The Muse of Virtuosity: Desmond Richardson, Race, and Choreographic Falsetto

In earlier epochs, technical virtuosity, at least, was demanded of singing stars, the castrati and prima donnas. Today, the material as such, destitute of any function, is celebrated.

—Theodor Adorno (1991, 32)

As in sport or athletics, the achievement by a virtuoso dancer raises the achievable standard for everybody else. And this is what Baryshnikov, more than any other dancer of our time, has done—not only by what he can do with his body (he has, among other feats, jumped higher than anyone else, and has landed lower), but what he can show, in the maturity and range of his expressiveness.

—Susan Sontag (1987)

What is it in the falsetto that thins and threatens to abolish the voice but the wear of so much reaching for heaven?

—Nathaniel Mackey (1997, 62–3)

Desmond Richardson has been labeled “one of the great virtuoso dancers of his generation” (Dunning 1995, n.p.). Having danced in a range of performance contexts, from the companies of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ballett Frankfurt, and American Ballet Theater, to Hollywood films and Broadway musicals, to the tours of Michael Jackson and Madonna, Richardson holds a unique position as America’s most visible and admired African American concert dance artist. An expert in styles as seemingly disparate as break dancing and ballet, Richardson has honed his ability in a way that has allowed him to traverse a cultural landscape ranging from the popular to the avant-garde. It is rare for a concert dancer to achieve star status—one he shares with the likes of predecessors Mikhail Baryshnikov and Sylvie Guillem. Like Baryshnikov and Guillem, Richardson exerts a high degree of control of his own career, and is unafraid to venture into commercial settings from time to time. He has become a prototype for young conservatory dancers, as well as audiences of So You Think You Can Dance, which he frequents as a guest artist. Transcending boundaries of style, Richardson has become an exception, earning widespread acceptance in the face of the exclusion of other dancers of color. Richardson’s popularity exemplifies a cultural practice of consumption demanding of the black male dancer the projection of charisma, athletic ability, and muscularity. Additionally, when viewing black masculine performance, audiences are more inclined to embrace virtuosity’s inherent queerness when it is offset by such markers of virility.

Photo 1.

Desmond Richardson in Dwight Rhoden’s Moonlight.

Photo by Sharen Bradford.

Co-founders of Complexions Contemporary Ballet (1994–present), Richardson (b. 1969) and Dwight Rhoden (b. 1962), both danced with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) from 1987–1994.¹ With Richardson as his muse, choreographer Rhoden created an explicitly heterogeneous platform for contemporary dance that sought to diverge from the AAADT’s dominant aesthetic of “Soul,” which privileges hetero-normative black masculinity and narratives of triumph. Inquiring into Richardson’s dual role as muse and co-director of Complexions brings greater understanding to the type of virtuosity he inaugurated in American dance in the 1990s. By proposing and developing the term choreographic falsetto, I liken Richardson’s virtuosity to that of nineteenth-century virtuoso musicians and composers such as Franz Liszt, on the one hand, and black “Post-Soul” singers such as Prince, on the other, accounting for a historically and crossculturally prevalent (if relatively forgotten) aspect of virtuosity, namely, its position at the meeting point of gender, religion, capitalism, and individualism. While Richardson initially attained stardom at AAADT, his contributions to Complexions worked to establish a queer, Post-Soul aesthetic that lingers in gender ambivalence. On the heels of Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino, and Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, Richardson and Rhoden continued the work of other gay male choreographer–muse partnerships that introduced heterogeneity into American concert dance. Certainly, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company has been more vocal about confronting homosexuality in its work (which emerged in an experimental domain far from the confines of ballet), whereas Joffrey Ballet and Complexions—even while fostering queer aesthetics—have sustained traditional heterosexual pas de deux...