For the launch of Sunday School, a new series hosted by Elephant and 99 Scott Studios, we sat down with Tione Trice, the creative force behind the inaugural programme, IN REVERENCE FOR ULYSSES: VESPERS. Trice is joined by Serpentwithfeet, the multifaceted artist, songwriter, musician, who will perform excerpts from his latest album as part of the day-long programme commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the passing of Ulysses Dove – renowned dancer, choreographer, and artist. The programme, installation and performances centre on the enduring impact of Dove’s work, Vespers, a choreographic touchstone that redefined the expressive possibilities of the body through rhythm, restraint, and sculptural movement. We spoke with Trice and Serpentwithfeet about the impact of the sacred in their artistic practices, the influence of ritual in their lives, and what devotion means as an act of both love and creativity.
ELEPHANT: Perhaps you can start by telling us a bit about the influence that Ulysses Dove has had on you, and why creating this tribute to his legacy felt important?
TIONE TRICE: My relationship to Ulysses Dove began with the work itself. There was something about the physicality of his choreography that felt almost impossible to separate from emotion. The body was never simply moving. It was remembering, resisting, desiring, grieving, surviving. Creating IN REVERENCE FOR ULYSSES: VESPERS became less about recreating or memorialising a work and more about asking what it means to continue a conversation with someone who is no longer physically here. Thirty years after his passing, his work still has the capacity to move us. That feels extraordinary to me.
SERPENTWITHFEET: I wasn’t familiar with Ulysses prior to this project, which is so funny because I was aware of Merce Cunningham, obviously of Alvin Ailey. I’m often thinking about and ruminating on the work of Geoffrey Holder, who is my creative and professional north star. But there’s something that Ulysses said that he learned from Merce Cunningham that really stuck out to me – that he couldn’t rely on passion alone, that he had to have the technique. Play allows us to do what our work is but technique is important. People have asked me what advice would I give to a younger artist, and every time I always say, “study the greats and do what you want.”
TIONE: That is so great. It is not often understood that the greats have given us a road map. I grew up with a photo in my house that I thought Carmen [de Lavallade] and Geoffrey were family members and they were not.
SERPENT: Yeah…but also, maybe they were. They were part of our cultural tapestry.
ELEPHANT: To that point, artists and creatives are always in conversation with people who came before them, whether consciously or unconsciously. Who are the artists, ancestors, or cultural figures you feel are in conversation with you when you create?
SERPENT: Several. Geoffrey Holder is definitely one of the central figures. I would say Nina Simone, Essex Hempill, Toni Morrison, Gilbert Price, and Debbie Allen, who is still with us, but I’m thinking of how they were just consummate artists. I’m just always floored when I look at old footage and, so I think I’m in conversation with them. Geoffrey Holder used colour physically but also was such a colourful storyteller. Eartha Kitt – the way she uses movement – she could use fabric, and if you gave her a playing card, she would work that playing card. Work anything! In a time where we have everything at our disposal in terms of technology, in terms of the archive, it could be tempting to feel like you have to employ everything all at once. But what I’m reminded of with these performers is they know how to work their most immediate element, and they know how to focus the performance. I’m often asking myself, what is a story I need to tell right now? Like, what do I need to urgently tell? As an artist, there’s always like a million things I want to say, but right now in this moment, what is the urgent thing I need to say? And let’s focus on that.
TIONE: There are so many. I think about artists who understood that their work could exist across disciplines and could speak to something larger than the category it was placed within. I think about choreographers, musicians, designers, architects, writers, photographers and artists who expanded the language available to the people who came after them. Ulysses Dove is certainly part of that conversation for me now. But I also think about the people who don’t necessarily have their names attached to institutions or archives, whose creativity was embedded in everyday life without necessarily being recognized as artists. Those people are ancestors too.
ELEPHANT: Serpent, you’re going to be giving the audience some works they haven’t heard before. What do you hope to be the takeaway?
SERPENT: I would hope that me and the audience have a nice conversation. That’s what I’m walking into it with, that’s my intention. I hope that we have a wonderful conversation. I’m in dialogue with them.
ELEPHANT: What does lineage mean to you when so much of Black artistic history has been fragmented, erased, or inadequately archived? What do we inherit from those that came before?
TIONE: Lineage is a responsibility. I think part of the work now is remembering. It is about activating the work again. Allowing another generation to encounter it. We inherit courage, strategies for survival, ways of seeing, ways of gathering, ways of imagining ourselves. Inheritance is not imitation. I think the responsibility is to preserve the spirit rather than simply reproduce the form. That is how lineage stays alive – it changes. And when I look at these greats like a Ulysses, I think there was so much great talent that died between ’89 and ’96 from AIDS or complications that it was just challenging to archive all the information. It has been thirty years, and now we have an opportunity to usher him into a new audience in a way that just brings joy and play.
SERPENT: What does lineage mean to me?
TIONE: Yes, what does it mean to you – and is this something that we have to archive? I think there’s so many conversations right now around archiving and lineage that we forget it is a spiritual conversation.
SERPENT: I think archiving is important because then we get to have pattern recognition. Things that even may not be evident at the time will be evident to generations beyond us or that come later. So when I think of lineage, I do think of pattern recognition. It becomes not just that I’m doing arbitrary movement, but that I’m part of a tradition, and there might be variations on that tradition. That is a word that is important to me and I often think about.
ELEPHANT: What does it mean to create from a place of reverence rather than simply from a place of inspiration?
SERPENT: Well, I think reverence says “thank you” – that’s all it’s saying. Reverence doesn’t mean I need to recreate you.
TIONE: Oh, that could be a sermon. Hallelujah. I can’t wait to get off the phone and tell my mama that!
SERPENT: The people that we love, they were also originals. They were inspired by whatever they were inspired by, but they moved the needle because they took liberties and I think they examined what came before them. Reverence asks us to examine, which means that we’re also participating. It leaves space for you to participate. In the tradition of performance in ceremony, in ritual, there’s an idea where we’re in conversation. It’s not happening in isolation that I’m singing at you or performing at you. I’m performing with you.
TIONE: I always say the difference between reverence and inspiration is that reverence is collaborative. Inspiration is singular.
SERPENT: It’s a communal act. It’s us here, living with the knowledge of the past and these greats that came before us. Inspiration can be immediate but reverence requires responsibility. Reverence requires humility. It means understanding that you are entering a conversation that began before you arrived. I am constantly working through that. How do you feel you’re able to live and embody and experience everything the ancestors have left behind without so much weight?
My initial response is that to make is a gift. As much as it feels like a compulsion, it is also a joy to do it. I love the labour of it. Like the labour that is invisible to the public. I enjoy having to figure out the puzzle. I also enjoy the sort of extroverted expression of it. The joy never ceases for me and maybe that’s what makes it easy.
ELEPHANT: There is something deeply embodied about both of your work, even when the body isn’t necessarily the subject. What does the body allow you to say that language alone cannot?
TIONE: The body holds things that language sometimes cannot access. It carries memory, history, desire, trauma, joy and inheritance. Long before we have the language to articulate who we are, we are already experiencing the world through the body. Serpent, this is actually why we’re here because when I see your embodiment when performing, I sometimes see the way in which you hold love. I was really curious about that. And it could also just be a part of your secret sauce.
SERPENT: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t know what the body allows me to say that that language cannot. But what I do know is that movement has always been essential to me, and has always been essential, I think, for Black people. I think about the fullness of our expression. You know, we often see the memes online that say when Black people laugh, they have to run. Or that we clap to punctuate, whether we are laughing or as sort of an exclamatory phrase.
I consider myself to be an interdisciplinary artist, and movement is definitely at the core. I’m so inspired by Black dance – from regional social dances to Black concert dance. I love thinking about diasporic dance and the church, the ring shout and the movements of folks in West Africa and how they’re very similar to how we move when we catch the spirit and the way that it stays in our DNA, stays on our body, stays on our nervous system. I’m not sure what is being expressed that is different from words alone, but I do know that I have to use my body.
TIONE: When I was growing up, I often found myself in Southern Baptist Holiness kind of churches. And you know, that could be very, very sanctified. I would always think it was interesting how there were movements throughout the churches and ultimately around the world that were so similar. When I was in South Africa (and there were no slaves that came from South Africa), I went to church and one of the guys said, “Well, remember at some point none of us were speaking the same language and our movement and our praise is what kept us together.”
ELEPHANT: Serpent, your work often feels like an act of devotion. What are you devoted to at this point in your life? And how has that devotion changed the way you make art?
SERPENT: My initial response is to say I am devoted to play. That is the entry point for everything I do professionally. In my opinion a real deep person, a real sage, we can talk about lint on denim and then we’re talking about indigo and then we’re talking about West African pattern-making. But play is the entry point. I think for me, I can trust my technique now. I can trust that I’ve studied. I can trust that I spent many years studying under many elders who have taught me so much. And so now I can rely on play.
ELEPHANT: Tione, how do you define “devotion?”
TIONE: I think devotion is ultimately about what you are willing to consistently give your attention to. It can be spiritual, romantic, political or physical, but underneath all of those things is commitment. What are you willing to return to? What are you willing to protect? What are you willing to learn from? What are you willing to keep alive? Devotion isn’t simply admiration. It requires action. For me, devotion is love made active.
ELEPHANT: How do you live in this current body, in this current time, with all the things that inspire you, and still take those things that the ancestors have given you and make it feel authentic and contemporary?
SERPENT: Again, I think this thing about play is that even I’m thinking about myself as a child, growing up with a really vibrant community in Baltimore. I was aware of how skill was measured. I was aware of what the model student or child acted like. But the beautiful thing about play is that you also create your own metrics. Children are always navigating what they’re being told and what they’re being pulled to – and I think the artist’s job is to sort of keep that spirit, to recognise or acknowledge the old, but then to honour their own gravitational pull.
TIONE: In the most distilled language, how do you define play?
SERPENT: I would define it with this phrase they use in acting classes. “Yes, and yes.” This idea is if you were to put two roads in front of me and say, “Okay, you have to choose one of these roads.” I would say, “yes.” Not which I choose – I would say “yes” because I’m gonna cartwheel between both, or I may not take either road. I might go the opposite direction. I might become the road. So it’s about playing with your options, creating new options. So when I think play, it’s not even about colouring outside the lines. I think it’s redefining the lines. Or maybe it’s not lines at all. Play means embracing a little bit of chaos, which to me feels very cosmic.
TIONE: Thank you for saying that, because I typically live like a very controlled existence. And anytime I hear “play” or I see it in writing, I just always think about innocence and I think about the joy that comes through naiveté.
ELEPHANT: Does ritual play a role in your creative process? How so?
TIONE: Absolutely. I think every creative practice develops rituals, whether we call them that or not. The act of researching, gathering, listening, remembering and making space for someone else’s legacy can itself become a kind of ritual. The repetition is important. You rarely understand something the first time you encounter it. Sometimes you have to keep returning to an idea until it reveals something different.
ELEPHANT: Artists are sometimes spoken about as being “channels to the divine,” downloading new knowledge and embodying it in the physical. Do you feel you relate to this in terms of your own creative practices?
TIONE: I do believe there is a moment in the creative process when you realise you are not completely in control of what is emerging. The work starts giving you information back. I don’t necessarily think of that as downloading in a literal sense. I think of it as being receptive. For me, creativity is as much about listening as it is about making.
ELEPHANT: VESPERS is traditionally an evening prayer service that would be held at sunset. How does prayer figure into your work and into your personal practices?
TIONE: I think about prayer less as a prescribed religious act and more as a form of attention. It is the act of becoming still enough to listen, to acknowledge something larger than yourself, and to recognize that you are part of a continuum. Sunset is neither day nor night. It is a threshold. I have always been interested in those spaces between things, because that is often where transformation happens. Making this project has also reminded me that creative practice can be a form of devotion. I believe in prayer and steps, so I walk a lot. I’m in prayer as I’m walking. You know, it shows up differently for everyone. Serpent, what is prayer for you? Is this something that you live with daily?
SERPENT: I think I’ll just revise some of that language. More so than prayer, I think about being in deep communion with the divine. Being in deep communion with spirit, which is a never-ending walk, it’s a never-ending dance.
