“I hate the written word,” the choreographer Reggie Wilson said with an almost wicked edge, as he sat in his cozy kitchen in Brooklyn, drinking sweet tea on a recent blustery day. Then, acknowledging my confusion, he added, “Now breathe, breathe.”
This remark is doubly surprising, coming from a choreographer who routinely provides reading lists for the audience before his shows — his “Citizen” has its New York premiere on Wednesday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music — and who has been described as a kind of cultural anthropologist working in dance. Mr. Wilson’s creations develop out of personal obsessions that lead to years of reading and research trips before he even sets foot in the studio.
The suggested reading list for “Citizen” includes Valerie Boyd’s biography of Zora Neale Hurston; a monograph on Mother Rebecca Jackson, an itinerant preacher who taught herself how to read through prayer and joined the Shakers; and a study of African-American culture during the Jazz Age, “The Practice of Diaspora.”
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