Roberta Garrison

Choreographing to jazz music isn’t easy. The improviser must trust that moments of consonance emerge from chaos. Every Tuesday night in New York, Garrison’s Crosby Street loft became a postmodern playground. She promoted festivals and hosted informal dinners. “At that time, in the 1970s, there were jazz musicians from the west coast, Chicago, and St. Louis, all in New York, collaborating with dancers,” she recalls. Players such as David Murray, Henry Threadgill, Lester Bowie, and Dewey Redman all drifted in at one time or another. Garrison’s first piece, in 1973, united her with Jimmy and pianist Dave Burrell.

One evening, a group of Italian musicians, including trumpet player Enrico Rava and bass player Marcello Melis, appeared at the Garrison home. When Melis’s wife Nina saw the rich chaos, with music, dance, children and food, she thought a report on Garrison would be perfect for the RAI television program “L’altra domenica.” She got in touch with the New York correspondent for the show, a young woman named Isabella Rossellini, and suddenly Garrison’s scene was on Italian television. Rossellini’s then-boyfriend, who attended the taping, told Garrison, “No one does this in Italy. You should go to Italy.”

But Italy would have to wait. Her husband’s death devastated her. She didn’t dance for three months. Finally, friends dragged her back to work. “I was alive again,” she says. Then, in 1979, she was invited to participate in the second edition of Estate Romana, Rome’s summer culture festival then in its infancy.

In Rome, she worked with young saxophonist Maurizio Giammarco and singer Jay Clayton, who in turn had played with Bobby McFerrin and his Vocal Summit. The summer trio was a hit and toured several Italian cities.

Garrison’s Italian adventure had begun. “I went right to work. Everyone was interested in me. I taught workshops, classes, I had a company.” The Everyday Company was born in 1982, when one of Garrison’s dancers, whose father was in politics, helped her obtain a grant.

What it wasn’t, at first, was easy. Picture it: Garrison, nurtured by the postmodern New York scene, a widow with two young children, stuck in what was then a cultural backwater. Italy didn’t attract many out of town companies and the state-sponsored Accademia Nazionale di Danza was hardly avant-garde. “I wanted to go home every year.”

But the Roman dance community did present a seductive combination of intellectual curiosity and generous players. “I was 39 years old and I wanted to search for my own stuff, collaborations with jazz musicians,” and Italy’s jazz community, she says, was game.

As for how her Rome career developed after that, Garrison’s comments are decidedly sober. She continued to work, she says, but the novelty of her presence wore off. “I’m not Italian, so opportunities I had when I was new have since been taken away and given to Italian performers,” she says. “If you stay here, they’ll lose respect for you. That’s what happened to me.”

So why not go home? “Why should I? I’ve trained dancers here. I’m working. In New York, you had to be either young and energetic or old and rich. I’m not rich and I’m not as energetic as I used to be. And now I’m used to having things come to me.”

She started the dance program at St. Stephen’s, a respected private school. She also teaches packed evening classes at the Scuola di Danza Mimma Testa in Trastevere. Mention her name in the Rome dance community and insiders reply, “Certo! Roberta!” Few in Rome have not studied with her or with someone who trained under her. Dancer and choreographer Aurelio Gatti, who runs MDA Produzioni Danza, helps fund Garrison’s various projects. Her current one would bring together her daughter, an accomplished dancer, her son, a successful jazz electric bassist, as well as singer and stepdaughter Joy, on the same stage for the first time.

Garrison isn’t is shy about her dancing. “I have incredible stage presence, I just do. You can’t teach it…” And she won’t be reined in. “Every time I perform I wonder if I’ll prepare something or just see what comes when I get on stage.”

A bit like the story of her life.

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