By Matt McDermott

How is each season's program determined at your company?

I sit down with my company. We're a company that's very much on the side of consensus decision-making. And so we discuss projects. We think about what we did the previous year. We think about pieces that we might want to get before the Chicago Public. We also think about what John Schmitz's needs are in terms of programming at Dance Chicago. We put that all together.

We're interested in doing ensemble pieces so that more of us can get out on the stage and do the work. And that's all decided among us and we just,¦ we sit down together. We think about the best piece that meets all those criteria.

What criteria do you use to find new talent? Where does it come from today, in Chicago?

Well, we do a kind of continuous outreach; I'd guess you'd say. We have community classes in the Jump'n'Jazz technique. What we try to do is to attract people to taking the technique because it is new for almost all of them. Even though some of them may be very deeply talented, they are not familiar with this particular approach to physical rhythm making.

In order to actually judge them fairly, we need to give them a little bit of a head start in the technique so that when it comes time for an audition, for instance, they have immersed themselves in the technique and they've also decided that they like it.

The way we find talent, then, is usually with people who have discovered us and discovered the technique. Some of that happens in Chicago, but some of it also happens on tour. People find out about our company on tour. We also do what we call the Jazz and Tap Intensives, which is a week-long workshop that we alternately do here in Chicago and in Massachusetts. And from around the country and internationally, students come and study the Jump'n'Jazz technique. Some of them then make a decision about studying the technique, the Jump'n'Jazz technique, further, and working with us.

How involved is your company in community efforts, outreach, mentoring programs, appearances at schools and cultural centers?

We do lecture demonstrations in schools. We're in the process of negotiating the possibility with a couple of schools of teaching in them regularly. But that negotiation has not yet reached fruition.

We also do a lot of outreach to seniors and people in nursing homes. We have a yearly grant from the Rothschild Foundation which sends us to about 20 half-hour performances in these centers, where we also work a little bit physically with the seniors, in the context of our half-hour show.

Our outreach is certainly something that we're always working to try to achieve and increase. There are challenges because we have to make sure that our dancers, who all are working multiple part-time jobs in order to support themselves, are free to do the teaching. But it is on the docket, we've been in the schools, we actively do lecture demonstrations in schools, and now we're in the process of trying to figure out how to get into a school more consistently.

All of us want to, for instance, work with underserved populations. But it doesn't necessarily happen that easily, just because you want it. You need to find an organization that's happy to have you. Plus, they, themselves, have to have a source of funding to help make this possible.

Well, how receptive and supportive is Chicago of the dance community?

I think Chicago is receptive. Dance Chicago is an interesting event, because I think it proves that there is a community for dance, an audience community for dance. That's what John Schmitz and Fritz Lorre have been proving now for some time. They've been doing a fantastic job putting together programs that will appeal to populations that aren't usually dance-going, and on the evidence of that I would say that there is a community interest in dance.

Also I think the fact that we have a diversity of dance companies surviving, and their survival in itself proves that we do have a dance culture here, and that it does make an impact on the art scene. I came from New York and obviously New York is somewhat of the dance capital of the world. There are many, many dance companies, and many, many people watching dance. Well, I would say that proportionately, Chicago is a pretty active dance-going community, meaning that they not only go to see Hubbard Street and Joffrey, but they go see the other companies too, at mid-tiers or even lower tiers of activity.

And that, to me, says that Chicago is friendly to dance. I think my only hesitation is that I think the press could be friendlier to it. I think the press has done a good job with the few people who have actually gone out and reviewed, but I know that - for instance, Hedy - who is a wonderful dancer of ours - is caught between dance and theater.

So that's hard for her sometimes, because she's kind of pulling double duty. It's not like in New York; we don't have a dance critic. I know that Lucia Mauro, who's also a wonderful dance writer, is also sometimes caught between double assignments to theater and dance. You know, dance or rather the arts exist because the press also helps them to exist. The great artists of our time, or of past times, happen because of the public awareness created by the press.

I think that's very necessary, because when the publicity is serving culture at its best, you have very intelligent, articulate writers helping to explain the art form to the community. I would say that I think it would be nice if there were more, we now have Asimina Chremos for Time Out Chicago, she's now writing a weekly column on dance. And of course there's Laura Molzone, who's wonderful, who's been very, very supportive of the dance community: she does the Critics' Choices. Still, on any given weekend, there are multiple dance events, and not all of them are necessarily reviewed or attended by the press.

I'd like to ask, who has had the greatest influence on your career?

I mean, nobody I've studied with or even met. The great rhythm jazz dancers of the 20th century, people like Astaire and the Nicholas Brothers, they're my inspiration. And in fact, the Jazz Rhythm Jazz Project, being a vernacularly-based movement technique - the Jump'n'Jazz technique with the Project itself being defined by a vocabulary of movement that is rhythmically based, we're really focused on extending that tradition. We're not repeating it, we're not trying to say, "Okay, now come to see the Jump Rhythm Jazz Project and we're going to imitate the dance that Fred Astaire did."

I don't mean that at all. The core of Astaire's or the Nicholas Brothers' art form is finding movement that rhythmically is brilliant, and rhythmically tells the story. Now, that's very different from most concert dance today, which is based on academic disciplines like ballet, and has a greater shape orientation. But this is a rhythm orientation, and we have in the history of dance in this country, an approximately a 50 or 60 year history, of some of the most brilliant rhythm dancing that was ever done.

And it's on tape, you know, you can get it on DVD. And it's nothing to scoff at, it's a brilliant tradition because it's a populist art form that was, nonetheless, built on a kind of virtuosity that is very, very difficult to duplicate. So all of the brilliance of the art making was produced to make connections with the audience. I guess that's why I use the word "populist." In other words, I'm not talking about dumbing down. I'm just saying it was made to make connections to audiences who were not necessarily aficionados of the art form.

When people, for instance, watched the Nicholas brothers or any of those people, they were moved. They could be college professors, they could be dockworkers, they could be homemakers, they could be people of every kind of diversity and cultural stripe. But they were completely wowed by it, and moved by it, because they were looking at an art form that was built on rhythmicized human behavior.

Speaking of that, do you think that resurgence of swing dancing, for example, helped audience reception for your company?

Very much so, very much so. We know that swing populations come to see our work, because it's rhythm dancing to jazz music and, in fact, much of the technique is based on of the core of swing dancing, which is two people holding hands making rhythm together. Again, it's not as if we're out on the stage doing Lindy dances, we've abstracted from that, we've extrapolated from that.

But the core of it, which is making rhythm with a partner, is essentially what the Jump Rhythm Jazz Project is about, and that's what that tradition of vernacular dancing that has inspired me was about. So I guess I've sort of taken a long way to answer your question but, honestly, it was those people, and I watched them endlessly. So if you were to put Thayer Nicholas, Fred Astaire, and Michael Kidd: Michael Kidd's brilliantly angular, punchy choreography; those were my inspirations, because I was a drummer.

It's a musical dance technique driven by rhythms such as a drummer plays, so some people have called this tap dancing through the body. Some people have noted that it's a technique that is built around a percussive musicality; it's a very musical technique. And as a drummer, I was very attracted to these people that I mentioned, to watching their movies, because basically what you're looking at is drumming in the body, and not just tap dancing. They were percussing all of their body parts. My mentors are those historical figures, and I'm so grateful for them, and I'm so grateful for the tradition.

We're just trying to honor the tradition, and use its materials to tell contemporary stories. We're not a nostalgic dance company; we're operating on a tradition, in the same way a painter will operate out of the tradition of abstract painting. You know, you're not going to go imitate Jackson Pollack, but you can take some of his forms or his methods. And if they feel right to you, you can map them around your own voice and come up with a distinct statement. I think that's what just about everybody does, if they're serious about an art form.

For someone who's going to Dance Chicago 2005 to explore dance, how would you describe what's unique about your company's approach?

It's rhythm-based, so we do not use ballet as a base of our technique, we use rhythm-making as a base of our technique. The bodies are meant to come across on the stage as embodiments of rhythmic musicality, so what you're getting is a tremendous amount of punchy energy on the stage, because that's what rhythm is. It's accent-making through the body, when you're thinking of dancing. And so, my understanding is that we have a unique approach in that way. It's recognizable, and the other part of it is that we use it to tell stories, we're not just doing abstract dance.

So for instance, in one [Chicago Dance] program, we're doing a very old piece, called No Way Out, which audiences have seemed always to love, which features a lot of this percussive musicality in the body. There's also a tremendous amount of tap dancing in it, but tap dancing that is body-influenced tap dancing. It's fun, because it's in three sections and it tells a kind of fun story of people very hyped up, almost as if they would be in an MGM musical, coming out on the stage and dancing at high energy as if they're hysterical about life.

Then, in the second section, everything drops down to a kind of cool, sort of noire-ish atmosphere, because you have two tap dancers with trench coats on and sunglasses and black hats, kind of turning out all these tap phrases that are essentially making fun of all of those MGM dancers. And then at the end, you have, in the third section, you have a sort of a stylized gang dance, which is loosely based on an homage to "Cool" of West Side Story, but again, it's using this vocabulary.

There's a tremendous amount of counterpoint rhythm in our choreography. Because I make rhythmic counter scores against the music we're hearing, we're not just dancing on the beat. We're a jazz company, so we're syncopating all the time. And in the last weekend [of Dance Chicago 2005], we're doing an anti-war piece.

Could you talk about the anti-war piece, and the date that the piece is being performed?

It's being performed first on November 12, 2005 and then second on November 20, 2005. That's called No Way Out. Then we're doing The News from Poems which is based on: I don't want to say it's a topically propaganda dance piece, it's not that at all. It's much more poetically conceived, and it's non-linear. But it's definitely coming from an emotion that is, I would say, very deeply felt in me, the choreographer, about the state of affairs in the world currently. And that's being done on the last weekend [of Dance Chicago] on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, December 2nd and 3rd at 8 PM, and December 4th at 7 p.m.

I think it's best to say that we are storytellers with rhythm, and that's basically what's our cache. And the stories are ... they can encompass very contemporary topics. It's using the language of Astaire to address contemporary issues, I mean, that's what The News from Poems is about. I think rhythm is a universal language. And what we've simply opted to do, or what I have been doing through my choreography and through inventing this new technique, the Jump'n'Jazz technique, is to take the language of rhythm and use it as the basis for all of the work we do.

And that's different, it doesn't mean better or worse, just different. Most other companies are using, as I said, more academically based dance technique. Now, this has a technique, and it's a very rigorous technique; it's just that the emphasis is on transforming the human body into a very precisely rhythmic percussion instrument. Ballet is interested in, you know, reshaping the body parts so it achieves a certain look, which takes, of course, years and years of discipline. Well, this also takes years and years of discipline; it's just disciplining a different set of movement ideas.

You characterized ballet and its technique, and then the technique of your own company. Where does the modern technique fit in?

Well, probably I'd say halfway between the two. Because presumably, modern is what it is. Modern, if it's feeding off of that original inspiration is people wanting to make distinctly individual statements. In other words, it sort of implies an idiosyncratic approach, an idiosyncrasy present from the beginning. So presumably, the movement material is being reshaped to give voice to a very individual take on things.