Jonathan
was another one of those who encouraged Olivier to branch out on his own.
Jonathan projects a tremendous intensity in his dancing.
He’s fast and athletic and full of the joy of movement.
From the beginning Jonathan was excited to work with new and different artists. It’s challenging and difficult, he says, because you have the same work methods as the dancers you’re used to working with. And it’s a matter of style, too. “With ballet dancers, you can fall into place—we all start in the corps, where you have in common that you are all trying to be exactly together. With modern dancers, it’s more individual from the get-go, the more individual the better.”
From unfamiliar dancers, “You can learn a lot,” he says. “We watch each other.” He calls it “a great group, all so talented.” Jonathan likes the idea of what the dancers and Olivier call “the connection section,” as a metaphor. They curl and sway and wind among each other in a chain, each different and distinct, but all connected to each other.
Like some of the others, Jonathan says he wishes there was more rehearsal time. For him, there was even less of it back in June because he was going back east to teach at the Pennsylvania Youth Ballet. “It never really freaks me out, though,” he says, and I get the impression he loves the challenge of it all.
Jonathan, too, emphasizes how specific Olivier is as a choreographer—”He’s the most, or one of the most ever—to the point where I want to smack him sometime!”
But it’s also obvious, from how he takes up Olivier’s suggestions/corrections and incorporates them enthusiastically, that Jonathan rises to the bait and revels in that very precision.