Trajal Harrell Reclaims Dance as Shared Heritage

Trajal Harrell, a queer Black choreographer from small-town Georgia, challenges the ownership of dance history by blending postmodern dance, voguing, butoh, and hoochie-coochie shows. In 1999, he performed a slow, methodical pose to Yazoo's 'Ode to Boy' at Judson Memorial Church, a repudiation of the athletic style then popular. His 2009 work 'Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (S)' imagined vogue ballroom dancers invading the Judson scene. In 2012, 'Judson Church is Ringing in Harlem' flipped the script, imagining Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer attending a ball. Harrell studied butoh in Tokyo in 2012, leading to 'The Return of La Argentina' (2015) at Vienna's Leopold Museum, riffing on Hijikata and Ohno's collaboration. 'Caen Amour' (2016) reimagined hoochie-coochie shows from his childhood. In 2018, Tanz magazine named him 'Dancer of the Year', prompting his solo 'Dancer of the Year' (2019). His 2022 trilogy 'Porca Miseria' was presented at the Barbican, London, on 12–14 May. Harrell's work reclaims dance as a heritage open to all, using what queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz calls 'disidentification'.