Hi again, dance friends. I’m Margaret Fuhrer, editor and producer of The Dance Edit newsletter and podcast. This week, we are lucky to have a returning guest, a friend of the podcast, with us: choreographer and Ailey II artistic director Francesca Harper.
Francesca always has so many irons in the fire. But the specific reason she’s here now is to discuss an upcoming premiere that’s part of the filmmaker Ava DuVernay’s Law Enforcement Accountability Project, or LEAP.
DuVernay created the LEAP initiative in the wake of George Floyd’s murder; it commissions artistic responses to police violence against Black people. She asked Harper, whose choreography is frequently in dialogue with social justice, to create a work addressing Detroit police offer Joseph Weekly’s murder of 7-year-old Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones. Aiyana was shot while she was asleep on her grandmother’s couch, during an ill-informed SWAT mission that was being filmed for a reality television show.
Harper’s response, titled The Reckoning, is both a dance film and a live performance, created in collaboration with musician Nona Hendryx, visual artist Carrie Mae Weems, and a cast of six dancers. It will have its world premiere at Works & Process at the Guggenheim on March 11th. There are many complex layers to unpack in Aiyana’s tragic story; as you’ll hear, Harper believes that dance is an especially powerful tool to help us process this kind of brutality.
A quick note before we begin: Harper’s mother, Denise Jefferson, was the longtime director of The Ailey School, where Francesca also trained. I’m mentioning that now because that information will come into play early in this interview.
Here is Francesca.
[pause]
Margaret Fuhrer:
Francesca, welcome or rather, welcome back. It’s such a pleasure to have you on the podcast again.
Francesca Harper:
Oh, the pleasure is all mine. I had a wonderful time the last time. It’s great to be back. Yes.
Margaret Fuhrer:
It was almost exactly a year ago, I’m realizing, that we talked.
Francesca Harper:
Wow.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. What is time, even?
Francesca Harper:
What a different time! Yeah. [laughter]
Margaret Fuhrer:
So we wanted to have you back on now to talk about this new work that you’ve created for Ava DuVernay’s LEAP Project. And I guess a natural place to start is, how did this commission come about? Did you get a phone call from Ava DuVernay? I can’t even imagine.
Francesca Harper:
I will give you, this is the wildest kind of backstory you’ll ever hear. So I had graduated from high school with a friend of mine. Her name was Betsy Jaffe, and she introduced me to another woman, Elizabeth Mosley, who basically was interested in my artwork. And I had an interview to meet them, she was going to support my company as a benefactor and help out. And we just really hit it off. So she introduced me to a woman named Regina Miller who works with her. She thought “Well, she was involved in dance, this woman, and so I just want you to meet her.” So I basically meet these two women and they want to hear about my company. And before we start, Regina says to me, “I have to share a story with you.” I said, “Well, what?”
She said, “I auditioned for the Ailey School when I was 15 years old. And your mother came up to me in the audition and basically she could see how nervous I was. She said, ‘Do not diminish your shine. You go out there and dance.'” And she said—she couldn’t believe it. And she got into the Ailey school. She started studying there. She was there for many years. And then she got into philanthropy and ended up working with Ava DuVernay’s company.
And the irony of that, and then she saw my work and I had met her and she had had this incredible history in dance. And because she works with Ava, she was like, “I have someone that I think you’d be interested in.” And then Ava saw my work, and I had been made these 16 dance films in the pandemic. So it was really at the height of the pandemic too, in a very prolific time for me, which was ironic. And then also just seemed… A lot of my work is founded in social justice and inclusivity. So I think that is just right up my alley in terms of what she was looking for her LEAP initiative for that project. But isn’t that a circuitous, crazy connection? It was just like the universe was conspiring.
Margaret Fuhrer:
And I love that the spirit of your mom was sort of over the whole thing.
Francesca Harper:
Oh yeah.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Isn’t that beautiful?
Francesca Harper:
Well, recently I have felt like the spirit of mom just watching over me has really been present in my life.
Margaret Fuhrer:
So you were assigned by Ava the case of Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley Jones. That’s what The Reckoning is responding to. To react artistically to a tragedy of this magnitude, to the murder of a seven year old Black girl—where does one begin? Where did you begin?
Francesca Harper:
I began with research. I began with research because I really needed to know what happened. And before even getting into what I could offer emotionally, just needed to know what happened and who these people were that were involved. And there’s just such a sense of responsibility and safety to think about the injustice and the reality of what this family experienced and the loss that was felt by everyone of this seven year old child. So starting with research, Ava gave me some research material. She had already kind of created a sheet for me with information, and then I just did a deep dive afterwards into—I watched some of the Detroit SWAT reality show that was involved. So I think that just did a lot of research into the police officers and the police that were involved in the incident.
And one of the big things that resonates for me is the fact that she…the police officers, the cameras following them for a television show, so that for me already, you talk about a breach of justice and where are their minds when they’re going to serve out their sense of duty, and there are these cameras following them. So I think that for me was really where I started all of this. And also really giving voice to this young girl who lost her life, who was an African American girl. And that for me, I also connected to that, and thinking about myself or my daughter and the loss of life and wanting to give her voice and power. So that was initially very apparent when I started the work. That’s the reckoning: If she were to come back, what would she say?
Margaret Fuhrer:
You’re starting to answer one of my next questions, which is that you imagine Aiyana’s future self in this work, she’s one of the dancers. Can you talk a little more about that choice and why you made it?
Francesca Harper:
Well, it’s interesting because I always have this kind of abstract vocabulary when it comes to dance, but I like to call it abstract storytelling, which for me also gives space for the imagination to really have its own voice. So as I was workshopping, it just became more apparent that these people had to be characters within the work and that they needed to really dialogue with each other and be present. And I think I did consider a couple of times like, well, but she was erased. There are themes of erasure, which are important, but for me to have her presence and really establish that in the beginning was important.
And then I also thought about the family. The grandmother is an important person in this story, and some of the research I did really had her in the courtroom sharing her feelings. And even this idea of when she shared her grief in the courtroom, how she was ushered out. And I thought, again, another kind of moment of oppression, suppression, erasure, that this grandmother who was right next to this child couldn’t express her feelings fully. Her grief, her loss, which is so much—you see what’s going on in the world with so many other cases, and we all feel so deeply the loss and the tragedy that the families are experiencing. So the grandmother also became a very important character in the work, and centralizing their relationship so that it really became the center point for the work. And then of course, the officers and their training and also the filming. And some of the research that we did actually has—I use some audio of the police officers talking on the reality shows, and juxtapose what they’re saying with then a group of bystanders witnessing the event in the moment.
And the way I work is in a collaborative sense, that the dancers were also asked to bring in their opinions. And so we started with conversations like, how are these young people feeling about this case, and even their own kind of instability in the world as young people of color, or not? I thought it was also very interesting to hear some of our Caucasian artists talk about what impacted them. So that for me also too is the coming together and the empathy that was really shared as a community of artists, that was deeply empowering. And that started to influence the scenes and the building of the work.
Margaret Fuhrer:
The idea of filming, and how filming was actually a central part of the story as it was happening, and now is also part of the storytelling that you’re doing in layered ways—you’re creating a film, but in that film, we also see people filming—can you talk a little more about the choices you made there and where that led you?
Francesca Harper:
Well, it’s such a big part of our lives now, our phones and being able to capture everything, and there’s power in, now, even citizens that have the opportunity to film moments and officers. I think about Eric Garner and think about, wow, how powerful it is that we had people there and documenting that. So it made me think about, that was a crucial element in the work, the filming, the negative and the positive aspects of the filming. And then I really do feel like the fact that it’s a reality show, and how does that impact the officers as they’re entering this space? What is this psychological state of these men as they go into—and also the potential stardom, and power in that kind of exposure? And does that almost subvert their jobs and what they’re meant to go in and do and carry out justice? So that for me was a huge, really important theme to share and convey in the work, to have that element.
I think also, we’re working with a live feed for the Guggenheim, which I think will be really powerful too for the audience to see it happening in the moment. So that was also important to me, to put the audience members in the moment of experiencing what happened. And the way that I’ve structured it kind of grounds the work in Aiyana and the grandmother’s relationship. It goes to the police officers and then it actually goes to the moment of the invasion, and also capturing the journalist that also became one of the characters that filmed the work and brought the team and—the producer, sorry. So they’re all characters, and it’s the recreations and reimagined experiences of that day with the incident. So it’s one of the most narrative works that I’ve done, and it needed to be. It needed to be really clear.
Margaret Fuhrer:
I’m going to apologize in advance for thinking through this question as I’m formulating it.
Francesca Harper:
No, please. No, I understand that. I have to tell you, it’s very intense to contemplate.
Margaret Fuhrer:
There’s something about the distancing that was happening maybe with these officers, as they were not just going about their jobs, but thinking about entertaining, that this is a show they’re putting on. And then the idea that now, this piece of art is reversing that process, in a way—it is art that someone’s watching, but it’s shortening, it’s eliminating that distancing, it’s getting rid of it. That is so interesting to me. Again, it’s not a question, I’m just talking.
Francesca Harper:
No, no, no, I really do think that’s right. It’s also this idea of them thinking about what is being produced for the camera in this moment, which is really deeply disturbing to contemplate think about, and what is our sense, what is our duty as good citizens of the world really, and humanitarians. I think that’s the opportunity I felt with this work, is for us to reinvestigate and rethink our ethics as a society, as communities, and safety and what we provide for our neighbors and each other, and a sense of responsibility for each other and each other’s safety. That’s what I hope that the piece leaves people with, is the importance of our connectivity as humans, as citizens together.
Margaret Fuhrer:
And I want to talk about one detail in particular that intrigued me from the little preview clips that I’ve seen, because your piece Freedom Series, which Ailey II performed last year, incorporates these very poetic, glowing orbs.
Francesca Harper:
My globes, I’m obsessed! I’m obsessed with my globes, yes.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Well, and so they made their way into this piece as well. Can you talk about that choice and the symbolism they hold in this context?
Francesca Harper:
Yes. One made it into the piece, one globe, and I think that it is probably the remnants of the Freedom Series, which during the pandemic and when I made that work, it was, the globes represented hope and the life force. And I think also it represents—the globes are turned off and her life goes out, and her life force is obliterated and sucked away from her. So I think that I just felt it was a powerful moment—and it’s even a lamp in her house or a toy that’s a pretty toy that she likes to look at. It’s just served so many purposes. This illuminating, illuminating her life and her existence is really what I thought the importance of the globe was.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Light imagery, it’s so literal and so figurative at the same time.
Francesca Harper:
Yes! Right! Yes. It can serve so many purposes. Yeah, that’s right. And I really love to leave room for the audience to interpret how they want to. But the dancers also really as collaborators, they also give me ideas, and like I said, they share their opinions and their thoughts behind the work. So some of those ideas are collaborative artistic developments as we go along in the process.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Can you share a little more specifically what that collaboration resulted in, the choices that the dancers helped make?
Francesca Harper:
Oh, yes. I mean, I think after working so many years with William Forsythe, who just gave me so much room to offer my ideas, that for me is just, it’s such a pleasure. I think we have an opportunity with every work to learn and grow with each other. And I think every artist in the room has their own biography and experiences to share and shed light for other people. So I think that really allowing that room for their offerings to be present, and especially in something like this, I learned from their offerings and almost evoked strength from their offerings. And especially with such a sensitive subject, we needed to provide safety for each other and find some answers. So I think collectively we just did our best to find some answers and some healing around this very painful case.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Speaking of collective creativity, can you talk a little about how you brought on the other members of the creative team for this project, what other artistic voices you wanted to include and why?
Francesca Harper:
Oh, yes. I had to invite people I’ve been working with for years. I think I really wanted to create a safe group for myself, people who really understand the why, and even just who understand my artistry and also my mission in inclusivity and social justice. And I’ve been working with Nona Hendryx for many years, and Carrie Mae Weems, and the three of us, we’re feminists, we’re Black women, and have created works together that have been very political and very powerful, in my opinion. I did Grace Notes with Carrie Mae Weems, and she brought in Nona. I met Nona through my work at MASS MoCA, and some work I had done with my company through Nick Cave, the visual artist who’s also—we’re going to be housed in his exhibit at the time at the Guggenheim.
So it’s just like, these are all my people I needed to surround… Actually, when I came back from Europe, these have been my consistent collaborators. And so I felt it was just imperative that I surround myself with them. My costume designer, Elias Gurrola, I’ve been working with him for over 10, 15 years now. So I really created and collected a group of people that have created a safe artistic space for me.
Margaret Fuhrer:
It’s family.
Francesca Harper:
It’s family, my dance family! Yes. And then of course the dancers, all of them are dancers that started as students and now are these incredible professional dancers. Eriko Iisaku, I’ve worked with her for over 10 years now, and Tim Stickney, and they started their collective, the FHP Collective. And then I have my Ailey II dancers who came in. So it’s, yeah, like you said, it’s true family.
Margaret Fuhrer:
I wanted to talk about Carrie Mae Weems’ photos in particular, because it looks like you actually recreate some of them very, very directly, explicitly in the piece. Why did you choose to do that?
Francesca Harper:
Oh, yes. Well, for me, the Constructing History series I thought was really pertinent to the work. And these photos are really moments that we have grieved as a nation, that she recreates these beautiful moments and tableaus. And the one that we really decided to recreate is entitled “Mourning,” with three women and the small child at the feet of the women, all in black. And that they’re providing this space for this child to experience her sadness as well and mourn. And that one for me, I said, “This is the one that really resonates.” And so that is the one we recreate, that you will see at the end that she’s missing. So I think that that one, for me—just also having Carrie’s powerful images I felt would really ground the work in an important way.
Margaret Fuhrer:
So as you’ve said, you have this deep experience with filmmaking, and then of course you have deep experience with choreographing for the stage, and this is a project that involves both. So how do the film and the live performance sort of talk to each other in The Reckoning?
Francesca Harper:
Oh, it’s so interesting that you asked that. Let me see. So it went through different permutations or different ideas, because we were in the middle of the pandemic, but then we also thought we were kind of emerging and thought we want to make a live performance. And I had reached out, I was always interested in Works & Process at the Guggenheim. I had always seen work there. And during the pandemic, I introduced myself to Duke Dang. And we really just hit it off. I mean, we had a wonderful conversation and I think a couple months had passed and he reached out again at this moment that he said, or “Do you have any projects that you’re working on?” And I said, “I actually have this project The Reckoning.” And when I shared it with him and Caroline Cronson, they just thought—I think you’ll see they’ve been creating this space for diverse voices at the Guggenheim, really focused on that lately too. So I think it was really very much in alignment to their mission right now. And so I thought, well, what an opportunity to have two performances. We have one, the film, as well as the live performance.
So they offered us rehearsal space, a residency with their new initiative Launch Pad, which is just providing, what did they say—”process without a destination.” So we went out to Bethany Arts, which was just a haven for us, cooking every night, and we would watch the case at night and have conversations over dinner. And it was really wonderful to have this incubation period that we just became, really, closer as friends and collaborators. And so the film idea developed from that as well.
And I really feel, to be honest, one of the things that’s important to me, I’ve been really contemplating and thinking about over the pandemic, is the importance of documentation, especially for voices of color, and how in our history, just because of slavery and erasure, we don’t have records. So that was also a big inspiration for me, to digitize and document this and have a record of Aiyana Jones and her life in the incident. So I think ultimately that felt really important to me.
And also then I have to say, it’s Ava DuVernay! I’m a little inspired because she’s an amazing filmmaker and I love making films. So I thought would be really wonderful also to have her input. And that has been just a gift, to have Ava and the ARRAY team give me feedback as filmmakers has just been phenomenal. I’ve learned so much and feel so fortunate.
So I thought that ultimately was important that we would really solidify this piece and this artwork and have documentation of it. And then also with the Guggenheim, we thought, okay, we’ll have a live performance as well. And maybe, who knows, maybe this can tour, maybe we can spread this message and spread the importance of Aiyana’s life and the importance of sharing this incident and this tragedy with our world, with our communities. So that was also an important consideration. Maybe this can have legs and reach many more people, not only online, but as a live performance.
Margaret Fuhrer:
You’re leading into my next question, which is one that you started to answer actually earlier in the interview. I know that art doesn’t have to “accomplish” anything, that’s never a prerequisite, but because this kind of work does encompass both art and activism, what are you hoping that the wider impact of the reckoning might be?
Francesca Harper:
For people to care about others and be more deliberate and contemplative and empathetic.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Which is the goal of most good art, actually.
Francesca Harper:
Yeah, I think with this piece, it couldn’t be clearer to me.
Margaret Fuhrer:
So the larger aim of the LEAP Project—and here, I’m going to quote from the website—is “to disrupt the code of silence that exists around police aggression and misconduct.” Why do you think dance storytelling is particularly powerful in that context?
Francesca Harper:
Oh, the embodiment. I think people can be so disassociated from their bodies and numbing themselves, whether it’s through disengaging from others and isolating from others. And I think the power of the full embodiment of these stories, I think that’s the power of dance, for people to see movement. We have movement even watching you and your gestures and your head move, and you absorb so much through our physicality. And I think really the full embodiment is what’s so powerful about the work.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Someday we’re going to have a video component to accompany these podcasts, because especially when talking to dance artists, there’s so much choreography even while talking that I hate—
Francesca Harper:
We’re so animated!
Margaret Fuhrer:
—for listeners to miss.
Francesca Harper:
Really animated. I know, I know. Yes, that’s right. But I love that. I think when I choreograph, there’s so much interesting kind of gestural vocabulary and conversations with people using their hands, or also just how much their faces can express. That’s actually I think is also the power of film, that you can capture those things. I really realized that during the pandemic, being able to get kind of, these close portraits of people is so powerful. And that also connects to the themes of this project, it being powerful and also detrimental.
I did want to say, I think one of the most amazing things about Ava DuVernay and the ARRAY Alliance and the Law Enforcement Accountability Project, it’s not only to disrupt the silence around police aggression and amplify the names of officers, but really I think her mission is to keep them accountable, which I’m hoping that this work will also share.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Mm-hmm. Well, Francesca, thank you so much for coming on again, and merde for the premiere of The Reckoning. I’m really looking forward to that. And we didn’t talk that much about Ailey II today, about this other very large hat that you wear.
Francesca Harper:
I know, I know. It’s a lot. I know. It’s wonderful.
Margaret Fuhrer:
And they’ve got big performances coming up very soon too, so merde for that as well.
Francesca Harper:
We do. We have our season in March, which is really exciting. We’re going to be at the Ailey Citigroup Theater. Yeah. And then I think also too, this is a little plug, but I think on social media, LEAP Action is something people can connect to, to see all of the wonderful work they’re doing with all of the artists that they’re commissioning right now.
Margaret Fuhrer:
We’ll get that in the show notes for sure. Yeah.
Francesca Harper:
Perfect.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Well, thank you again, Francesca, and I hope you get some sleep at some point too.
Francesca Harper:
I know, not much sleep lately! It’s okay. It’s a lot of work, but it’s important work . I’m passionate about it, inspired, and I hope that we can inspire change and progress through the work.
[pause]
Thanks again to Francesca. As promised, in the show notes, we have several links where you can learn more about the upcoming Works & Process premiere of The Reckoning, about the violence that it is responding to, and about Ava DuVernay’s LEAP project. And we also have a link with information about Ailey II’s upcoming New York season.
Thanks to all of you, as always, for listening. We’ll be back next Thursday with a new episode discussing the top dance headlines. Until then, keep learning, keep advocating, and keep dancing.