By Rita Felciano
Nol Simonse
For Nol Simonse, it all started with that most popular of all ballets and most common breeding place of American dance. The oldest of five children growing up in College Park, MD, Simonse had seen Baryshnikov in The Nutcracker on TV and “thought it awesome.” So he asked his parents whether he could do that. At age nine they enrolled him in a “tiny little ballet school above a pizza parlor. He’s still in touch with the teacher-owner.
Compulsory education was not exactly a good experience, particularly for a boy “who came out very early” and didn’t like to deal with linear logic: “As long as I could learn with a diorama, I was OK”. It took Simonse a while to find his own way of learning, through his body.
Nol Simonse, How Fortunate the Man With None
Janice Garrett, who had never seen Simonse dance, took a chance on him when she added male dancers to her heretofore all-female company for Ostinato in 2002. “He has worked out beautifully,” says Garrett. “What I admire is his ability to express what is deep inside. He has such humanity as both a person and a performer. In the studio, he is incredibly generous and brings his whole heart and mind to the creative process. He doesn’t need to be in control, and his sense of discovery is such that I can go wherever I want with him.”
The admiration is mutual. Simonse seems to be getting as much as giving in the artistic relationship, because Garrett manages to contextualize direction so it is not just technical but respects the dancer as a full person. “She told me once,” he remembers, “to push my lower ribs out, because being vulnerable doesn’t mean you are weak. She also once said that I had ‘emotional shoulders’.”