With his tattoos, shaved head, and taste for provocation, Stephen Petronio is like your sexy older punk-rock friend, who’s been there, done that, and wants you to know it. For 25 years the choreographer has head-butted the modern dance world with innovative, dark, manic pieces that are frequently sexual (like 1990’s landmark Middlesex Gorge, in which the male dancers wore corsets and were victimized), and his latest piece, I Drink the Air Before Me, at the Joyce Theater in New York through May 3, is just as charged. A meditation on environmental tumult, it commemorates the 53-year-old’s quarter-century of work as head of his eponymous company (before that he was Trisha Brown’s first male dancer) and features a live score by Nico Muhly - performed in part by the Young People’s Chorus of New York City - and a special costume for Petronio designed by longtime friend Cindy Sherman. Who else has this ravishing man worked with? Almost every influencer in music, fashion, and art. I’m humbled (and turned on).

Portraits of Stephen, and performance photos from
"I Drink The Air Before Me" shot for EVB by Ves Pitts

Sean Kennedy: You’re an original East Village boy. Where did you live?

Stephen Petronio: I lived on St. Marks Place above Yaffa Cafe from 1976 to 1990-something. My name is still on the bell there.

SK: It is?

SP: Yeah. [Laughs]

SK: But you live in the country now. Why?

SP: I feel that I’m phenomenal and I wasn’t living a phenomenal real-estate life. I just felt like I couldn’t. As a choreographer I’d never make enough money to live well in Manhattan, so I began looking outside and I found an amazing house with lots of acres, built in the 1700s. Now I go home and feel like a superstar.
SK: It’s one of those New York paradoxes: you can be very successful and still live in a box.

SP: I remember when I first met Rufus [Wainwright], he was like, Oh yeah, I could barely afford a one-bedroom apartment. And he’s a pop star.

SK: It’s even worse now with the recession. How do you view the environment for young artists today versus 25 years ago?

SP: It was hard then too. Trisha Brown gave me her basement for $100 a month, which was 5,000 square feet, and I had very low rent in the East Village, but I really had to scrape by to pay dancers. It’s harder now because people can’t live in Manhattan, so there’s more traveling going on. I travel two hours a day, one hour there and one hour back. My advice would be, make art if you have to. If you don’t have to, do something else. I have no choice: I make it happen no matter what, and that’s why I’ve been here for 25 years. I’ve begged and borrowed and stolen and owed and defaulted. You just love what you do and that’s all there is to it.

SK: Your new piece is about the environment. What are you trying to say?

SP: The work is not narrative but inspired by extreme weather, both internal and external: tumultuous environments inside and outside. In the external sense, weather patterns were very important in the geometric design of the piece. Lots of vortexes and swirls. A lot of it is rotating counter-clockwise, like the picture you see on The Weather Channel every day when there’s some gigantic storm or tornado. There’s a kind of violence in the movement that’s characteristic of my work.

SK: Except that the end is so calm - not just the dancing but the music too.

SP: I didn’t want to leave the audience with a typical punch blackout, and I wanted them to have a little comedown. And that particular song, Nico found a text that commemorates the consecration of a bell in a church tower. It’s a Christian tradition but a pagan idea, that the bells will ward off evil spirits - the Christians took a pagan ritual and Christianized it. We thought that was funny. But also it’s incredibly moving: the sound of the bells reminds you of hope. On a personal note, [the dance] starts with my rehearsal director, who brings on the oldest members of the company in the order they joined; we all have a moment of dancing together. It’s like the dancers pass their history to each other.

SK: Given your political statements over the years, is the piece a comment on global warming in any way?

SP: Absolutely. The reason I began working with the idea of weather is because it’s on everybody’s mind. It’s a geopolitical moment, so I wanted to bring attention to it - though the work is not about Katrina or anything like that. In the end it’s more joyous. We started off, when we were building the piece, by drawing attention to the darkness and overpowering-ness of weather based on what we’ve done to the world, but it really morphed into something much more joyful: that art is the beacon in this storm.

SK: That’s very redemptive.

SP: It smacks of redemption! [Laughs]

SK: But isn’t that always part of the project of art?

SP: Possibly. I’ve always been kind of a positive nihilist: I think my best work is dark, but I’m a very hopeful person. The movement is very mean and can be very punched and people tear at each other. And when I was drawing more attention to sexual politics in my own life and the work, the work was really slammed. It was about control of the body and lack of control of the body and who owns it and who could touch it.

SK: Like Middlesex Gorge.

SP: Yeah, which we’re bringing back next year actually. It was really funny: The New York Times article was like, Why corsets? I happen to think it’s one of the best dances I’ve ever made, and the corsets totally upstaged it in the dance world.

SK: But that was 19 years ago. I can’t imagine a similar stir now.

SP: Not unless you tried to get married in a state where you can’t get married! [Laughs] The world’s a much more jaded place and we have access to much more. MTV was just a baby in those days. You could stick on a corset and you were extreme. I thought nothing of it. Even shaving my head in those days - there were so few shaved heads! It was before basketball teams did it. Now every man in the world has a shaved head.
SK: Do you still think contemporary art has the capacity to make a political impact?

SP: I don’t know about that, but I do know that I can impact you. I can have an effect on you with my work. I can still cry at something and I can still get really angry at a show. Can it have political implications? Can art move people on to the street? I’m not sure. But I can certainly have an effect on you in the audience. My role in this piece happens before the show: I’m in and out between the audience and the stage, mingling with people and doing various things. I’m very sick of that wall. I make hardcore dance, but I try to rip open that wall a little bit and cast lines of energy out to touch people. It’s something I didn’t do for many years. I was more interested in pummeling people. [Laughs] Now I’m interested in grabbing them by the throat.

SK: Where did that anger come from?

SP: I don’t know. There’s so much in dance that’s so graceful and pretty; it never seemed like I was going to do that. My natural bent is fast and hard. It’s just my nature.

SK: I can tell that from talking to you!

SP: Aries fire sign. Monkey. Social and fiery.
SK: You’ve called Middlesex Gorge your “sexual anthem.” What was going on there?

SP: Well, the women were in black girdles and bras and the men were in pink corsets, upside down and backwards, with dance belts and flowers sewn on their crotch. And the movement was very much about how people handle each other, giving up control and taking control. Some people just saw it as dance and some people saw it for the violence and the implications of control and power.

SK: It was also a comment on the HIV/AIDS crisis.

SP: It was made while I was working with ACT UP. A lot of the partnering is about more than one person handling a single body. There were extended pas de deux, but I was very interested in the group handling of one person - how they could throw that person around. It started when I was getting arrested one day during a demonstration with ACT UP and I was being picked up by policemen. I was like, this is the most real thing that’s happened to me in a long time. How do I go back into the studio after having that experience? So I tried to bring them together in some way.

SK: Do you remember the demonstration?

SP: I don’t remember much more about it. It wasn’t the stock market one. It was something to do with the mayor. I got arrested three or four times. Men were being carried to the van and there was a sea of people around me. I thought, there’s something here.

SK: Have you ever thought about returning to that subject, given that HIV/AIDS remains such a scourge?

SP: We were doing condom demonstrations on bratwursts in a square in Vienna for one performance. I don’t know if I want to go back there, honestly.

SK: Because it’s too painful?

SP: No, it’s just that I did it. I’m not a social worker, I’m an artist. Also, I felt like that was right on the tip of my tongue, at the surface of my body, and that’s where I make work from. I don’t want to ghettoize myself - although if I feel like going back there, I will. Every year something different comes to the foreground for me. But I did feel, after Middlesex Gorge and a couple other things, that I was becoming limited artistically by my own image. I was becoming the angry young gay. And that’s cool. There was a time when I’d only talk about my sexuality in interviews: I didn’t want to talk about the dances because I thought, if I have your ear, I’m going to talk about the crisis. There’s other ways of creating action - and right now, at this stage of my life, to deliver the most beautiful and tantalizing things in the world to you is really important to me.

SK: Even if some of your fan base misses the more queer work?

SP: It’s my job to take the audience where I’m interested, and if they want to come, they will, and if they don’t, they won’t. When I moved away from the more overt fag work, I think I did lose a bunch of fans. I get very uncomfortable with being pinned down. It’s my nature. Maybe it’s the Aries thing. Once I can identify it, I like to change it. I remember when I went from Middlesex Gorge [set to music by the band Wire] to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring [in 1992’s Full Half Wrong], there was a bunch of my friends who were like, why are you making us listen to this? But that’s where my interest went.

SK: As you said, you’re an artist, not a social worker - but you mentioned same-sex marriage earlier. Is that an issue you’ve thought about covering in a dance, or would that be too obvious?

SP: It’s too obvious. I flew to California and got married in August. That was the action, the performance. It doesn’t need a dance. Dance is for touching other things. The thing that interests me most about dance is that it can do things to you that are not rational, that you don’t understand, that you don’t expect. I’m not there to reinforce your opinion as a young gay man. I’m there to fuck you up a little bit and bring you somewhere different. If it’s classical music this year and next year Lou Reed and the year after Jonny Greenwood, that’s where I’ll go.

SK: Have you collaborated with Greenwood?

SP: We’re trying right now.

SK: Awesome! You have fabulous tattoos, by the way. Where did you get them done?

SP: Michelle from Daredevil Tattoo on the Lower East Side. She did them all.

SK: And when did you get them? Over the years?

SP: Within the last decade. I got them as I was transitioning off stage. You have more flexibility when you’re not inked up.
SK: How much is dance about sex?

SP: For me, quite a bit. I find disorientation very sexy, and so I try to create stage pictures that lead you down a path and then twist you. That to me is very sexy. Part of the reason I brought sexuality into my work originally was because it seemed like it was just missing from American modern dance. Everything’s so abstract. We do fuck and I want that in the work.

SK: But the act of dancing is so sexual too.

SP: For me it is. It’s an intuitive journey, an intuitive engagement with the audience, and that’s animal. Plus dancers have good bulges. If you see dance you get to look at that. If you go to the ballet all you see are these big white bulges. It’s like a big giant spotlight. I like it!

SK: You have some really sexy guys in your company now. Is it ever distracting?

SP: Every second. But I would never sleep with my dancers.

SK: I’m not suggesting that!

SP: But many people do. I don’t. I never have. I had two dancers in my life and after those relationships I vowed never again. Because if you sleep with someone and you split up and you’re still on the dance floor, it’s murder.

SK: It’s like having sex with an office-mate.

SP: Exactly. It’s a bad idea. And also as a boss, it’s just wrong. I mean, I’m in love with them all, and at different times - if there’s an erotic charge, I put it into movement. It’s so much fun to be attracted to someone and to make movement for them. I’m in their body basically! [Laughs]

SK: Are there people in the company now that you get that charge from?
SP: Well now you’re going somewhere where I’m not willing to go. [Laughs] I love them all. You can tell I’m drawn to them because I give them really good movement. It’s hard to give somebody good movement if you’re not attracted to them.

SK: And your collaborators are very sexy: Cindy Sherman, Antony, Rufus, Nico, just to name a few. At the risk of being impolitic, who’s your favorite? Cindy?

SP: I’ve worked with Cindy three times. I really, really love Cindy. She’s really funny. She’s one of those artists whose work totally grabs me in some unknown place and I love it. It always surprises me. And I find her really easy and delightful to talk to and work with - I’ll work with her as much as she’ll work with me. It’s my job to always find something that will interest her. The first time she did photographic projections, the second time she did sculpture - her first sculpture, which I was really proud about. This year I thought, I’m just going to ask her to do what she does best. So she dressed me.

SK: You’ve been in New York for more than 30 years. When was the city at its sexiest?

SP: When we didn’t have to wear condoms. New York is always full of fresh young things, so it’s always really sexy, but I’m very grateful that I lived through a time when I didn’t have to wear a condom. That was pretty special.

SK: That’s probably the answer to my last question: When was the best time to have sex in New York?

SP: With my husband right now. It gets better!

Portraits of Stephen, and performance photos from
"I Drink The Air Before Me" shot for EVB by Ves Pitts
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This week's East Village Boy of the Week is Max, from New York
Photographed for EVB by Paul Gunn

Team, by Max Steele
Artwork by bowerystudio

My best girl friend, Cotton, and I wake up in the afternoon and smoke the joint he made with grass he stole from his dad. We drink mint medicinal tea and listen to the old Pandoras record. We get sad when we remember that the lead singer was a speed addict. Cotton shows me how to play Courtney Love songs on the guitar for a few hours. At dusk, at eleven at night, in the middle of the night, then, we go out. It’s nighttime in the Tenderloin. Gay couples in bars want to buy us drinks.

We go further downtown and sit at the bar. Cotton wears black and brown and I wear blue and black. We’re the colors of punched-up faces. Punched-in mouths.

Yuppie fag couple comes up and sees us sitting at the bar, says “How are you boys tonight?” His hair gel smells.

“I’m here with my boyfriend.” He says. I picture a German Shepherd, a Fido on a leash tied up outside the gay bar. Growling. He grins at us as if he has just made the funniest joke anyone has ever heard. “Do you boys like to dance?” he asks, then he yells “I LOVE TO DANCE”, which settles it, I guess.

I love to dance, too. Cotton used to hate to dance, used to tell people to stop dancing. Now he’s okay with it. He’s a really good dancer, he shouldn’t be so shy.

I’m not the greatest dancer but I ‘get really into it’. I was hoping to dance a lot tonight but now I’m not so sure. I drink gin and tonics and Cotton drinks gin and tonics. Cow pus, some bitch next to us keeps sipping his white russian (milk has cow pus in it - we know we’re the vegans) really loudly with his big sunglasses, indoors. Milky and sticky and loud. Bacterial. I don’t really wanna dance with hairgel.

Hair Girl.

I go to the bathroom to talk to my friends.

I’m waiting in line for the bathroom, which means cigarettes, I guess. San Francisco, anyways.
I see a boy with a dyed black mowhawk sitting on a chair in the back hallway, sobbing, while a girl rubs his shoulder. His lips are pierced a few times. I sidestep them and watch someone giving a blowjob at the sink. It’s my friend Daisy Duke, he writes a gossip column. Loud fag! He is getting his dick sucked by someone in a white t-shirt with expensive shoes.

“Hey Billy.” Daisy Duke zips up his pants and we watch boys on the dance floor.

Here’s how he says “Hey”: he says it like women on television, like he is talking about the food that horses eat.

“Damn!” he shouts and points like kids at candy. He sees a boy who is skinny or something, hanging up his coat nearby. (The boy's pants are tight - they are probably his sister’s pants. I bet he got all his old records from his older sister too. She probably taught him how to dance so good. It always comes from an older sister.) “Look at him!” Yeah I see him. “You like him, Billy?” Daisy asks. I nod yes, of course. “You wanna put your dick there? You wanna put your dick up his ass?”

I have to admit that I am not a poet.

“Oh, um hey.” The boy says to Daisy. “What’s up?”

“Not much, sweetie, we just watchin’ you dance is all. What’s your name?”

“Daisy, you know my name!”

“How do you know my name? What’s your name?” He is bewildered. This is like when you accidentally eat poison, or when your vegan girlfriend takes a bite out of something that has milk in it and you don’t have the heart to tell her, explain about how the cows are hooked up to machines, milking machines, for so long that they get infected and pus gets into the milk into the cookies, you don’t tell her you just let her chew.

“Daisy, I’m Justin. We know each other.”

Which means that poor Justin with the ass up for grabs, dancing by himself in the back hallway with sobbing faggots, poor Justin fucked Daisy Duke one time, got fucked by Daisy Duke, and now doesn’t even get to keep his name. Worst divorce yet.

I could watch this all night.
The back, the further back you go it’s like in time. The boys here are younger. At the very back of the gay bar there are even more idiotic young tiny boy conversations. In the back alley there’s a little baby, maybe. Shitting his pants. I leave Daisy Duke to go dance. Meet up with Cotton and the men who want to buy us drinks. Men who LOVE TO DANCE. Daisy kisses me on the cheek. Daisy kisses me with tongue. I shake Justin’s hand.

Congratulations.

Yuppie negotiates with Cotton. Says “We’re really open, Steven and I are like, we’re, like, cool with anything. We’re up for anything.” Cotton comes up to me.

“These guys want to fuck us, Billy.” I hate it. “They really like us.” This is code for “RUN”.

“Are they going to pay us?” I ask. I would maybe have sex with one of them, the cute one, for money. Or something. That bitch bottom, kept boy, even at 29, frosted tip hot bitch piggy bottom. Pierced nipples, tweaked nipples. Maybe he’d like me to tie him up and leave him locked up somewhere dark. Maybe he’d like me to fuck him in the bathtub, tie him to the bed and then take his money. Worth a shot. Maybe he likes expensive sushi. I am doubtful.

Our drinks are done and Cotton is bored. I am the slow one, I take forever. I can never make up my mind, I might have a tumor. What a creep I am. Apparently. What a bore! The out-of-towner! The tourist! We get our coats.

“It was so nice to meet you boys,” they say. “Are you guys gonna have a good night? Seriously,” the cute one, that old queen queer bitch puts his hands on my shoulders “have so much fun tonight, okay? Have a lot of fun.” Like a carpet he is rolled up, rolling. I can taste the glue taste on my own tongue, just looking at the sweat pooling down his neck. They think Cotton and I are running home to go fuck each other.

Outside the club, we find a pack of Nellies smoking cigarettes so we steal some. Cotton starts a fight.

Princess is the leader of the pack. He is a radical faerie and he is chatty chatty chatty with us. “Oh boys, I love making new friends.” Hands us a pipe of weed. It’s a crack pipe, though, there are traces of meth TINA CRYSTAL STEPHANIE MICHELLE HONEY WANDA LINDA ALEXANDRA SAMANTHA EUGENE NAME NAME AMERICA GIRL LADY powder on it. I’m scared to smoke from it but I do anyways. Fear is there to be overcome, right? Ride through the forest.

A homeless woman walks up to ask for change from us. Princess says “Ew, oh my GOD! This woman smells like shit!” The homeless woman walks away, cursing. “Oh Honey!” I’m terrified. Cotton is terrified too. You never know when, if, or how a curse will come true. Maybe Princess will get hit by a car for being a fucking bitch faggot tonight.Cotton turns to Princess, turns to him even though Princess is much taller, and says “I hope you get hit by a car and that your face gets torn open on the asphalt.” Princess giggles, shocked! Boy cruelty! Boys with no hearts! We are in a city where the boys amputate their hearts. Not DC, not Olympia, SAN FRANCISCO is where all the boys are robots. It’s not so bad. It’s an efficiency thing.

Cotton is glutted on the truth serum and weed and dancing, and the go-go boys, and the offers to have our assholes eaten. We start walking back towards the heart of the Mission, to his house. Cotton lives in a big room with no windows. It is full of guitars and pictures of rocker-chicks. It’s my favorite room in the city.

I make us stop for pizza. “Are you sure, Billy?” I nod and I am bossy, apparently, so Cotton and I go out for pizza. The pizza place near his no-window room is one of the few things open all night long. Cotton has a theory (and he is absolutely right) that the pizza place is staffed exclusively by faggots in the closet, there to catch a glimpse of boys like us. Tonight is a night of our assholes money godfuture heaven assholes. Advertised, as well. We are always being hit on, the two of us. We order pizza, there is a cute boy sitting alone, eating two slices of pizza. I stare at him. I cross my arms. I have a stomach ache.

“Hey lady,” Cotton says.

In high school he was my most popular friend. He can talk to animals, you know. He’s one of those rare birds who knows everyone’s language. The boy perks up. We sit down.

“So what are you guys up to tonight?” He asks. I think about lying to him and giving him a fake name, Cotton and I think the same thing, like twins or teammates.

I tell him my name is Billy and Cotton tells him his name is Cotton. We feel comfortable because these aren’t our real names anyways. He gives us his real name, Chris.

“What did you boys do tonight?” He asks. I wait for Cotton to talk first. I like feeling like wifey. This is Cotton’s home turf. He’ll make a better joke, I’m better at following it anyways. Cotton says we went to a club together and now we’re bored. What about you, Baby Chris? He looks like he is new to town and Cotton says so. I don’t need to say it I don’t get to say it because I live in New York City now. So this is provincial San Francisco. This is the boonies I am in a foreign land where the boys amputate ourselves. We wear tight jeans in NYC but we also act like we’re dead. We all lie perfectly still in bed.

Courtney Love: “WE TALK THE SAME. WE LOOK THE SAME. WE EVEN FUCK THE SAME. DO YOU PLEASE? MAKE IT REAL?”

Chris is (of course) from the East Coast. He is new to San Francisco and this is when Cotton gets bored so I take over. He gets our pizza. My pizza.

I eat pizza - Cotton doesn’t, he is a good vegan warrior and I have no backbone. I can’t make a fucking decision to save my life. I’ll have the cheese. Mine with extra cow pus please.

Chris has some job - some nonprofit job. He is bummed because he spent all night taking care of his friends from out of town. “And now,” he says with his raising eyebrow, which strikes me as obscene, me with a face full of pus, finding this boy’s eyebrow obscene, “and now, it’s like, what am I gonna do all night?”

It’s four a.m. “Y’know?” he says. “You know what I mean?” I wonder if he likes it in San Francisco.

“So what’s up with you guys?” Chris asks, finishing off the last of his pizza.

“You guys like, friends, boyfriends, what?”

Cotton pauses and I don’t know whether to follow his lead. “We’re best friends.” This seems to work. “But all night people have thought we’re a couple.”

“Oh.” Chris says. Fuck him. As in hurt.

“We’re going back to my house now,” Cotton continues, “to watch the Sonic Youth Goo movie. Have you ever seen it, Chris?” No he hasn’t seen it he hasn’t scene anything good. This is getting ridiculous.

“Should I come too?” he asks. He is honestly asking and now Cotton has to literally hold his greasy hand to get him to come over. Don’t bother, I think to myself. He comes with us.

In Cotton’s room we smoke more grass because I think I’ll need it. Chris lays down in between us on the bed and I am watching the shit out of Kim Gordon in leather stretch pants. Wondering how much more blonde I’ll have to be in my life. I want to be as cold as her. I watch and don’t even notice that Chris and Cotton have started necking. Chris licks my ear and I can’t decide whether to go for it or to keep hearing secrets about My Friend Goo. Girl World. Hairgel Girl world sunglasses. Fucking music videos, man.

Chris and I make out. He gets his ass eaten and at some point Chris wants to take off my shirt. He sits on top of me and it pisses me off because now I don’t see the video for Cinderella’s Big Score. He raises his eyebrow, again, when he sticks his finger up my ass. As if HE is surprised and as if it is news to HIM that he is clawing his way up my ass. His mouth tastes like cow pus grease and crust. I hate him for looking so curious.

I wrap my hand almost all the way around his neck. My hands are smaller than I thought. My ex-boyfriend and I used to choke each other in bed, used to beat each other up a lot. A lot of biting. No blood though. We went wild, so I figure Chris will a) go wild, or b) get freaked out, and either way it’ll be over soon.

Kim! Tune your bass with the tendons of this poor boy’s throat! Your picks are all chipped, with fingernails up my ass, expectant.

He is one of those awful horrible boys who insists on eye contact when he cums. He stares at me and makes an expression of great exertion. This is supposed to get me hot. I cum and wipe myself up with his t-shirt. He has the audacity to stay over in Cotton’s bed. In the morning Chris wakes up and says “I’m leaving my number here, guys.” And the fucker leaves his number.

Back in New York City, ran into Daisy Duke. Walking home from the train. He said “you know, I’ve wanted to fuck you from the day I met you.”

I’m not being fair.

Daisy Duke is drunk and out of town staying at a friend’s house. He doesn’t live here he’s a tourist. He says “Billy, I have wanted to fuck you from the day I met you. You’re not my friend. We’re not friends, you know. I can get pervy on you. You’re not safe from me.”

Actually, that sounds fine to me. I don’t wanna be safe. I wanna be H-E-L-D like H-E-L-D down, touched. But I don’t want to be safe.

Not with you, Daisy Duke.

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This week's East Village Boy of the Week is Michael, from Miami
Photographed for EVB by Robert Clyde Grima