http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/arts/dance/theyll-perform-and-talk-to-remember-those-killed-by-aids.html 2016-10-06 22:31:19 They’ll Perform and Talk to Remember Those Killed by AIDS “Platform 2016: Lost and Found,” a six-week series organized for Danspace Project, includes performances, conversations and more. === One day in the middle of the 1980s, His final appearances, those of an emaciated, disoriented man, came in February 1988 at Performance Space 122, another theater in the neighborhood, where he had been a mainstay of the bold, innovative, do-it-yourself performance art scene. After Danspace Project would host many more memorials for dancers who died because of AIDS — so many deaths that the memorials became marathons. The whole dance world — ballet, Broadway, modern dance — was hit hard, and the sanctuary of St. Mark’s Church became a site of mourning for what could feel like a whole generation lost. Mr. Bernd’s memorial was one of the early ones, and his illness and art were tangled up before that taxi ride. In his 1981 performance piece “Surviving Love and Death,” he had wondered aloud whether his mysterious disease might be “the new gay cancer.” Thirty years later, Mr. Houston-Jones, 65, and now a mentor to many in the Downtown dance scene, worries that many won’t remember his friend. Young dancers might not recognize the influence of Mr. Bernd, who died too soon, and of the many like him. Reminding and informing are among the goals of “ Speaking recently during rehearsals with a group of young performers, several not yet born in 1988, for a re-examination of Mr. Bernd’s work that will debut on Nov. 3, Mr. Houston-Jones identified an upsurge of cultural interest in the plague years. He cited theater pieces, performance art and Not that looking back is easy. The choreographer Lately, though, Mr. Greenberg has been looking at things he hasn’t looked at since the ’90s. He found a notebook in which he and the friends who were taking care of his brother in the hospital kept track of each day’s suffering: the vomiting, the diarrhea. Finding that impulse to record has surprised him, as have memories of shame. “No matter how many Gay Pride parades I went on, it didn’t go away,” he said. “It was hard not to interpret AIDS as a punishment, even though I knew it was a virus and a virus has no morals.” Mr. Houston-Jones did not want to organize the platform by himself, so he brought in Will Rawls, a thoughtful 37-year-old choreographer, performer and writer. Mr. Rawls grew up without seeing someone close to him die of AIDS and had not heard of Mr. Bernd. Both men were very aware that for every name they picked to spotlight — either as a performer or the subject of a tribute — many would be left out. “These are very charged choices,” Mr. Rawls said. “We have to admit it can’t be a complete gesture.” Mr. Houston-Jones and Mr. Rawls, who are black, also agreed on the need to correct the popular image of AIDS as affecting only gay white men like Mr. Bernd. “It was never the case, and it definitely isn’t now,” Mr. Houston-Jones said. And so although the platform focuses on the effect of AIDS on experimental dance in the East Village (as opposed to the world of dance more broadly), it is large and inclusive, with contributions by more than 100 artists, black, white, Latino, male, female, gay, heterosexual and transgender. For one feature of the program, called “Life Drawings,” young artists were given dossiers of information about dead artists and asked to respond in performance. Orlando Hunter and Ricarrdo Valentine of the duo Mr. Hunter, 25, and Mr. Valentine, 29, are both black and both H.I.V.-positive. Mr. Hunter contracted the virus last year. Mr. Valentine’s previous partner died from complications of AIDS at 36. Both men spoke about continuing stigma, and skepticism is a mild word for their feelings about the pharmaceutical industry. “Yes, there is medicine,” Mr. Valentine said, “but there are days I don’t want to take it because of what it’s doing to my body, and then I have to think, Do I want to live another day?” Mr. Hunter acknowledged the influence of those who came before him: “Now we have the courage, the support, the power to say, ‘Yes, I’m living with H.I.V.’” But he and Mr. Valentine noted that while Mr. Bernd’s papers are archived in the “John kept a lot of things,” Mr. Houston-Jones said. “I wonder about people who weren’t like that.” And even at Harvard, things get lost. Judy Hussie-Taylor, the executive director of Danspace, was shocked to learn that the Harvard archive had no one listed as being in charge of Mr. Bernd’s estate. She found out from Lucy Sexton, one of the group of friends who cared for Mr. Bernd during his illness, that these caretakers were supposed to be listed. “That speaks to the young generation of artists creating new families and new ways of taking care of each other,” Ms. Hussie-Taylor said. “What happens to their belongings after they die?” Amid many memories of shame, silence, grief, fear, loss and love in the “Lost and Found” printed catalog is a reproduction of a handwritten weekly schedule made up by the friends who took care of John Bernd: whose turn to take him to the doctor, whose to do the laundry. Scribbled in for dinner duty one of those days was Asked about the platform, Ms. Sexton said she was ready for something like it to happen 10 years ago. But she welcomes the opportunity to look back at the art and the work of the lost, at “John Bernd not just as a person who died of AIDS, but as a choreographer,” she said. “A big event like this can put an artist back into the fabric and gain the attention of a new generation,” she said. “It would be wonderful if that happened with John.”