IN PRACTICE: Meet Talli Jackson
by SIMA BELMAR
SB: —of course. I see those calls all the time— TJ: —so I ended up doing a gig with them. Then they offered me a scholarship to study at their school. At first I had very little idea of what a life in dance would look like. But early on the Vanavers helped my family find its way to a show by Hubbard Street. Ohad Naharin’s Minus 16 was on the program. I found what they were doing tremendously beautiful. At 14 I started working with another youth company, Susan Slotnick’s Figures- in-Flight, also in the New Paltz area. It was an exciting and maybe necessary step to go into a space that called on angst as a legiti- mate source for creative expression. I stayed with The Vanaver Caravan and Figures-in- Flight until I was almost 17. Throughout that time my family lived about an hour and a half drive from where the dance classes and rehearsals were. I don’t think my mother particularly liked driving, but I never missed a class or rehearsal because she was sick of doing it. Her devotion made my dancing possible. After attending the American Dance Fes- tival’s six-week school when I was 16, I felt like I needed to step outside of those two environments in order to go further on my particular path, so I auditioned for a fellow- ship at the Ailey School. When I got in, my parents facilitated my move and then relo- cated to the Bronx a couple of months later to support my training. I think it’s important to say that almost all of my training up to that point was given on scholarship. This is not to say that I was special or uniquely tal- ented, but that other people’s support, gen- erosity and belief was what made it possible for me to do what I’ve been able to do. SB: How was it to go from New Paltz to NYC, from one summer at ADF to the Ailey School? TJ: I was doing a lot of dance at ADF so I was prepared in some way for the amount of dancing that it was, 6 days, 15 classes a week, all ballet and Horton except for one jazz class. But the way that their fellowship program works is you get a fellowship for one semester and then you re-audition. And I didn’t get it the second time. TJ: I wouldn’t say that I was devastated but I was disoriented and very disappointed. I had worked quite diligently for that time, getting there early, staying there late, never missing a class except to go on a brief tour with the Vanavers. Afterwards Livia Vanaver connected me with a work study position at Peridance and I started taking class around the city. SB: A twist in the plot! Were you devas- tated?
I GREW UP in Brooklyn (New York, not Wisconsin; if you think the clarification is unnecessary, you’ve never been to Wiscon- sin). And this is what it was like taking dance classes in New York in the summer: Walk five blocks to subway in hazy-hot- and-humid-with-a-high-of-95 weather, wear as little as possible; board freezing train and pile on the layers hidden in dance bag; pray not to hear “We should be moving shortly”; emerge from train into Broadway- Lafayette cauldron—strip; walk a few more blocks to arrive at studio drenched in sweat; barely keep up with the warm-up, for two hours struggle among dancers way more committed and talented than you—more sweating; class ends; walk out onto sultry street to enjoy the sweat that now cools you; descend once more into the fifth circle of hell; board train—sweat turns to icicles, muscles atrophy. I loved those NYC summer classes but I didn’t have the right constitution for it long term. Dancing in the Bay Area was a better fit—cool air, for one thing, and I felt like my questions were welcome rather than signs of my inability to just shut up and dance. Then, as I began writing dance criticism here, I started to hear about the tension between the New York and Bay Area dance communities, a tension felt mostly, it seems, in the Bay. In fact, RAPT Productions’ documentary Artists in Exile: A Story of Modern Dance in San Francisco (2002) highlights “the marginaliza- tion of Bay Area artists due to the New York dance establishment.” The film does a won- derful job explaining this sentiment while honoring the contributions of Bay Area art- ists to the dance field. Earlier this year, I witnessed the tail end of a master class taught by Talli Jackson. Jack- son arrived in the Bay Area in 2018 after ten years with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Com- pany. I recognized the tall, sensual mover from his performance in Story/Time (2012) at Zellerbach Hall and was curious about how he came to be in Berkeley, and about what his fresh, newly exiled eyes see here. Sima Belmar: Give me the quick and dirty version of your life story. Talli Jackson: I was born in Liberty, NY in 1989. SB: So it will be a short story. Proceed. TJ: At 13, I was introduced to The Vanaver Caravan, a wonderful organization based in New Paltz, founded and run by Livia and Bill Vanaver, very inspired by the Denishawn company. They have a passion for bringing different cultural influences into the work they do, particularly their work with chil- dren. I had been practicing circus arts for a while, and when I saw my drum teacher walk on stilts, I built myself a pair. The Vana- ver Caravan needed a stilt-walker—
Pictured: Talli Jackson/ photo by Eric Politzer
SB: You’re still so young at this point. TJ: Yeah, 17. That year I went to the Bates Dance Festival, did a summer dance program at Steps with Heidi Latsky, and performed at the Holland Dance Festival with the Franc- esca Harper Project. When I was 18, I went back to ADF, this time in the adult program. When I went I had in my mind that this would either be the moment I’d find the dance company I would aspire to join and orient my training toward, or I’d turn my attention to college and find some other thing. SB: I’m sensing a turning point! TJ: Yes—I saw the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company for the first time, in Serenade/ The Proposition . I thought the dancers were fierce, the vocabulary was articulate, and they had more diversity in that company, racial and of body type, than any other com- pany in the festival. They were bringing together ideas, literature, beautiful speech, and powerful music, and it was everything I wanted to do. In the ADF library I found the documentary Bill Moyers did with Jones on Still/Here , and I was struck with an impres- sion of Bill T. as someone with a truly deep and living heart. I decided that was the
company, and the man, I wanted to dance for. I thought if I really focused for about two years, really got my ass in class, then maybe I’d be ready to audition for his com- pany. The next day, Janet Wong, the associate artistic director, was teaching a master class. I went in with no sense that anything was at stake—I was just going to have a good time and do my best. Afterwards she came up and asked if I would be interested in apprenticing with the company. At the beginning of 2009 I became a member of the company. SB: Whirlwind! TJ: When I was invited to join the com- pany I didn’t think I was good enough to be in it, and to a certain extent I wasn’t. I wasn’t really at the level of the other danc- ers. When Janet and Bill saw me, they were presented with a choice about whether to take this green, solid bodied, racially ambig- uous, young male dancer and try to sup- port and cultivate his development, or to let him go on his way. When they took me on it was a risk, an investment, and a generosity. I worked hard, and it wasn’t until about six years later that I felt I was starting to be able to meet the work. SB: I know you left the company in 2017. Why did you leave and what brought you here? TJ: When I left, I had been working with the company for about nine years and I wanted to push myself to grow beyond what I had established in the company and in NYC. When I was 16 I started getting involved in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and at 18 I did the Bay Area Nonviolent Com- munication leadership program and started making connections with people here. Then, through a different pathway entirely, I met a woman on the east coast, whom I eventu- ally became partners with. She was living out here. And I was hearing about SF as one of the centers of dance in the US, so when it came time to decide where I was going to go, I had my partner here, I had connections here, and there was the possibility of explor- ing the dance scene here.
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