Call it a bold move. In his five years as a choreographer, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd has created dances for black box theaters and dances on film. But after two isolated years of pandemic life, he wanted to do something different, something that would honor his neighborhood, Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn, and its neighbors.
They “gave me so much for two years while I was deeply isolated,” he said, teaching him that “everything I need is here in my area. I wanted to add dance productions to that.”
That motivated Lloyd to produce his first dance himself. He said he’d decided it should be free, outside — and got ready for his neighbors, the people who might sit next to him and strike up a conversation on a park bench. That dance, “Jerome,” will be performed on June 2 and 3 in the school yard of Stephen Decatur Middle School 35.
Lloyd, 28, works with a small, rotating group of employees to create dances that are mostly narrative. He uses a rich mix of movement forms, including hip-hop, West African, contemporary modern and release.
“Jordan is an artist and, most importantly, a black artist,” said art consultant Georgiana Pickett, who became Lloyd’s coach through the MAP Fund’s Scaffolding for Practicing Artists, a collaborative program with the Jerome Hill Fellowship. Pickett has also become a fan. In an email she has applauded his breakthrough from the traditional theater setting. “Our parks, school yards, bodegas, street corners and sidewalks should be places of joy, discovery and comfort,” she said. “Jordan is one of the people who makes that possible.”
For the past five years Lloyd has lived on the corner of Halsey Street and Lewis Avenue in Bed-Stuy. In the early days of the pandemic, he said: “My parents didn’t want me on the trains, so I spent time in the parks. I befriended the folks at the corner shop, run by a team of Yemeni men, and Gizmo who runs her thrift store.”
On the occasions he has left Bed-Stuy in recent years, he has gone to Albany, where he was born and where his parents still live. (Both parents, now retired, worked for the state.) On one trip, his mother helped him apply for the Jerome Foundation.
Lloyd said he remembered seeing his mother in West African dance classes when he was 5: “Then I learned to put on a show.” His parents supported his dance studies and he received a bachelor’s degree from SUNY College in Brockport in 2016. Since graduating, he has worked, collaborated and performed for Beth Gill, Netta Yerushalmy, David Dorfman Dance, Monica Bill Barnes and others, as well as creating his own dances.
As of 2021, Lloyd has had a series of personal residencies: at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, the Petronio Residency Center and Danspace Project. These provided him with crucial support during the pandemic, even as they took him away from the neighbourhood.
From the start, he said, he wanted to perform “Jerome” in a schoolyard in Bed-Stuy. That required building relationships and working out his logistics needs with city officials. “I’m not used to navigating city government,” he said — a different process with a different timeline than working with arts organizations. He spoke to his councilor and his city council representative and was eventually given permission to use MS 35, just around the corner from where he lives.
He used money from a two-year $50,000 Jerome Hill Fellowship to pay his associates, money also gave him the luxury of time. Lloyd is used to working fast – he made his first dance in four weeks and has made two films since the pandemic started. But “Jerome” he had plenty of time to go back after he was done and to give it a deeper look.
“I can feel all these different parts of myself forming and crystallizing in this work,” he said, “and I place it in the middle of the concrete schoolyard where literally everyone can see it.”
Gray, one of Lloyd’s collaborators on ‘Jerome’, said he admired Lloyd’s diligence and ability to do many things at once. “Jordan choreographs every moment in the work serving what the piece needs,” he said, and “he’s also interested in who we are and how we fit into the work.”
For Gray, who has worked closely with Lloyd for five years, ‘Jerome’ has become ‘a child, a mischievous person, imaginative, but sometimes real and alive around and within me’.
The dancers, who perform in sneakers, with the sky and brick buildings in the background, take up space. Like a pack, and in long rhythmic sequences, they move in and out in unison, cutting sharp corners, stopping with a jolt that reverberates from joint to joint. One or two can break away from the pack, jog at full speed, slow down and break the rhythm of the group’s sequence in a solo or duet, then reunite later. Others can fold out lawn chairs, sit down and watch.
And why that title? “The name Jerome kept popping up throughout the trial,” Lloyd said. And while acknowledging that it’s “problematic or complicated to determine someone’s race by name,” he said, “I think Jerome is black. And given the location and place of work, it’s important that black people feel invited to this experience, and that the play could be about their brother, uncle or friend.”
Lloyd, who described “Jerome” as abstract and layered, said he hoped the public would see the seriousness and capriciousness. “I also hope they see the performers as a group of kids in the break.”
In his five years of dancing, Lloyd has only shown work to dance audiences in conventional theatres. But to him, “Jerome” is more of a community engagement project than an experiment in moving concert dance.
“I’ve told a lot of my neighbors that I’m a dancer,” he said, “but they haven’t necessarily seen what I’m doing. My dream is that we flood the park with black people who have lived in Bed-Stuy for years.”