Watching the work of Trajal Harrell (Georgia, USA, 1973) has always been a personal experience for me, so it is difficult not to write about it in the first-person singular. I saw my first performance by Harrell in 2011 in New York, at The Kitchen, a venue that has been showcasing avant-garde dance and performance work for over fifty years. Out on the street, there were the performers, already waiting for the audience at the entrance. Those intriguing, charismatic people – queer, and above all ‘here’ – made an impression on my 21-year-old self. ‘I don’t work with wallflowers’, Harrell said later in an interview, and that certainly applies to the cast of each of his shows and performances. The work I attended in 2011 was (M)imosa: Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (M). It was the ‘medium-sized’ performance of a five-part project (XS, S, M, L, XL) in which Harrell blended two worlds without compromising their distinctive essence: the world of the ballrooms and vogueing on the one hand, and postmodern dance on the other.

Postmodern x ballroom

Paris is Burning is Jennie Livingstone's legendary 1991 documentary depicting the ballroom scene in Harlem in the 1980s. Ballrooms were places where the queer community, mainly people of colour, came together to hold ‘balls’: a form of competition in which all kinds of gender stereotypes and characteristics were performed, distorted and appropriated in different categories. To do this, the participants looked at what was happening on the streets and in pop culture – and certainly also at fashion. Just like the big fashion houses, members organised themselves into ‘houses’ that often took their names from major labels such as Chanel, St. Laurent or Mugler. These houses were both ‘teams’ and social and personal support networks: a chosen family. Also echoing the fashion world, the dance floor was a kind of catwalk on which people paraded and struck poses. The body and outfit together formed a ‘look’. A whole vocabulary of movements emerged, a unique ‘dance’ called ‘vogueing’.

'Also echoing the fashion world, the dance floor was a kind of catwalk on which people paraded and struck poses. A unique ‘dance’ emerged called ‘vogueing’.'

Judson Church was the church in downtown New York, in Greenwich Village, where postmodern dance developed in the Judson Church Dance Theatre in the early 1960s. Key figures such as Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Lucinda Childs and Steve Paxton created their own dance vocabulary by exploring and integrating everyday movements. At first glance, this sounds somewhat contradictory, but it was precisely this aspect that gave their work a conceptual dimension. The group of people who gathered at Judson Dance Theatre laid the foundations for what is now called postmodern dance, which later developed into contemporary dance. What if the approximately 10 kilometres between the two neighbourhoods and the distance between the two communities and times could be bridged?

This was already happening in a sense in the figure of Trajal Harrell himself, who, as an African American, studied dance at the Trisha Brown School and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, among others, but also earned a degree in American Studies at Yale. The practice and history of postmodern and contemporary dance, the connection with ballrooms, and a theoretical view of society: together they form the breeding ground for Harrell's rich oeuvre.

Vogueing, queerness, catwalk, fashion, looks that are literally ‘rocked’ are therefore ingredients that Harrell continues to incorporate and reformulate throughout his impressively consistent oeuvre. From postmodern dance, he takes the idea that vogueing can be integrated into choreography, that it can be the ‘queer everyday’ part of a dance: poses, looks, ‘fierceness’, but also that abstraction and minimalism can be distilled from these forms, as well as complex group choreographies. Often there is also an MC, a master of ceremonies, who comments on what is happening, introduces dancers or simply shares an anecdote.

‘I don’t work with wallflowers’, Harrell said later in an interview, and that certainly applies to the cast of each of his shows and performances'

Cheerful tragedy and sweet melancholy

Emotion can be seen as the third pillar of Harrell's work. The dancers radiate vitality and the joy of performing. Harrell is also a melancholic creator and dancer. Loss, pain, grief, tragedy: these are universal emotions that often form the other side of the coin. The pleasure of self-expression and fulfilment goes hand in hand with the sadness of the price that had to be paid for it then, and still too often has to be paid today. That cheerful tragedy and sweet melancholy is what makes Harrell's tone so moving and specific, for example, in the wonderful Köln Concert (2020), which he choreographed to Keith Jarrett's iconic concert followed by a number of songs by Joni Mitchell. The performance aptly captured the isolation, melancholy and longing for physical company that characterised the coronavirus period.

Welcome to Asbestos Hall

In recent years, Harrell's work has toured internationally, appearing at major venues, galleries and museums. Yet that success also seems to evoke a nostalgia for the underground and the sense of community that goes with it. In the project Welcome to Asbestos Hall (2025), Harrell returned to the free, unforced work of experimenting, exploring and bringing people together around art. During the Holland Festival, Harrell revived the legendary studio of Tatsumi Hijikata, one of the founders of Japanese Butoh dance in the 1960s.

Over the past decade, Harrell has regularly found a rich source in this dance form to give shape to emotions. Butoh was both a reaction to the trauma of the Second World War and a search for a new, open language of movement. Hijikata once described butoh as ‘a dead body standing desperately upright’. The body is fragile and raw, but also connected to influences from pop culture. Taboos surrounding (homo)sexuality are broken. Working with grotesque facial expressions and a great concentration on responding to feelings, butoh influences the movements, but it is especially as a dance related to the dead, darkness, decay, ghosts and memory that it is a source that resonates with Harrell's work.

Musically generous

Music often plays an important role in Harrell's performances. References from (older and more contemporary) classical, pop, jazz, folk, soul and R&B form a musical dramaturgy that is an essential part of the work. Not only because the songs are sometimes linked to topics or communities, but also because they trace an emotional line through the pieces. Music underscores, propels, provides the cadence, feeds the emotion and expression. The generous use of music helps Harrell's work transcend the communities from which he draws inspiration – while remaining faithful to them – and appeals to many audiences and life experiences.

This is what places Harrell at the forefront of the international dance and performance scene. Performances at the Cour d'honneur at the Avignon Festival, artist in residence at MoMA, guest of honour at the Festival d'Automne in 2024, guest of honour at the Holland Festival in 2025 and a Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2024 are just a few examples of the recognition he has received. After a period as a creator at the Schauspielhaus Zürich (2019-2024), he founded the Zürich Dance Ensemble there in 2024. In Belgium, his work was first shown at the CAMPO Arts Centre, later at the KunstenfestivaldesArts and now at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. Schubert's Winterreise, with its rich emotions, melancholy and personal journey, is bound to be right up Harrell's street.