The Way We Handle One Another: An Interview of Choreographer Holly Blakey

Photograph by Max Barnett


interview by Lara Monro

Born in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, Holly Blakey found contemporary dance as a teenager. After she was rejected by a number of well-known dance schools, she attended University of Roehampton where teaching dance was the only option. What was initially a devastating and painful life transition turned out to be a profound moment for Blakey, leading to a fruitful career as a choreographer. Free from the confines of institutional models and languages of dance, she created her own — one that advocates drama and our lived experiences. 

Honesty, intimacy, and a sense of community feed into her work, as does her fascination with music, film, and TV. Her ability to emulate pop culture has led Blakey to traverse multiple creative industries such as directing music videos for musicians who include Florence Welch and Coldplay. She also had a longstanding collaboration with the late fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, whose widower Andreas Kronthaler, has designed the costumes for the return of her performance of Cowpuncher My Ass. This Wild West dance show, scored by Mica Levi, takes the notion of the hyper masculine, yet camp cowboy, as a starting point to explore the archetypes of masculinity through non-linear perspectives.  

Cowpuncher My Ass will be playing at Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, Wednesday 15 February at 7:30 pm. 

Autre’s London editor at large, Lara Monro, spoke with Blakey in between rehearsals to discuss how the performance challenges what might be deemed acceptable in choreography and much more. 

LARA MONRO: How would you say your transition from being a dancer to teaching has impacted your approach to choreography? 

HOLLY BLAKEY: Well, I think because it was so non-linear it meant I had to reframe what its potential could be and think of new ways of accessing it. I found a separate authenticity so that I could practice in a way that felt clear and realistic to who I was and what I was doing. It really did feel like the end of the world at the time because I'd danced all my life and I now think it was my biggest gift because I had to shift the way I was accessing things and I had to adjust my way of thinking. I think it's led to me have a practice that hasn't been so shaped by others. It’s allowed me to find my own language, I hope! So, I'm always quite grateful for that failure. 

MONRO: Where do your ideas often come from and what's the process there? 

BLAKEY: Well, I suppose like any kind of author, in a way it's about how you feel or experience life and the things you find sweet, or not. I'm more interested in people than I am in dancers or dancing, per say. I'm more interested in seeing the person within it. Even though I work with dancers, it's always about setting what the dancing is and then learning who the people are inside of the moving. That's what I'm most interested in. 

Photograph by Grace Horton

MONRO: So, when you are putting together a piece of choreography, how do you choose the dancers that you work with? 

BLAKEY: Well, the dancers I'm working with in Cowpuncher My Ass I've worked with for about ten years. Some of them since they were 18. So, we have a secret language, you know, and an understanding about what it is we're doing, or want to do. We share that feeling of rigor and I think they get me. With other dancers who might join the cast, it will be a more simple audition process. It will be logistical. 

MONRO: Cowpuncher My Ass stems from a fascination with the archetypal idea of the cowboy and themes of masculinity, right? 

BLAKEY: Right. It's mainly about people and the threat of masculinity being a loud voice within that. It isn’t about masculinity from one perspective. I remember speaking to my boyfriend recently and he said to me, “How do you think I feel when I walk down the street and I see a load of lads with their shirts off?” The idea and threat of masculinity is one that impacts all of us, you know? And sometimes we can forget that. So I suppose that although masculinity is vital in the conversation, it's about people, ultimately, and the way we handle one another.

MONRO: Can you tell me more about the choreographic style of the piece?

BLAKEY: What's important about Cowpuncher is that while a narrative is unraveling, at the same time, there is this confrontation with what's acceptable in choreography, what's acceptable to put on a stage, and what is dance. So, while we're having this conversation, we're also trying to look at what we can do as makers and to dismantle the ideas of expectation. There are so many different styles within one performance because we experiment so much. And it's also this idea of it being messy; that it doesn't have to be one specific style. It can be lots of different things. It's doesn't have to be linear. 

Photograph by Max Barnett

MONRO: How do you want your performances to impact your audience? 

BLAKEY: What I really want my work to do is to be like when you read an amazing book and you believe it's been written about you. You feel like what’s unfolding is about your own life—that you see yourself within it. That's the most important thing. And for it to feel like a shared experience. At the beginning of Cowpuncher, for example, we have the lights on, which is a lot about the audience feeling situated in what's going on, recognizing themselves in the space, you know, feeling the people who are sat next to them. The dancers are watching you, watching them, and there becomes this continual conversation. So, you're invited into the experiences of the dancers in a very intimate way. 

MONRO: What are your influences around that notion? Are there any in particular? 

BLAKEY: Well, I'm someone who's more interested in films and television than I am in dance. I go and watch a lot of dance, but I try to not think too hard about what other people are making choreographically. I like movies, I like cinematography. In a way I'm more inspired by capturing narrative. I recently spoke about the Sopranos. It is one of my favorite things ever to have experienced. It's those scenes with Tony and Carmela where they're just in the kitchen and they're moving around that really grab me the most. How, how do you create something so beautiful and simple and show people in such an amazing way? I'm kind of more interested in that. 

MONRO: I read that you want there to be a sense of community in your performances. Does this partly stem from your appreciation of club culture? 

BLAKEY: My first work that toured was called Some Greater Class (2012/2013). That was a lot about being in the club; this notion of social dancing. This sense of social dancing is a loud part of what I look at—I want to be able to articulate the power of this moment within a party or communal dance. 

MONRO: You talk about being influenced by TV— soaps, the Sopranos. How do you translate these into movement? 

BLAKEY: I think I'm trying to harness an idea: How does that make me feel? What does it remind me of? How does it relate to my past? What was that in my past? Why the need to recreate this? Where is all this sadness coming from? Why do I need to expel this feeling? How can I communicate this to a group of people? Oh, they understand too. They've experienced life. You know, it's like the looping of it all. So, it's about trying to execute that and let the dancers practice it; unravel it in their own kind of way to begin with and then, okay, this works, and then oh, what did you feel there? Okay. This reads like this to me. Try it like this. Try it like it's two o'clock in the morning. Try like your dog just died, you know? Okay, now I read this. There's a lot of drama. I love drama and I'm not afraid of drama. I had a very crucial conversation the other day with my friend Eve Stainton, the artist and performance maker, who helped me realize just how important drama is to me! I don't want to steer away from the feeling of things being dramatic. I want it to feel like that. Why shouldn’t we embrace it?

Photograph by Daniele Fummo

The Grandeur of His Epic: An Interview With Choreographer Jay Carlon

interview by Summer Bowie

photos by Oliver Kupper

Defining a culture that comprises 7100 islands, centuries of colonization, and an overwhelming desire to assimilate is profound and Sisyphean. Unlike a migration that takes place over land, the ocean seems to wash away all evidence of the traveled path. The historical narrative that has framed Filipino-American immigration is fraught with this eternal question of identity and belonging. Being part Filipino myself, I learned very little about my grandmother’s life story while she was alive. It wasn’t until after she passed away and my grandfather published her memoirs that I learned just how harrowing her journey had been.

After attending the world premiere of FLEX, a dance theater piece that explores primarily the story of choreographer, Jay Carlon’s father and his immigration from the Philippines to the States, I realized that the erasure of these stories is rather commonplace. Jay’s father was not only a senior citizen by the time Jay was born, but it seems that he liked to let others tell his story for him. It wasn’t until his father passed away that Jay started to make heads and tails of the man versus the myth, and the role that he and other Filipino-Americans played in the United States throughout the 20th century, from World War II, to the Labor Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and beyond. The work explores the story of Honorio Carlon and his immigration to the States, as well as that of several other Filipino-Americans and their children. This pastiche of memories serves as a paean to those whose stories have been lost in the shuffle of sublimation. In the following conversation, we discuss everything from the Filipino sartorial sensibility, to the homoerotic Renaissance paintings of “Jacob Wrestling the Angel” in the book of Genesis, to the implications that result when one must prioritize survival over preservation.

SUMMER BOWIE: First, I want to talk about your upbringing as the youngest of 12 children, and what that’s like to have such wide age gaps between both your siblings and your parents. Were you all very close?

JAY CARLON: I suppose this question is difficult to answer succinctly. My dad had 3 wives and my mom was the last. Let me provide some context: My dad, Honorio Carlon, immigrated to America in 1932 during the Great Depression, while the Philippines was under US occupation. Filipino immigrants were almost exclusively men due to gender expectations in the workplace. These immigrant men started bachelor societies for solidarity. Due to anti-miscegenation laws (anti-interracial marriage laws) these men found it difficult to start families in America. Despite this, my father married twice and had 6 children. It wasn’t until the 1970s when my dad was able to make it back to the Philippines to eventually meet my mother and bring her back to the US. Now back to the question, my siblings: 6 of them are my half siblings and the other 5 are my full siblings. Naturally, because of age and generations, I am closest to my full siblings. The strange thing is some of my half siblings are older than my mom, which is a weird dynamic having half-brothers older than your mom. My relationship with my father, however, was somewhat distant. Ever since I was born, his death was imminent. He was 74 when I was born. He kept to himself; perhaps my expectation of him as a father was to simply maintain this “Big Fish” legacy and the grandeur of his Epic, being among the first wave of Filipino immigrants in America. He lived through the Great Depression, World War II, the Labor Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, etc. He never talked to me about his experiences, also I was a child, so I couldn’t really understand why any of this was important/interesting. However, doing all the research I’ve done for FLEX, I’ve been able to fill in some of these gaps in his memory, his narrative.

BOWIE: I grew up in a suburb of San Diego with a large Filipino population, and my being only a quarter Filipino meant that I had a lot of Filipino friends, but I was never Filipino enough to call the parents of my friends Auntie and Uncle the way they did with each other. Did you grow up with that idea of the extended cultural family?

CARLON: I grew up in a large Filipino community and both my parents are from the same very small island in Philippines. My dad immigrated here with a group of about 8 men, some his cousins and some his friends. Those 8 men stuck together and worked as migrant workers throughout the Southwest. Every Labor Day Weekend, they would all come together and have a fiesta. This tradition has been going on since the ‘50s and still happens today. From those 8 pioneers, there are now over 500 descendants, and we all still gather in Santa Maria, California. All those 500+ extended family members are my uncles and aunties, whether I’m related to them or not! 

BOWIE: It seems like you did an extraordinary level of research into your father’s life while in the process of creating this work. Do you feel like you see your father in a different light now that the work has been fully actualized?

CARLON: Like I stated earlier, a lot of my knowledge surrounding my father’s history was from oral stories told by uncles, and aunties, and cousins. Some of these stories seemed to be conflated or exaggerated, as most memories are. 

Last year, I was interviewed by an Asian periodical and was asked how my work was influenced by my identity as a Filipino American. The question really caught me off guard and I felt uneasy and confronted with this responsibility to be more or less Filipino. I am a contemporary dance choreographer. Some of my work is abstract, some of it is conceptual, and some of it is expressionistic. The general topic of my work was often surrounding migrant issues and labor rights, but as far as a direct Filipino relation to my work, I was stumped. I thought of an article that I came across by Miguel Gutierrez in BOMB Magazine called “Does Abstraction Belong to White People.” The article resonated with me and elicited introspection: as a Filipino-American abstract choreographer, what am I doing here, and why, and how did I get here? Soon after being asked the question about my identity and coming across this article, L.A. Dance Project asked me to be their first recipient of the MAKING:LA Residency, a new work by a Los Angeles-based artist. I knew I wanted to make an unapologetic work about the diverse tapestry of Southern California. My father’s, mother’s, and my story seemed to be the perfect backdrop for that opportunity to create and share a hella Filipino [untold] history.

To return to the question: the process of researching my father’s history and filling in the gaps of his narrative allowed me to create a more human understanding of who he was. My dad was this historical figure to me once I was born. I wouldn’t say we were emotionally close. I have few memories of him, some of which include dropping me off to kindergarten with whiskey on the dashboard. (Laughs), it was a different time I suppose. But I never had conversations in length with my dad. Doing all the research I’ve been doing has made him become a more human and tangible person in my life. This research has also served my relationship with my mother, who is still alive and thriving. I seem to understand her better; why she is the way she is. My mother and I never had conversations beyond the weather or my financial situation, but now we talk about memories, family back in the Philippines, and emotions (which, for a Filipino family is huge).

BOWIE: You grew up training as a competitive wrestler. How did you find dance, and how do you think your wrestling background has influenced your approach to choreography?

CARLON: My first introduction to physicality was wrestling at the Boys and Girls Club. I followed my older brothers, who joined the wrestling team to stay out of the streets. I was 5 years old when I started wrestling and competed throughout my teens. I learned partnering and momentum, strength and velocity, and nuance between force and flow. I loved these concepts, but hated competing. Wrestling is brutal. I watch videos on YouTube now and think, “Goddamn! I grew up doing that?” I found the arts in high school, first with architecture, then voice (choir), and eventually the body (dance). I knew that I could channel these learned skills into a different medium.

I am also inspired by the image of “Jacob Wrestling the Angel” (Genesis 32:22–32). The story has been depicted by many Renaissance artists in painting and sculpture form. The artworks inspired by this scripture tend to look very homoerotic. I wanted to use this image as inspiration for FLEX to represent the Filipino peoples’ resistance to colonization, and perhaps the obedience as a result of colonization. The image also reminded me of Filipino male affection, and I wanted to use this image as a way to display the way different cultures showcase affection.

BOWIE: FLEX tells the stories of several Filipino-American immigrants and their children. There’s a very militant scene, it feels like boot camp and the dancers are counting in Tagalog, I believe. Can you talk a bit about that scene and the story behind it?

CARLON: I love that scene. I wanted to integrate Filipino languages in the work. I don’t speak Visayan (my family’s dialect), but counting seemed to be a natural and relatively easy way to integrate Tagalog (the national dialect of the Philippines) into the work. We made 16 gestures/movements and gave them each a number. I noticed the sequence of movements with the counting in Tagalog sounded very militant. This section made me think of the Philippine American War (1989-1902), where the Philippines fought for their freedom and independence from America.  I wanted to create a scene where the wrestling drills, something I grew up doing in America, paralleled the guerilla warfare in the Philippines.

BOWIE: The dancers you cast for this piece are all incredibly athletic, they’re poetic with their movement, and they’re multi-talented. At times they lend voice, either in narrative or song, and your choreography demands a certain versatility as well. How did you go about casting the work?

CARLON: I only cast people I trust. Trust is a very important component of my work, for the performers, the audience, all the natural and simulated elements, etc. I have worked with all my collaborators in the past on projects at REDCAT or The Annenberg Community Beach House. In my process, I like to [safely and consensually] push physical and emotional boundaries. I also like to work as a multidisciplinary director and see how I can integrate each and every individual's skill[s] into the work.  The cast of FLEX is incredibly dynamic and I had a wonderful time learning about their multiple talents and how I could incorporate them into the work.

BOWIE: Your dancers seem to go through a marathon from the beginning to the end of the piece. Some of their faces were dripping within the first 3 minutes, and you see the way that the movement becomes increasingly more demanding, pushing them into a deeper synchronicity with one another. What is the warm-up and rehearsal process like for a project like this?

CARLON: I often like to focus on sensory improvisational tasks to begin a process. I like to work with eyes closed to privilege the other senses, especially touch. We start with an improvisation with eyes closed while being guided through the space. The participant with the eyes closed will recall a memory and tell that memory to the person guiding them around the room safely. This mode of embodiment and memory primes the dancers for the process of creating FLEX.

BOWIE: There are two very deep Americana references that you included in this piece, the first being the opening monologue from Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, the second being Patti Page’s “Tennessee Waltz.” The Tennessee connection seems coincidental, but can you talk a little bit about those choices, and the Filipino rendition of the song that you included? Where did it come from?

CARLON: I wanted to create a 1950s Filipino American ballroom, a place in which my father and his comrades found solidarity--the only place they could escape and have fun without judgment. My dad loved the Cha Cha and music from the ‘50s. The Tennessee Waltz was incorporated into the work because the lyrics reminded me of the loss of their home. 

We also changed “Tennessee” to “Philippine” in the live version of the song. I did this because I wanted it to be clear that these Americana attributes were coming from a sense of otherness, or perhaps reappropriation.

I was dancing with my darling to the Tennessee Waltz
When an old friend I happened to see
I introduced her to my loved one
And while they were dancing
My friend stole my sweetheart from me

I remember the night and the Tennessee Waltz
Now I know just how much I have lost
Yes, I lost my little darling the night they were playing
The beautiful Tennessee Waltz

BOWIE: The musical score was really beautiful. I think Alex Wand did a phenomenal job. How did that collaboration come about, and what was it like?

CARLON: I began working with Alex Wand on a previous project that took place in a parking lot with my car about mental health and stability. We used audio recording from the iconic moon landing as well as solar system sonifications (using the orbital speeds of the planets and creating a sound score). After that project, we became obsessed with sonifications and played with amplifying sounds of a cardboard stage, we made synth sounds activated by waves by putting Wii controllers in a buoy at the beach, and made a resonant frequency plate that used sand to predict the vibrational sound, etc. Prior to FLEX, Alex went on an epic bike tour across the Mexico-American border, biking from LA to Michoacan (the Monarch Butterfly migration path). We used field recordings from his bike ride for the ambient and environmental sounds in FLEX. I love finding parallels with Alex’s interest in ecological sustainability, like with the Monarch Butterfly migration and my interests in immigrant stories, and visible vs. invisible borders.

BOWIE: The costumes were really lovely. I understand that many pieces were from your father’s wardrobe. There’s one story you tell, called The Filipino and the Drunkard by William Saroyan. Can you talk about your father’s sartorial sense and the role that the costuming plays in this piece?

CARLON: My dad, though being a strawberry picker for over 50 years, never left the house without a suit. He never wanted people to know we were poor. He wore pressed suits and tailored clothes daily.  He taught me how to shine my shoes and slick my hair back. I always felt that Filipinos had this sense of showing off, and I never understood why. When I heard The Filipino and the Drunkard, it brought to light the complexity of Filipinos not wanting to look poor, to assimilate. This is one factor why I decided to call this work FLEX--slang, to show off.

Over 70% of the costumes were sourced from my father’s wardrobe. However, the garments were quite large and boxy. Ching Ching Wong, soloist for FLEX, also served as a costume production assistant and tailored the costumes to fit the performers. 

BOWIE: Throughout the show, there are times when characters can be seen in the back folding, unfolding, and refolding jackets. You also have a previous work literally called, Fold, Unfold, Refold. Can you explain this theme a bit?

CARLON: The integration of the folding in the background came out of this notion of hidden labor.  I integrate labor a lot into my work. The work Fold, Unfold, Refold was a work about monotony, and repetitive gestures, and the performance of labor. I’m obsessed with the performance of labor. The folding in the background of FLEX was inspired by my mom’s immigration story. My mom lived in the shadow of my father’s epic and I wanted to pay homage to her. I thought about the invisibility of domesticity within our Western culture. I tried to incorporate as much folding in the background as possible to remind the audience of a sense of forgotten work.

BOWIE: The history of Filipino-American culture and its contribution to American development has been widely overlooked. However, Filipinos are the second-largest population of Asian-Americans, second only to Chinese-Americans. Why do you think this history is so easily overlooked?

CARLON: The Philippines is such a uniquely eclectic culture that is constantly evolving and trying to understand itself. From the 7,100 islands within the archipelago to the large amount of immigrants all over the world, Filipinos are great at adapting to cultures while still maintaining their own culture. There are so many influences, mainly because of colonization, but it’s hard to pinpoint what a Filipino is. I think assimilation, the desire to fit in, is a result of our culture being forgotten. I also think erasure is just a part of the Filipino diaspora; through centuries of resistance, the Filipino mentality is primarily survival, not preservation. That’s why I think it’s important for more Filipino stories to make their way into pop culture, and media, and academia. I think we’re getting there.

BOWIE: Where else would you like to take the work from here? It’s so emotionally compelling and educationally-rich that I could see it playing at a number of different venues.

CARLON: My dream is to share this story with other Filipino-Americans. I want to focus on touring this work throughout California, to start. From San Diego to the Bay, California is home to the highest number of Filipinos outside of the Philippines. I would also like to take the work to New York and other Filipino populated cities. It would, of course, be a dream to even take this to the Philippines.

Follow @carlondance on Instagram to learn more about FLEX.