Transferring ahead: Celia Rowlson-Corridor talks ‘SISSY’

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“I got my BFA in Dance and Choreography. I thought I would have my own dance company, and that’s what I came up to New York to do. When I was asked to choreograph a music video, it was an intro to dance on film. And quite simply, it was a love-at-first-sight moment. I just poured myself into it. But truly everything I had gained at school and in my own practice was…how to work. It was a direct transference. I’m a very visual person, and so film lends itself well to how I naturally think about things. When you’re choreographing for film, you are choreographing for a very different beast, and must understand what the camera is seeing. It was quite an easy transition, because the camera itself is like a dance partner. And to me, film is choreography. It felt like the most natural transition ever.”

Over the last decade or so, we’ve seen dance become more integrated into mainstream media via film, TV and social media. Your new work, SISSY, combines dance, theater and, at one point, also contains a film element. In some ways, this approach is the reverse of dance making its way into those disciplines in that those disciplines are now making their way into a dance performance. Was that intentional, or an organic outgrowth of your body of work thus far?

Celia Rowlson-Hall in rehearsal for ‘SISSY’ with Ida Saki. Photo by Lydia Murray.

“Once I gave birth to my son a couple years ago, I started thinking about time in a very different way and how I wanted to get really intentional. People said, ‘When are you going back to work?’ I’m not going back. I’m moving forward into something. I am a new person. I have a new life. This is all different. I want to go back to the theater, but for me, it’s forward because I haven’t done it in 20 years. For the past 20 years, when I think of something I want to make, I think of it in a film version. In my film work, I’ve always combined dancers and actors together. It’s just the perfect alchemy for me. How am I going to do it in theater? What’s fun about this is I haven’t done it yet, so I get to find out in a couple weeks when we go into the rehearsal.”

The original story of Sisyphus, in its simplest version, is of a man condemned to push a massive boulder up a hill only to have it roll down and begin the task again, forever. You’ve reimagined it from a female perspective, which feels fitting given the endless, relentless efforts women make to gain an even footing in the world. And when women become mothers, the weight of that boulder increases. How much of the show relates to you becoming a mother?

Rehearsal for Celia Rowlson-Hall’s ‘SISSY’. Photo by Lydia Murray.

“It’s literally what the show is about. I became a mother simultaneously with my father falling very sick, and I was stuck between being a new mother, trying to be an artist and trying to be the best daughter possible. I was at capacity in a way I didn’t even know was possible. The beauty is that in having my son, a new person with an incredible amount of capacity arrived. The show is about all these Sisyphean tasks of being an artist, a performer, a mother and a daughter. The only thing in our control is our approach to it (control), and this show really is taking all that on. I think that is also what’s important as a mother and as an artist, to be exploring these spaces because I didn’t really grow up seeing stories explored in this way. Really, the only thing I know is to make good work, make truthful work, and don’t forget to have fun. Because I do think joy is such a necessary element right now.”