Revisiting Invisible Labor
An Interview with Thomas Choinacky
BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT
Thomas Choinacky (they/them & he/him) is a queer interdisciplinary artist who creates avant-garde performance in Philadelphia. Here, they discuss their upcoming piece, Forehand Down the Line, which highlights the agility, absurdity, and queer movement of ball people in tennis. They share their interest in invisible labor, how it relates to queer identity, and how the pandemic reshaped their choreography.
All photos by Thomas Choinacky.
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Can you tell me a little about your dance history – what kinds of performance practices and in what contexts have shaped who you are today?
My dance history is steeped in living and growing up in Philadelphia and the artists in Philly. I originally came from theater and moved into dance after undergrad. Artists like Headlong Dance Theater, Annie Wilson, and Meg Foley have steeped me in contemporary movement practices, primarily improvisation and building movement scores to tell stories that are body-based. My early works were about my body in relation to space and architecture. I built movement scores that, in my own understanding of myself as a queer person in space, used dance to think about my identity.
How would you generally describe your work to someone unfamiliar with it?
I’m studying vulnerability, using movement to expel my demons and tell personal stories that for years felt invaluable or dangerous to share. Human nature often cultivates keeping secrets and I have kept many in my life. Right now, and what speaks to my upcoming piece, is the importance of play and joy within storytelling and the body. I take dramaturgical research as well as autobiographical experiences and secrets, and build movement scores and stories.
Can you tell me about your upcoming performance, Forehand Down the Line, and how the piece came about?
The piece came about from me thinking about both the visibility and invisibility of queer identity. Culturally, it’s something that is completely visible in some ways and also erased by mainstream culture. In that reflection, I was thinking about jobs that are visible and invisible. I am a tennis player, and I was watching professional tennis matches and seeing the ball people on the sidelines, the people who chase down the ball between points. They are completely visible – anyone can see them – but to be good at the job is to be invisible.
I took that as a prompt and was really focused on the limited gesture vocabulary of the ball people as the core to telling their story. What does it mean for them to be the only story? How can they break out of their role of being responsive to others, and how does the movement change when agency is granted? Visually, I am following a strict movement vocabulary. The ball people role is nonhierarchical and collaborative. What happens if they use those tools to get out of the requirements of their labor and break out of their limited gesture vocabulary?
How have you continued to work on this piece since it was postponed due to the pandemic? Did your work process change between now and then?
The piece was two weeks from opening when the pandemic started. It was a long period of me processing this piece that I had worked so hard to make. I also wondered: What’s relevant anymore, especially when the whole world and our understanding of bodies and space is changing? I did lots of writing at that time.
As live performance started to return, I wondered if Forehand Down the Line was worth making anymore. It felt like a ghost story, a show that was made yet was only in my head and I had no product. I realized it felt relevant to tell that story, because having nothing to show felt like another erasure of this piece that was about visibility.
My writing and going back into the studio involved reflecting on what visibility means now for this story.
You mentioned that the show is both much the same and completely different. How so?
It’s the same in that the core of where it begins are these strict seven gestures that the ball people complete. That’s still the heart of the piece. This movement is what would be familiar to someone who knows tennis and also is the core of where the dancers begin the piece. What’s changed is the stretching of the world. Some of that is from the pandemic – I was really depressed for the first two years of the pandemic: What is the point of being an artist if I can’t bring people together? I realized that my point as an artist is exactly that: to bring people together. When I do, what do I want them to experience? I want them to feel joy and pleasure that is personal and social. Using the ball people’s movement that ultimately shifts away from labor and toward a structure that centers themselves in play and joy is an exciting invitation to gather audiences together.
You’ve described the movement of the ball people as queer. How so, and how does your own queer identity inform that understanding?
Most of the team working on this project identifies as queer, nonbinary, and trans. Ultimately it comes to the performers who are visible. We sit down and watch them dance. The piece has specific ball people gestures that are on the bodies of the dancers. As the piece goes on, they are no longer required to be the fastest or most precise. It’s queer – on the fringe, not precise, on a spectrum. To build a visibility that does not necessitate a clear box is delightfully played with in this dance. We’re moving away from what you should expect.
One thing I’m really processing in this show is the idea of agency within the piece. As the creator of the piece, it’s the first piece I’m not performing in. I am the creator but then I hand it off to the performers, and it’s not my body telling a story anymore but the performers’ bodies. It excites me to see the variety of queerness explored through each of their minds and how it gets transformed, changed, muddled, and messy, but still following the score in each’s own way. They are the agents of the story. The movement is ultimately told through their experience. Identity can’t be erased in movement. That’s very exciting to me.
What do you hope audiences take away?
In a simplistic place, I think about the joy of movement and dance. By centering tennis, this sport that often ignores the movement and dance that is quite visible, I’m excited for audiences to have their perspectives changed in some way. This might initiate going to another public event and seeing dance in it – whether it’s a sport or someone walking down the street.
As I mentioned about the value of gathering, there’s something about going into a theater and laughing with other people. There’s value in live performance and the pleasure and joy you can get out of that collective action.
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To learn more, visit thomaschoinacky.com.