(bright gentle music) - I'm Norm Silverstein, and I'm glad you're with us today, because we're in very good company with Garth Fagan.

I hardly have to say more than that, and you probably have an image of Garth Fagan or Garth Fagan Dance in your mind.

Garth is well known, not just in our community, but around the world.

His dance company is famous for its signature movements.

They've been called powerful, fluid, off balance, energetic, out of sync, and brilliant.

He's the winner of a Tony Award, an Olivier Award, an Eastman Medal, just to name a few.

Garth Fagan began his world class company right here in Rochester, and today we're so happy you can be with us, welcome.

- Glad to be here Norm, glad to be here.

- Well Garth, you're really associated with Rochester so closely, but you were born and raised in Jamaica.

What was it like growing up there, and how did you get interested in dance?

- Growing up in Jamaica was heaven.

I was from a well-off family, so we had maids and servants and yard boys to do everything.

I had one problem, and it was my dad.

When I was a kid I loved him to pieces, but once I became a teenager, he started to get very difficult with me and I couldn't play, I couldn't do anything.

And I said, "Dad, I wanna go to Norm's party."

"Well, you haven't done your homework.

Well, you haven't done," whatever chore.

As Chief Education Officer and principals of the high schools and whatever, he had to set a standard, and his son, I was under the microscope all the time.

And he used to tell me, "Garth, discipline is freedom.

Garth, discipline is freedom."

I heard that three times a day and twice after meals.

And it meant that I had to go back to study, even football practice, what you guys call soccer, discipline, that was okay with him.

But he had to know when it started and when it stopped, and I best be home when it stopped.

- And that's something that you've taken with you with your dance company.

- Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

In one of my opening numbers, "Prelude", the subtitle is "Discipline is freedom", 'cause dancers have to take classes twice a day, and stretch before every performance and really keep the human body, which is the instrument, in top shape.

So in 1973, I was possessed in taking the dance company to Jamaica, and I didn't know why.

So we didn't have any money then, but I used my dad's American Express card and charged flights for 16 dancers and hotel to go down there.

And then I got there and I called him up and I said, "Dad, I'm here with my dance company.

I'm not staying at home.

We open tomorrow night, I have a box reserved for you," 'cause a man of his prestige needed a box.

"Give me a call, to make sure you'll come."

So then he came, and he came with seven friends and relatives, and came backstage after the show.

"Oh, what a wonderful show.

If you had told me it was gonna have intellectual content and creative stamina, I never would've fought you so hard."

And my dancers are saying, "This is the man you said was so tough on you?

What a lovely man."

But the next year he died from a stroke, and he never would've seen the company if I hadn't carried them home then, and I would've been wondering to this day of my life, "Was this good enough for Daddy?

Was this good enough for Daddy?"

And thank God I did that.

- Well, there were a few stops between growing up in Jamaica and getting here to Rochester.

Can you tell us a little bit about your work in Detroit and a few other places before you came here?

And I'd like to know a little bit more about what your original plans were too, and we'll get to that.

- I went to a Ivy League school, which was Dad's preference, being an Oxford man.

And I went one semester and I said, "Oh no, this is not for me."

My mom, whom I didn't mention in the beginning, she was excellent, supportive, great cooking, nourishing mother.

I lived with her in Detroit after they had split up, and food, food, food.

All the dancers there would come over for luncheon that she threw for them, unbeknownst to me, you know.

And whence there I had a beautiful teacher, Pat Welling, who saw something in me and pushed me real hard.

And Pat helped me choreograph my first dance as a joint choreographic piece, and it was a piece called "Contemplations."

And I was so young and vulgar, that I did little Speedos to show off the body and the muscles, you know.

No music, no music in silence, which this was about '65, '64, '65, was a big scandal, you know?

And it went wild, and they applauded all the way through.

Then I got my first great review, you know?

And it came from a place of great vulgarity, you know, no place artistic.

But I since then learned my lesson thanks to Pat Welling.

She taught me a lot of things and nourished me.

Then we had Dance Theater of Detroit, and Detroit Contemporary Dance Company, and I was principal dancer and choreographer for both.

And I was bitten by Martha Graham fabulously then, and Martha was also a great teacher of mine, and had me go across the floor 13 times to do a simple unadorned walk.

And we didn't know anything about simple unadorned walk in that age, 'cause we wanted the world to know we were dancers.

And I said, "Whatever this woman wants," and she didn't show us, "I'm gonna do it."

And Irene Rains fell out from me around the 11th time, it was me alone.

And then when I finally got it, she said, (clapping) "You're gonna go places."

And I said, "Well thank you ma'am, (laughing) but what took so long?"

But it was a lesson that went deep inside of me.

Simplify, simplify.

Because we were so decorative in our dancing back then, you know, everything had a little flourishtry and a little flu-de-lou, and you know.

- Well, you studied with Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey.

- Alvin Ailey, Alvin gave me money to start the company 'cause he understood where I was going.

'Cause he said, "Garth, with all these trained dancers around, why do you wanna start with untrained dancers?"

I said, 'cause I didn't wanna have to waste the time to untrain them from what they had learned, the group thinkers and what have you.

And I wanted some of that basketball stuff on my stage.

- Now putting this original group together, you took some criticism, didn't you?

Didn't people say- - Oh, look- - You were taking the bottom of the bucket?

And you turned that into a phrase.

- Yeah, it was the bottom of the bucket, and I did BUT, B-U-T, exclamation, exclamation, exclamation, because we were using untrained dancers and going from the bottom, but watch where we were gonna go.

And we went to Buffalo.

We did our first show November 15th in Buffalo in 1970, and we took the show.

All the critics went crazy, you know?

And then we came back to Rochester to work on the company then.

Steve Humphrey was one of my original dancers, is still dancing with me, and he's 62 years old, and he looks like he's 45, abs and everything, amazing.

- So you have several dancers who have been with you a long time, and as you say, past the age that say athletes, professional athletes would perform, working just as hard and still in the company.

- Because lots of dance companies think that after you're 30, it's over.

And I love the youngsters in the company, and we need them because they're young and they're wild, and they can jump and they can turn.

Lots of energy, great.

But there's something you learn, Steve is now in his second marriage, a happy, beautiful marriage.

You know, when you've been divorced, when you've had children, there's things learn, you accumulate, you know?

Which great singers and actors share that with us.

But dance because it's so physical, they don't wanna use that.

And I said, "Hell no, I wanna see a community on stage, dancing people, human beings dancing, as opposed to dancers portraying human beings."

And it's a very subtle distinction, but it works for me.

We won five Bessie Awards, Steve, Natalie Rogers, Norwood Pennewell, who's now my assistant and a choreographer, you know, and he's up there in his 50s, you know.

So you bring knowledge to the art form, not just, you know, youth.

And we have the youth.

Don't get me wrong, I love the youth, but Steve can do a simple gesture that speaks volumes, whereas a young dancer can't get it together, 'cause they don't understand that kind of simplicity.

- And what about Garth Fagan?

Did an injury take you out of your original dream to be the dancer, and made you the founder and the patron really of this company?

- Yes because frankly, I was gonna stop in Rochester and go on to Alvin Ailey.

But I had a back injury, and I had dinner with Alvin, and Alvin said, "Garth, what you're talking about doing, how you see movement, how you see music, is something that's not in any stage any place."

- So in the early '70s you found the company, and then choreography starts hundreds- - Choreography bit me hard and I loved it.

And then I could demonstrate to them what I'm doing.

Now that, for some mysterious reason, my waist has gotten a little bigger, they're not making clothes like they used to.

So I have Norwood Pennewell, and Natalie Rogers to demonstrate for me, and they were my assistants when I did "The Lion King" in 1996, '97, you know?

And they're bright too, they're incandescently bright.

Now I love bright dancers, and this old-fashioned notion of shut up and dance, that's old news.

Dancers today are bright, 'cause they have to know the moves, they have to know the music, they have to know the space, and they have to know different timings, and which lady's coming, flying out the wings, and you better catch her, you know?

So I mean, I don't pay any attention to that.

And I've taught all over the world.

I mean, in every continent except Antarctica.

So I've seen, and I auditioned dancers for "Lion King" all over the world, you know?

So I've seen a wide array of dancers.

- Well, a lot of people of course know your association with "Lion King" and the awards you've won.

But I'm curious, how does Garth Fagan get together with Walt Disney?

- Well, that was a surprise to me.

My assistant Bit Knight called and said Walt Disney's looking for me, they want me to choreograph something for them.

And my generation, Walt Disney was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Sleeping Beauty", and I couldn't see anything.

And I had just done this serious duet where both male and female were topless in "Griot New York" with Wynton Marsalis, that when we did it in Paris, we had to stop the show, 'cause they wouldn't stop applauding.

When we did it in Vienna, they said we got applause reserved only for grand opera, you know.

So it really is a beautiful piece, if I say so myself.

But that was what my big thing was.

And I'm saying, "What am I gonna do with Disney?"

And then she said, "Well, it's for something called 'The Lion King'."

When somebody told me that I was one of three people from around the world, so I called Janet Lomax and I said, "Janet," she had young kids, they had "Lion King."

I said, "Loan me your 'Lion King'," 'cause I hadn't seen it.

So she loaned me and I saw it, and I fell madly in love.

And I said, "Yeah, I can really do this," 'cause I know the culture.

I'd been to Africa seven times when I did "Lion King."

So I knew what was there, and I knew what these animals looked like out in the wild, you know?

And I knew what it was like sitting in a little pool in Victoria Falls, and the falls and death and damnation right over there.

But it's that kind of energy that Africa is full of.

So next thing I heard, Julie Taymor had me over to her home, showed me her sketches, and they offered me the job and I said, "Call my lawyer," and they figured it out.

And it's one of the most rewarding experiences I've had, not just for the dancers in America, but in Tokyo, in Hamburg, you know, in Australia, you know, in Rio.

All over we've done "Lion King."

So I'm meeting a lot of different languages and cultures.

And I told the then head of Disney, who was a wonderful man and a big supporter of the project, I said, "See, they're all speaking in different languages.

They're singing in different languages, but they're all dancing in Fagan."

He just howled, absolutely howled, and passed the story on.

- Well your style obviously includes African influence and Caribbean, but you've been quoted as saying that you're more interested in ethnicity than race.

Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

And how did that work in "Lion King?"

- That's important to me.

Now when I see a company, I wanna see everybody, Black, white, white, pink, green on stage, dancing in a similar fashion.

So I get the language of the company, that they do this, they don't do this.

You know, whatever the shapes are they wanna do.

That's important to me, and I've achieved that with my dancers.

And my children that dance now, oh my God.

I mean, Bill Ferguson teaches them, I don't do anything with them, but they're wonderful.

And it's the only dance company still in Rochester where you see all genders.

So he's got lots of boys, and including his son, and all races, biracials, everything.

And they love each other and they compete with each other and they applaud each other, and that's the way youth should be.

So I'm very proud of that.

- How's the company evolved over these years, to get to this point?

- Hard, hard, hard work.

And I thank again, PJ and Natalie and Bill and Nikki, all my senior dancers, and Steve of course, in keeping that discipline in.

That discipline is so important.

'Cause I said, "My studio is a sacred space."

The muses, the gods, they rely there.

You know, my grandparents that loved the arts, they rely there, you know, so I don't want that disturbed with BS, you know?

Biological sciences, I mean you know, so I don't want that messed up with BS, you know, 'cause it really ruins the whole temperature.

But that's important, and rehearse it until you get it right.

There's a transition now going on with lots of our young people, because they don't play ball in the alley anymore, they don't jump rope for fun anymore, they're electronic babies.

They got these wonderful machines that they can manipulate however they want, and with those machines, you can explode, change, rearrange anything with just a touch of a button.

But dance is not like that.

And the human body has flus, you know, certain days of the month, have all kinds of things that happen to the human body, that you have to fight mentally and spiritually, compensate for it, and still do the best show you can do.

You know, and it's a hard one for them.

So it takes them longer to learn certain physical things than it used to, and we have to learn.

However, they love looking at videos of how it used to be.

But the transition that comes with how you are gonna get to that quality eludes them.

And as an educator, I have to spend some more time on that.

- Do you think that dance, whether it's modern dance or ballet, gets the respect it deserves in the arts?

- No, it's the stepchild of the arts, because it's the latest that came to the stage.

You know, we had drama and singing and all of that years before we had dance coming to the stage.

And ballet is a learned technique, and ballet idioms all mean a lotta things.

And you have miming in ballet.

And people feel that they don't know enough to really, now I'm a contemporary choreographer, and as you know, I've choreographed for New York City Ballet Dance, City of Harlem, and still have a piece outstanding for Stuttgart.

But it's important to communicate to people.

You don't have to know what everything means.

Look at it, listen to the music, see how the movement and the music interact, how they correspond with each other.

'Cause the old fashioned days of everything being on the note (groaning), you know, we don't do that, way back from Mr. B., stopped doing that, you know.

- How are you going to be able to sustain this energy, this, you know, tremendous company that you founded into the future?

Have you thought about what this company ought to be in 10 years?

- Oh, yes, yeah.

It's documented and legalized.

I don't want it to become a repertoire company.

I wanted to have my, Mertz closed down his company when he died, I don't wanna do that.

But I want the PJs and the Natalies and the Bills to have a place with organization and money so they can continue in the same style, but they'll bring new things to it.

What Bill has the kids doing already is new and wonderful.

I don't want it to stay the same, but I want a tradition of fabulous contemporary movement, good ballet shapes and formats, and African-Caribbean ease and fluidity, you know?

It's a good blend, I think, and the audiences and the critics around the world have said so.

So it's not just me tooting my own horn.

- Garth, you've talked a lot about the dancers who are important and have helped you over the years, and have made this company so tremendous.

And you mentioned your mother and your father and their influence, but today, who are the most important people in your life?

- Today, my great-grandson Zakai, because he's seven years old, and he's born on my birthday, so I have to protect him, and he's doing a great job.

But, and Bill's son, he calls me 3G, Grand Godfather Garth, that's what 3G means.

And those kids, amazing.

And his vocabulary, he throws these big words at 3G all the time, and he's gotta tell me what it means.

And I say, "Come here," and I'm become my father, oy.

But you know, and, and I still quiz him.

"Come on, what do you mean by that?"

And he takes me around my home and shows me new things and relationships that he just discovered, you know?

So the youth, the youth is the future, and we have to nourish them, but we also have to discipline them.

And that's the thing that we're losing out on.

They just been really, think everything is free, and you know, yeah.

You know, that's the problem we need to have as seniors and parents and grandparents and great grandparents.

- Well, that's wonderful.

Garth, I have a tradition of asking my guests the same three questions at the end of the show to hear people's thoughts, and I'd like to do that today, and ask you if there's one thing you could change about Rochester, what would it be?

- A little bit, a lot more involvement in the arts.

They love their sports and I love sports.

This is World Cup and I'm going to pieces, okay?

Football, soccer is my favorite sport, I have trophies from it.

But anyway, but understanding the arts some more, knowing that because you saw one play at Geva, seeing it a second time, you learn more, and a third time even more, you know?

And, or a different style of play than you usually go to.

And just because you saw my dances once, baby, you got 10 times to see.

Well, they found that out with "Lion King", from people taking kids and younger kids to "Lion King", and they'd say, "I missed that the first time."

I'd say, "Yeah, there's a lot up there that you can miss."

And listening to music, Brahms is one of my favorite classical composers.

And depending on the mood I'm in, I hear my Brahms differently.

But it always interests me and calms me down.

Jazz is my favorite music, but I'm hard on jazz musicians.

I hate four square jazz music.

You know, you gotta really have a groove.

And, but that's what I would love to see.

- Well, what do you love most about Rochester?

- I love springtime in Rochester.

I mean, coming from Jamaica where flowers bloom all year and whatever, after the winter, not as terrible as this winter was, but our normal winters, when the blossoms come out, oh my God.

I have two Japanese cherries in my front yard, tall 60-footers, and they just drizzle flowers, you know?

And all the things, and the tulips and the daffodils, you know?

My friend Deborah Lynn has a whole driveway covered in daffodils, you know?

I love that about Rochester, the beautiful spring flowers.

- Well, what's Rochester's best kept secret?

And I'm not gonna let you say Garth Fagan, because you're not a secret here.

- Right.

I guess there's some really great house parties that occur in Rochester.

The nightlife out there in the clubs is not so much, it's not New York, it's not Chicago, you know.

But I've been to some great parties in some homes in Rochester.

Really mellow, good food, and not just chips and dip, but I mean real cooked, delicious food, and lovely wines.

I'm a wino, I like wine, so I don't do the other stuff, but I know quite a few of those.

I can call on the phone and say I'm coming over.

- Okay, well, we'll be giving you a call and hoping for an invitation to one of those parties.

- Well, your wife can come anytime, but I'm not so sure about you.

Absolutely, absolutely.

- Well thank you Garth.

- Thanks a lot, Norm.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you so much.

- It's been a pleasure, and thank you for watching.

You can share this program or watch it online at wxxi.org, and we'll see you next time on "Norm & Company."

(bright gentle music) (bright flourish music)