I’ve just seen T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock performed before my eyes, complete with spilling reams of paper, booklights, hats, coffee cups and spoons and three human beings who danced and acted the poem out, section by section, in a studio in midtown Manhattan.

This is the work of The Movement Group, a very original dance troupe founded by a young woman named Aynsley Vandenbroucke. She conceived and choreographed this 50-minute work, which begins tensely as Dawn Springer, Djamila Moore and Kristen Warnick take tentative steps around a wide floor, muttering the poem’s opening lines, “Let us go then, you and I.” Typing paper appears as the first symbolic element, as the dancers box themselves in with stacks of blank pages and try fitfully to sleep, until one of them has a burst of inspiration and sends a jet of white papers flying into the air. But moods change again, and they sadly sweep the mess up, embarrassed. Two of the dancers engage in a hilarious dual-voiced pastiche while spinning coffee cups, and eventually the three dancers curl up like crabs, become old, turn into crashing waves and then into spinning mermaids, attempt to hug and touch each other, and finally find peace, falling asleep in three separate spots on the floor.

I am no expert in modern dance, but I found the experience dazzling. I got a chance to ask Aynsley Vandenbroucke a few questions about this work in an email interview this week:

Where did the idea come from? Have other choreographers done work like this?

Well, actually someone (Ariane Anthony) created a dance/theater piece based on “Prufrock” a few years ago. I didn’t get to see it, but her work is really interesting. I was annoyed when I found out she was doing it, because I’d had this piece in mind for a few years. For a while, I thought I shouldn’t go ahead and make mine because she’d just done one. But then this year, I realized I really needed to make it. And that it would be my own take and style anyways.

Another choreographer I can think of is Alexandra Beller. I think she did a piece related to Sartre’s “No Exit”. I can’t think of other pieces in dance that are built around particular poems or existing works of writing, but I’m sure they exist.

Working on this piece also brought home strong similarities between the art forms of poetry and modern dance. I felt like they’re both working with images and essences in a way that is very experiential and not necessarily linear. I think that way of working is the beauty of both forms and also what sometimes makes them hard for new audiences.

Can you tell me about your own personal encounter with T. S. Eliot’s poem?

I first read the poem senior year in high school. We had to memorize and recite a few lines for the class. At the time, I thought the memorizing assignment was silly. But then the poem really stayed in my head… I would find myself repeating lines and thinking about it regularly. When I think back on it, it was a lovely poem to have people read as they’re about to leave home and high school. It was a time when we were all asking questions, wondering what to do with our lives, how to find meaning.

The poem has always touched me deeply. Here is this man experiencing the nuances and concerns that I feel. They’re not so wierd or unusual and they’re not made pretty in a fake way. I’ve always been particularly pierced by the lines about “one turning her head should say, ‘That is not what I meant at all, that is not it at all’.” This human (and artistic) experience of trying to share what is inside, to be met.

When I first heard that your piece dramatized Eliot’s poem with three women dancers, I was wondering what role gender would play. Of course, Eliot’s poem is about a man who sees women as somewhat alien — and yet in your poem it seems the women *are* T. S. Eliot (or, to be more precise, they are J. Alfred Prufrock). Was this gender switch part of the meaning of the work, for you, or was it an incidental choice?

My company is generally all women, just because that’s the way it’s worked out, not for any particular statement. I too was curious how we would deal with these beautiful young women being parts of Prufrock. At the same time, what I wanted to explore was human experiences that I think transcend gender. I’ve always related to Prufrock and I’ve always read his concerns as more universal, fundamental than being about a particular man relating, trying to relate to a woman. We had some interesting discussions in rehearsal about Eliot and his relationship with women. But again, I felt that what he is getting to in the poem is much bigger.

I understand that you are involved in Buddhism (as I am as well, and as T. S. Eliot was too). Do you see “Prufrock” as in any sense a Buddhist-themed work, a meditation upon “desire”, and did this play a role in your conceptualizing of the dance?

Yes! For me “Prufrock” is deeply related to a Buddhist focus on awareness of life and death. If I am aware of the preciousness of my life and that it is going to end, I want to make sure I spend every minute of it taking advantage of being alive. Prufrock seems aware of time slipping away and yet he is not quite able to take charge of how he is going to spend it. I find myself constantly checking in during my every day life. Am I worrying about parting my hair? Am I worrying about eating a peach? Is this the way I want to spend my life? If I’ve only got a short amount of time, how do I want to spend it and what kinds of risks make it worth living?

I’ve written elsewhere on LitKicks about The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. We each have our own favorite poems in the world; this is mine. In fact, the only other poem I like nearly as much is Eliot’s later, longer The Waste Land, which has much in common with Prufrock (both deal with the dread of sexual intimacy, both are “purgative” works infused with nearly pathological honesty, and both personify human beings as cities, and cities as human beings).

If Aynsley Vandenbroucke and her talented dancers ever decide to take on The Waste Land, I’ll be there on opening night. Till then, try to catch this show while you can.