Neil Greenberg (born in 1959 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) has been creating dances since 1979. He came to New York from Minnesota in 1976 and danced with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1979 to 1986. He formed Dance by Neil Greenberg in 1986, and his choreography has since been presented in over twenty-five New York City productions and on tour. His work Not-About-AIDS-Dance (1994), which employs his signature use of projected words as a layering strategy to provide doors into spaces for meaning(fulness) while raising questions about the nature of meaning-making. Other projects include Really Queer Dance With Harps (2008), (like a vase) (2010), This (2014) and Betsy (2022). Greenberg is currently a Professor of Choreography at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, and previously taught at Purchase College, Sarah Lawrence College, and University of California, Riverside. He served as dance curator at The Kitchen from 1995 to 1999.

STAN WALDEN: Okay. Um, thank you, Neil. So, uh, Stan Walden here with Neil Greenberg. Is it—

NEIL GREENBERG: Here.

WALDEN: The 16th or 17th? I think it's the 17th.

GREENBERG: It's the 17th, yes.

WALDEN: Um, and so just before we proceed, I want to, oh, so June 17th, uh, 2024. And before proceeding, I want to confirm if I have your consent to record this interview.

GREENBERG: Yes.

WALDEN: Thank you so much.

GREENBERG: You have my consent. Yes means yes.

WALDEN: Thank you. Great. Um, well, yeah, thank you for being here to speak with me. I think we're about to look at some memorabilia. Um, but, um, yeah, I'm, I'm interested to, you know, I'm coming from, uh, Parsons from the background of architecture and design, and I think what's been special about this is to meet other people in The New School who are coming from very different perspectives. Um, both just in life, but in their work. Um, and yeah, that's why I appreciate this opportunity. Um, so you—

GREENBERG: And it's nice to meet you as well.

WALDEN: Yeah. Thank you. Likewise. Um, and yeah, you're a dancer and, uh, you started dancing in Minnesota.

GREENBERG: That is all correct.

WALDEN: Yeah. And, uh, you've been in the city at this point for a long time.

GREENBERG: Since 1976.

WALDEN: Yeah. And you started with Merce Cunningham?

GREENBERG: I started dance, I started dancing with Merce Cunningham in 1979 in the company. Yeah.

WALDEN: Yeah. That's great. And then, um, well, I mean, where to start? Um—

GREENBERG: Well, what do you want to know?

WALDEN: Yeah, yeah. I mean, so, uh, you know, I, I like your work is so expansive and you've been active for so long, and you continue to work and, um, make art and teach. And, um, I guess the—I'm curious to know, you know, I, before we started recording, I was describing where this project is coming from, "AIDS at The New School: What is Remembered?" and, um, you know, I've, this is something that for better or for worse, I've kind of stumbled into, but I'm now very excited about, just to ask the question and to learn. And so I wonder, and you know, we can get, um, into this in more specific, but I guess I'm curious to know, like what your reaction is to that question. And is this a question you get often? Are you surprised by the question? Are you not surprised? Um—

GREENBERG: The question being what is remembered?

WALDEN: Yeah, and, yeah. AIDS at The New School, what is remembered?

GREENBERG: AIDS is, AIDS at The New School—

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: What is remembered?

WALDEN: [00:02:31]:

Yeah. And correct—are you, did you come here at around 2010?

GREENBERG: I did.

WALDEN: Yeah, exactly.

WALDEN: So what brought you here at the new school? Specifically to The New School?

GREENBERG: I had, [laughs] I mean, really, really what brought me here was, I actually, I've been here since, I've been in New York since 1976, except for three years when I was teaching at the University of California Riverside, which was, which was my first full-time academic job. Immediately after getting my terminal degree, I got that job. And I was there for three years. And my husband did not move out as we had expected he would. So I really wanted to come back to New York. So that's really what landed me. There was the job posting, and I met with Danielle Goldman, who was the only full-time faculty in dance at The New School. Actually, but we are housed at, we are in Lang, we're at Lang in the Lang Arts department. And I real—and I guess I had met Danielle before in a panel discussion that actually, I think—no, it didn't involve Bill T, Jones. Sorry. I thought that would be a connection there, but it wasn’t. But I had met her before, but didn't know her.  I really liked her when I met her. And I was offered the job. You know, I did all of that. I was offered the job and I took it and I came back to New York. And for the record I'm, I'm super glad about being, working with Danielle Goldman. Like, I'm gonna say that as one of my number one things about this job has been working with Danielle. Like, it's been great.

WALDEN: And she's still—

GREENBERG: And she's still here. And we are still the only two full-time faculty in dance at Lang and at The New School.

WALDEN: Yeah. That's great. And so is she somebody you'd known prior to your moving to California?

GREENBERG: No.

WALDEN: Okay.

GREENBERG: No, we had, I had just, I think while, I don't know, at some point I had been in a panel discussion that she was moderating at, I think it was called Dance Theater Workshop at the time. Now it's New York Live Arts, but that theater.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Didn't know her at all. Although [laughs], when I look in my database, when I look in my address book, I see that I had her phone number, and that's because she auditioned for me in 2003 as a dancer.  She’s a scholar and a dancer, which is, and she really is a dancer, but she, and she really is a scholar.

[00:05:19]

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: You know?

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: So—

WALDEN: When you were—and so you were teaching dance at Riverside as well?

GREENBERG: Yeah, I was teaching choreography. I think that was my title there.

WALDEN: Did you notice any—

GREENBERG: Experimental choreography. That was actually—Professor of Experimental Choreography. That's how they frame it.

WALDEN: Yeah. And was it the same here when you, was that the same kind of role, or—

GREENBERG: Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, I was hired as a choreographer who could be a part of a program in a liberal arts school, and therefore also teach things that, I do teach hybrid studio seminars that are reading, that are, they have quite a bit of reading and writing and—

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Yeah.

WALDEN: Do you find, are students, um—and these are undergrads, is that correct?

GREENBERG: Yeah, all undergrads.

GREENBERG: Okay. Yeah.

WALDEN: Are students, uh, and this is my own ignorance, so I'm just, I'm asking for myself more than anything. Are students coming in, um, into these dance classes with like a strong background or like, uh, openness to theory, um, when it comes to dance? Or is it, is there a learning curve there?

GREENBERG: Well, there's certainly a learning curve about, about theory. Yeah. But, and it's, the students come in, there's no audition for the program anymore. Over the years we changed that, we inherited a program and, and we're the first actual faculty to—you know, and not administrators, but faculty to design it.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: To re—so we kind of redesigned it. But anyway, students come in with all sorts of different backgrounds, but they've chosen, and some of them are just coming to a liberal arts college for a liberal arts college, and they have some dance in their life and they just want to  continue some of that.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And some of them are coming specifically for dance, and some of them have a lot of prior experience and could be doing conservatory work, but chose a liberal arts college. Those students, the ones who like, could be in a conservatory and chose the liberal arts college, seemed to me to be really ripe for theory. Like they are—

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: They don't know what it is. They don't know that it exists yet.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: That critical dance studies or performance studies,  they're not aware at all, but, so for those students taking their first courses with Danielle and others, it's a new world for them and they're really open to it. And others, there's a very steep learning curve. And some of them never get very far on that curve before they graduate. 

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: It's a liberal arts college.

WALDEN: Yeah. Is there any sort of, um, I guess I'm curious to know, like what, as you are, you know, I'm sure the first part of their, um, experience in the dance program, like you're kind of giving them the, maybe the foundations that you think they need. And then what do you find that they're giving back to you by the end of their experience? Are you—

[00:08:34]

GREENBERG: Oh—

WALDEN: Yeah. I'm curious about that.

GREENBERG: By the end? So I teach, I often see them at the beginning and the end. I often see them for an introduction to choreographic research course, which is required of the dance major. And might be required of the dance minor. I can't even remember my own program requirements. And then at the end, students take a senior seminar, all students at Lang do some kind of a senior capstone project. And in the arts, they, they don't have to take mine, which is performance-based, where they do a performance. But many, most, I would say most of the people really interested in dance whether dance is their major or not, take that one. And it's, and some theater students take it, it's performance with, it's not specifically dance. But the dance students give back by that point, they know how to engage in,  I don't know, discourse about each other's work.

And they know how to, how to think about work in, in context, and they know how to—like in my courses, I, we work a lot for a while on, everybody likes and dislikes and let's just leave that out of the room right now. Which is so hard and so new to them to like, engage in other parts of critical, other critical operations besides, besides immediate evaluation. You know, to engage in description, interpretation, contextual explanation, all sorts of it. So, they do, they can do that. And they can work with each other and, uh, give feedback in a way that, and ask for feedback in very particular ways. Like, I think this is, like, for me, that's a big deal.

[00:10:37]

WALDEN: Yeah. It's a lot of growth.

GREENBERG: And they can make work. And, I mean, it depends on who, but they know how to listen to feedback. You know, one of the big things is like disentangling authority, perceived or claimed or—authority. Um, so like the authority of, certainly my authority. They act, they know by the end, those students know they don't have to do it. Like, I'm just another human being. And I'm maybe a human being further from their audience than—it's like, “okay, boomer.” It’s like, I'm further from their audience than their peers. So they can take everything in, in different ways. And it's not just about, like, the question of, that question that people ask when they're making something. Does it work? Does it work? And the question,  I always mirror back, well, does it work for what? If you do this, it's different than doing that. That's the main thing. It's different. And then which direction is appealing? And, and like, feels like it's the direction that you're engaged with, or want to be engaged with. [laughs]

WALDEN: Yeah. When you're introducing them to—

GREENBERG: Well, that was fun. I've never—

WALDEN: Good, good!

GREENBERG: I haven't had to articulate that before. I like having that on the record.

WALDEN: Good. Yeah, I'm glad to bring a decent question. Um, uh, do you, when you're bringing them into this process and into this mode of thinking, um, are you talking about much about your work and your experience?

GREENBERG: I do not talk about my work. I mean, I talk about my experience as a choreographer, just what it is like for me to make a work without talking about the aesthetic—well, I, it's a bit of a lie. The students come to know, some of my own aesthetic preferences or what I'm interested in. And they also learn my biases. That's really important. But I don't, I don't lecture about my work much at all. But I do certain kinds of improvisational exercises that come straight from the making of my work.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And I tell them that, and the purpose in those classes is just to loosen the, to get them doing something different. You know, some ways to think outside their box. [Laughs] Um, but we bring in all sorts of choreographers.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: That's another thing that upends my core, my authority, they work with other choreographers with really different points of view.

WALDEN: Um, I was interested, just your phrase, choreographic research. Um, and it made me think about, um, some of your process and your work from a few decades ago, maybe even continues, but just your interviewing of, um, people you're dancing with and your performances and that informing text that's displayed, um, in some of your performances. Um, yeah, I guess I'm, and, and I think as an outsider to this world and to this specific art form, I think to know something about the dancer who's performing in front of you, some added context was so, um, surprising and refreshing and, um, made me, I think just look at this in a new way. So I think that was special to experience. And then I'm curious to know, you know, you started dance so young, and then how long, I mean, what was that process like to really engage the people who are performing either with you or that you're conducting? You know, did it, was it, um, did it take a big leap for you to get there? Or did it come, did this emerge from a kind of natural place? I guess I'm just curious about how—

GREENBERG: Interesting.

WALDEN: Yeah. As someone who's interviewing for this project, I'm, it just strikes me when someone else is interviewing for their own work.

[00:15:04]

GREENBERG: [laughs]

WALDEN: So I'm, I'm just, I want to know more about what that was like.

GREENBERG: Well, and so I did that for the first time with "Not-About-AIDS-Dance," and I continued it, and then I did it, I didn't do it again—no, I did. I must have done it—no, I don't even think I had to interview people for "The Disco Project," which was the piece that followed, although there is some biographical data in it. But I did, I think I did interview again for the very last piece in that series of work. You know, it wasn't intended as a series originally. [laughs]

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: But the last piece is "Part Three (Luck)." And that again, has text, uh, written text. And then I don't think I've done it again.

WALDEN: Okay.

GREENBERG: Wait, wait, wait. I did it when I made a commissioned work for White Oak Dance Project and, oh, and another work in Minnesota, I think. Did I? I can't remember, but I don't think I've actually done that [interviewing the dancers] again since.

WALDEN: Okay.

GREENBERG: Just—

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Just, so the last time was in '98, although I have used projected text since. I can say that the version of that that I do now, the interviewing that happens now is, and I've never framed it this way, but another part of the research, if you want to call it that, or just my process, my not knowing what's gonna happen and then doing something, and then from that moving forward. That's a kind of research.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

GREENBERG: Are the improvisations. So I videotaped improvisations, and for years I only videotaped my own improvisations and then the dancers and I—I chose sections of that for us to learn. And, and we did. And it takes a lot of time to learn an improvisation off of video. And then at a certain point, I took the obvious next step.

GREENBERG: It took me a long time to get to the obvious next step, which was to videotape the other dancers' improvisations, as well as my own. And I've continued that since, not, since 2006 was the first time I did that. And that's continued. And that is in a sense, a form of this [interviewing the dancers].  I don't, I don't like, I'm suspicious of the speech metaphor.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Like, it's not like speech.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

GREENBERG: But I'll still use it here. The dancer speaks.

WALDEN: Yeah, yeah.

GREENBERG: You know, their body. You learn, there's so much experiential stuff that you, that comes out of these improvisations. And then I get to use, pick parts of that to use, and we use it verbatim. So the dancers appear on the stage now in that way.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

GREENBERG: Like they're really there.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: From them.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Um—

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: But, okay. So was it, well, I think even when I was with Merce, one of the things I used to bristle at and then kind of respond to in my own work. I don't even know how to phrase what I was bristling at. So I'll start with the response. My response, something about like de-heroizing the dancer, and de-romanticizing is really it. And not that I,  I'm not making claims that this is what Merce was doing, but I was still bristling [laughs] a little bit, and I, it's only bristling because I loved the work so much that any little bit of it that didn't fit my own ideas, it really expanded my ideas, and I loved Merce's ideas. So this, I would bristle at it. So even for my first concert, I wore a watch [laughs] while I was dancing, which is, it's like you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to be seen as out of time, you're not a human. And I was humanizing without—ah, that's weird. Because I don't really like, I'm not, I'm humanizing the person engaging in this labor— [laughs]

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Is a person!

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: But that doesn't mean that I'm expressing things about, like, we're not, we're not acting out humanness in a, I'm losing a word here. What would be a word for almost a religious—Humanist. Humanist, almost a religious take on the respect of the human. And people talk about that in their work. And I, I kind of go, [laughs] let the record show that—

[00:20:20]:

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Greenberg had made a vomiting—

WALDEN: Yes.

GREENBERG: Signal. I'm just not interested in acting out, touching each other's cheeks.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Like, oh my God, value of the human is also a romanticization to me.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: So I was interested in de-romanticizing and I engaged in that in my work to some extent, as a styling of the work to try to take it down a notch. [laughs] Early that took the form of, absolutely engaging in performance in a way that the viewer knows that we know we are performing.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

GREENBERG: Like, not pretending that like we don't see them.

WALDEN: Right.

GREENBERG: Or like, actually doing a lot of things that are directly facing the audience and looking them in the eye. And look at this, look at this, look at this. Look at this, now look at that. You know, that kind of thing. But that's all in that, there's a person here and there's a real exchange.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: With "Not-About-AIDS-Dance" I had already done some work with projected text that was from my own mind. And it was fictional, kind of. It was, or it was, it was like nonfictional, but it was tongue-in-cheek. It was fictional.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

GREENBERG: It was almost satiric about the choreographic process. And if it mentioned a dancer, it wasn't real about them. Like, oh, there's one: "This material might be in the wrong place." That was from an early dance. Uh, and then, well, it, I've always, I've often framed it this way. You might have read this already, [laughs], but whe—I have a memory of dancing. I, well, rather, I think I'll just say that, like even watching Merce's work, I, like, I, this is where I'll get into this memory of watching a work at the, at Westbeth, the 11th floor. And there was a huge rainstorm, and it was a piece, it was early in my years in the company. I wasn't in the piece. And so I was watching it, and I had never seen it perfor—well I, turns out I had seen it performed once as a teenager in Minnesota. But I didn't, I don't think I remembered that yet. It wasn't until I saw the sets and costumes that I remembered that.

WALDEN: Wow.

GREENBERG: That I was seeing it rehearsed and it was just like, so amazing to me. There was this rainstorm, and after I was done running around shutting windows, since I was the one not in the piece, I, it was just, like, it was such a resonant experience. And so I never, well, how is it this, I have this resonant experience and I know that many people see this particular work, or Merce's work in general, or dance in general, and they just, they don't have a resonant, it doesn't resonate. Like, why? And I think it, I don't know, this might be after the fact theorization, but I just thought, oh, it's because I know the people.

WALDEN: Right.

GREENBERG: Like, that's a part of it. Like, I actually know these people.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Like, they aren't, they are doing shapes and, and rhythms and, and, and, and different kind—you know, different kinds and qualities of movement and different relationships, spatial, they're doing all this stuff, that isn't humanist, but there are people doing it. And when I made "Not-About-AIDS-Dance," and I'll be, this is a really long-winded response, but when I made "Not-About-AIDS-Dance," it had first started as, I had to write a grant application. So I had, this is like just a part of the process often, oh, I have to write a grant application. It's for a show next year. Hopefully I know, when things are going well, I know where that show is gonna be.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: But I have to write this grant application and, and I have to give it a title and I have to say what I'm gonna do.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And in this grant application for New York State Council for the Arts, those years it was probably like $5,000 or $6,000.

[00:25:10]

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: I bet that's all we got. If that. Um, uh, I called it "Secrets of Identity." [laughs] And I was going to...  I kind of had the plan that I was going to include projections, but this time it would be nonfictional. And this time it would be about the performers too. And I might have gone into something about as a door into watching the dancing. And I also included that a big part of this was that I wanted to reveal I was HIV positive. So we got there. [laughs] We got somewhere that resonates with your project.

WALDEN: Yeah. Well, I—

GREENBERG: That was a part of it. Like, I wanted to, I somehow wanted to name that.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

GREENBERG: And that was probably my own therapy.

WALDEN: Right.

GREENBERG: And a little political.

WALDEN: Of course.

GREENBERG: Even the humanizing was somewhat political to me. De-romanticizing. Like it's somehow about power relations.

WALDEN: Were other dancers at the time also revealing their status? Or was that—

GREENBERG: No.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: No. I mean, very, very—no. John Bernd had, but I don't even know if I was aware of that at that time. I mean, also Bill T. Jones. Arnie Zane had, had died, and it was known that it was AIDS. But no. Nobody was, nobody was naming it.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Nobody was naming AIDS.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

GREENBERG: [laughs] You know, AIDS. Like AIDS.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

GREENBERG: It's a very funny thing in Morgan's [Bassichis] show [“Can I Be Frank?”]. [laughs] Where he makes this joke—they make this joke—sorry, Morgan, I misgendered you—where they make this joke, uh, about like, "I think I'm, I think I'm, I think I might be the first person to ever talk about AIDS on stage. Yeah. I think I, I think I am."

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: But the funny thing is, I mean, it's funny obviously, 'cause Morgan is not, that they are not the first person, but also because—well, but people don't, like, they include it.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: But they talk around it.

WALDEN: Yeah, yeah.

GREENBERG: They include it. It's obvious that that's what is going on.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: But that, that AIDS is just too scary a thing to say.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And at the time, me saying I'm HIV positive in 1990, I guess it was '94 or five. Well, it was, but it was 1993 when I wrote the grant application, so I can date it back. I know I had that intent back then.

WALDEN: Right, yeah.

GREENBERG: In January of '93. Um, that was like, you don't do that.

WALDEN: Right.

GREENBERG: I mean, I wasn't out places,  'cause that, it meant you were gonna die. [laughs] I mean, I did—I refused to believe that, but I believed it.

WALDEN: Right.

GREENBERG: And there's no reason I shouldn't have believed it, at that time. Um, well, although I'm glad I refused to believe it, and that turned out to be true for me.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: You know, so that's also true.

WALDEN: Right.

GREENBERG: People react differently to the virus and some, my time release formula [laughs] kept me alive just long enough to be able to stay alive.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Um, but where was, well, anyway, I lost myself there.

WALDEN: No, I, that was so rich. I, something I was, uh, responding to in my head was, um, I think de romanticizing and resonance and knowing people, um, and like the memories that you share with the people, the stories that you know about these people, and then I know that, you know, so this, you're so showing this for the first time in '94 or '95?

GREENBERG: '94.

WALDEN: And then you, uh, showed it again, like, 11 years later, right?

GREENBERG: In 2006. Yep.

WALDEN: And, um, I'm curious to know what, for you, I understand some of the motivation to kind of reshowing it and, um, bringing it back, but, um, you know, it's now 2024. And, uh, I think like I'm, I'm experiencing this desire of like revisitation and, um, kind of re-engaging conversations in this topic as, at least for me in this circles I'm in. So I—

[00:30:00]

GREENBERG: Uh-huh.

WALDEN: To, um, remember, or to know people in one context and then to, over 10 years later, revisit that, and like, what, what's the memory and the meaning that you're mining from that revisitation then, and maybe even ongoing?

GREENBERG: Entering into the question. [Laughs] Um, so it's the revisitation you're especially looking at.

WALDEN: Yeah. I think, you know —

GREENBERG: Both in 2006.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And I can say—

WALDEN: We can start there.

GREENBERG: Yeah. Okay.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Um, I have to remember.

WALDEN: Yeah. [laughs]

GREENBERG: In 2006, what did we do? We framed it as twenty—I mean, one thing was, it was 25 years, I was looking for something like, I think I had missed the, uh, 10-year, yeah. I missed the 10-year mark on the piece. But we called it, we just looked for, it was 25 years since 1981, which is when the first, uh, it first became a part of the public consciousness through the New York Times article about gay men dying of rare cancer. Um, yeah, in early July. Right before July 4th, isn't it? 

WALDEN: I think it is, sounds right.

GREENBERG: It might be, yeah. Something like that. Something [in] there. Which I remember by the way, [laughs] like, I didn't see, like it isn't like I saw it in the paper the day it came out, but every, people talked about it in hushed tones and frightened tones and, "did you see this? Did you see this? Oh my god." 

So we’re revisiting it, in 2006, and protease inhibitors. You know, it's interesting 'cause I, it was an effort to do it. Like, of course it was an effort, but also it was, I didn't have, I wasn't being produced by anyone to do this. And it was the first time in many years, since 1985 or since 1983, that I was once again self-producing at Dance Theater Workshop. I mean, they were supportive, but it was not a part of, it didn't have their full support. They couldn't get commissioning money for it. Although I did make a new work for it, that turned out really well I'm happy to say. "Quartet with Three Gay Men," that we showed right before "Not-About-AIDS-Dance." So the point is I really wanted to do it. I wanted to do it during gay pride, which it was, I wanted people to see it. I wanted people to remember.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: You know, I wanted, I mean, in all of this, is it altruistic?  Like, I want to think people will remember me, which means that they have to, how are they gonna? So yes. As part of my own immortality project, maybe showing it again, will help people remember that Neil Greenberg existed. For about five years after I die. But what about all those names? What about all those people that I, that are in there, including my brother?

WALDEN: Yeah, right.

GREENBERG: And processing it… There was something that was like a reemergence, like right after the protease, my reaction—and I'm not alone in this, but it isn't everyone's reaction—but mine was like, "Oh, phew. Let me not, let me just move away from this as quickly as possible." You know, I'll stay with it long enough to make a piece where I inform people that I am on the protease, [laughs] and I am—you all think I'm gonna live! Somehow I felt like I needed, somehow needed to close that loop—

WALDEN: Of course.

GREENBERG: As if it's a loop to close. 'Cause it turned out to be not a loop to close. 'Cause I got very sick in the years after that.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: But I'm alive. [laughs].

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Uh, I don't know where I was. I just, I was reemerging and thinking about that horrible era in my own personal, and my community's life. I was reemerging from… the escape. And so that was one period of reemergence. And I was, how old was I in 2006? I was 47. And I could still do it.

[00:35:11]

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: I could still do it. I mean, I could, I could still do a performance of it now, [laughs] a performance, but I bet I would kill myself. [laughs] Not kill, not, you know—

WALDEN: Of course.

GREENBERG: But I bet I would. I don't know if I could, like these old joints, they can't take that much jumping. So anyway, so that was that revisitation.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: It was partly personal and partly something I was… like, people were, we were talking about it again in a different way and realizing that we had not been talking about it, or not been living there, as much. I'll say that I also, from teaching here, students were interested. Here at Lang there was always a group of students—I was so surprised. This student who unfortunately has died of leukemia, a brilliant, brilliant student, Nez Hafezi. They were a student early on, a brilliant person who was really interested in engaging with this in their classes. And, Robert Sember maybe was starting to teach around that time in our program. Robert did that course, Vogue'ology, he had done a something through the Vera List Center and that got Danielle Goldman thinking he should do it in the dance program. And that started this long history now we've had with, both with Robert and with that course, which Robert no longer teaches. That was, that's a pretty big deal.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Vogue'ology at The New School.

WALDEN: Is that like 2014 or around there?

GREENBERG: Was it? I think it was earlier.

WALDEN: It was earlier? Okay.

GREENBERG: But I can look it up.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: I think it was the first, I remember it was the first year that I had to serve as dance program director. So I think it's earlier because I came in in 2010.  So in 2011. It was either 2011 or 2012.

WALDEN: Okay.

GREENBERG: Because I was corresponding with Robert and I didn't know him yet.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: I remember that. I have a strong memory of it. I was new as dance program director. So it's really a quite long time ago.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: So I. that kind of like got me thinking about it again as early as, you know. I mean, it's recent to 2006, but 2010, '11, '12, um—

WALDEN: It's pretty prolonged. It's great.

GREENBERG: Yeah. Yeah. And this piece, "The Disco Project," had an unexpected life during the pandemic that… there was a gallery installation at Greene Naftali, that was arranged through, it was Sarah Michelson, who's a choreographer, was sort of the connecting link there, and heard that they were doing, during the pandemic, an exhibition installation, "From Disco to Disco." And Sarah just said, "well, you have to do “The Disco Project.” Like, you have to take a look at this." And then I worked with Carol Greene, and we came up with some… I mean, I was really pleased with that. Which then was repeated. That was in 2021. And then in 2022, it was part of the White Columns Annual. And then in 2022 also, then we did it at the AIDS Memorial, but without the projected text. And it's the projected text—well, I thought it was the projected text that explicitly ties the piece to AIDS, but it turns out [laughs] that… I mean, people got the gist.

WALDEN: Yeah. It stood on its own.

GREENBERG: Yeah. Well, I mean, there was enough knowledge, I guess, that it was somehow [understood]. And then also I have a big solo. My work veers away, usually stays away from direct expression, especially with verbal language, with text, that kind of text. But the title of the song "Never Can Say Goodbye" is, I have a solo to it, and it's my heart-on-sleeve, crazy solo.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: You know, like, people get the gist.

WALDEN: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[00:40:01]

GREENBERG: Yeah. So there's been this reengagement, and then we did it again in 2023 in the Catskills with the projected text again.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: So there's been this other engagement… and now Morgan is doing this show, with Frank Maya, who is the person I was most recently—Frank Maya died while we were making "The Disco Project," which is why I included text. I wasn't going to include any text. But I just didn't see, I had documented my brother and all these people dying while I made "Not-About-AIDS-Dance." How could I not [mention Frank Maya’s death in “The Disco Project]?

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: So that's what happened there. And now Morgan's doing this, and it seems to really be engaging people, but I think because people are already engaged, or—so Morgan's adding to that discourse a lot. I think Morgan has a whole Douglas Crimp part of the show [laughs], by the way, which is so great. Morgan wrote a song to Douglas Crimp text.

WALDEN: That's great.

GREENBERG: Which is so good. Yeah.

WALDEN: Um, yeah, I think, I'm just thinking about the—

GREENBERG: Boy I talk a lot.

WALDEN: No, that's great. This is wonderful. Um, uh, I don't know know, um, are you familiar with Ted's book "We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production"]? Um—

GREENBERG: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Not cover-to-cover, but yes.

WALDEN: Yeah. Well, I read it before I spoke to him most recently. And just, um, I forget what the main, how they're categorizing this kind of new era of just—

GREENBERG: Right.

WALDEN: Um, ongoing kind of, uh, AIDS understanding, but that the groundwork has been laid for people to kind of access and to participate from so many different, um, angles. And so I think, like you said, it's, it's, people, um, are already engaged is what you said. And I think that's like, really, I think that that's kind of, uh, reassuring to me as I've been looking for people in this community who, um, like are there people, you know, my question went from "are people engaged?" To, "yes, people are engaged, and of course they are." And then, um, you know, here's this list of names of the people who are engaged, including yourself. Um, so—

GREENBERG: And I'll say Ted, I mean, Ted is a big… he's done a lot and it's had an effect. And that includes certainly like, broadening, oh, I guess it was an engagement… In 2016 at Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church there was a platform, like a series, that was, curated or programmed by Ishmael Houston Jones and Will Rawls, who are both dance artists, Black dance artists, and it was called "Lost and Found," and it was specifically about AIDS. And that's when they, they did the first revival of a John Bernd piece. Um, and they did a performance series, and, I did an evening basically framed around "Not-About-AIDS-Dance." We didn't perform the work.  But they were really looking a… okay, so I mean, really, like, so this seems like Neil Greenberg's, like, they didn't say this right out, using me, but okay. So this seems like Neil Greenberg's, and as far as they knew, all those men in that list were white men, which they weren't, but sure, the majority were white, gay white men, you know? So like, sure. The world has acknowledged that gay white men have died.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Of AIDS now, let's get real here. Like, let's, that's the context they were like, that was their project, I think.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And so that's been a big part of the project lately.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what's been really, uh, the kind of—

GREENBERG: Women and black—

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Men and I mean, I'm just gonna start there. [laughs]

WALDEN: Right, yeah.

GREENBERG: But, just to name it.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think that's what's been really, like Ted has this line in the book, um, I forget if it's him or his, um, co-creator in this project, um, Alex [Juhasz]. But, uh, it's like when you talk about AIDS, you talk about all these other issues, and it's exactly that. So I think that to use this as a lens to look, uh, back forward and, uh, straight ahead, just in terms of like, where we are, what we know, and what we're still finding out has been really rich. And I think that's what's been the most, like, I think there's the interest in the past and collecting those stories, but also highlighting like where this work is going and the, how it's evolved in the new stories that it can include each time it's interpreted or responded to.

[00:45:16]

GREENBERG: Right.

WALDEN: Yeah. Um, yeah, I guess on that note, you know, it, you've named like multiple projects, um, I feel like for every year that's gone by, but what's, what are you working on now and where's that going?

GREENBERG: Nothing.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: But I will be.

WALDEN: Yeah. Summer break. Yeah.

GREENBERG: No, no, no. It's not even summer break. I can only make it work when I'm on sabbatical.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

GREENBERG: And I, I've been happy that I've had a sort of accelerated sabbaticals for the past 10 years. Like I've had not just one sabbatical, but a few, just because I was able to negotiate that at one point. And, and I have a sabbatical coming in the fall of '25, and that is the last of my accelerated sabbaticals. You know, the term of this contract, as far as having special sabbatical,  scheduling. So I'll be making work a year from now.

WALDEN: Okay.

GREENBERG: That's the way it's worked. Like, I will be in rehearsals probably a year from today.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: I hope.

WALDEN: Yeah. Fingers crossed.

GREENBERG: Well, funding is much more difficult.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah. Do you stay in the city normally?

GREENBERG: Yeah.

WALDEN: Or do you—okay.

GREENBERG: 

I mean, if I can get a residency somewhere that will pay dancers, and I, I'm hoping maybe I can get one.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: But it's hard now.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: [00:46:47]:

For all sorts of reasons.

WALDEN: That's exciting though.

GREENBERG: Yeah.

WALDEN: Um, and then in terms of—

GREENBERG: But the last work I made, in 2022, I needed… it had a text. It's called "Betsy," and there was… it's a dance [laughs]. And I was thinking about all sorts of things, including race and white supremacy, mostly about white supremacy. And I found a way into that through "The Nutcracker" [laughs] for me. Like these really, horribly, problematic musics and dances that are, like orientalism and, yeah. Really bad. [laughs] Really bad. Oh, you read that. Maybe if you read the most recent New York Times.

WALDEN: Yeah, that's right. I saw.

GREENBERG: So that's about “Betsy.” And for "Betsy" I had a text that was projected as the audience was coming in that provided some context that I wanted to provide.

WALDEN: Right.

GREENBERG: And within that, I wanted to name… I named "Not-About-AIDS-Dance." I don't know that I… I already can't remember what's in the "Betsy" text.  It’s on my website now. You can click on it. I've supplied the text.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Separately as a document.

WALDEN: I love that. I saw that for the "Not-About-AIDS-Dance," and I mean, so powerful just to have that access. So, cool. That's really great.

GREENBERG: I did it with "Betsy." So AIDS is there. Like, the word AIDS is written.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Like, if it, if that's the only thing… maybe it isn't, I can't quite remember whether I… I think I said something about I'm still alive, so… like I referenced myself. Yeah. I think I talked about "Not-About-AIDS-Dance" a little bit within that text.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: That's just on the loop and it just repeats. And who knows where people go in. And I also talk about how "Not-About-AIDS-Dance" and "The Disco Project" are, we're all white.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Like all the dancers were white.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And how I just wouldn't do that again.

WALDEN: Right, right. Yeah. I, I am curious, I kind of wanna ask, like, as, you know, this discourse unfolds and we kind of broaden the view and get more specific about, um, these marginalized groups, women, black people, people of color, trans people, um, you know—

GREENBERG: And of course—just, just to name the obvious—of course, white gay men were marginalized in a way. I mean, they were marginalized at that time, too. But there are, there are, there's still a power structure.

WALDEN: Exactly.

GREENBERG: Yeah. That exists within those groups. Yeah. Yeah.

WALDEN: Do you see—

GREENBERG: Yeah. White gay men have access to power and money, GMHC and even ACT UP.

[00:50:01]

WALDEN: Totally.

GREENBERG: Totally. Okay. Go on. [laughs]

WALDEN: No, I—

GREENBERG: I wanted to name that.

WALDEN: No. Yeah. Um, it's important. Um, I mean, the fact that you're speaking to it and your work is speaking to it too, and how it's evolved. I mean, it's like, this is the evolving discourse around AIDS and HIV. Um, and I guess in like, to kind of continue it in that trajectory that continues to like, I think like build and heal and kind of recognize and, uh, like call people in. Um, do you see other dance works that, uh, dancers or artists that are also kind of, um, responding to this? I mean, you mentioned Morgan. Are you seeing, um—

GREENBERG: Morgan.

WALDEN: Um, where else are you seeing this?

GREENBERG: Well, that's a good question. Well, I mean… honestly, this project that Miguel Gutierrez and Ishmael Houston-Jones joined forces to make, to revive… but it wasn't just straight on revival 'cause they had to do creative work on it, their own creative work on, on John Bernd's, I forget the name of the piece. Um, John Bernd's piece. Yeah. And, and I can't, and I can't let that stand.

[Neil searches on his computer]

GREENBERG: John Bernd's… "Lost and Found," it'll say right away… "Scenes from Life," "Scenes from Life," okay. No. "Lost and Found: Scenes from Life," uh, I think it's scenes—"Variations on Themes from Lost and Found." That is very interesting. What was the name of the work? "Variations on Themes from Lost and Found: Scenes from a Life and other works by John Bernd." I think the John Bernd piece was "Lost and Found: Scenes from"—I don't know. I actually don't know. I can't say for sure what the name of that work was. I'm confused now. But, so just the fact that they engaged with that, and then that has continued, it was performed again. It's been performed again a few times, including at the AIDS Memorial.

WALDEN: Okay. Yeah.

GREENBERG: Last summer.

WALDEN: Okay. Um, yeah, this is, I this is just a whole world that I don't—

GREENBERG: But there isn't a lot—

WALDEN: Don't have access to.

GREENBERG: —that I'm aware of that is explicit.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Because my work is not—like for me, these are texts that exist simultaneously without having to, like, act out each other. So the dance I make is not trying to say something about anything. I mean, it's trying to perform, bring up, put some things in the air. And some of that is through that text that I... some of it I could only do through written text, I guess. So I did it, but I did it not totally connected to the dancing in this case.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And… this is occurring to me that whenever I perform, my body is so marked now as, I'm not talking about all the scars from the mosquito bites that I've scratched. I just can't stop doing that. But,  yeah. You know, I'm— [laughs]  I am one of the early people to say, to let it be known explicitly, I'm HIV positive.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And you can probably count it on your hands. How many people have done that publicly in the, I don't know.

WALDEN: I'd have to—but I mean, we find out after, in the old days, we found out after they died.

Walden: Right.

GREENBERG: We suspected it before they died and found out after they died. Even if it didn't say that they died from AIDS or AIDS related complications, as the language went then. But my body is marked. So as soon as just appearing in a work, that context is there.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Including that I'm alive.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And, here I am, I was, how old was I when I did "Not-About-AIDS-Dance"? I was 36, no, 35 when I performed it. And it, and now I'm 65.

[00:54:06]

WALDEN: Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's really cool to hear that, um, you continue to encounter students who are curious and bring their own knowledge and can respond to it how they see fit. Um, so I think that's just for them to have that access to like your, I don't know, I guess just anything that you're also bringing, giving them into shape them into this next phase.

GREENBERG: I say—since this is for The New School—I explicitly address it. I don't think I can get fired for this, [laughs] it's, it is been a practice for a long time, like, before I was at The New School, to tell my life story. And it started like when students, when teachers were doing that at a conservatory program where I taught, I taught a Purchase College for 20 years, and teachers were doing that, and it was all, very about their career. And if you worked for Balanchine, Mr. B, and for me, Mr. C—you know, that's a joke. We don't refer to Merce as Mr. C, but still it would be like that, giving them—

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: You know, in my career highlights and, "ooh!" And you know, "I was in the company at the age of"—

WALDEN: Right.

GREENBERG: You know, puffing one's, puffing oneself up for one's students.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And giving them information as a fringe benefit. But then I started to do that. I don't know when I started to adding that I was HIV positive, but I did. And it was probably bef—it was probably around the time of "Not-About-AIDS-Dance."

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And I've done that since. So here, if I teach a first year seminar, I do it with them, one day, one class day. And if I'm teaching Introduction to Choreographic Research, I do it one day in that. And, and there's no guarantee that all students will have heard it.

WALDEN: Right.

GREENBERG: But I tell my life story and a big part of it, I mean, there are few big parts of it that are not the, not careerist, [laughs] or they aren't about my career as a central thing. And one of them is, well, I'll also show them pictures of my family. Now I have a whole PowerPoint.

WALDEN: [laughs]

GREENBERG: It's lovely. But you know, in the pictures, there's my brother, Jon.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Or in this video of me improvising in the living room at the age of five, there's my brother Jon in the back.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: You know, and other siblings.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: You know, like, it becomes this—and I used to do it in this way that like, they didn't know [that Jon died of AIDS]. I've had to calibrate it. Like, I now let them know pretty early on that Jon died of AIDS,  I don't leave that until it happens, there's not this big suspense and—

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: That was all manipulative and gross. But yeah. Students know.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

GREENBERG: My students know. And of course they, anyone can know really easily if you know how to Google.

WALDEN: Right.

GREENBERG: If you have the interest, you can find reviews of "Not-About-AIDS-Dance" and interviews with me. And you know, you'd have to know how to Google though, so there aren't,  who knows?

WALDEN: Well, on your beautiful website, it's now there too. Yeah.

GREENBERG: It was there. It was there before.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: But in more careerist, promotional— [laughs] you know, the whole website was written for a different purpose.

WALDEN: Um, I interrupted you earlier and you were going to show me a thing or two in your bookcase.

GREENBERG: I was just thinking. And for that, you're gonna have to stand up.

WALDEN: I can do that.

GREENBERG: Because I need your chair to stand—

WALDEN: Let me—

GREENBERG:  On, to, oh, just for a moment, because it's on the top-most shelf in front of… 

WALDEN: In front of Judy at Carnegie Hall.

GREENBERG: In front of my Judy at Carnegie Hall album. And there are three of these, and I'll take down this one, and now you can have your chair back. And this has already been exhibited at The New School.

WALDEN: Oh, great.

GREENBERG: Early on. It's so weird to, display this to you now. But it is a votive candle. That was… my brother had a… my brother had a… When Jon died, most of his, many of his friends were in ACT UP. He had been in, he had done a lot of ACT UP. I don't know if he considered himself in ACT UP right then [when he died], but anyway, he had a public funeral. It was one of those.  Casket carried up First Avenue and into Tompkins Square Park. Totally illegal, but the police didn't do anything. You know, the police were very respectful once they figured out what it was. And that's a votive. And it has some writing by my brother. Um, I don't, I don't even know what that stuff is, but it's probably, it's Buddhist or is it a chant thing? I don't know what those, that's TAP: Treatment Alternatives Project, which was an early project that he founded, or co-founded about treatment alternatives.

[01:00:47]

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: He was very much into treatment alternatives.

WALDEN: And I think I read your, your parents and siblings were at that, uh—

GREENBERG: Yes, they were.

WALDEN: Washington or, uh, was it Washington Square or To—

GREENBERG: It was Tompkins Square Park. So anyway, that was already exhibited in a, it was something where some people were just asking New School professors for an object that meant the city to them.

WALDEN: Mm. Very cool.

GREENBERG: Objects of the city or something.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And this—

WALDEN: I mean—

GREENBERG: This really, like, I had an object.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And it also brought AIDS—

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

GREENBERG: Like, because, it brought AIDS there.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Into that.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: So I think that's why—

WALDEN: That's incredible.

GREENBERG: I chose that.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: These three votive candles, empty now.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Burned. [laughs]

WALDEN: Thank you for sharing that.

GREENBERG: I mean, it's also, I mean, it's also so weird to me 'cause what he's writing about, I don't know, to me, I don't buy it, and I didn't buy it then, but I was trying… but at the moment of his death, on that day, I was trying to buy it.

WALDEN: Of course. Yeah.

GREENBERG: Yeah. You know?

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: Yeah. I mean, there's more about my brother's funeral that can be read.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah. It's all there.

GREENBERG: I mean, it's in David Gear's book, David Gere has a book. Oh, that might be a good book for you to be in, to know about. Do you know about this book?

WALDEN: I don't.

GREENBERG: Um—

WALDEN: Oh, great. Okay. "Tracking Choreography in the AIDS of—in the Age of Aids."

GREENBERG: Right. How to make dances in an epidemic. It doesn't talk about… I mean, I was shocked it didn't talk about "Not-About-AIDS-Dance." Except, parenthetically.

GREENBERG: But it talks about my brother's funeral as a choreography, and then parenthetically mentions that, I mean, it doesn't talk, call him GREENBERG: Greenberg's brother, calls him Jon Greenberg. [laughs] It calls GREENBERG: Greenberg, Jon Greenberg's brother—

WALDEN: [laughs].

GREENBERG: You know, so that's—

WALDEN: Well, I also, I was looking, um, uh, Susan Sontag's, is it, uh—

GREENBERG: "AIDS and its Metaphors."

WALDEN: Yeah. I need to, I added that to my list too.

GREENBERG: Oh, yeah.

WALDEN: So I'm happy to have more, more to read.

GREENBERG: Well, and I don't know if you're familiar with her "Illness as Metaphor."

WALDEN: I hadn't until—

GREENBERG: So that, so that preceded it. And that was, that's… I think AIDS is, I can't remember. I think "AIDS and its Metaphors" 

WALDEN: Was alone. 

GREENBERG: I think it was, but it's also good too, her "Illness as Metaphor."

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

GREENBERG: So I think she was responding to her own cancer.

WALDEN: Right. Yeah.

GREENBERG: Diagnosis and treatment and—

WALDEN: Well, I think the, the object as a, an object of the city, it's so interesting. And, um, someone coming from a spatial design perspective and, um, I think to distill the city and it's, you know, a procession and a dance and a choreography, um, through space, it's, um—

GREENBERG: Oh yeah. What a performance that was.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

GREENBERG: It was a pretty big performance.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: I mean, I understand performance studies, everything's a big performance.  But that was a big, deliberate performance. It was really, and it was performing a funeral. It was performative in the, like, I wanna say clinical, [laughs] in the, performance studies use of the term “performative.” Which you understand—

WALDEN: Uh, I mean a little bit. I feel like through Ethan [Philbrick], I mean, just—

GREENBERG: Yeah. I mean, it's really simple. The performance study, the early performance studies use of performative is, the big example was, or the big example that made sense to me, maybe there were other big examples… In a marriage ceremony, the phrase “I do,” it actually performs, it actually performs the marriage.

WALDEN: Right.

GREENBERG: It actually, some is work is being done by this utterance. It started as utterances.  “I apologize,” and “I do,” were big ones.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And that the work was accomplished by this performance.

[01:05:00]

WALDEN: Yes.

GREENBERG: It was a funeral.

WALDEN: Yeah. And I think I, that's what's really, um, I think interesting to me about this project is that it's not just memory and people, but it's the city and the landscape that we're all passing through.

GREENBERG: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, we're right by St. Vincent's Hospital.

WALDEN: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

GREENBERG: I walked this block.

WALDEN: Yes.

GREENBERG: I walked the block where my brother died.

WALDEN: Right.

GREENBERG: Not just my brother. I mean, I mean, many people died of AIDS in that hospital.

WALDEN: Yes.

GREENBERG: And many other people I knew died of AIDS in that hospital.

WALDEN: And I think what's, you know, that I, including myself, you know, I can't help but feel so transient here, but, you know, as a, an educational institution, people by nature are passing through here and it's really easy to take this block or this neighborhood for granted and just at face value. So I think anything that allows us to scratch the surface and like using an object as a way to enter into, um, like a dancer's perspective, uh, on, uh, this space and what it contains or, um, a social psychologist's perspective on the space. Um, I think that's really special. And I, I just, um, yeah. I think that's why, why I'm kind of doing this. There's so much here to understand and to kind of bring us forward. Yeah.

GREENBERG: I think that's a great project.

WALDEN: Yeah. Thank you.

GREENBERG: I'm really curious what else is, what else you're having here. =

WALDEN: Um, uh, maybe that's a good place to stop. Um, sure. But, um, yeah, I want—

GREENBERG: AIDS and Yeah. Yeah. And it's specifically around The New School.

WALDEN: Yeah.

GREENBERG: And give it to my students—I don't give them AIDS. I wanna make that clear. I'm not trying to give them AIDS.

WALDEN: 

Oh, of course! [laughs] Thank you, Neil.

[both laugh]

GREENBERG: [unintelligible, 01:06:57]

[end of recording, 01:06:57]