JILL JOHNSON

JILL JOHNSON

Jill Johnson is an internationally renowned dancer, choreographer, artistic director, educator, producer, stager, movement consultant, and advisor. Her leadership in the dance field brings into service over three and a half decades of experience and a vast knowledge of diverse repertoires and methodologies to realize visionary, world-class programming, develop the next generation of artist leaders, and reimagine how the arts engage, intersect, and interact with all people. Ms. Johnson choreographs for film, television, dance, theater, opera; has danced in over 60 tours on 5 continents including A Quiet Evening of Dance; was a soloist with the National Ballet of Canada; principal dancer and researcher with William Forsythe for over three decades; stages Forsythe’s work worldwide. Director of Harvard Dance Center, Founder/AD Harvard Dance Project, and faculty, at Harvard University, 2011-2021, where she designed an innovative interdisciplinary program of study in dance and was a campus leader in DEIJ. Amongst her recent projects: LA Dance Project, Paris Opera Ballet, La Scala, Boston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Harvard Choruses, Dries Van Noten/Louvre Museum, V (Eve Ensler), American Repertory Theater, PBS’s Poetry in America, Sadler’s Wells Theater, and Equity Based Dialogue for Inclusion (EBDI).

JILL JOHNSON

Digital technology allows us to communicate and use imagination in all kinds of ways, but I do think it has created a barrier for just simple interactions. I think it has sped everything up because we can access things so quickly...I think that has sort of an isolation which then compels this kind of commercial sublimation of isolation, loneliness, and human. Keeping people interested in dance is exposing folks, no matter how big or small an audience, to the different ways of seeing.How can you place a value on solace, joy, or tenderness and vulnerability. I think that is what differentiates dance from any other art. I mean it is special in itself. It is your body language and it is really an inner expression as well.I learn on a daily basis. It is a constant grueling process and that is what is so incredible about the arts is that you never stop learning.

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Describing Forsythe’s Choreography for Step Text:

I had never seen anything like it and I thought, “this is possible?”...The articulation, the structures, the musicality, and the curtain coming in and out was just radical and amazing.I just wanted to be a part of it.If you remain curious just about anything as an artist, you can make it compelling...it reminds me of what a beautiful visual artist, Jack Whitten, talks about. He said that when people ask him what art is about, he says it’s giving structure to feelings. Also this notion that we can give meaning to something without it being a singular narrative. Something can have an individualized meaning. If it is meaningful in the conveyance of the dancer, everyone seeing that dancer or the group of dancers performing will receive something different that resonates with them in their life.

Dance articulates the ideas for which there are no words. So you know it can be what it is for you as a member of the public or an audience member or whatever it is for you in that moment. And you know it could be different tomorrow...“dance is an analog practice. So I think there is a certain cachet about that. It is tricky for people that are less familiar with dance. It requires a lot of time to practice over and over and the repetition is essential for finding that meaning. To find the efficiency of the execution of the step, but then what is it imbued with and how are you doing it.

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Well, I think dance chose me. I’ve always felt that it was a vocation and a calling...pulling me in that direction. I think that I’ve been lucky enough that I just always knew I wanted to do it. And in fact, I don’t think I even knew that it was dance, it was just who I was, to move in the world and move to music.

I had never seen anything like Forsythe’s Choreography for Step Text, and I thought, “This is possible?”...The articulation, the structures, the musicality, and the curtain coming in and out was just radical and amazing. I just wanted to be a part of it. If you remain curious just about anything as an artist, you can make it compelling...it reminds me of what a beautiful visual artist, Jack Whitten, talks about. He said that when people ask me (him) what art is about, I (he) say its giving structure to feelings. Also this notion that we can give meaning to something without it being a singular narrative. Something can have an individualized meaning. If it is meaningful in the conveyance of the dancer, everyone seeing that dancer or the group of dancers performing will receive something different that resonates with them in their life.

This interview was conducted by Caroline Dougherty & Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Hannah Steincamp. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

It's about, can you handle the complexity of these things and, with American Indians, it's overwhelming, for the American public, this terrible tragedy and seeing Indians as part of the 21st century. Seeing Indians who are engineers or contemporary artists at Biennales is hard for people becaue they're always thinking about (not always, but) many of the kind of people who go to our museum. They're coming from a place of guilt and also not knowing how to process things. And so to always see Indians as of the past, which is sort of what happens. We're only Indian as much as we're like our ancestors, is something the museum has always been trying to challenge. And, you know, it's difficult. This is not a good time for complexity and nuance. We're trying to flip the script from the idea of just tragedy, this terrible past, to say, American Indians are part of the 21st century doing all kinds of interesting things. And the connections between American Indians and the United States are profound and deep, and it's not simply an issue of us being victims and the U.S. being the opressor. It's much more complicated than that.

–PAUL CHAAT SMITH · ASSOCIATE CURATOR
SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process

I actually assumed in graduate school that I would become a teacher and I've taught in a number of different universities, but it was working with art objects and seeing them in museums like the Metropolitan Museum or The Frick that made me want to go into museum work and ultimately become a curator. So when I was finishing my dissertation and had to think about a career, I applied to a lot of teaching jobs and there was one job that year in America in my specialized field, which was European sculpture, and I was very lucky. But a professional career is a bit of luck as well as predisposition, so I knew I wanted to work in museums, and I was lucky enough when
I was able to find my way here.

–IAN WARDROPPER · DIRECTOR
THE FRICK COLLECTION
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process

I think there are certainly social aspects to this because, you know, whether painting a landscape or doing a conceptual piece or large sculpture, I think artists, who are all involved in this creative process, I always say they are almost like bellwethers. They pick up on trends, pick up on anxieties, pick up on things in the world almost before the rest of us do. And artists get up, eat their cornflakes, go to work. They really do. And it's this creative process, which as Chuck Close once debunked and said, "Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us get up and work." It's not always inspiration, but another great quote of his is that he always, anytime he sees a lot of painting like going to a museum, he's always astonished by the transcendent moment when you realize that this is just colored dirt and pigment laid on the surface with what's arguably just a stick. There's such a metaphysical moment when these images are created on a surface. In three dimension, if you're talking about something that has reference in the natural world. In three dimension on a flat surface, it's kind of a head-scratcher to start. So great art has a transcendent moment.

–ALICIA LONGWELL · CHIEF CURATOR
PARRISH ART MUSEUM
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process

I think that contact with ancient civilizations is very important because we get to have in our life a third dimension. If we live only in the present, we don't understand what happened many thousand years ago. We don't realize what the development of humanity really is. I think it's very helpful to know history. I don't believe that history can teach for the future, but history can give us another dimension, can make us wiser with more abilities to judge our present. Sometimes we think that we invented everything, but this is not true. The history of human thinking is very important, is very useful for us to know different thinking of other people. At the end of the day, multicultural civilization is also very helpful today. I know, for myself, for example, I concentrate on antiquity, but sometimes I work on other civilizations. Some months ago I organized an exhibition on a very famous Chinese emperor – Qianlong (1711-99). And through this opportunity, I studied a little about Chinese culture, and I found very exciting things. And I can compare these things with our Western civilization. All this is very fruitful because we open our eyes, and we are not going on only one track. There are different approaches in life and different interpretations of the world and of societies.

–DIMITRIOS PANDERMALIS · DIRECTOR
ACROPOLIS MUSEUM
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process

The whole thing is to get them to feel like no matter where their background is from, the difficulty they have in their personal lives, the isolation that they feel in relationship to that, that within the art community they are embraced, they are welcomed. All they have to do is just keep getting better at it, but the community is there. I think that something we're all looking for is where we belong.

–ERIC FISCHL
ARTIST
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process

When I first started acting, I came to Los Angeles for a one week job. I was with my dad and we went to a production of a play called Fences. And James Earl Jones was the star. And I remember I was just the whitest kid ever from small town New Mexico. I'm sitting there watching this play about a lower middle-class African American man in Pittsburg and his family. And I just remember being so moved, moved to tears at thirteen, fourteen years old about a world that I really knew nothing about. Not even from school, even, but certainly not this feeling empathy for this specific man and wife, and she was peeling potatoes on a rocking chair and monologing ire at his character. And it was so moving. I did think, even back then I recognized the impact that the theater can have on someone that isn't even anything like what they're like.

–NEIL PATRICK HARRIS
ACTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER, MAGICIAN & SINGER
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process

Creativity is perhaps the ultimate mystery. I veer wildly between opposing views on it and have different feelings depending on whether the creator is isolated or a collaborator. Gropius said the artist is an exalted craftsman. “In rare moments of inspiration, moments beyond the control of his will, the grace of Heaven may cause his work to blossom into art, but proficiency in his craft is essential to every artist. Therein lies the source of creative imagination." And Steve Sondheim said, "Art is craft, not inspiration." And Rilke mistrusted any artist's knowing participation in his own creative process.

–TONY WALTON
ART & THEATER DIRECTOR · COSTUME DESIGNER
Excerpt of an interview for The Creative Process