DANCE : Building a Dance in the Distinctive Bradbury

David Rousseve says that his multimedia dance/theater piece, “Had Somebody But I Lost Her Very Young,” exists on many levels.

And, as performed today through Tuesday in the unorthodox setting of downtown L.A.’s Bradbury Building--the city’s oldest historical landmark structure--it will also exist on several floors.

New York-based dancer and choreographer Rousseve, 31, believes that the 96-year-old Bradbury--located at Third and Broadway and nearing the end of a $5-million renovation by the Yellin Co.--is uniquely appropriate for “Had Somebody,” a blend of dance, theater, vocal music, speech and video set in the 1930s.

The production, which delves into the history of Louisiana’s Creole society, was inspired by stories told to Rousseve by his Creole grandmother, who died just a few weeks ago at age 83. “Had Somebody” is a co-production of “Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century” and “Dancing in the Streets,” an eight-year-old New York organization committed to presenting “site specific” dance in urban architectural settings that in some way reflect the significance of the dance.

“What I do is dance theater work--I layer things,” says Rousseve, a Princeton graduate who grew up in Houston, where his Creole ancestors eventually migrated after leaving Louisiana. “The main character, an elderly Creole woman, is saying a monologue about her husband who worked in the train yards in Houston; at the same time, someone will be doing an expressionistic dance to that, while some other people are doing an expressionistic dance to something else, so there’s all these juxtapositions happening at the same time.

“In a traditional theater, you are somewhat limited because you are on one level. The Bradbury Building is on several different levels, and it’s all split down the middle. We’re treating it almost like a split screen.”

Rousseve also believes utilizing the Bradbury’s five floors will visually illustrate the strongest point of his work: that “humanly, politically and socially, black people are still going through some of the same things they were in 1930.”

Along with historic material from 1930s New Orleans and Houston, Rousseve explains, “we have this 1990s African American chorus up there, sort of chanting rap. We are also talking about the fact that you can leave this theater and see that the head of the Los Angeles Police Department is being asked to resign because a black man was just beaten.”

Rousseve says the meeting of “Had Somebody,” the Bradbury Building and the “Black Choreographers” festival resulted from a series of coincidences. First, Elise Bernhardt, executive director of “Dancing In The Streets,” approached Rousseve about creating a site-specific work to be performed in Los Angeles as part of the group’s ongoing nationwide project, which has already staged performances with other dance troupes in Washington, D.C., and Miami and will do the same in Philadelphia and Chicago after Los Angeles.

Through Bernhardt’s connections with UCLA and the directors of “Black Choreographers,” a partnership was struck. Rousseve will blend his own New York company with local dancers. (Rousseve’s company will also perform another piece, “Coloured Children Flyin’ By,” at the Wadsworth Theater as well as the Bradbury performances.)

Bernhardt then began looking for a site that would provide an appropriate frame for Rousseve’s work. “I always think of my job as being a matchmaker,” Bernhardt says. “We once had the Merce Cunningham Dance Company dance in Grand Central Station; it’s a place where time and space meet, which is a kind of metaphor for his dances.”

Rousseve, Bernhardt says, wanted “a certain feeling of age, a certain feeling of light.” Their first choice was the Los Angeles Herald Examiner building; but, although Hollywood occasionally uses the facility for film and television shooting, the live performers were denied access.

After scouting several other downtown buildings, they discovered the Bradbury--and now Rousseve says he wouldn’t have it any other way. With its intricate maze of open stairways, delicate ironwork stair rails and elevators, brick walls, and a thick glass ceiling that bathes the building’s open court in an eerie light, the inside of the Bradbury resembles a little slice of New Orleans. Bernhardt and Rousseve found developer Ira Yellin--who purchased the building for $8 million in 1989 as part of a grand plan to revitalize Grand Central Square--to be equally enthusiastic about using the Rousseve performance to mark the building’s grand opening.

Rousseve also likes the fact that the Bradbury stands near a landmark wall constructed to honor Biddie Mason, a black woman who escaped slavery in Georgia to become a nurse and a successful real estate entrepreneur in Los Angeles in the mid-1850s. Like his grandmother, Rousseve says, Mason was able to overcome sexism and racism by sheer strength of will.

“(This dance) is almost therapeutic for me, because we were so close--what she (his grandmother) gave to me I’ll be able to pass on, and keep it going,” Rousseve says.

“When I was young, I was really embarrassed by her, through my own ignorance. She spoke Creole, she had a first-grade education, she was fat--I thought people would make fun of her. But I just evolved to where I think she was the greatest spiritual person I have ever known and the wisest person I’ve known. She just changed my whole reality, and my whole perception of people.”