Michael French. Photo by Simone Finney.
“Cut off the head and the body will follow.” I doubt that it’s a quote from the Bible, but it sounds like it should be, at least from the Old Testament, and probably from the mouth of a warrior like David or Joshua or Gideon or Deborah. Maybe it’s from the bark of a cigar chomping sergeant as his spit showers your face with all kinds of delicious enzymes. And when push comes to shove, it’s not a stretch to imagine a portly high school football coach imploring his doe-eyed team to run through a brick wall for the thirteenth time that morning, even though they’re losing 55–6.
Wherever the fuck the quote comes from, it sounds like nothing less than the god’s honest truth, especially when applied to the company left behind when its founder and visionary is suddenly plucked from earth for a quieter place.
If I know anything about anything, it’s that human beings are likely to become downright revolutionary if asked to see a future without a map (its accuracy be damned). At least, that’s what I had been led to believe.
Dancer and choreographer Jess Curtis died Monday, March 11th, 2024, while riding his bike in the Presidio area of San Francisco. If you were an artist and lived in the Bay area in the early-mid 2000s, it was damn near impossible to go anywhere and not hear, feel, sense, bump into, or be reminded of the glory that was Jess Curtis. Trust me, dance is not the first hallelujah that comes to my mind when I need to do something that I can casually boast about the next day. Yet, even I knew something of Jess Curtis, at least enough to know that I needed to see him in his natural habitat to understand the cult of him. “Under the Radar,” an evening with mixed ability dancers on crutches, in wheelchairs, and swinging on chains from the ceiling, is still one of the most awe-inspiring evenings I’ve ever experienced.
That’s the thing about Jess Curtis. He had this punky, dandyish, somewhat camp, somewhat rakish air of a creature carved from Mount Olympus, with a feline sense of masculinity that entered the room several minutes before he did, all to the sound of trumpets, no less. It’s a cosmic strand of masculinity that I still haven’t found in quite the same way in anyone else.
We never spoke, Jess and I, apart from the odd anonymous ‘hi’ while passing each other in the men’s bathrooms at one of his performances. But when I saw him prowl the stage, when I saw him suspended in weightless midair, when I saw Clare Cunningham walk along his prone body, her crutches striding either side of him as an extension of their arms, I’d think to myself, “In my next life I going to be David Bowie, so that life’s taken, but if there’s a life after that one, I’d happily be Jess Curtis.”
When I reached out to Co-Artistic Directors Gabriele Christian & Rachael Dichter of Gravity, formerly known as Jess Curtis/Gravity, I told them that while it wouldn’t be possible to talk about the company without mentioning Jess’s work and life, that was not my primary focus. What I wanted to dive into was how a company replaces its founder and Visionary, hear their thoughts on the idea of ‘genius’ and whether it still makes any sense, and why they think desire is no longer the succulent, juicy peach that it once was, if they think that at all. Put simply, I wanted to talk about the role of the artist, of the dreamer in the 21st century and whether it’s a role that matters anymore.
We met on Thursday, November 15th, 2025. It had been 614 days since Jess’s passing.
VISIONARY: An individual with the ability to imagine the future, offering innovative, forward-thinking ideas that often challenge the status quo. They are often considered to have a distinct ability to “see” possibilities not yet recognized by others
Michael French: What was Jess’s vision for Gravity? I mean, he performed one piece on a huge chunk of ice and another dance piece in a room with all the lights off…
Rachael Dichter: Yeah, but put simply, he wanted to make people feel things in their bodies. I mean, his interests shifted over the years, but it was always about the idea of mirroring neurons and how we could make people sitting in front of us, watching us, how we could make them have bodily feelings in reaction to what we were experiencing on stage through moving our bodies. In the end, it was, ‘How can I communicate my physicality to you?’
Gabriele Christian: Which is why I think the question of accessibility and working with mixed ability ensembles was so important to him. It was always about receiving and expanding to folks beyond himself.
Michael: I’m not sure that I’ve heard the vision of what it means to be a dancer expressed so succinctly. When you were putting this new version of Gravity together, was there any part of you that said, ‘No matter what, we can’t do This!’
Gabriele: The simple answer is, we knew that we couldn’t keep doing Jess’s work. Harsh as it sounds, we’re not going to keep Jess’s work in our repertoire forever. Maybe it will come back at another time, I don’t know… But you know how Alvin Ailey and some of the more established groups have to do certain pieces? I mean, Ailey HAVE to do ‘Revelations’ every year. But for us, the spirit of Jess’s inquiry is inside the company no matter what we do. Also, the center of the company is not going to be Rachael and myself. It’s going to be ‘us’ plus…
Rachael: Jess came up working with Contraband. Meaning, he came up working very collectively. I think he was looking to work another 10 years, if I may say that, and he was already looking at how the company could move beyond his artistic vision. He wanted a different model, a five-person collaboration, which is what we have now. We’re excited about this!
Gabriele: From 2021 we had already started to create a strategic plan to expand beyond Jess’s vision. He was never tyrannical anyway, that was part of his gift, his ability to bring a wide sprawl together and get it moving in the same direction, so it wasn’t as big a shift as you might imagine.
Rachael: Jess and I were partnered for 12 years, and just a few months before he passed I was directing the last group piece that we made and he was really frustrated with the piece. Not me necessarily, but the piece. And during a break he said to me, ‘No matter what, if I die tomorrow, you’ve gotta tell me that you’ve got this, that you can make this happen and get it on stage.’ And I said, ‘If you die tomorrow that is the last thing I’m going to be thinking!’ And he was so angry! He said, ‘No, you have to know me better than that, you have to know this is what I would want!’ And I made a promise to him, not about the company, but about that piece and the show, that I’d get it on stage.
GENIUS: To possess extraordinary intellectual power, exceptional creativity, and the ability to produce original, groundbreaking work that advances a field.
Michael: Do you still believe in ‘genius?’ I say ‘still’ because I assume that both of you did at one point. And if so, who is a ‘genius’ for you now?
Gabriele: I’ve let go of the ‘man is an island.’ It’s the myth of this country. Maybe some folks have a predisposition to be more focused perhaps, and genius needs a certain type of focus, but I think it’s more about chance.
Michael: Really?
Gabriele: All any of us is trying to do is shape a river. I’ve abandoned the idea of individual genius as it’s not really reflective of all the forces that shaped that person into who they are. There are some folks that will never see the light of day or be interviewed like this, for example. What about them? I’ll say this, I think anyone has the ability for genius when in a collective enterprise.
Michael: Does that include ‘You?’
Gabriele: I’ve been a part of genius and I will continue to be, but I am not it.
But for us, the spirit of Jess’s inquiry is inside the company no matter what we do.
Michael: Rachael?
Rachael: Depends on how you define it, but yeah, definitely, when I was younger. But as I get older… I’m still so inspired by certain people, but if I think that they’re a genius, I know it’s because I haven’t seen the whole experience that got them there. I think of genius more as a constellation rather than a shooting star.
Michael: I love that. But it’s sad, because over the last ten, fifteen years, I think the term ‘genius’ has shifted from being associated mostly with artists, to tech folk. It’s gone from a definition of people that work in an arena that can’t be measured, can’t be calculated, to an arena where it’s ALL about measurements. Press this and that happens, press that and this happens. Horrible.
DESIRE: To want, crave, covet, have a longing for. Desire stresses the strength of feeling and often implies strong intention or aim; one desires to start a new life. Wish sometimes implies a general or transient longing especially for the unattainable.
Michael: And what about ‘desire?’ Which I see as an essential element of any creative endeavor, yet it has a strange place in our culture these days. The Internet encourages us to indulge in every desire we have, yet society says it’s better to have a strategy than desire. Thoughts?
Gabriele: Um…um, I’m more interested in desirability than desire. Desire is an antidote and a curse.
Michael: Haha! To what?
Gabriele: This thing called the human experience! If I didn’t have desire, it would be a very flat existence, but at the same time, at a certain volume, desire is destructive. Desire keeps my life interesting; interested.
Rachael: I think desire is something that works best when it’s just out of reach. Jess said that his greatest work was preserving his desire to dance, which is such a skill. How do you nurture this thing that you can’t quite have with your audience, how do you make them keep wanting to be with you?
SUCCESSION: The orderly, step-by-step process of one person, thing, or community replacing another. It generally refers to a sequence of events (following in order), the transfer of a title or property (inheritance/taking office), or the gradual change in an ecological community over time.
Michael: The season coming up is the first new season since Jess, so what is it that you want to say or do with it, because it’s such a demarcation point. If there’s any time where you’re going to notice Jess’s absence it’s going to be in this new season.
I think of genius more as a constellation than a shooting star.
Gabriele: I think Jess would be surprised by how far we’ve gone. We’ve trying to feast on our shared memory. ‘ICE CAR CAGE’ with Keith Hennessy, which was only performed once, is coming back as a benchmark. But we’re going to bring people in from Berlin and LA to produce and remake responses to work Jess was known for. We want to honor a life in its full way, but also honor a life within the other lives that have also been lost.
Rachael: This first season without Jess we knew we would have to look back to move forward –
Michael: Without getting stuck there, presumably –
Rachael: Yeah. In the Bay we’re so lucky to have Keith Hennessy, Sara Shelton Mann, Joanna Haigood, Joe Goode and so many other elders. These are the people that put the Bay Area on the map with dance. They did so much risk taking and boundary pushing, and with the dance scene shrinking in SF with the economic reality, it’s become really integral for us to keep this generation, this legacy alive.
Gabriele: So, we’re going to look back over the duets that Jess did over the years, but the pieces will be very different from the way they were done.
Michael: Are you scared?
Rachael: Always, right.. Hahaha!
Gabriele: Less scared, but more, are we ready to step into the space?
Michael: What’s the name of the season?
Gabriele: ‘OUT/OF|THE\FOG.’
Gravity x ROT festival: A three week festival featuring classes, workshops, talks and performances by local and international visiting artists, plus an accessible party in collaboration with CRIP Ecstasy. Find the full schedule, event descriptions, artist and teacher line-up, and registration information on ROT’s website!
May 18th – June 6th at Joe Goode Annex.
Duetrospectives: A collection of Jess Curtis’ duets from his work over the years spanning 1995-2018. Now on the two year anniversary of his passing, these works are restaged and re-imagined by Rachael Dichter, Maria Francesca Scaroni and Stephanie Maher, Sherwood Chen, Claire Cunningham and Miguel Guiterrez, Vong Phrommala and Dylan Skybrook.
May 28th – 30th at Joe Goode Annex.
ICE CAR CAGE: A re-imagining of the seminal performance work “Ice. Car. Rage” performed originally in 1997 in an abandoned parking lot by Jess Curtis, Keith Hennessy and Jules Beckman. Its reimagining in 2026, instigated by Gabriele Christian, will be performed by jose e. abad, Styles Alexander, and Clarissa Rivera Dyas with elements from the original work: an autonomous car, an ice block, a gilded cage.
August 14 – 16 at Fort Mason.
Please. Stay. Touch – Experiments in Gravity: Explore Jess Curtis’ forty-year career of pioneering radical, accessible dance performance. Come into a participatory embodied and multi-sensory experience. Every body is welcome and provoked into presence.
June 20th – August 15 at Fort Mason Center Store House.
This memorial exhibition and living laboratory activates the gallery: All it needs is you.
Michael: Congratulations!
Gabriele: Thank you.
Rachael: Yeah, thank you.
CHANGE: The act, process, or result of making or becoming different, involving an alteration in form, state, quality, or essence. It signifies a transition, substituting one thing for another, transforming, or shifting direction.
And so it is that the body of Gravity has been given new life with a breath that is something more than the sum of its parts, something more than the footprints of its history, something more than the dreamer that created it like magic out of thin air.
Twenty-five years into the 21st century, the world is a body at a fork in the road. I wish the question was simply ‘Heads or Tails,’ but sadly it’s not. It’s a question of who we are and who we want to be. Disappointment is the most insidious and cruel and withering of all feelings because of the damage it can do while we blame something else. It is also the shadow angel of sadness. Hippydom didn’t work out. The relentless drive for money didn’t work out. Globalisation didn’t work out. Tech hasn’t worked out. The world is deeply disappointed. And when disappointment is asked to reveal its true feelings, it will always choose the road with tubs of technological ice-cream in the hope that it will soothe the heartache. Fortunately, there are those of us with our heads on straight and the spine to resist until the world gets real. And by ‘real,’ I mean a world that believes in Human Connection, and by ‘us,’ I mean anyone willing to drink at its fountain as though it’s life itself, which, of course, it is.
Y’see the truth is, underneath the charisma and sparkly surface of things in Jess Curtis and the Gravity that’s being forged from his irrepressible mold, is something we desperately, desperately need in this monstrous day and age of ours: Sincerity.
OUT/OF|THE\FOG, May 18-August 16, 2026. Gravity-SF.org
