Chatting with the Creators of dre.dance

If the October Face to Face with dre.dance creative directors Andrew Palermo and Taye Diggs left you wanting more, you’re in luck. Read on for some outtakes as DT gets up close and personal with the two childhood friends.

Dance Teacher: Does your tight-knit relationship make trusting and critiquing each other’s choreographic judgments easier?

Andrew Palermo: If Taye and I ever disagree, we are able to work around it because we are so close. Don’t get me wrong, we do have those moments; it’s just never created any problems. We’re lucky because we like each other’s style better than our own sometimes. I can even guess how Taye will react to something because we know each other and our tastes.

Taye Diggs: Luckily, we’re similar enough that huge falling outs can be avoided, but you must pick your battles. For instance, we might disagree on a certain movement, but we have enough humility and trust in each other to step back and figure out what’s best for the piece. Besides, being too immersed in one’s own style and ideas can be a dangerous pitfall. I get sick of my own work and constantly want to redo it, and the pieces we’ve enjoyed the most are those we have choreographed together, side by side.

DT: Do you ever perform in your own works?

AP: Only when forced! We really don’t want to limit our choreography, since we work with incredible dancers who are at the top of their game and can do anything we throw at them. However, we did do a four-minute performance during our benefit last season. We were so nervous beforehand, and we’ve danced all our lives! It’s just something I don’t want to worry about anymore; if I want to get fat now I will!

TD: I wish I could, but you get to that point—and I hate to say this—but it just feels like we’re getting old; it would be too depressing and painful to watch. All this being said, it was still an amazing feeling when we were dancing onstage together [at the benefit]. It was a great dynamic to revisit, but the pressure and nerves involved still didn’t seem worth it afterwards.

DT: What inspires you to create thought-provoking works like your autism piece, beyond.words?

AP: I was at the gym on the elliptical machine when a feature about Amanda Bragg came on CNN. (She’s a young, non-verbal woman with severe autism who posted a video on YouTube, expressing how she lives and thinks.) And I was floored by her argument that just because she perceives and interacts with the world in a different language doesn’t mean it isn’t normal or needs to be cured. I’d never heard that perspective before, and it felt really artistic. She senses the world in a personal and intuitive way with no barriers or preconceived notions, which is what we artists strive to do. I started doing a lot of research and have been working on it for a year now. We’ve held talk-backs and section showings and have been working with many autism organizations, so we get what it is. The piece takes an autistic boy and looks at each stage of his life to see how it changes and how he embraces his traits. And I’m really confident with how it’s going to turn out—it’s truly a necessary voice.

DT: What’s up next for dre.dance?

AP: An evening-length work called the people that will open this month at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in New York City. It’s a socio-political piece that features original music by experimental jazz composer Rob Reddy, who’s also a TPAC artist in residence. We’ve also been working with a text designer because we’re using a piece of text that will be deconstructed, reconstructed and layered in throughout the performance. There will be a lot of other cool visual effects, too. It’s a challenging piece, but it’s [been built] completely ground-up and that’s exciting!

Check our Editor’s Blog next week to get the scoop from the October 9th premiere of dre.dance’s the people!