Does one really have to forego a career in dance if he is neither graceful nor quick on his feet?
Not a chance.
Just ask Jacques Heim, the physically uncoordinated, although brilliant, artistic director of the Diavolo dance company. Through Heim’s unique vision, the troupe celebrates life in motion and illustrates how people interact with their environments. By blending modern dance, ballet and acrobatics, Heim creates provocative scenes about faith, struggle and survival and sets them against surrealistic backdrops; not bad for someone who claims that he can’t dance.
Heim’s 15-year-old, Los Angeles-based company is scheduled to take the stage of the Walt Whitman Theatre as part of Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts’ season on Jan. 20. The Brooklyn engagement offers a rare opportunity to see the award-winning company perform, and is the only Big Apple stop on their 2006-2007 globe-spanning tour that includes dates inSouth Korea and Italy. The troupe is expected to perform four pieces from its innovative repertoire – “Knockturne,” “Trajectoire,” “D2R-A” and “D2R-B.”
“It’s a little bit unusual the way [I came to this career],” Heim told GO Brooklyn this week. “I am a non-dancer. I am probably the most inflexible artistic director that you will ever meet … When I left Paris in 1983, I wanted to go into the theater, but because my English was so bad, my friend told me, ‘Take some dance classes, you won’t have to speak.’ That was the beginning of my discovery of movement.”
About that same time, Heim says he was considering a career in architecture. Instead of going that route, however, he decided to find a way to merge his two passions.
“I love structure and I love environment,” he explained. “When I graduated in 1991 from the California Institute of the Arts [with an MFA in Choreography], the natural progression was to start a dance company. I knew I wasn’t going to be an architect, but I thought movement is a little bit like architecture.”
Given Diavolo’s success over the past decade and a half — the troupe has earned three Lester Horton Awards, and was named Best of the Fest by the London Independent in 1995 at the Edinburgh Festival — it’s no wonder the company’s founder seems to harbor no regrets he was not born to perform on stage.
“The advantage is I have no rules!” declared the man who was recognized in 1997 by the Los Angeles Times as one of “36 Faces to Watch.” “So, any time I start a piece, I say to myself: ‘I don’t know how to choreograph. I don’t know anything about dance.’ That’s my blank page.”
A disadvantage to not being a trained dancer, however, is that Heim frequently needs to bring one with him to demonstrate for other companies or show bookers certain moves he can’t do himself.
“I use other dancers to say, ‘Imagine this was my body,’” he noted. “So far, it’s been working OK.”
Emphasizing he cares more about how audiences react than what critics say, Heim says he thinks a lot of ticket holders turn up for shows out of curiosity. Audiences are intrigued by the promise of extraordinary physical feats as well as the inventive use of ordinary doors, pipes, obstacle courses and stairways.
“Sometimes, audiences expect a circus and it is absolutely not a circus whatsoever! There is some acrobatic movement, but that is it,” Heim clarified. “It is not really traditional dance … it’s a fusion of different things.”
Heim says he is excited the troupe will be making its Brooklyn debut later this month, and insists that — even though he has not yet seen the space where his dancers will perform — he is sure his production team can easily adapt the show’s sets and enormous props to fit the Whitman Theatre’s stage.
“We have a great production manager…he tells me the space and then we sort of finalize where we put a structure and where we are going to shift things. We work with what we have,” he assured. “Nobody is a diva here; nobody says, ‘This stage is too small!’ We try to find a way. Sometimes we see a little structure that is sort of coming out of the wings and we put a black curtain over it. You know, if it distracts the audience, then there is something wrong with our work.”
The French immigrant says he hopes his company is making dance more accessible to contemporary American audiences, folks who, in Heim’s estimation, are not always thrilled to catch a traditional dance recital.
“Dance sometimes can scare people away, and so I want the audience who is not used to going to see dance to actually appreciate that this is [different].
“There are scenes in our pieces, but there is no narrative process. Audiences use their imagination because, in a way, what we do on stage is like a live, abstract painting.”
Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts presents Diavolo at 8 pm on Jan. 20 at the Walt Whitman Theatre, on the campus of Brooklyn College, one block from the junction of Flatbush and Nostrand avenues in Midwood. Tickets are $15–$25. For more information, call (718) 951-4500 or visit their Web site at www.brooklyncenteronline.org.
