ABSTRACT
On May 10, 1985 the choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones, the musician Chris Cochrane, and the writer Dennis Cooper presented a work-in-progress called THEM. 1 The performance involved a series of structured improvisations that, as Burt Supree later wrote in the Village Voice, explored “some ways men are with men—physically, sexually, emotionally” (Supree 1986). Cochrane composed and performed the score, Cooper wrote and recited the text, and Houston-Jones was joined by two other dancers, Donald Fleming and Jonathan Walker. Less than a year later the group performed a portion of THEM as part of Dancing for Our Lives, the first official AIDS benefit for New York City’s dance community, held at the downtown performance space known as P.S. 122 (Gere 2004, 79).
