“Roberts has not only confirmed that he is one of the vital choreographers at work and one of the most spellbinding makers of dance film-he has confirmed that he is an artist. And for people who care about art, that is a sign of hope.” –
Brian Seibert, New York Times.
Jamar Roberts, co-Artist-in-Residence at this summer’s Vail Dance Festival along with Sara Mearns, the veteran New York City Ballet dancer, moved seemingly effortlessly from being a Bessie-award-winning dancer with the Alvin Ailey Company, into a role as a celebrated choreographer. Since his first piece for Ailey’s second company in 2015, he went on to become that company’s resident choreographer from 2019-2022. He has also been commissioned to create works for New York City Ballet, Ballet X, San Francisco Ballet, LA Dance Project, and the Juilliard School.
I spoke with Roberts on a Zoom call a month before he would arrive in Vail to create a new piece.
Culturevulture: You were raised in Miami. I understand when you first began choreographing seriously you began by working with kids in competition choreography and then began playing around in a studio. It takes a huge amount of confidence to go from there to working for New York City Ballet. How did you do that?
Roberts: I just made a lot of dances, good dances, bad dances, dances. I copied from, I don’t know, Martha Graham, from anybody, from past solos, I just made a lot of dance. I took two breaks from dancing with Ailey. Each time I would always go back home, and I would teach at this dance studio. I wasn’t making dances for fun, the whole time I intended to do something with it. I just didn’t know when that moment would come. The Associate Artistic Director at Ailey at the time, Masazumi Chaya, would see me making phrases. After rehearsal, if the studio was empty, I would go in and just make things. Sometimes he would hold a camera for me. He was the one that really pushed for me to show my work.
CV: You’ve said that you admire choreographers like Martha Graham, Ohad Naharin from Batsheva, and Pina Bausch (the German Dance Theatre choreographer who died in 2009). And then there’s the work of Alvin Ailey. What is the legacy from these artists that you carry? What kind of ideas from these dancemakers do you bring into your work now?
Roberts: I think for Ailey its the stories, the black stories, the way that he presented black people. I think it’s really beautiful. I mean, you know, not all black life is beautiful, but he found a way to elevate the most, you know, lowest points. With Martha Graham, there’s this feeling of total theater. It almost feels like opera, and her use of stillness is arresting. The clarity in her work, and the intention. I mean, sometimes she was very long-winded, but to me, it always feels like not a lot is wasted. Ohad? You just tap into the weird and the fun and the humanity. When I say humanity, I don’t mean it in the noble sense. I just mean like a human being moving. He kind of distills movement to it most simple form, and takes-in all the quirkiness and the awkwardness. Even the most normal things, he turns them into theater. He’s not afraid to appear messy or disruptive, and he challenges the audience in ways that a lot of the earlier dance makers did.
Pina. For me, it’s just like the unattainable. I don’t really know her. I don’t know her process. But I’m always really impressed at how she brings that all to the stage. As an artist, I think it’s always important to have something that inspires you, that feels a little unattainable, because it kind of keeps you working toward something, and you never get complacent.
CV: Pina Bausch had a group of dancers that stayed with her for years, and you’re a freelancer. Do you have a dream of having your own group for years?
Roberts: I never used to, until now. It feels like I’ve done enough freelancing for the past three, four years. It’s great, because the visibility is awesome and meeting new dancers is wonderful. But I’m also finding that it can sort of stunt your growth artistically, because you’re always having to explain :”Jamar 101” before you can push past that and get into new territory. So I’m starting to feel a little bit like my pants are too tight with this. I do think that working with ballet dancers—I don’t know if I would say it’s a push for me, or a conundrum…
CV: You mean you don’t enjoy it as much?
Roberts: It’s not that I don’t enjoy it. It’s just that the tools are different. Your approach has to be different. Everything is different. And so for me, I kind of find that sometimes my movement or the work can lose its power when I don’t have the tools that I need. It still doesn’t sit 100% in the pocket.
CV: What is “Jamar 101?”
Roberts: Mostly it’s a movement vocabulary. When I walk into a room (with a new company) dancers always find it a little bit tricky to understand in their bodies the way that I’m moving. It’s rooted in modern dance, like classical modern dance, because I trained so much in Graham and Horton and Limón. At the same time, it’s about taking those forms and taking those shapes, mixing the way that my body moves and how I interpret sound.
CV: I watched a video where you were working with San Francisco Ballet. I have to admit, those ladies looked kind of like, lighter than air, if you know what I mean. So that must have been challenging.
Roberts: That’s the main thing. There’s a groundedness. The pelvis wants to be closer to the floor. When the arms move, they want the torso to move with it, and the ribs and all the organs want to be involved. So it’s not just flapping the arms. Small things like this that to me seem really simple, but when you’re trained in a certain way, it can be difficult to break certain patterns.
CV: Where would you like to be 10 years from now?
Roberts: I’ll be 42 on the 27th. It’s getting harder, physically, to demonstrate steps. I go and choreograph and then come back home and sit on my ass. I’m not necessarily keeping in shape. Ten years from now I hope to be in some kind of directorship position. I think that would be great. I think I have a lot to offer to a new generation of dancers.
CV: Tell me about the new piece you’re creating for Vail.
Roberts: It’s a mixture of ballet and modern dancers. There’s a trio within the piece that I premiered at Vail last year or the year before. It was set to a libretto by Langston Hughes. It has a lot of subtext. It’s being expanded on.
CV: What’s the subject of the expanded piece?
Roberts: I don’t know. I’m still working that out. The music is by Caroline Shaw. Two songs that hopefully will be sung by Caroline and Davóne Tynes. There’s eight women and I have yet to be in the studio with all eight of them. So far I’ve only had rehearsal with Sara Mearns. I have a little bit more time to sort out and solidify concepts. But once I’m in the room with the ladies….
