Louis is Joe
Louis Kavouras has an MFA in Dance from Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, performs with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, is Chairperson of the Dance Department at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and is the creator, choreographer and Artistic Director of "Joe," a series of modern dance works showcased all over the country. And to think he planned to be an engineer. Go figure.
"When I went to school, I went to school as an engineer. I was a smart kid with high SAT's and a scholarship...When I went to college, I had an open elective and I took this course called Modern Dance and I didn't know what that was but I thought it sounded fascinating...and at some point during that year I realized, even though I was doing quite well as an engineer - I wasn't flunking, I had A's - I realized that it wasn't challenging me."
"The sciences do what the arts do on the opposite end. They teach us through facts how to appreciate the world. And I think I realized that it was the other, it was through the sensations, it was through that whole other end of the human experience I really wanted to delve, I really wanted to explore."
"I think I could've done a lot of different things. What fascinated me about art was, I knew I wanted to do something important with my life. I think a lot of people think that art is the last thing that's really important. That's the frustrating thing, that people don't even value what the role of an artist is. For me, what an artist does, is an artist teaches us how to be human. In the doing of any visual art, in the acting or the performance, it teaches us fundamentally what it is to be human."
"I've always wanted to create work that speaks to people, is about people, that someone can look at it and see themselves in the work that I've created. It's not about the performer. I think so much of the dance world is about what's being expressed, that the most important thing up there is how well this performer can do this movement. For me, that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is what does the movement express? What does this piece of choreography express and how is it somehow teaching us something or showing us something about the world so we say, 'Oh yes. That's how my life is every day. I've been there. I know what it feels to feel that.'"
And so he created "Joe." His web site, www.joesuniverse.org, says, "For dance to survive in this new century, we cannot solely think of dance as pretty bodies doing pretty things. We must embrace the fact that we all move and use movement as a means of communicating human existence and expression."
"Joe is all of us. Joe is none of us." Joe is the human condition in its startling beauty and haunting frailties. "So I created 'Joe In Winter.' And it's a kind of love story. It's a 'Joe' where Joe receives a rejection letter and that plunges him into winter. So the winter is the metaphor for his emotional state and he gets through it and finally at the end there's a spring."
"I think the smartest of the Joe's is my last piece, 'Joe, this Infinite Universe.' I realized all the material I was exploring...was all about the universe. And I really was dealing with reality. That each of us is somehow separate. That we all have our own little world that we live in and somehow that connects to this bigger world of the universe, and that somehow our little universe is no different than the bigger one and that we ourselves are a metaphor for the bigger universe."
"Now I'm on to my next Joe that I don't have a title for." It's an exploration of the philosophies of Ovid and Hericlites. Thought-provoking, mind-expanding stuff. "I love the questioners. I love questioning. I think that's the most beautiful thing in the world. I think when we stop questioning, we stop living."
But, he adds, "Life isn't about finding an answer. When we talk about finding the meaning of life, I mean, it's not the meaning that's beautiful. It's the search. That we'll continue to search for it."
"When I look at what I really want to be when I grow up, still, I only ever want to be an artist. I only ever want to really feel deeply and question and out of that question to come up with something beautiful in movement." Would that we all strove to appreciate the journey.
For more about Louis Kavouras and/or his teaching residencies, visit his web site at www.joesuniverse.org.