Choreographer Carlos Jones

Fusion,” choreographer Carlos Jones insists, “is where my heart is. All of my concert pieces are fusion pieces.” Fusion meaning, of course, the artful combination of genres in sound and movement and crossing one form over another. For Jones, cross-pollination breeds fertile, lively art projects.

Part of Jones’ career has been as choreographer for dancers to be presented in recital. In Buffalo, he is best known for staging dance with actors in the theater—two entirely different tasks with different artistic demands.

A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Jones has made a strong mark on Buffalo theater in the short time he’s been living here. For Alleyway Theatre’s Reefer Madness, Jones made the production numbers hallucinatory. He put lunacy into the numbers of Lost in Hollywoodland at the same theater. For MusicalFare’s Rainbow Journey he sampled the suave moves from the golden era of the major studios.

If fusion is where Jones’ heart is, his current stage projects should register cardiographic joy. He is providing the dance for Nakai and the Red Shoes, a new musical opening at the end of the month at African American Cultural Center’s Paul Robeson Theatre. In addition, he is back at MusicalFare as director and choreographer of A Brief History of White Music, opening this week.

That revue’s title is supposed to be self-explanatory, but for Jones it causes some conundrum. Press releases from the original production in New York City stated “white performers, from Elvis to Michael Bolton, have had hit recordings, interpreting the music of black artists. Now…[s]ongs of the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Connie Francis and Sonny & Cher are given a new interpretation by an African-American cast.”

“All the songs in the show have been made popular by white singers,” says Jones. “Now, I have listened to pop music through the decades…the seventies, the eighties, the nineties. But standing here in the 21st century, I can’t say that any of these songs are white.”

On a deeper level, the premise established by the show’s originators—a white attorney and a white public transit manager, for the record—reinforces stereotypes that African Americans are more inherently musical, more earthy, more spiritual, more exotic and have more flava. And white…well, it is merely vanilla.

MusicalFare artistic director Randy Kramer encouraged Jones to treat the original concept as a starting point. “Randy wants a broader audience for MusicalFare and to show them a wider range of musical theater. He also wants to expose audiences to different performers and faces.” This is one reason why Jones has mixed up the cast. This production features three performers, one African-American, one Puerto Rican and one Polish.

What Jones wants to showcase is the music of Rodney Appleby, Victoria Perez and Kelly Krupski, not merely show off how people of different colors or genders sing. It seems as if it will be less about white versus black, or soul versus blandness, but about the colors any performer can bring to a song. Jones intends to show that a white guy from Mississippi and una Latina can both perform “Blue Suede Shoes” and bring something of themselves to the song. Jones emphasizes the individuality of the performers he is working with instead of asking them to imitate others.

Jones recalls receiving the score to the show and reviewing the musical charts. “They were marked with notes like ‘ala Natalie Cole’ or ‘in the style of Luther VanDross.’ That does not help the performers or the musicians.”

The individuality of the singers and context for the songs is conveyed by Jones’ choreography. Even though there is no script, per se, for A Brief History of White Music, Jones has worked with the actors to create a reality for each number. That reality might be situational or it might be emotional, but it must be genuine.

“Choreography for actors is not about the step or the move; it is about that person and that time. It is how that person’s body responds at that moment,” says Jones.

“Gratuitous movement,” he adds, “is not interesting choreography.”

A Brief History of White Music fuses many styles of music into one show. Don’t be surprised if “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” sounds more like Pat Benatar than Nancy Sinatra. In Nakai and the Red Shoes, an original fable about a clever, ambitious girl, Jones borrows from West African folk dance. Because Red Shoes is a contemporary story, Jones weaves current popular moves into the centuries-old dance. Fusing the traditional and popular, according to Jones, will provide a distinctive style for this new show with a story suitable for families to enjoy together.

After graduate studies at UC Irvine, Jones spent years choreographing in Los Angeles. In order to escape, in his terms, “the craziness” of working California he came to Buffalo a year or so ago for a breather. Here he was surprised at the activity in a city not widely known as an entertainment capital.

“The theater scene is so rich in Buffalo,” Jones states. “There is so much activity. I find myself trying to explain this to my friends. On a theater-to-population ratio there is nothing like it. Maybe in New York City, but not even in LA.”

“I’ve been thinking for months and months about a project I might create. I think I’d like to do something noisy. I’m thinking tap. Lots of tap.

“Buffalo needs some noise,” he says. “And I can do it.”