Brian Webb's cultural impact on Edmonton is undeniable. Every MacEwan student has a Webb-related story from Webb's days as chair of the dance program. Attending a Brian Webb Dance Company show seems like a rite of passage if one wants to be consider a cultured Edmontonian. Now in the position of artistic producer of the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa, where he lives part time, Webb's influence is national. "After pop music" Webb likes to school, "contemporary dance is Canada's largest cultural export."
Known as the man who dances in white underwear, Webb also looms large in Edmonton's gay psyche. As I was growing up, an exposed man dancing in public was too much to take at times, in part because Webb's comfort with his body crystallized my own discomfort. But more fundamentally, until recently, there was a disconnect in my mind with the space he took up as a gay figure and the lack of a role he played in Edmonton as a gay man. I assumed, like some other gay men of his age and stature, he didn't discuss sexuality, see it as relevant or have thoughts about what it was to be gay or otherwise.
I was wrong. Talking with Webb over coffee recently, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that he had lots to say about queerness and Edmonton.
Webb grew up around Morin, Alberta, graduated from the University of Alberta in the class of '73 and spent years working, learning and living in New York and Los Angeles, travelling back and forth even after he made Edmonton his home in 1979, the same year he formed the Brian Webb Dance Company.
Just as his dance career was taking off, he was also awakening sexually. "I came out as I was becoming professional. Dealing with my body and who I am are interrelated," explains Webb.
In the early '80s he traveled to LA, getting his fine arts degree in choreography at the California Institute of the Arts. The years he spent in the US are iconic times in queer history. Reagan was in power, the legacy of Anita Bryant's homophobia was ripening and the AIDS crisis was new, devastating and unavoidable. "Being there I was very aware that the political is the personal and that we must get involved," remembers Webb.
West Coast movements focused on rights, freedoms and one's duty to work in the community at large influenced Webb. In part it was the community at large that seems to have left the richest imprint, one that makes Webb skeptical of the need or existence of a gay community. Having lived in a gay epicentre Webb seems to prefer a world where he is not wholly understood or permeated by homosexuality, yet can still be open about it. "I lived in a gay ghetto. I am not part of some community just because I take it up the ass," explains Webb. "I am defined by the work I do as a human being, not my sexual practices."
In Edmonton he thinks that there is a lack of intellectual dialogue on queerness. "There is a broad schism between gay and queer," Webb argues, a gap he thinks many Edmontonians don't get, further misconstruing their confusion between demography and community. "Oh how the gays have bought into the bourgeoisie," laments Webb, specifically pointing to what he sees as the futility of marriage, although acknowledging its importance as a right to have. Conscious of his own upper-middle class standing, his pricey sweater a soft barrier between what he just said and what is complexly true he smiles, "I have never been good as the starving artist."
Throughout the conversation everything comes back to his art. I recently came across a question posed by Eric Rofes: "What if what we've named gay men were actually a grown-up clan of active resistors to heteronormative and patriarchal values?" It made me think of Webb. As homonormativity expands, those who have created identities as outlaws will need to find new terrain beyond sexuality to set up camp. Webb takes well-deserved pride in the fact he has been able to create his art for over 30 years, especially in a conservative province like Alberta. "Alberta respects mavericks," Webb says, his barrel chest expanding.
In a place and time when progress and apathy can look the same yet feel so different it's no wonder Webb returns to art. It is where people engage him. Speaking with Webb I get the sense that unless he is willing to talk about how great the gay community is people don't want to listen.
He maintains his outlaw status by not curtailing.
As the conversation wraps up, there is a moment where I catch Webb at his most giddy. He is thinking back on his wild New York days, sharing stories too good to cement in print. "Being the other was fun," he flirts.
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