Modern dancer/choreographer Sean Currun has a powerful sense of community, which has developed throughout his substantial career.

Story by Toni Taylor
Portraits by Giulio Graziani

Starting with childhood training in Irish step dancing through his education at New York University, Curran's career ranges from being part of the critically acclaimed Bill T Jones/Arne Zane Dance Company, an early member of the long running off-Broadway show, Stomp, to the choreographer of The Dead on Broadway. From these accomplishments to the establishment of his own company, Curran has always thrived surrounded by a community of dancers. As a result of embracing this variance, Curran has excelled.

Along with his younger sister, Patricia, Curran began his performing as an Irish step dancer. His dad, John Curran, born in Kerry and raised in Cork, is Boston's 'Mr. Ireland' heading a successful import and consulting business, Curran Consulting Company. His Roscommon-bred mother, Kitty, is a fiddle player who heads up the local chapter of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann--the international federation of Irish musicians.

As a kid, Curran experienced his share of alienation from the community of his peers. Following a treacherous time at school--tolerating a series of suburban Boston middle and high schools--Curran desperately tried to not get beaten up too badly because he "was trying to be the best little boy in the world. The dancing thing was kind of a secret and I was kind of a sissy." Once out of high school, Curran left for New York, entering the community of the dance department at New York University's Tisch school for the Performing Arts. Joining a thriving theatre and dance community was a relief. Initially considering a future in musical comedy, Sean determined that he "wasn't all-american boy" enough for the market. The former Bostonian was drawn to modern dance classes along with the dance composition classes taught there. He immediately took to heart the old adage, "Today is the tomorrow I worried about yesterday" and became in his words a "New Yorker, living on the edge and loving it." Teachers Stuart Hodes, who came up through the Martha Graham Company, and Lany Rhodes, with his classical ballet background were running the Tisch dance department. Both developed techniques that build strength, agility, and flexibility in dancers which creates the effortless dancing that modern dance fans enjoy. The psychological intensity of the Graham technique, with its emphasis on contract and release, solidified the idea of movement as metaphor.

From this background, Curran developed his "real clean, simple technique" which he teaches to the dancers in his company. Solid grounding in classical techniques adds another level of rigor to training which concentrates on what the rest of the body is doing. This complex use of rhythm and shifting of weight through the feet are from his childhood training in Irish step dancing.

During this time, he also discovered the difference between the artistic scene at NYU and the commerce inherent in the Broadway tradition--the difference, as Curran says, between "sharing and showing off." He found the dance technique and composition classes at Tisch "honest and direct" in a way that allowed for a clarity of intention not available to him in the commercial world, with the emphasis on filling seats at all costs. Tisch was the first place Curran found where he could form a complete artistic thought with the sole intention of creating a profound exchange with an audience rather than the simple monetary exchange generated by the often vacuous Broadway-bound razzmatazz.

Once he completed his dance BFA, he was recruited into the acclaimed Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company as an apprentice and assistant to the due. "At the time Arne Zane was pre-AIDS, before any one was sick. Arne didn't want to perform that much any more, he wanted to administer the company, choreograph, direct.

They needed someone to step into his parts. I move like Arne did, quick, very punctuated, very percussive way of moving, and I fit the costumes. We hit it off, so I stepped in to Ame's parts, which was really an incredibly gift coming out of college."

During the years he became active in more aspects of the company, taking over Zane's parts along with most of the management duties. After a sometimes tumultuous 10 years--which included Zane's death from AIDS, the death of other company members, friends.

Upon leaving the Jones/Zane company, another community beckoned. "The casting director of Stomp called and invited me to audition. I knew, sort of, what Stomp was from being in Scotland at the Edinburgh Festival." This British import combines a percussion concert played on every type of found object and body part with battling tap dancers who use almost every kind of dance style except ballet. Stomp's performers are as much musicians as dancers. The show has been ensconced at the Orpheum in the East Village since its early days.

"That first audition, I loved it and really wanted it. It was 15 grueling call backs. Monday through Friday, three different weeks. I got cast as a swing, because I am a quick study. I was in the first American cast. I did it pretty much full time for two years and then two more years on again and off again, doing my own stuff. They were very generous about giving us time off to pursue other stuff. Stomp was so great because it was so inventive. I had to learn how to be a musician."

From being part of someone else's community of dancers--which can be stultifying after more than a decade-- Curran had the need for solitude or, at least, to set himself apart from everyone else's expectations except his own. Upon leaving the Jones/Zane company, he created a series of solos, among them Five Points of Articulation, Am I Dead Yet, and Folk Dance of the Future.

These "dances are like journal entries." Curran says, and are the basis of his own body of work. As journal entries, his pieces provide Curran, and the audience, a way to think about things by gaining and sharing perspectives on issues such as self-healing, self-revelation, rejection, acceptance, homo/heterosexuality, and life transitions. These entries have found encouraging audiences and producers at the Dance Theater Workshop and more recently Danspace Project at Saint Mark's Church where the company performed in late May.

For his foray into the Broadway community, Sean worked with actors for the first time, as he choreographed the quasi-musical of James Joyce's The Dead. The show began with a run on off-Broadway before moving to Broadway's Belasco Theatre. Unfortunately, it closed shortly after (though it had Tony Award nominations) but plans are underway to tour the production.

In The Dead, his choreographic approach was challenged by working with actors who are primarily trained to do work in service to a story. His efforts had to move the play along while still expressing his ideas. Both Stomp and The Dead, are challenging works for their genre that are supported by gutsy producers who understand that when art is a priority it can still be commercially viable. His work on The Dead left him financially poised to concentrate on the transition from performing for other organizations and doing his own solo work to gathering around him a dancer community of his own. Says the boyish-looking Curran, "I got serious, hunkered down and decided, I am going to do this." This process of "hunkering down" began in his final months with Stomp, as he sent out letters daily to presenters, promoters, and theaters asking them to present his work. He also hired a business development director and promoted one of the dancers in his company, Heather Walden (from the Boston Ballet), to rehearsal director. He began receiving annual teaching engagements at American Dance Festival, Bates Summer Dance Festival, Jacobs Pillow and innumerable colleges. Says the now 40-ish Curran, "We started to get touring and the National Dance Touring Project grant, which went through Jacob's Pillow, commissioned a piece, which is basically the 10 stops we've had this year on tour. In May, we did St. Mark's Church. We are going to have our own week at the Joyce, who will present us in June, 2001. I feel very blessed, very lucky. I have worked very hard."

While this hard work continues, he has created an interesting movement vocabulary and a community/company of dancers that work in an environment of generosity and respect.

"Irish step dancing gave me two great gifts, speed--a fleetness---and an odd musicality from listening to that very dense rich music." Certainly the effect of his Irish background was evident in the piece Six Laments, with music by Seamus Egan (of Dancing on Dangerous Ground fame), Wini Horan and paintings by Kieran McGonnell.

These gifts also show up in the movement vocabulary he creates for the company as illustrated in his recent set of pieces. The current members--Amy Brous, Eun Jung Choi, Marisa Demos, Tony Guglietti, Peter Kalivas, J.M Rebudal, Jennifer Risch, Donna Scro Gentile, Heather Waldon-Amold, and Yuji Yoda--soak it up, making these qualities their own. Curran and the troup also revel in a rhythmic complexity.

Curran incorporates lots of unison, that one suspects, comes from his child hood training. Everyone moves in a tight unison that lacks any tension. This ii unison that speaks softly and pulls one in for a closer look at the dancers' individuality, especially in the piece "Symbolic Logic." The dancers move througl the vocabulary based on the classical dance of East India. Curran's use of uni son movement allows the audience to consider what he and the dancers migh be getting at. Even if one seems to miss what the dancers are dancing about one can filter in the personal experience of moving in unison on the highway going to work, or perhaps on the dance floor. His transitions--never fudged or fumbled--show a cleanliness of detail beautifully expressed by his dancers.

Of his dancers, Curran says, "I love them so much, they are so committed ane I have such an allegiance." This love provides a space for his dancers to be con fident. There is self-indulgent, diva-esque behavior on the part of anyone in the company, no nervously darting eyes because everyone knows there are no tem per tantrums on the part of the choreographer.

The rehearsal atmosphere created by Curran allows the dancers to do amazing things while being urged to "take the trick out of the trick," to dig for the metaphor in an incredibly athletic gesture. An example is the lift at the end of the piece which could easily be an easy applause cue. However, the dancer Demos, is being sent to the heaven's as our messenger and it is her life's mission to do exactly that.

His work illustrates the dark little weirdnesses that aren't as far from the surface as one might believe. Some of those are suggested in "That Place Those People," a quartet for two men and two women (music by Lees Janacek). Then is a fair amount of gentle and not so gentle interrupting/manipulating of one dancer's movement by another.

One of his greatest joys is making the transition from being known as a dancer who performs in all of his work to a choreographer who performs ii only some of it. "I thought I would hate going out at five past eight and sitting in the last row watching people do my work. Sort of like checking out the people in the audience."

So now it isn't the act of performing it but of making dance that satisfies him "I am interested in making art to connect me with a sense of spirit, as a way o constantly trying to heal myself and make myself better. To know myself more well. In a way connect with people. Have an identification. To have people identify, see themselves in the work. We go to the theater for two reasons, te see ourselves reflected and for transformation, to leave changed."

The Sean Curran Company will perform in New York on July 7th at Central Park Summer Stage. For info contact Elsie Management at 718-638-9862 or elsieman@artswire.org.