Dance
Meet Chris Emile: The movement artist pushing the boundaries of dance
"The industry is a little bit more accepting of different types of dancers, and styles, rather than just one thing."
The short film for “Amend,” choreographer and curator Chris Emile’s latest work, opens with an evocative montage of a young Black boy running through different rooms in a house, moving through haunting static and snippets of recorded interviews with social workers. The scene ends on a poignant quote: “A student was talking about how that was the first time in their life that they weren’t afraid that they could potentially die.”
Presented both as a short film and series of live performances, “Amend” follows the life of one man from childhood to middle age. Set against a backdrop of archival material around government policies like welfare, redlining, and the L.A. riots of the ‘60s and ‘90s, the project offers a deeply intense exploration of Black masculinity—especially in Los Angeles.
Born and raised in L.A., “Amend” feels only right as Emile’s first solo exhibition. For years, Emile performed with companies like Complexions and Alonzo King LINES Ballet before coming back to L.A. in 2014 to co-found NoOne. Art House—a collective dedicated to creating movement-based experiences in unconventional spaces—with three fellow dancers from L.A. Now, he’s choreographed for artists like Solange, Kelela, and Anderson.Paak and frequently teaches throughout Southern California.
This September, “Amend” reopened to a limited audience after shutting down amid COVID-19 public gathering restrictions in March. But after months of protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement worldwide, the show couldn’t have returned at a more crucial time. Read our interview with Emile below.
Red Bull: How did you first get into dance?
Chris Emile: My mom used to put me in a bunch of things when I was young, I feel like just to figure out which one would stick. She would take me to sports—which I hated—and then she'd take me to a lot of shows like theater, puppet shows. But she took me to one show at the Crenshaw mall where a company called Lula Washington Dance Theater performed, and they do a lot of African and modern dance. This man did a solo and I was like, that's what I want to do.
I also used to be obsessed with Michael Jackson when I was young and would copy him in music videos. So yeah, once I saw [dance] live, I just kind of knew that was what it was for me.
Chris Emile
© Marissa Mooney
What was it like growing up in the L.A. dance community?
It was really cool. I started dancing with Lula Washington, who’s a pioneer in Black dance in Los Angeles. It was really amazing because a lot of L.A. is known for the commercial industry, obviously, and Lula was kind of the opposite of that, so I was never really immersed in that world until much later. I got a very East-coast-focused dance perspective [in my training] which is like concert dance. It’s all about process: You spend time working on your technique, really developing the intention behind movement and what it means rather than being all about the performance and showing out and being virtuosic.
It was really amazing to have that sensibility around dance from a young age, because a lot of people never experienced that and only think about it as an entertainment industry, which it isn’t for me.
Back then, the L.A. dance community did feel very homogenous and competition-centric. Do you feel like it’s changed from then until now?
For sure. I mean, once I got a little bit older, Debbie Allen opened up her school. I started going there, and that's where I started to learn about the industry a little bit more. But I was still surrounded by a lot of Black people because, you know, she's Black. It wasn't until I started going to ballet schools—when I knew specifically what type of dance I wanted to do—that I started to be around a lot of white people.
In the last 10 years, dance in L.A. has grown so much. For a long time, it was just a few very small modern dance companies. Now there's a lot more contemporary dance companies here. And even in the commercial dance industry, they're starting to merge concert dance and its aesthetic into the commercial world. So a lot more concert dance choreographers are working in the industry, which I think is really cool because it’s different for that world. So yeah, I think [the L.A. dance scene] opened up a bit more. People can find themselves a little bit more. The industry is a little bit more accepting of different types of dancers, and styles, rather than just one thing.
As a choreographer, where do you draw inspiration from most?
In my own work, life. My life. Black life. The work that I just made [“Amend”] was an investigation into Black male identity within the scope of how the government and society sees Black men. I did a lot of research around the governmental policies that have been put in place to keep Black men down and the Black family separated. I’ve been doing a lot of work in that realm and being a bit more socially conscious.
You know, I feel like dance is so niche already, and people don't really understand a lot of dance when they see it. So just trying to give it more context and also speak out about issues that are going on. It’s really important to me for people to physically engage with the work because I feel like that's another big reason why dance is so misunderstood. It's a very insular world—you come to a space. You sit down for an hour, two hours, and you kind of leave. If you don't know anything about dance, you're not really invested. It's just like OK, what did I just watch for 2 hours?
A lot of my work I’ll do in museums or an unconventional space for dance where people can be immersive, move around the performance, or watch from different vantage points and there's no real separation between performer and audience.
That approach really shifts the mental model of how audiences interact with dance as a craft. What inspired you to do that?
I used to dance for companies, and it was always that same thing of performing in these [theater-like] places and my friends who weren't really in [dance] would be like, ‘I didn't really get it.’ And I'd be like, ‘Yeah I get that.’ Also, a lot of companies I danced for ended up closing because the board didn't want to give money to them anymore.
There was an evident non-funding of dance, and I was like, if we don't change the way that people engage with this, how can we expect them to keep wanting to fund us if they don't get it? The more that I spoke to artists outside of dance, [the more] I realized how insular dance and dance-making is. I didn’t want to continue that, so that's why I started doing stuff outside of the theater.
Do you feel like people are able to resonate with the work more fully because of the spatial setting?
For sure. People are invested. First, a lot of it is standing, so [audience members] are physically active in the work. And because I'm thinking of how [the audience is] going to look at it—I know that's another big thing with dance creators. They don't care about the audience. They're just like, ‘This is my work. This is what I want to do for myself and what I want to put out there.’ But for me, it's really important that [the audience] understands what's going on in some way.
If they can't understand the dance portion, I'll give them a fashion element—I love to collaborate with different designers. If they don't associate with that, then I can give them an architectural element for people. If they're not into that, I can give them a really bomb sound score. Just something so they can tap in and be like, ‘Oh this part really intrigued me, but I really got to enjoy that even more by learning something new about this part over here.’ Offering a different vantage point into dance is important, I think, rather than focusing on what we do as dancers everyday in the studio which, again, is super niche and insular.
It’s really about curating a whole experience, like what you did with “Amend.” What was your process around creating the piece?
Well, I had been thinking about this project for a while. I started pitching it to different places, but then U.S.C. actually reached out to me and asked me to propose something to do on their campus. They were like, ‘We want to bring attention to our digital archives so if something sparks you, just pitch us.’ And I was able to go further into my idea with their resources.
Back in March, “Amend” already focused on breaking the monolith of Black masculinity. But between March and September, America went through an intense social reckoning around the Black Lives Matter movement. Was there a change in how you approached the work when you re-opened in September?
It's a hard question because it was just so crazy that [the last few months] happened. Because I was already doing this work and research and was very keen on using elements from archival footage from the riots in the ‘90s. So to have those riots happen again during these times—and for people to finally understand that racism exists [Laughs]—it was just really crazy.
It made me really appreciative to have the show open up again, and to have another vantage point of like, oh, this is actually happening now. It made me thankful that I had made the show already and happened to be on that wave; people can just have a better understanding of it.
It was your first solo exhibition—was it different from when you create work for No One Art House?
Yeah it was. Another thing about dance is that it's so ephemeral. Once it happens, that's it. It's over. There's no residue, no artifact that you can keep with you to commemorate this moment. So it was really special to me to have something that people could keep coming back to over the course of two months. I was also able to do a collaboration with the brand Vince. and make some t-shirts. And I made the film. So I was able to give the work a longer life than a typical dance performance, where you spend months working on this thing, it happens in one night, and then it's over forever, you know?
What inspired you to shift from performing to starting NOAH back in 2014?
I always wanted to make my own work. I knew that from a very young age. I wanted to dance, liked to dance, and wanted to learn more from choreographers and other creators. But once I started dancing for these companies that started to close out of nowhere, I was like OK, I need to invest in myself and stop waiting for an opportunity for someone else to give me.
It's also kind of a scary jump because the whole mindset in dance is to follow the leader. There are exponentially more dancers than there are choreographers and directors because they do that for a reason. They want you to do what you're told. I feel like it's a big jump from being told what to do to just being like, OK, I know what i want and I'm going to start doing it.
The company also seemed to be founded very intentionally, with its community values at the forefront.
I started NOAH with three other collaborators of mine. We were all from L.A. but had left and come back to realize that the L.A. community was a bit small. There were no Black people doing the type of work that we enjoy doing. All of the people we saw doing the type of work we were interested in were white. And we wanted to change that because specifically for me, when I was dancing, I was usually the only Black person—or one of the only Black people in the company. [Having Black representation] shows other people that want to do what you do that it can exist.
If I wanted to join a dance company, I would always go research that company and first see if there's any Black people there. If there weren't, it's like are they gonna like someone like me? Would they even consider someone like me? You don't even think that you can do it because you don't see anyone that looks like you doing this, even though you know you can.