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December 2005
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Dancers and choreographers on surviving and thriving with HIV.
By Joseph Carman
Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since reports of a voracious disease with an ability
to destroy immune systems appeared in The New York Times. At the time, neither
the disease, nor the agent that caused it, had names. Today they are known only too well: The human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
In the 1980s and 1990s, AIDS cut a devastating swath through the dance world, cutting short too
many lives and careers.
HIV remains an enormous global problem in 2005, despite the fact that breakthrough
medications like protease inhibitors and antivirals have saved a lot of lives in the last decade.
In the dance community, HIV has many faces—male, female, black, white, straight, gay, healthy,
or compromised. Five dancers, choreographers, and teachers stepped forward to tell
DANCE MAGAZINE how HIV has rerouted their lives—and to demystify the issue.
One dancer who has weathered his fair share of ups and downs is Jaime Galindo, who began
his dance training at age 17. Galindo came to New York in the early 1980s, performing with
the Eleo Pomare Dance Company and in numerous industrials. In 1986, when many in the dance
community were dying of AIDS, Galindo suddenly suffered spasms of vomiting back stage
during a performance. His subsequent hospital stay proved unbearable. “All the doctors
wore masks,” says Galindo. “Food trays were left in the hallway. They put tape
around my room, and no one would enter or clean my room.”
For eight years, through bouts of streptococcal meningitis and wasting syndrome that, at
one point, cut his body weight in half, Galindo somehow boomeranged back and kept dancing. To
keep his HIV status a secret, he says, “I would work some, and then just disappear for a
while.” Eventually, doctors consulted him on his survival techniques, which included
the steadfast support of his ex-wife, Victoria Burke, and a sense of humor. (Galindo devilishly
liked to stun nurses by jackknifing himself into a completely folded hospital bed.) Despite sight
impairment in his left eye from a bacterial infection (“It's hard to spot,” he jokes), Galindo adheres to a combination drug therapy regimen that's working. Recently, he completed a degree in dance education through the 92nd Street YMHA Dance Education Lab and SUNY Empire State College with an aim to teach kids in city schools.
Richard Daniels, on the other hand, returned to dancing at the age of 43 after his HIV diagnosis.
Having stopped 15 years before to work as an arts manager, producer, consultant, and interior
designer, Daniels resumed dance classes to counter the burnout of caring for his hospitalized
life partner, Curtis Sykes. When Sykes died from AIDS related causes in 1994, Daniels
concentrated on taking care of himself—and that meant rejuvenating his body and soul
by dancing and choreographing. Hungry for a serious artistic outlet, Daniels called his friend
Molissa Fenley, the choreographer. “Mo, can I have a solo?” he asked. Fenley danced
three solos for him in her studio and said, “Pick one.” Since then he's performed
works by choreographers like Zvi Gotheiner and Peggy Baker.
Though he's remained asymptomatic of AIDS, Daniels has experienced debilitating
side effects from the medications. Crixivan, a protease inhibitor, bloated his rib cage.
“I can look at videotapes of my dancing and tell you what drugs I was on because of my
body shape,” says Daniels. Although his own choreography doesn't deal directly with AIDS,
he says it's informed by “looking at an altered world.” As far as what keeps him
going, Daniels says, “Dancing is the only thing I really want to do.”
For Fay Simpson, the connection between dancing and healing also bestowed a new sense of
life's purpose. After dancing for six years with the Erick Hawkins offshoot Greenhouse Dance
Ensemble, and RUSH Dance, Simpson became disenchanted with the modem dance world and considered
jumping ship. Then, in 1987, she unexpectedly tested positive for HIV. After an initial
period of shock, she says, “My eyes got bigger.” She questioned what life she wanted,
if that life only lasted five more years. “Before that, I felt like there are so many
choreographers, what do I want to say? Suddenly I felt like I had a lot to say,” says
Simpson. Her creativity coalesced in the formation of her own physical theater troupe,
Impact Theatre, where she produced, directed, and performed 15 works. One of the highlights
was her signature one-woman show, Trapped in Seven, a personalized essay on the conquest
of the emotional barriers of victimization, which she performed at The Actors Studio in
New York, the Harold Pinter Theater in London, and for the opening of World AIDS Day in Tennessee.
Simpson, nevertheless, navigated bumps in the road, like gritting her teeth through
tasteless AIDS jokes and rejoining the dating scene, where many equate HIV positive
with damaged goods. (She's happily involved with a man now.) Simpson, 48 and healthy, has taken
her hard-earned woman warrior perspective into the classroom by teaching her self-conceived
technique called The Lucid Body, a chakra-based method geared for actors but also helpful for
“dancers who seek emotional clarity in their work.” Though she is pleased to be
viewed as a female HIV positive role model, she doesn’t necessarily want to be pegged
just as “an HIV artist.” Instead, she says, “I want to be judged on the merits
of my work and my teaching.”
Joseph Carman is contributing editor for DANCE MAGAZINE and author of Round About the Ballet (Limelight Editions, 2004).
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