Ishmael Houston-Jones facts for kids
Ishmael Houston-Jones (born 1951) is a talented choreographer, performer, teacher, and writer. He is well-known for his unique dance and language work that often involves improvisation. His performances have been seen in many places, including New York City, across the United States, and in countries like Europe, Canada, Australia, and Latin America.
Ishmael Houston-Jones has won several awards for his work. In 1984, he and Fred Holland received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for their piece Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders. He won another Bessie Award in 2011 with writer Dennis Cooper and composer Chris Cochrane for their 2010 show THEM. This show was first performed in 1985 as part of a special benefit event in New York. THEM has been performed in many famous venues around the world, including Performance Space 122 (PS 122) in New York, the American Realness Festival, and places in Utrecht, Berlin, Los Angeles, and Paris.
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About Ishmael Houston-Jones
Early Life and Dance
Ishmael Houston-Jones was born Charles Houston Jones in 1951 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was an only child. He first started dancing at age 16 when he was in high school. He took free jazz dance classes offered by the Harrisburg Community Theater because he was already interested in school plays. This was his first time performing dance.
In 1969, he went to Gannon College (now Gannon University) to study English and Drama. He didn't find any dance classes there, and after two years, he decided to take a break from school. He traveled to Israel and stayed there for a year. For nine months, he worked on a pig farm at Kibbutz Lahav in the Negev Desert. Then, he spent three months working on a banana farm at Kibbutz Adamit in the Galilee region.
While in Israel, he took one dance class from an African-American choreographer named Gene Hill Sagan. It was around this time that he started using "Ishmael" as his first name and combined his parents' last names with a hyphen, becoming Ishmael Houston-Jones. He never legally changed his name.
Moving to Philadelphia
After his time in Israel, Ishmael Houston-Jones returned to the United States in 1972 and moved to Philadelphia. He took dance classes at Temple University and later joined a dance company called Group Motion Media Theater, where he danced for two years.
He then began studying and performing improvisation with Terry Fox and musician Jeff Cain. He also studied with other teachers and learned Contact Improvisation. During this time, he became good friends with artist Fred Holland, whom he met through the Painted Bride Art Center. Ishmael Houston-Jones and Terry Fox were Fred Holland's first dance teachers. Fred Holland later created his own award-winning dance works, sometimes working with Ishmael.
Ishmael Houston-Jones started creating his own dance pieces in 1976. He formed a performance group called Two Men Dancing with Michael Biello and Dan Martin. This group created four full-length shows, including What We're Made Of in 1980. He moved to New York City on Thanksgiving Day in 1979, after living in Philadelphia for seven years.
Life in New York City
Ishmael Houston-Jones arrived in the East Village, Manhattan in early 1980. He performed Contact Improvisation at Danspace Project. The East Village was a lively place then, full of punk music, new wave styles, and a mix of young, creative people involved in modern dance and experimental theater. Ishmael Houston-Jones, like many dancers, was inspired by the club scene, break dancing, graffiti, and rap music.
He often went to clubs like 8 BC, Limbo Lounge, and the Pyramid Club to see and perform shows. There was a lot of excitement about new performances at places like PS 122, The Kitchen, and Danspace Project. He performed at most of these venues. It was during this time that he first heard writer Dennis Cooper read and knew he wanted to work with him.
In the early 1980s, Ishmael Houston-Jones also traveled to Nicaragua twice. In 1983, he was part of a North American group at a theater festival. The next year, 1984, he returned on his own. He taught contact improvisation to soldiers at the University of Central America in Managua. Students would come to class in their uniforms, change into dance clothes, and prop their rifles against the wall. These experiences, along with other events, influenced his work, leading to pieces like f/i/s/s/i/o/n/i/n/g, Radio Managua, and THEM. He also worked with musicians from the punk and club scenes, especially Chris Cochrane.
Professional Dance Work
Ishmael Houston-Jones has created many important dance pieces. These include 13 Love Songs: dot dot dot, which he made with Emily Wexler and premiered in 2014. He also created No Where /Now Here for Mordine and Company in Chicago in 2001 and Specimens for Headlong Dance Theater in Philadelphia in 1998. In 1997, he was the choreographer for Nayland Blake's Hare Follies at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
From 1995 to 2000, Ishmael Houston-Jones was part of an improvisation trio called Unsafe / Unsuited with Keith Hennessy and Patrick Scully. In 1990, he and Dennis Cooper presented The Undead. In 1989, he worked with filmmaker Julie Dash on the video Relatives, which featured his mother, Pauline H. Jones. This video was shown on the PBS series Alive From Off-Center (Alive TV). He has also worked with many composers like King Britt and Chris Cochrane, and was a longtime collaborator with Blondell Cummings.
Besides his own choreography, Ishmael Houston-Jones has performed in works by other artists such as John Bernd, Ping Chong, and Yvonne Meier. He even had a small role as a dancer in the 1984 film The Brother from Another Planet by John Sayles.
Recent Work
In the early 2000s, Ishmael Houston-Jones decided to stop creating new dance pieces for a while. He felt he didn't have anything new to say and didn't want to create work just for the sake of it. He continued to perform in other people's shows and focused on teaching and writing. He also served on the boards of several dance organizations.
Then, in 2009, after eight years, he started making professional dance pieces again. He created The Myth and Trials of Calamity Jane and the Son of the Queen of the Amazons with Ashley Anderson, and This Ring of Fire with Daniel Safer. Also in 2009, he was asked to bring back three of his older works from the 1980s: What We're Made Of (1980), DEAD (1981), and THEM (1986). All three were performed again in 2010. The updated version of THEM has since toured to Europe and Los Angeles. His most recent piece, 13 Love Songs: dot dot dot, with Emily Wexler, premiered in 2014 and toured to the American Dance Festival.
Curating Dance Events
Ishmael Houston-Jones is also known for organizing and planning dance events, which is called curating. He was the main curator for PLATFORM 2012: Parallels at Danspace Project in New York. This event celebrated the 30th anniversary of an earlier series he curated in 1982.
PLATFORM 2012: Parallels was a two-month-long event that explored the connections between African-American choreographers and postmodern dance. Ishmael Houston-Jones organized eight weeks of performances, discussions, video screenings, and special events. It featured a wide range of experimental dance artists from African, Caribbean, and African-American backgrounds. Some artists who participated in both the 1982 and 2012 events included Blondell Cummings, Fred Holland, Ralph Lemon, Bebe Miller, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.
To highlight the next generation of Black dance makers, Ishmael Houston-Jones also featured works by artists like Will Rawls, Kyle Abraham, and Nora Chipaumire, along with about 30 other artists. The Platform event ended with a 12-hour marathon curated by Ralph Lemon, where 12 artists of color interacted with sculptures created by artist Nari Ward.
In 1999, Ishmael Houston-Jones and Yvonne Meier curated a festival of New Swiss Dance at the Swiss Institute New York. Ishmael Houston-Jones also curates the DraftWork series at Danspace Project, which showcases works-in-progress.
Teaching Dance
Ishmael Houston-Jones has taught dance at many colleges and universities as a guest or adjunct professor. Some of these include:
- Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts
- New York University (Tisch School of the Arts)
- University of the Arts (Philadelphia)
- Sarah Lawrence College
- Hollins University (Virginia)
- Bennington College (Vermont)
- the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
- California Institute of the Arts
He has also been on the faculty at:
- The American Dance Festival at Duke University
- Movement Research (New York)
- The European Dance Development Center in Holland
- Urban Bush Women Summer Institute at Florida State University
- La Escuela de Danza Nacional in Managua, Nicaragua
- El Instituto de la Danza Moderna in Caracas, Venezuela
- The Anti Static Festival in Sydney, Australia
- The London International Summer School 2002
The Lambent Fellowship in the Arts
From 2002 to 2007, Ishmael Houston-Jones worked as the Coordinator for the Lambent Fellowship in the Arts, which was part of the Tides Foundation. In this role, he helped create and manage a program that gave grants to individual visual and performing artists in New York City. For five years under his leadership, six artists each year received grants of $21,000 to support their work.
Some of the artists who received funding through this program, overseen by Ishmael Houston-Jones, include: Sanford Biggers, Patty Chang, Miguel Gutierrez, Emily Jacir, John Jasperse, Julie Atlas Muz, Swoon (artist), and Jennifer Monson.
Awards and Recognition
- 2016 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts
- 2015 Doris Duke Impact Award
- 2013 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award
- 2011 New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award for THEM (with Chris Cochrane and Dennis Cooper)
- 1985–1991 National Endowment for the Arts Choreographer Fellowships
- 1985 New York Foundation for the Arts Choreographer Fellowship
- 1984 New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award for Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders (with Fred Holland)
List of Choreographic Works (Selected)
- 1974–76 A Way of Improvising (with Terry Fox, Jeff Cain)
- 1976 Two Men Dancing (an improvisation on their maleness) (with Michael Biello)
- 1979 Night/Light (with Michael Biello, Dan Martin)
- 1980 What We're Made Of (with Michael Biello, Dan Martin)
- 1981 DEAD (solo)
- 1982 Part 2: Relatives (with Pauline H. Jones)
- 1983 Untitled (sometimes called Oogala) (with Fred Holland)
- 1983 Babble: First impressions of the white man (with Fred Holland)
- 1984 f/i/s/s/i/o/n/i/n/g (solo)
- 1984 Cowboys, Dreams, and Ladders (with Fred Holland)
- 1985 THEM (with Dennis Cooper, Chris Cochrane)
- 1986 THEM (with Dennis Cooper and Chris Cochrane)
- 1986 2 solos: Radio Managua and 3 folk dances (solos)
- 1986 Adolfo und Maria: "Duh Guvnuh's Dancin' Gal
- 1987 Tell Me (with Yvonne Meier)
- 1987 How to Pray for 21 (with Fred Holland)
- 1987 The Onyx Table (with Fred Holland)
- 1988 Prologue to the End of Everything
- 1989 Relatives (film with Julie Dash, Pauline H. Jones)
- 1989 HOLE (with Dennis Cooper)
- 1989 Knife/Tape/Rope (with Dennis Cooper, John DeFazio & John B. Walker)
- 1989 HOLE: (The spoken word) (with Dennis Cooper)
- 1990 The Undead (with Peter Brosius & Dennis Cooper)
- 1990 In the dark / Without hope (solos)
- 1995–2000 Unsafe/Unsuited (with Keith Hennessy and Patrick Scully)
- 1995 Rougher (with Steven Craig)
- 1996 Eyes, mouth and all the rest : surrendering to the desire(s) of others (solo plus)
- 1997 Hare Follies (choreographed for Nayland Blake)
- 1998 Specimens (with D. Brick, S. Kahn, A. Simonet, A. Smith, P. Turner)
- 2001 Nowhere / Now here (for Mordine & Co.)
- 2009 The Myth and Trials of Calamity Jane and the Son of the Queen of the Amazons (with Ashley Anderson)
- 2009 This Ring of Fire (with Daniel Safer)
- 2010 Revival of What We're Made Of (with Michael Biello, Dan Martin)
- 2010 Revival of DEAD (solo performed by William Robinson)
- 2010–2013 Revival of THEM (with Dennis Cooper & Chris Cochrane)
- 2014 13 Love Songs: dot dot dot (with Emily Wexler)
- 2016 Variations on Themes From Lost and Found: Scenes From a Life and Other Works by John Bernd (with Miguel Gutierrez and Nick Hallett)
