Choreographer Brian Jeffery, the 37-year-old founder of the experimental dance company Xsight!, has earned lots of kudos over the years for his group’s daring performances, which meld movement, music, and theater into shows that defy easy categorization. But increasingly, acclaim is not enough. “When a show is done, it’s gone,” he says. “Unless you were there you missed it. I’m not left with anything. As I get older that’s been a problem. I did another show. I lost all this money. Not enough people came to see it. I’m so hungry to find something tangible–I need something to remain.”
Jeffery graduated a semester early, when he was 17. “I said, ‘I gotta get out of here and get on with my life.’ So I went to Chicago on the Greyhound with literally just my duffel bag and $400 I had earned.” He didn’t know a soul here. “I got off at the Greyhound station downtown–it was still that nasty one on Randolph. And then it started getting dark. ‘I guess I’d better find a place to stay. Where is the nearest Y?’”
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Before meeting O’Slynne, Jeffery says, “I knew I was attracted to men. I’d had random experiences with men. But I’d never had a boyfriend or a lover or dated men. I was still dating girls, because that was easier to figure out. I was 20.”
O’Slynne found Jeffery a place in Mordine & Company and a position teaching dance at Columbia College. In 1987 they left the troupe, and the next year they and Mary Ward founded Xsight! Performance Group. “We had an amazing rapport, the three of us,” says Jeffery. They were given residencies in Alaska, Arizona, and, in 1989 and ’90, Amsterdam. “Xsight! was just taking off.”
After O’Slynne’s funeral Jeffery began trying to revive the company. “Xsight! used to be a mom-and-pop company,” he says. “Now it was just pop.” He brought in Marianne Kim and Peter Carpenter, the first of several new members. “A month and two weeks after I buried O’Slynne, I did another Xsight! concert–which just about killed me. You know what I called it? ‘Wait’ll It Happens to You.’ Some people were shocked. ‘That is so irreverent.’” He laughs. “Well, when was Tim reverent?”
