friends to this day.

In ‘95, Kane recorded with MC Hammer and Tupac Shakur on the rap song Too Late Playa.  In 1998, he released his final solo album Veteran’z Day, before turning his attention to live performances and collaborative efforts with artists like A Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang Clan, and Busta Rhymes.  He’s also appeared in Dave Chappelle’s Block Party and acted in several films, including Posse, The Meteor Man, Just Another Day, and Exposed.

Kane’s legacy – and his place in the pantheon of hip-hop royalty – is secure.  The high-top fade and eyebrow cuts have long-since been retired but he continues to tour, both domestically and overseas, and the next generation of rappers continue to sing his praises.  He does the occasional feature for artists like Joell Ortiz and The Game, and he’s set to be an executive producer on a Netflix biopic of the Juice Crew (release date TBD).

All part of the mosaic.

A Big Daddy thing.

I’m geeked right now.  I’m sitting here with a legend, an icon, Brooklyn’s own Big Daddy Kane.  How are you?

I’m great, man.  Wonderful.

We’ve got a lot of ground to cover – Tupac, Madonna, Jay-Z, those limited edition BDK British Walkers.

Let’s cover it all.  I’m in a mood to go.

You got your start in your Brooklyn neighborhood.  Tell me about that.

I’m what you call a lyricist, but I started off as a battle rapper.  At an early age I wanted to get down with a cousin of mine – he was around 17, and I might have been 12 or 13 at the time.  He was telling me that I was too young, and he was rhyming with these other two guys.  I felt if I became nice enough to beat his friends, then he would have to put me down for a battle.  That’s how I started writing battle rhymes.

Who were some of the guys you battled in the early ‘80s?

Hardly any of the ones that I battled were known at that time.  There were a few artists that had records out – Mike Ski of Dismasters Crew and Disco Ritchie from Divine Sounds are a couple that come to mind – but the majority of them were just regular cats on the street.  Once I started making music and the world had a chance to hear me, nobody wanted to battle then.

One of those who did battle you was Biz Markie.  Tell me about that.

We had a mutual friend in Long Island, and this friend used to always come around telling me about his man Biz Markie D – he was Biz Markie back then, he was Biz Markie D.  He wouldn’t stop talking about him.  He’d say, “Biz said this funny rhyme about such and such,” or “Oh, he rocked this party here,” or “He did the human beatbox.”  One day he said, “My man Biz Markie D is at Albee Square Mall right now,” and I said, “Look, let’s go find him and we battling.  Then, you go tell this Biz dude about me from now on, because I’m going to eat his ass up.”  So we went over to the mall and battled.

Biz Markie and Big Daddy Kane: A rap battle blossomed into a brotherhood.

Who won?

[Laughs]  We were doing serious rhymes at first, and he saw that he didn’t stand a chance so he tried to do a funny rhyme about a girl.  And then I did a funny rhyme about a girl.  He started laughing, and he was like, “Okay, that was dope.  Yo man, you got a lot of different styles, you’re bad, you’re dope.”  And then he started telling me about parties that he was doing in Long Island and in the Bronx.  He was telling me that he should get down with me and do some of these parties together and make some money.  He said that we were going to get a record deal, and that we were going to be famous.  And he kept his word.

The start of a beautiful friendship.

Biz was that dude that believed in me.  After he signed his deal with Cold Chillin’ Records he brought me in to write the majority of his first album.  Then he got me a deal with the same label, so he’s responsible for me having a music career.

And it started from a battle.

[Laughs]  A lot of people that I’ve beaten in battles have never spoken to me again.  This cat got me a record deal.  I have the utmost respect for him, and anything that I can do for him I would be more than happy to do.  I owe so much to that brother.

MTV ranks you at No. 7 in its Greatest MCs Of All Time list.  What’s the difference between a rapper and an MC?

A rapper is someone who makes words rhyme.  You can consider Dr. Seuss a rapper, because he’s just putting words together and making them rhyme.  The biggest difference between an MC and a rapper is that the MC is the crowd controller.  When I say crowd controller, I mean the MC gets on the mic and demands the crowd’s attention, and he is able to have the crowd do whatever he wants them to do – throw your hands in the air, slide from side to side, or ream something out.  That’s what the MC does.  A lyrical MC is an MC that puts together complex lyrics that the average human being ain’t going to think to do, and probably can’t do.

Biz Markie, LL Cool J, Guru, and Big Daddy Kane.

Let’s talk hip-hop lineage.  Give me the Big Three the era preceding you, the era you came up in, and the era immediately after you.

It started off in the early ‘80s with Melle Mel, Grandmaster Caz, and Kool Moe Dee.  Then it became about myself, Rakim, and KRS-One.  And then after us it became about Biggie, Nas, and Tupac.  That takes you up the new millennium.

There is no Big Daddy Kane without…?

Everybody in hip-hop always refers to my family tree, and me being a student of Grandmaster Caz.  Once I heard Grandmaster Caz from the Cold Crush Brothers, I was blown away.  Not only is he a great lyricist, he sounded like that dude that would come in the barbershop or into the pool hall talking shit, the dude that the kids wanted to stick around and listen to.  So I’ve always had respect for Grandmaster Caz.  I learned a lot from him when it came to writing rhymes.

Without Big Daddy Kane, there is no…?

I think Biggie and Jay-Z took what I was doing lyrically to the next level.

How did you and Jay-Z hook up?

They were trying to get Jaz-O a record deal, and a producer named Fresh Gordon asked me to come in and make a tape.  We were at his crib, and Jaz-O asked me if his man could rhyme on the tape.  I was cool with that.  It turns out that his man was Jay-Z.  After we made the tape, Gordy asked me if I could work with Jaz-O, but I told him that I liked the other kid better.  That’s how me and Jay first connected.

Was Jay-Z your hype man?

Jay was never my hype man.  I went on tour with Patty LaBelle, and I saw something new that I hadn’t seen before – I saw people onstage doing outfit changes.  I was like, “I’ve got to do this in hip-hop.”  So when I came back off tour with Patty, I asked Jay-Z and Positive K to come on the road with me.  I would do half the show and then I would leave the stage to do an outfit change.  That’s when I would call out Jay-Z and Positive K, and just let them spit for about 10 minutes while I was changing clothes.  Then I would come back onstage in a different outfit and finish the show.  This was all during my Chocolate City Tour.

Sounds like a win-win for both you and Jay-Z.

His relationship with me was very similar to my relationship with Biz in the beginning. When Biz had the Make The Music Tour, he would call me onstage and I would just spit a rhyme to the crowd in the middle of his show.  It was the same type of thing with Jay.

Did you have any idea that Jay-Z would blow up like he did?

At the time, I had no idea of the impact that Jay-Z would make.  In my mind, I always thought of Jay-Z as a dope MC, and I thought that people would really love his skills.  But Jay is a really quiet and shy type of dude, so I never envisioned him becoming the megastar that he became.  I’m so happy for him because he really deserves it.

Are you and Jay-Z still tight?

We’re still tight.  Jay had me come and do Summer Jam with him one year, which was the time he mentioned me in his song and rapped about the cuts in my eyebrows.  And I performed with him at the Barclays Center when they opened it up.  So we are cool.

All artists have their negotiables and their non-negotiables.  What are your non-negotiables?

For one, no one is writing lyrics for me. That is a non-negotiable.  There are people out there who write songs for some of the greatest singers ever, they write for legends like Marvin Gaye and Luther Vandross.  Luther’s whole career was pretty much remakes.  Willie Nelson is a great singer, incredible, but a lot of the stuff that he recorded was Kris Kristofferson’s stuff.  Nobody is writing for me.  I don’t mind if somebody writes the hook on a song, but as far as my lyrics that I’m saying for my verse, no.  I feel that that goes against the code of a real MC.

You mentioned Tupac.  How did you meet?

In 1990, I took Digital Underground with me on my Chocolate City Tour.  They were actually the opening act, and Tupac was one of the dancers there at the time.  He used to hang with two of my dancers, Scoob and Scrap, all of the time.  So I would see him every day.

Big Daddy Kane and Tupac Shakur

Tupac wasn’t Tupac yet.

Not at all.  He would sometimes ride on our tour bus, and he was always talking.  I remember him telling me that he was getting ready to do his own solo stuff.  He said it wasn’t going to be like this funny stuff with Digital Underground, because he was a serious rapper and he was going to be doing some hard stuff.

Did he rhyme for you?

Yeah.  I felt like his flow was amazing.

Could you tell that he was going to be a star?

Yeah.  He was just a cool dude, very bright.  We would talk about hip-hop, how I got my start, things like that.  He was always asking questions – questions about the stage show, about why you do this and why you do that, how you handle your business in the rap game.  When he made his impact and became a superstar I was so proud of him.

You and Tupac have a Suge Knight connection.

The year before Tupac passed, Suge Knight was trying to start a Death Row East label and he wanted me to be on it.  We all met up out in L.A., and then we went to Vegas for a Tyson fight.  Then we came back to L.A. and recorded a song, so I have all kinds of crazy memories about that.  Tupac was a great guy.  It was sad to see what happened to him.

Do you think Tupac’s fate would have been different with different people around him?

If Pac had the right mentors, I think that a lot of the stuff that was going on could have been controlled.  He needed encouragement, and it needed to be reinforced.  I remember the trip back from Vegas, and he almost got into it with some drunk dude on the plane.  I got in front of him and told him to chill.  We talked about the situation and I explained to him why you don’t want to do stuff like that.  And he was like, “You’re right.  My bad.  I didn’t know what I was thinking.”

Madonna asked you to pose with her and Naomi Campbell in her Sex book.  How did that happen?

Warner Brothers had sent me, Madonna, and Color Me Bad out to do walkthroughs at three Manhattan hospitals.  We talked to kids in intensive care, took pictures with them, stuff like that to cheer them up.  Unfortunately for me, all of these hospitals were in upper class neighborhoods.  None of these young white kids knew who the hell I was.  At one particular hospital, Madonna was pointing to me and telling the kids that I was a famous rapper.  She was showing the kids how to sing Ain’t No Half Steppin’, and I’m just sitting there amazed.  It was like, “Wow, Madonna knows my shit.”  We talked afterward, and I thanked her for that, and that’s when she said that she was doing a book.  She wanted to know if I’d be interested posing in her book, which was all photos.  And I was like, “With you?  Hell yeah.  I would love to.  I would be honored.”  And she was like, “Well, it’s going to be a book of nude photos.”  And I was like, “Shit, even better.”  That’s how it happened.

Did you know that the photo would depict a Big Daddy Kane, Madonna, and Naomi Campbell threesome?

I knew there were going to be nude shots, but I didn’t know it was going to be a sexual thing.  I didn’t learn the title of the book until later.

What was the reaction when the book came out?

There were a lot of mixed feelings.  There were people who thought I shouldn’t be naked in pictures with a pop star.  And with my Islamic background, there were a lot of people who really had a problem with me being in those photos with a white girl.

What was your take?

Madonna is a great person, and a great artist.  She showed me a lot of respect, so I enjoyed being there.  She’s a multi-talented megastar, so I was also honored that she chose me to be a part of the book.

Let’s switch gears.  You’re still one of the most fashionable hip-hop artists in the game today.  Is there an NBA player, past or present, that reminds you of you?

Clyde Frazier all day.  If you didn’t know him, your first assumption is that this dude is a pimp.  He rolls in with the big brim hat, and the long, leather quarter field jacket with the fur collar.  His hat has got that lean to it, tilted to the side.  Oh man…

When did style become important to you?

Early in the game.  I just felt like, as an artist, you should never be onstage, look out in the crowd, and see somebody dressed like you.  You need to look unique.  Prince was Prince.  Michael Jackson had the glove, Cyndi Lauper came at you with that crazy colored hair, and Isaac Hayes had the bald head.  That stuff that was always important to me.

BDK Style

You recently helped design those BDK limited edition British Walkers.

It brought back a lot of memories.  We were rocking those British Walkers in the ‘70s, so I think bringing them back was a brilliant idea.  British Walkers were the official dress shoes for hip-hop.  You’re going to a party, you want that b-boy style, you want to be dressed up, you got your British Walkers on.  You put your British walkers and a double knit sweater on, and that was pretty much the equivalent of a three-piece suit for the adults.  You know what I’m saying?

What other shoes did you wear back in the day?

In the ‘70s it was either Clyde Pumas or the Pro-Keds 69ers.  In the early ‘80s I rocked those shell toe Adidas for a while, before switching over to Fila in the mid-80s and stayed with them until the late ‘90s.

Were sneakers a territorial thing in the New York hip-hop world?

Yeah.  You could look at someone’s feet and know where they were from.  You see someone in a pair of shell toes and you immediately know that they were from Queens.  You’d see those Air Force 1s and you knew that they were from Harlem.  If you saw the Filas, you knew they were from Brooklyn.  You saw Pumas, you knew they were from the Bronx.

BIG DADDY KANE, RECORD PUBLICITY PORTRAIT, 1989. (C)REPRISE RECORDS. COURTESY:

You’ve been performing for a long time.  What’s the secret to your success?

One record can make you successful, just that one song.  It can make you successful enough to go down in history books.  Toni Basil has Mickey.  That’s all she needed.  She’s set for life.  You know what I’m saying?  So, one song can make you successful.  But if you are really a student of this craft, and you really respect what you are doing as an art form, you are going to be so deep into it that the song doesn’t even matter.  In the hip-hop world, it’s about rocking the mic and making other MCs  fear you.  It’s about making the crowd love you.  I’ve been doing that for 30 years.

If you had one piece of advice for other aspiring artists, what would that be?

Be yourself.  Don’t try to follow the trend and be like whatever is popping at the time, at the moment.  Be yourself.  Give your fans you.  If you follow what is trendy, once that trend is gone, you will be gone.  If you share what you’re really all about, they will ride with you until the end.



Galen Hooks – Crossover Artist

By:  Michael D. McClellan  |  It has been said that the world is but a canvas to our imagination, and that the art within it enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.  Galen Hooks has been losing herself for more than twenty years, first as a 7-year old junior dance champion on Star Search, then later as a dancer for Janet Jackson, and finally as a world-renowned choreographer to megastars such as Justin Bieber, Usher and Ne-Yo.  Her résumé is dotted with TV and film credits, Broadway assignments, as well as with her work on the groundbreaking web series LXD: The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers, but all of this hard-earned success only begins to tell the story of the Los Angeles native who takes chances and attacks her canvas with the boldest of brushstrokes.

Hooks, refreshingly, is as multilayered and as fascinating as she is talented.  She attended Penn State University, earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Law, all the while touring with rap icon Snoop Dogg.  It was truly education on the road.

“While I was on the tour bus and touring with Snoop I would study,” Hooks said in a recent interview with Dance Track Magazine.  “His friends would help me with my homework.  It was funny.  They for real had the legal talk with me and knew way more than I did.  That goes to show you how much the real world educates you.  They knew everything.”

 

Galen Hooks

Galen Hooks with Ne-Yo

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Spend any time at all with Galen Hooks and it’s easy to sense the passion she has for her craft, and to understand how easy it is for that craft to love her back.  She has a magnetic personality, with a range and versatility that allows her to explore the nooks and crannies of dance in all of its forms.  It’s a romance that that started at an early age.

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“After our dance group won Star Search, my mom found an agent to represent me.  And being so close to Hollywood meant that my mom could also drive me to auditions, rehearsals, shows and sets.”  – Galen Hooks

 

“I grew up in Southern California,” Hooks says, “about forty-five minutes from Hollywood.  After our dance group won Star Search, my mom found an agent to represent me.  And being so close to Hollywood meant that my mom could also drive me to auditions, rehearsals, shows and sets.  She was the most supportive stage mom ever.  So from the time I was seven until I was sixteen, I worked as a dancer and an actress.  That really laid the foundation for what I wanted to do with my career.”

While Hooks credits her parents for the support and inspiration that helped put her where she is today, she’s also quick to recognize the opportunity provided by legendary ballerina / choreographer Marguerite Derricks.

“In my early teens, I started assisting Marguerite, who is a major film choreographer in LA,” Hooks says, “which is a pretty young age to be an assistant choreographer.  I was fortunate to have training under her, and that opened the door and led me into the choreography realm.”

Still, Hooks wasn’t ready to let go of dance.  She’s performed with more than 50 of the biggest names in the industry, sharing the stage with the likes of Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Rihanna and Chris Brown.  Keeping that kind of company is heady stuff for most and unattainable fantasy for others, but Hooks isn’t the type to be awestruck with the trappings of celebrity.  She has serious dancing chops, the kind that commands instant respect in the industry – and the smarts to leverage her outrageous talent into something even bigger.

“By the time I was twenty-one I decided I wanted to transition from dance to choreography,” she says proudly.  “Most of my work as a dancer was with recording artists, and I’ve been able to continue those working relationships.  But as I’ve transitioned to choreography, I’ve also been able to move into other areas that interest me.  Now I also do a lot of television work, a lot of commercials, a lot of film.  It’s been a rewarding move from dancer to choreographer.”

Hooks clearly values the impact that Derricks – a former ballerina and the only choreographer to win three consecutive Emmys – has had on her career arc.  Which begs the question:  Does Hooks have a favorite style of dance?

“I actually really enjoy my versatility,” she says.  “Most people have one specific style that they love.  But, for me, that was one reason I’ve been so successful as a dancer and as a choreographer – I can pretty much do literally any style that you throw at me.  But it’s kind of a blessing and a curse at the same time, because I’m not the kind of dancer that focuses on any one thing.

 

Galen Hooks

Galen Hooks

 

“As a dancer, I love to tap.  As a choreographer, I know that there are so many other tappers that are better than me, so I would rather learn tap than choreograph it.  I love hip-hop, I love contemporary, I love jazz…it’s unfortunate that jazz isn’t as popular as it once was.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve choreographed jazz or danced jazz.  I also enjoy ballet, break-dancing…I’m just all over the map when it comes to dance because I love it so much.  They’re all different facets of who I am as an artist and they are meaningful in both of those realms.”

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“I’m just all over the map when it comes to dance because I love it so much.  They’re all different facets of who I am as an artist and they are meaningful in both of those realms.” – Galen Hooks

 

Being widely recognized in the entertainment industry as both a dancer and as a choreographer, coupled with her proximity to Hollywood, meansthat Hooks has been free to explore other facets of her craft.  Hooks has plenty of film and TV credits on her résumé, including GI Joe 2, 17 Again, Austin Powers 3, Bratz, Glee, So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars, How To Rock, Harry’s Law, Suburgatory, United States of Tara, and the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards‘ historical Michael Jackson tribute.  It’s clear that she’s driven to succeed, and the recognition has followed in lockstep; Galen received a Choreography Media Honor for her work with Fergie performing “Live and Let Die” on Movies Rock, as well as a World Dance Award for her choreography with the LXD.  Heady stuff, but Hooks isn’t about the accolades.  For her it’s all about dance.  Always has been.

“You know,” she says, “since I was three I don’t think a week’s gone by that I haven’t danced.  So dance has been my life and what I’ve always wanted to do.  It’s who I am and what I’ve been about from the start.  Dance is how I’ve always wanted to express myself.”

If being an artist means dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium, then Hooks is in the perfectly suited to translate her gifts to across today’s web-enabled world.  Whether this is her involvement with LXD, or her turn as Ne-Yo’s love interest in the gorgeously produced and choreographed One in a Million video, Hooks isn’t shy about expressing herself or displaying a range that most in her profession lack.  It’s a gift that attracts some of biggest names in the biz; rattle off names like The Jonas Brothers, The Pussycat Dolls, Black Eyed Peas, Miley Cyrus and John Legend, and you begin to touch on some of the acts who have collaborated with Hooks in recent years.  How does she pull it off and make it look so easy in the process?

“Of course you have to offer something these individuals want,” Hooks says.  “That’s a given.  But beyond that it’s about communication, the ability to relate, knowing your place in their universe.  They are stars no doubt, but they’re also human beings who are concerned about their image and how it translates to the public.  You have to always keep that in mind when you work with them.”

 

Galen Hooks

Galen Hooks

 

Which doesn’t seem that far of a departure from the world of the elite, modern athlete.  Think LA and you can’t help but think about the Los Angeles Lakers, as star-crossed a franchise as any in professional sports.  From Jerry West to Magic Johnson to Shaq to Kobe, the Lakers’ history is loaded with mega-icons.  Is Hooks an NBA fan – and if so, is there a particular NBA star, past or present , that she would like to work with as a dancer / choreographer?

“Oh man,” she says, laughing, “Jordan.  It would have to be Michael Jordan.  He had a grace to him – he was so melodic – I think he would take to dance really well, and I think he would be open to the concept of bridging that gap between basketball and dance, even more so than certain players whose style and mentality about the game are different.  So it would have to be Jordan.”

So which NBA player – past or present – rate as one of her favorite from a performance standpoint?

“That’s a hard question,” Hooks says.  “I’m a big NBA fan, but I’ve been so busy the past couple of years that it has been hard to keep up.  My mentor Marguerite is a big basketball fan, and would always use basketball analogies with dance, especially during the three-peat era of the Lakers.

“This may be a weird way to answer your question, but I’ve always related to Robert Horry.  When you’re a dancer you always feel pressure, and when you’re in a team dance environment it’s even more amplified.  You don’t want to let the other dancers down.  During the time when Robert was playing I was a member of a dance company, and there are similarities between dance teams and NBA teams.  Every dancer has their rank, their place within the team, the same what there is a defined pecking order on NBA teams.  I related with Robert Horry because he always delivered – he wasn’t super consistent, but he was a different player in the clutch.  So I really identified with him.  I knew that the other members on the dance team would look up to me to deliver when it matter most.  So I related to with him in that way.

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“When you’re a dancer you always feel pressure, and when you’re in a team dance environment it’s even more amplified.  You don’t want to let the other dancers down.” – Galen Hooks

 

“I also loved watching Derrick Fisher, because I admired his consistency and the way he was always so solid.  That, I felt, was like the equivalent to a dancer who isn’t going to wobble out of a turn, and who has had so much training that you’re not going to worry about them.  You feel safe knowing that the dancer is technically sound and will respond to the situation on the stage.  That’s what I liked about Derrick.”

All of this talk of dance and the NBA brings to mind another famous dancer / choreographer in Paula Abdul, who rose to stardom after being discovered by The Jacksons.  Abdul was a Laker Girl at the time; ironically, Hooks herself has a connection to an LA hoops dance team.

“I was a SparKid, which was the dance team for the WNBA Los Angeles Sparks,” Hooks recounts.  “That was at some point during the first three years of the team’s existence, so I was probably fifteen or sixteen at the time.  It was the same concept as the Laker Girls, except that we were kids.  We would do hip-hop routines, that sort of thing.  I did that for two years.  My sister was a Clipper Girl for a couple of years, and has been big in the sport team entertainment field, so I’m really familiar with that world – but as a choreographer, I really haven’t worked much in that realm.”

 

Galen Hooks

Galen Hooks

 

With the sports world being viewed more widely as entertainment today, more and more artists are crossing over from music to the NBA.  Justin Timberlake is a minority owner of the Memphis Grizzlies; Jay-Z recently sold his minority interest in the Brooklyn Nets to form Roc Nation, a sports management group.  While the genesis of this phenomenon can be traced back to the invention of the TV, there are points that stand out – like the 1990 music video Jam, starring to the biggest Michaels on the planet.  If Hooks could draw up her dream collaboration between NBA star and music icon, who would she choose to work with?

“It would have to be Kanye West and LeBron James,” she says quickly.  “LeBron did the ESPY Award Show several years ago, and he was on stage singing and rapping, and he had all of these dancers around him.  I was one of them.  That was a really fun time to be a dancer, because it was so much fun for everyone involved.  So I think Kanye and LeBron would be a really awesome pairing.”

Imagining Hooks’ involvement with these two superstars is hardly a stretch, given her fearlessness in the face of such outsized hubris.  What does it take to build trust and maintain relationships with superstars such as Ne-Yo, Bieber and Usher?

“It’s funny, but I just finished reading Phil Jackson’s book Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success, and I noted so many parallels in the way that he had to deal with ego and personality, and the way that it relates that I have to deal with personalities.  He talks about how everyone is different, and how he had to deal with Jordan and Kobe differently to get the best out of them – even though they’re both stars, they have different ways of functioning.

“There are parallels between the NBA and the music world, because the stars have so much riding on their name and their image, and they don’t want to look bad.  So it’s really important to build trust, because they need to know that they’re same in your hands, and that what you tell them to do will not embarrass them.

“With recording artists like Bieber and Ne-Yo it’s a lot easier than if you were working with actors, because actors have a whole other layer of insecurity because they’re not dancers, so you have to build even more trust.  But it’s really about figuring out the personality type of the person that you’re dealing with, and figuring out the language that they speak in terms of dance.  The way basketball players view basketball drills differently, different recording artists view dance drills differently.  Some of them will be good at learning to count out the steps, some of them will be good with associating a move with a lyric.  So what I like to do is figure out what language they like to speak in terms of dance and cater to that, so that they feel 100% comfortable.”

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“With recording artists like Bieber and Ne-Yo it’s a lot easier than if you were working with actors, because actors have a whole other layer of insecurity because they’re not dancers, so you have to build even more trust.” – Galen Hooks

 

From Hooks’ standpoint, are there any other parallels between the world of the professional basketball player and the world of the professional dancer?

“It would have to be the physicality of both,” she says quickly.  “I think the way that dancers train gets overlooked a lot.  The way their bodies take the beatings that they take.  It’s very similar to the pounding that the NBA basketball player takes on a night-in, night-out basis, and because of that pounding a dancer’s career is relatively short-lived.  You see NBA players today retiring in their late thirties and early forties, but dancers are usually done by their mid-thirties at the latest because their bodies are pretty much spent.  Fortunately for the NBA players, they get the top-notch medical care.  They get the best therapy, and their bodies are treated as a valuable asset of the team they play for.  As dancers we have to do all of that on our own.  We don’t have access to those types of things when we get hurt onstage, dancing behind some of the biggest names in show business, it’s rare that you get anyone at all to work on you.

“So the physicality of what dancers go through really parallels the NBA player.  The average person doesn’t look at a dancer as an athlete, but they don’t see what we go through to train, prepare and perform.  And they don’t see the other side of it when our bodies are hurting, or when we’re injured, and what it takes for us to recover and to get back onto the stage.  And maybe that’s because the NBA is a sport and dance is considered an art form.”

Which brings us full circle to Hooks and that big canvas otherwise known as the world.  What is next for the fearless artist who has already accomplished so much?

 

Galen Hooks

Galen Hooks

 

“I am working on a song and dance project that incorporates bluegrass inspired folk music that I’ve written over the years.  One of my best friends, Melinda Sullivan, is involved.  The project is titled Campfire Vaudeville.  I wrote the original bluegrass/folk music for it, as well as choreographed all of the dancing.  I also produced three short films for the project, and star in each.  Campfire Vaudeville will be released via social media through an original folk tale that I’ve written – you would follow @CampfireVaud on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to experience the story.

“I’m also the Supervising Choreographer for the next season of XFactor, and choreographing on the ABC sitcom Suburgatory.”

Proving yet again that Hooks is the ultimate crossover artist.  And that’s great news for the rest of us, who can’t wait for the next Galen Hooks masterstroke.