Since 1974, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has been conducting a Dance Oral History Project with renowned dance professionals.  As the Oral History Archivist, I oversee this remarkable collection of over 450 voices and continue to add to it annually.  These unedited and in-depth audio interviews  capture the personalities, creative process, and relationships in the dance field that are not always evident in other forms of historical documents such as videos, programs, or articles.

During the past few years as Archivist, I'd hoped to include Rudy Perez's story in the Dance Oral History Project because of his importance as a post-modern dance artist whose experimental work expands the field of what dance is and can be.  In May of 2018, when I met his longtime dancer Sarah Swenson at the Reference Desk, it serendipitously began a process by which she helped connect me with Rudy in order to set up his oral history.  We wished to capture testimony from Rudy himself about his journey: coming of age as an artist in the Judson Dance Theater scene; presenting his unique performance works for over 15 years in NYC; and moving to Los Angeles in 1979 where he has been highly influential in the dance/performance community ever since.
 

I had the great honor to interview Rudy in his apartment this past February 5th-7th, 2019,  for a total of nearly 4 hours.  Yet interviewing Rudy was so much more than the moments in which we were sitting down recording.  In the six months leading up to Rudy’s interviews, we spoke by phone frequently and Rudy began to share his memories with me.  I combed through the Dance Division’s collection in New York which contains videos, photographs, and clippings on Rudy’s life and career - mostly while he was based in NYC.  I also visited the recently closed MoMA exhibition on Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done, where Rudy’s first piece from 1963, Take Your Alligator with You, was featured in the exhibit.  I followed these archival traces of his work to our eventual in-person meeting in early February.

Once I was in L.A., Rudy graciously opened up his home and life to me.  I observed his Sunday morning workshop class at the Westside Academy of Dance - as Rudy described it in the interview, “Structural moves dealing with energy and space and time.”  While taking in Rudy’s approach and process, I wanted to join his longtime students in following his prompts such as “fly a kite,” or “run to catch a bus,” - and then his directive, “try to find a different way that you’ve never done it before.”  As the class continued, Rudy continued to develop the sequence of prompts through new directives such as doing them in place, or using them as a warm up.  They then performed a new, in-process piece for me - an audience of one - my first time seeing Rudy’s work live.  I was struck by the honest presence of each performer and the simple but interwoven beauty of the patterns they moved through - with chairs and in the space with one another.  I was further moved when Anne Grimaldo demonstrated and taught the other students a phrase from Take Your Alligator with You.  The next day I looked through articles and watched videos in the Rudy Perez Archives at the University of Southern California’s Special Collections in order to further my understanding of Rudy’s life and works while in the LA area.

During the recording sessions, each day began with Rudy giving myself and Emma Rose Brown, the Oral History Assistant, a tour of his building.  He’d orient us to different rooms and views of his neighborhood, introducing us to neighbors that we encountered along the way.  We were immersed in his daily reality before we sat down to talk about his past.  For example, while talking in the sunny library space before our recording session one day, Rudy remarked that he’d like to title this interview, “When does a hobby become a career.”  Emma and I noticed that Rudy has a fine tuned clarity about the blurring of art and life, a sensibility that can be shocking to many of us who refuse to let this sort of blurring happen on a daily basis.

Rudy is truthful about where he is at in any given present moment - and this interview was no exception.  He shared frankly both on and off the record about his current concerns around his health and facing the end of his life.  He disclosed that he had hoped for an interview years ago, when his energy and outlook were better suited for this kind of project.  Yet he understood the enormous value of recording his story, and, as he said many times throughout the week, was making the best of the situation at hand.  He reflected on this several times during the interviews when he said, “That’s part of being a professional. You do whatever the situation asks you to do.”  The resulting conversation was a compelling opening into his current perspective at the age of 89 and what it felt like for him to look back over his life through this process.

Interviewing Rudy Perez was an unforgettable and moving experience.  I’m certain that this candid and revealing oral history will lead current and future scholars to new insights into his resonant life, personality, and artistry. 

Stay tuned!  In the upcoming year, Rudy's oral history will be processed for the Library.  The transcripts will always be publicly available at the Library for the Performing Arts in the 3rd floor research area, while the audio will be streaming through the Library’s Digital Collections pages.