“Through the early decades of modern dance in this country, The 92nd Street Y became a safe haven for many artists who were not being presented anywhere else in New York City,” says Alison Manning, co-executive director of the Harkness Dance Center and director of the Harkness School of Dance at 92NY. Dance legends like Erick Hawkins, José Limón, Sophie Maslow, Pearl Primus, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn all performed on 92NY’s stage. Although the organization also had classes and concerts in other dance styles, it was a hotspot for modern dance in particular just as the genre was beginning to take off in the U.S.

This year, as 92NY celebrates its 150th anniversary, honoring those dance roots is at the top of the list of priorities. The organization is installing a major exhibit called “Dance to Belong: A History of Dance at 92NY,” from March 12 to October 31, in 92NY’s Weill Art Gallery. It kicks off with a one-night-only performance on March 12 meant to connect the venue’s illustrious past to the promise of what’s ahead. The Limón Dance Company will perform José Limón’s beloved There is a Time, paired with Omar Román De Jesús’ Like Those Playground Kids at Midnight. The Martha Graham Dance Company will perform Appalachian Spring Suite, paired with an excerpt from Jamar Roberts’ We The People. And Ailey II will perform a series of excerpts from Ailey classics, including The Lark Ascending, Streams, and Blues Suite, plus a premiere by Hope Boykin.

“We are highlighting that, in the moment when modern dance was wrestling into relevance in this country, The 92nd Street Y played a pretty critical role in opening doors for artists who needed space and support,” says Manning.

The programming for the upcoming performance began with Limón’s There Is a Time, she says. “The piece represents such an important message about our own 92NY history. There have been ups, there have been downs,” she explains. “And we as an institution have weathered both times of great challenge and of joy, but that we were at the forefront for many overlooked artists, during this important period in modern dance history, in providing support, time for joy, time for grief, whatever they needed to make their work.” 

The one brand-new work on the bill is a premiere by Boykin, who says it’s an expression of her gratitude to the legends who paved the path before her. Creating it for this concert was a “no-brainer” she says, since 92NY not only gave some of those legends a platform, but offered her one too: Her first full-evening show of her own took place there in 2021. “This work is a thank-you,” says Boykin. “A thank-you for the lessons, and paths made clear. This work will be a celebration of who I have become as a result of the work so many did before me.”

Putting together the March 12 program has brought home for Manning just how pivotal a role 92NY has played in the story of modern dance, and her role in stewarding that forward for the next generation. “My vision centers around trying to make sure that artists who need a platform and haven’t had an opportunity have it,” she says, “and artists who already have substantial support and known work can lift up these younger, less established artists simply by sharing the space and being presented on these same stages.”

Román De Jesús points out that this is precisely what this particular program is doing for him. The emerging choreographer has recently been racking up fellowships and awards, like the Dance Magazine Harkness Promise Award, yet he still struggles to find resources and venues to showcase his work. “To me, standing on the same stage as legendary companies and alongside fellow emerging artists symbolizes representation, inclusivity, and hope,” he says.

92NY’s long tradition of inclusivity is ongoing, and it will continue to be a place where dance history is made for many more decades to come.

The post 92NY Celebrates Its Rich Dance History as a Birthplace of Modern Dance appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Built on years of research, the new biography paints a well-informed portrait of the iconic artist, infused with anecdotes from Graham’s life and bolstered by Jowitt’s own expertise from years as a dancer, choreographer, and writer.

The post A New Martha Graham Biography from Deborah Jowitt appeared first on Dance Magazine.

To contemporary audiences, Limón’s sense of identity might seem intrinsically linked to his artistry. But when Puleio took over the Limón Company in 2020, he realized that the group hadn’t worked with a single Mexican choreographer (though it had engaged other Latinx dancemakers) besides its founder, who passed away in 1972. While a few early Limón pieces exploring his culture remain in rotation, his 1939 Danzas Mexicanas, for instance, had been lost almost entirely after the choreographer did not teach it to any other dancers.

For decades, the development of American modern dance was largely seen as a reaction to classicism. But many other forces drove modern pioneers’ art. “At the heart of modernism, there is trauma,” says art historian Bruce Robertson. Robertson­ and dance historian Ninotchka Bennahum are the curators behind the New York Public Library for the Performing­ Arts’ exhibit “Border Crossings: Exile and American Modern Dance, 1900–1955,” which recognizes the foundational—and often overlooked—contributions that marginalized dancers, including Limón, made to the development of American modern dance. The exhibit, which runs in New York City through March 16, 2024, and at University of California, Santa Barbara,­ from January 25 through May 15, 2024, considers the genre’s more radical roots. “Why don’t we see the traumatized body, the stateless body, the asylum-seeking body, as a way of analyzing and seeing dance?” asks Bennahum. “Form and content, codified technique. Why is that the only thing that produces an artist of greatness?”

It’s a question that extends beyond the exhibit’s 1905-to-1955 time period. While “Border Crossings” considers who’s been left out of the historical narrative, some artists currently working with modern traditions are also trying to reframe the legacy of modern dance, acknowledging how issues of identity and politics have shaped, and continue to shape, the form.

Following in the Founders’ Footsteps

For the leaders of legacy modern dance companies, new commissions can be a way to honor under-recognized aspects of their founders’ legacies. One of Puleio’s first commissions after becoming director of the Limón Company went to Mexican choreographer Raúl Tamez. The resulting work, Migrant Mother, partially inspired by Limón’s 1951 trip to Mexico City, won a 2022 Bessie Award. “I felt like I had to go back to the roots and rediscover who José was, why he made the work he made, and then work with choreographers that are living and breathing in that same ethos,” says Puleio.

The Martha Graham Dance Company is revisiting its founder’s radicalism, honoring the countercultural elements of Graham’s oeuvre through a combination of reconstructions and new commissions. MGDC artistic director Janet Eilber says that though Graham always claimed she was apolitical, her work tells a different story: In 1936, Graham famously turned down an invitation to perform at the Berlin Olympics because she did not support the persecution other artists were facing in Germany, coupled with the fact that her company was largely made up of Jewish women. In reaction, she created Chronicle. In 1937, she made Deep Song and Immediate Tragedy to honor the women in the Spanish Civil War. And her 1944 Appalachian Spring featured the then-new company member Yuriko and sets by Isamu Noguchi, both freshly released from Japanese incarceration camps.

“It was a statement,” says Eilber. “Among the many other messages in Appalachian Spring, there’s the element of America being made up of immigrants, and needing to assess its own morals and how we treat people in this country.” This month, the Graham company will restage some of those early solos at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a complement to an exhibit about American politics in the 1930s.

Choreographers making new works at legacy modern companies are discovering ways to bring their 21st-century voices into dialogue with older traditions. When the Paul Taylor Dance Company commissioned choreographer and Ballet Hispánico School of Dance director Michelle Manzanales in 2019, she found herself at a crossroads. Manzanales, who is Mexican American, often references her heritage in her choreography, but the Taylor company’s repertoire largely does not reflect that approach. “I love to use music in different languages, but I wondered how the Taylor audience would react to that,” says Manzanales.

Ultimately, she chose not to compartmentalize that part of her identity. Her piece, Hope is the Thing with Feathers, which premiered in 2022, is set to a playlist of songs in both English and Spanish, with the Taylor dancers even lip-syncing lines from the Mexican musician Carla Morrison’s “Pajarito del amor.” “It’s interesting how, as a society, we want to see this part of Limón or that part of Limón, or this part of Michelle or that part of Michelle,” Manzanales says, “but really we can’t escape who we are.”

Carrying the Message Forward

Modern dance’s recontextualization efforts are reaching beyond the stage and expanding into educational and outreach programming. Chicago-based artist and educator Vershawn Sanders-Ward, for example, is working to bring more aspects of the modern dance matriarch Katherine Dunham’s legacy into the studio. Dunham was also an anthropologist who traveled throughout the Caribbean, bringing dances from the African diaspora back to the U.S. Her art and activism are so deeply interwoven that the one can’t be siloed from the other—which is one of the reasons she has been pushed to the sidelines of modern dance history.

“Miss Dunham was clearly a multi-hyphenate. She was a performer, a choreographer, a scholar, and an educator,” says Sanders-Ward, who is in the process of becoming a certified Dunham instructor. Sanders-Ward makes it a point to incorporate the cultural background of Dunham technique when teaching, and hopes that Dunham’s activist legacy becomes a more prominent part of dance education.

Elsewhere, the New York Public Library has created an educational curriculum around “Border Crossings,” and Bennahum will be hosting a Limón symposium at University of California, Santa Barbara, in January 2024 to bring scholars and artists together in conversation. Next year, Graham, Limón, and other companies will join forces for a conversation at 92NY “to look at the iconic works of the 20th century and how they should be viewed in light of today’s conversations,” says Eilber.

Bennahum and Robertson hope that their exhibit will help dancers—and audiences—expand how they think about the modern dance canon: A more complete understanding of the diverse factors that shaped the form’s development will help better shape its future. And they stress that even their very intentional project was only able to feature a small percentage of modern dance’s overlooked artists.

“Dance history has a very long way to go,” says Bennahum. “We’re trying to rewrite the field.”

The post The New York Public Library’s “Border Crossings” Exhibit is Part of a Developing Conversation About Modern Dance’s Radical Roots appeared first on Dance Magazine.

With boldly energetic dancing, a Hollywood face, and a ready laugh, Solomons—known as Gus—seemed comfortable in any dance genre. He moved fluidly between the largely white postmodern community and various dance communities of color. He was beloved by people throughout the dance world, so it’s no wonder that, since his passing on August 11 at age 84, messages of love and gratitude have come pouring in on social media.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Solomons briefly took tap, acrobatics, and ballet lessons in a local studio. As an architecture student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he moonlighted by studying dance with Jan Veen, the German expressionist émigré who founded the dance program at Boston Conservatory. (When Solomons told one of his professors at MIT that he wanted to be a dancer, the reply, according to Solomons, was, “Oh, no, you’ll be a credit to your race if you become an architect!”)

“Architecture and dancing are exactly the same. You design using all the same elements—time, space and structure—except that in dance, time is not fixed.” —Gus Solomons jr, from Cambridge Black History Project

Choreographer Donald McKayle saw Solomons in class in Boston, and invited him to New York City to take part in a musical that turned out to be dead on arrival—but Solomons’ professional life in dance was born. He quickly picked up gigs not only with McKayle but also with Pearl Lang, Joyce Trisler, Paul Sanasardo, and, notably, Martha Graham.

In the early 1960s, Solomons was part of a studio-sharing cooperative called Studio 9, with Elizabeth Keen, Phoebe Neville, Cliff Keuter, Elina Mooney, Kenneth King, and others. He attended some of the sessions in experimental dancemaking that Robert Dunn led at the Cunningham Studio, and he enjoyed using chance methods. But Solomons was “too in love with technical dancing” to invest in the pedestrian aesthetic of Judson Dance Theater, which emerged from Dunn’s workshops. Not to mention he was already getting paid gigs with more established companies.

Solomons found his aesthetic home in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, where he danced from 1965–68, the first Black man to join the company. There, he could just dance—leap, lunge, pivot, skitter, crawl, and extend his space-piercing legs. He originated roles in key Cunningham works: How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run, RainForest, Place, Walkaround Time, and Scramble. After three years, a back injury forced him offstage temporarily.

“Studying with Merce Cunningham, learning to dance from stillness, was giving me technical control rather than sheer muscle power, on which I’d been dancing until then.” —Gus Solomons jr in Reinventing Dance in the 1960s: Everything Was Possible, edited by Sally Banes

In the early 1970s, Solomons formed his own group, the Solomons Company/Dance, for which he choreographed more than 150 pieces. Taking an analytical approach, as per his architecture training, he made charts, designs, and diagrams and explored alternative spaces. Although many of his works had no music—or just the sounds of the audience coughing and rustling papers, as in Kinesia #5 (1967)—he sometimes collaborated with composers such as Mio Morales or Toby Twining. He embraced the new technology of video, creating an ingenious use of a dual screen for “City/Motion/Space/Game,” a 1968 work for WGBH-TV in Boston.

A watershed moment came in 1982, when choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones organized Parallels, a series for Black choreographers outside the “Black mainstream” of modern dance. Solomons, Ralph Lemon, Bebe Miller, Blondell Cummings, Harry Whittaker Sheppard, and others were invited to show their work at Danspace Project in downtown New York. As Solomons wrote in 2012, when the program was reprised, he was glad to be included “instead of being criticized for not being ‘black enough’ as I often was back then.”

In 1996, Solomons founded Paradigm, a small group celebrating the artistry of older, seasoned dancers. The kickoff was A Thin Frost (1996), a trio Solomons made for himself, Carmen de Lavallade, and Dudley Williams. This gem of a dance had moments of solemnity, wistfulness, and hilarity, where all three stars could revel in being themselves before finally reaching for a communal but tentative touch. Paradigm also commissioned other choreographers, including Kate Weare, Robert Battle, Jonah Bokaer, Wally Cardona, Larry Keigwin, and Dwight Rhoden.

“Paradigm…has reconfirmed my original naive conviction that dance can be a life-long vocation. Age need not be a limitation; it is a resource of life experience and dance craft that enriches performance beyond technical virtuosity.” —Gus Solomons jr, from MIT’s Open Door Archive

Solomons was a demanding but nurturing educator, teaching at UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, CalArts, Bard, and—for many years—NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. In 2004, he received the American Dance Festival’s Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching. The Bessie Awards honored him with Sustained Achievement in Choreography in 2000, and in 2014 the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts named him a Dance Research Fellow.

Always nimble with words, Solomons wrote reviews and features for Dance Magazine, as well as for The Village Voice, Ballet News, Attitude, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. In recent years, he posted reviews and reflections on his own website, Solomons Says.

“I try to write reviews that are both engaging to the readers and instructive to the creators, while respecting the integrity of their efforts—however effective or not they turn out to be.” —Gus Solomons jr, from the Dance/NYC panel “Meet the Press,” Dance/NYC, February 26, 2012

Because Solomons’ contribution was so huge, we’ve asked some dance artists who worked closely with him for their memories.

Douglas Nielsen

Member of Solomons Company/Dance, 1973–75, and friend for life

Gus was like a coffeepot that never stopped percolating. He was a source of infinite possibilities. Articulate to the core. He was a director with a purpose. Always prepared, and always in step with the times. His choreography was clear and nonnegotiable: “This is what it is. Now do it.” He often showed it, physically, but he also had prepared a movement score on graph paper for reference.

Gus lived his professional life as a man free of labels. He never defined himself by race, gender, or sexual orientation. When I asked him about that, he simply said he was “oblivious.” Truly an original.

Margaret Jenkins

Artistic director, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company

Gus and I started working on simply this fondness in 1964. I had met Gus when he came to teach a workshop at UCLA. He said, “Come east and let’s work.” I did. His long legs and my long torso became the “subject” of the work—how to find the balance between the two. He pushed me to lean into risk. He taught me how to trust I would be caught. He was fierce in his demand. He was kind with his physical support. There was joy, aways joy, close by.

Larry Keigwin

Artistic director, Keigwin + Company; producer of the short film #sharethemattress—Gus Solomons jr

Not only was Gus a mentor and friend, but he was also quick to dance for our camera when I asked him to participate in our video project Share The Mattress. It was a delightful and intimate afternoon. Gus gladly invited us into his bedroom and with cheer and vigor improvised for our camera. He didn’t need much direction….His physical instincts and dramatic intentions were spot on. Sensitive and self-deprecating (in a good way), he kept us laughing with clever conversation and witty quips. It was pure joy.

Donald Byrd

Artistic director, Spectrum Dance Theater; member of Solomons Company/Dance, 1976–78

What struck me about Gus was how thin he was, how long his limbs were, and that he was Black in what was often a very “white” context. I felt an affinity. The performance I saw, around 1973 at MIT, was enthralling. While Ailey’s work, which I was also enraptured by, struck me as heart and passion, Gus and his Cunningham-like vocabulary and odd organizing principles seemed to be a very different way of being Black. Its physicality was based on a subtle and ongoing interaction between body and mind, and an unapologetic assertion of the possibility that Blackness could be odd, astringent, and care little for respectability. I saw myself in him. And to some degree I still do.

Michael Blake

Faculty member, University of Missouri–Kansas City; former member of Paradigm

Puzzles. To work with Gus was a puzzle from the day you committed until the day you completed the task. He would give you a map in words or on paper and say, “Make steps!” I loved that! I loved hearing his voice say that, too! That map was confusing, complex, challenging, and in the end, beautiful to look at and perform. Gus challenged my brain as well as my body and my nervous system.

Courtney Escoyne

Dance Magazine senior editor; studied with Solomons at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts

Gus fundamentally altered the way I look at and talk about dance. Responding to our peers’ movement studies in composition class week to week always started in the same way: Gus projecting his warm, resonant voice to ask us, “Now, what did you see?” It was an invitation to not leap immediately to judgments of good or not good, whether what we’d seen was to our taste or not, and instead to analyze what had actually unfolded and what we had taken from it. The word “like” was banned from the room. If we wanted to express appreciation, we had to specify if we were intrigued, moved, made curious. He encouraged us to do the same thing when we attended performances, and reliably listened to, questioned, and supported our conclusions about what did and didn’t work. When he offered his own observations, it was invariably with wit, wisdom, and kindness—and more often than not opened up new angles we hadn’t considered.

A decade later, every time I sit at a keyboard to write about a performance or draw breath to give feedback to a peer, it’s still his voice that I hear first, asking not whether I had liked it, but what I had seen.

Read an expanded version of this post here.

The post Remembering Gus Solomons jr, 1938–2023 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Born in 1924 in New York City, Stuart Hodes Gescheidt attended Brooklyn Technical High School. He played violin in the school orchestra and joined the swim team. On his 18th birthday, in the midst of World War II, he was drafted and trained as a B-17 bomber pilot. He also got some writing practice with an army publication and later for a drama organization in Vermont. Hodes flew into the Graham orbit at the end of the war, joining her company four months after he took his first class. His robust presence graced her ballets from 1947 to 1958. You can see him as the Husbandman, bursting with optimism, in Appalachian Spring in this 1959 film.

He married Linda Margolies (Hodes), a dancer who also became a pillar of the Graham establishment, in 1953, and they had two daughters. He spoke warmly about family life. But they divorced 10 years later, and he married Elizabeth Wullen in 1965.

Hodes’ recent book, Onstage With Martha Graham, tracks his tumultuous relationship with Graham, his visceral joy in the technique, and the ups and downs of the many tours and performances. He offers insights about both Martha the woman and Graham the artist. He paints a picture of her as needy—needing to banish him and needing to beg him to come back time and again. “ ‘Martha’s genius,’ he writes ‘lies in being able to reveal the glory and catastrophe of being human.’ ” The book is a treasure chest of insights, inspiring me to collect  “13 Gems From Stuart Hodes’ New Book on Martha Graham.”

In an article in The New York Times in 2007, Gia Kourlas quotes Hodes saying, “I wanted to be around Martha all I could, except when I couldn’t stand her.” At an occasion commemorating Graham in 2015, he confessed: “The only way I equal Martha Graham [was that] I have as big a temper.”

During the Graham company’s off seasons, he found gigs in Broadway musicals. The choreographers he worked with include Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, Jack Cole and Donald Saddler, whom he sometimes assisted. “The things that happen backstage—they are mind-boggling. I find stories of flops the most fascinating of all,” he said on a panel sponsored by Dancers Over 40, “because they all start with a dream.” He was so keen on dancers’ stories that he started a short-lived website called ChorusGypsy.com. His first memoir, Part Real, Part Dream: Dancing with Martha Graham, was published in 2011.

He often compared the thrill of dancing with the thrill of flying a plane alone. Recalling his seven combat missions in this PBS segment, he says: “The plane became an extension of my body […] I felt that dancing and flying were two ways of getting to the same state […] I think anything you do with every particle of yourself can be wonderful, and it can make you forget the world. It’s magic.”

He held a string of leadership positions, including at New York University’s School of the Arts (before it was called Tisch), the interdisciplinary Kitchen Center (he oversaw its move from SoHo to Chelsea), the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance (as it struggled to restart around 2000), and the Dance Notation Bureau. When the Graham legacy was put in jeopardy by her nondancer heir Ron Protas, Hodes testified in court to defend the company’s right to perform her works. His written account of the long, fraught trial, Graham Vs. Graham: The Struggle for an American Legacy, is available in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts as is his interview for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division Oral History Project.

In the 1980s, he came back to perform for younger choreographers, including Stephan Koplowitz, Claire Porter and Gus Solomons jr. Reached by phone, Koplowitz, who made three dance-theater pieces on Hodes, said, “There was a combination of gravitas and lightness and realness in his presence. He was a dancer and an actor. He had a way of making anything he said onstage real. He was a natural storyteller. Rehearsals took longer because he liked to tell stories.”

Hodes choreographed for many companies, including Boston Ballet, Harkness Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and for his own youth group, The Ballet Team. From 1992 to 1996 he and Elizabeth Hodes toured locally in musical/dance duets like Dancing on Air with Fred Astaire and The Sound of Wings, about Amelia Earhart. His utterly delightful duet I Thought You Were Dead, co-created with the late Alice Teirstein, was named one of the year’s 10 best dances of 1996 by the publication Ballet Review.

He could be wickedly funny, too. In the 2007 production of “From the Horse’s Mouth,” which that year was a tribute to Martha Graham, Stuart recited his clever “Martha Rap.” In my memory, one of the lines was about how Ruth St. Denis thought Martha was ugly, but Ted Shawn wanted a partner less pretty than himself. 

Hodes’ earlier book, A Map of Making Dances (1998), overflows with various approaches to choreographing. It’s in the form of 247 numbered “projects,” pulled from his vast experience of dancing, choreographing, teaching, observing. Some of these seeds of creativity are conventional assignments and others can turn you inside out, like “Reinvent the joints in your body” or “Use music you dislike.” This book also pays tribute to fellow dance artists who have influenced him, including Remy Charlip and Robert Dunn, by bringing some of their unorthodox ideas into his fold.

Hodes was deeply committed to dance education. Author and educator Ellen Graff partnered with him on many educational projects. She had known him in the Graham company in the ’50s and also worked with him in recent years with Dances for a Variable Population. “His enthusiasm embraced all different aspects of the field,” she says. “He was so supportive toward other dancers and teachers. And he had an eye for talent. When he was the head of dance at NYU, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker was a student there and he told me he knew right away that she was going to be a player in the field.”

Thank you, Stuart, for the insights and joy you brought to the dance world.

The post Stuart Hodes, a Force in the Graham World and Beyond, Dies at 98 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Interviewed by Janet Eilber, artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, Baldwin spoke of his epiphany while watching senior artistic associate Denise Vale lead a rehearsal of “Steps in the Street,” from Chronicle (1936), at Montclair State University. As a writer whose area is American modernism, he realized that Graham was the “connective tissue” in his study of modernism, that her work was crucial to an understanding of this period in American history. But it took him four years to screw up the courage to contact the Graham company. Having written biographies on Thomas Edison, artist Man Ray, and poet William Carlos Williams, he said: “I spent my life up here [pointing to his head] and now I feel it here [pointing to his gut].”

Eilber and Baldwin decided to experiment with reading and dancing. He read his description of Graham’s masterwork Primitive Mysteries while a grainy 1964 film showed a group section with Yuriko as the Virgin. The timing of his words allowed us to see some images (for example, reaching toward a distant cross) that we might have missed, and to appreciate how starkly simple and well-crafted this ritual is.

It was exciting to see the Graham solos performed by superb dancers in intimate spaces. In the sensual Ekstasis, reimagined by Virginie Mécène, Natasha M. Diamond-Walker performed at the Graham studio, moving as though molding the clay of her body. At the New York Public Library’ of the Performing Art’s Bruno Walter Auditorium, Anne Souder took a slightly more percussive approach. In both cases, the restrained sexuality gave a sense of heightened drama to the angular designs of the body. On the other hand, Medea’s post-murderous dance is so psychologically creepy that Eilber joked that she and Baldwin had to leave the space because she knew that this solo scares him. Leslie Andrea Williams, in the Graham studio, and Xin Ying, at the library, gave different shadings to the full-body shudderings of this crazed, obsessive dance.

Although the book is more than 500 pages, it covers only the first half of Graham’s long life, when she was actively creating modernist dance for the concert stage. While Baldwin cannot offer the firsthand knowledge of Stuart Hodes’ Onstage with Martha Graham, he provides a fascinating intellectual context for her work. Baldwin’s book is about “how the ecosystem of her era fed her genius,” explained Eilber. Sure, there’s plenty in the book about her relationships with Louis Horst and Erick Hawkins, but you will also learn how reading Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung affected the young dance artist.

As a poet, Baldwin found his own common ground with Graham. “Poetry is making,” he said. “Poetry helped me to come to terms with dance.” He waxed particularly gleeful when talking about his discovery of Graham’s writings in high school. He called the teenager’s short stories “brilliant.” She also led her girls’ basketball team! So, the intellectual and the physical sides of her were already active. Years later, those two sides interacted with a dynamism that erupted into dance modernism. These three events were part of Eilber’s ongoing efforts to give a range of entry points into Graham’s monumental work. (The 100th anniversary of the company is only four years away!) For anyone hungry to read about Graham and her world—or “ecosystem,” as Eilber put it—this book will be challenging and satisfying.

The post New Insights into Martha Graham appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Born in San Jose, California, in 1920 as Yuriko Amemiya, she was only 3 when her mother, a midwife, sent her back to Japan. The influenza epidemic had claimed the lives of her father and two sisters, and her mother was desperately trying to keep her safe. Yuriko returned to California from age 6 to 9, and then went off again to Tokyo, where she studied with Konami Ishii, a proponent of German Expressionist dance. At age 10, she joined Ishii’s touring group. At 17, she returned to California and studied modern and ballet with Dorothy Lyndall in Los Angeles while also working at a florist shop. Lyndall knew of Yuriko’s bare financial situation and invited her to live in her family’s spare room. Yuriko toured with Lyndall’s junior group and began choreographing with Lyndall’s encouragement.

Her talent attracted attention. She was invited to guest with the UCLA Dance Club, and in the summer of 1941, she played Rima, the bird-woman of William Henry Hudson’s play Green Mansions, with original music by Lou Harrison, with a dance group in San Francisco.

Then, on December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed and everything changed. Yuriko, her mother and stepfather—along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans—were herded into internment camps. Assigned to temporary housing that she described as basically horse stalls, Yuriko taught dance classes that were so popular she was voted the Queen of Tulare Assembly Center. After several months she and her parents were sent to the Gila River Relocation Center in Arizona. There, too, Yuriko gave dance lessons. The camp administration sanded the floor, installed a piano in Lot 60, and paid her $19 a month, the same amount that a doctor received. Yuriko taught scores of children the dances of The Nutcracker Suite. “I just didn’t want to see the children go nuts. Besides, I didn’t want to go nuts, too.” She later reminisced about how uplifting her lessons were for the children.

In 1943, she was given the option to sign a loyalty oath to the U.S., whereupon she signed, was released and went to New York City. She headed straight to the garment district, where many young women worked. Under Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia’s decree, however, employers were not hiring any Japanese. But she was such a talented seamstress that an exception was made, and she got a job at a high-end ladies’ shop. Because of her skills, she became the first Japanese to be admitted into the ILGWU union. “I cracked the union,” she said later. In her second job as a seamstress she became floor manager, in charge of 30 or 40 people.

She knocked on the door at the Graham studio, and Martha Graham herself opened it. When Martha asked to see her dance, Yuriko refused because in Japan the tradition was that you need to prepare yourself for a master. So Graham sent her to study with Jane Dudley and Sophie Maslow, who both sang her praises. After that, she was given a scholarship and joined Graham’s class. Graham told her, “I have never said this to anyone, but I’m going to tell you. You are a born dancer.”

In 1944 Japan was still the enemy. So, before Graham cast Yuriko in Primitive Mysteries and American Document, she said to the other dancers: “The war is still on, and I just want to know if anyone objects to my using Yuriko. To me she is the best.” No one objected. Martha asked Yuriko to be her demonstrator for her classes, a position of honor that she held for eight years.

For Yuriko, there was no question that this was the right place for her. The almost religious devotion toward Graham reminded her of “a temple where zazen/seated meditation was practiced” in Japan. “When she did a deep contraction…I said to myself, ‘This is what I want in my body.’ ” In an interview with Francis Mason for Ballet Review, she said, “Working with Martha, you gave all your creativity, all your knowledge—everything to Martha.”   

Yuriko left her seamstress position to sew for Graham. All the dancers had to do some sewing, but only Yuriko got paid. Yuriko made many of Graham’s costumes, and in the fitting sessions she got to know the choreographer in a different, more comfortable way than the other dancers. According to Emiko Tokunaga, “Martha was charmed by things Japanese, and the young dancer was the embodiment of this fascination.”

Yuriko created roles in Appalachian Spring (1944), Dark Meadow (1946), Cave of the Heart (1946), Night Journey (1947), Clytemnestra (1958) and Embattled Garden (1958). She regarded Graham’s process as collaborative. Graham would make suggestions, then the dancer would work on her own for a while, and Graham would tweak it. “She would get you to come through clearly in the characters,” Yuriko has said. Working on her role as Eve in Embattled Garden (1958) she felt her own dancing was too smooth. “So I said to Martha, ‘I want to conquer awkwardness.’ And that is how Eve started.”

Not only did Yuriko contribute to the repertoire, but she also made an impact on the Graham technique. She understood the concept of spiraling around the back so well that, according to Tokunaga, Graham credited her with introducing the concept of spiral into class.

In the meantime, Yuriko was also making dances on her own. She gave her first solo concert at the 92nd Street Y in 1946. It was an evening of 10 solos, for which Isamu Noguchi designed some of her costumes. In his book Looking Back in Wonder: Diary of a Dance Critic, Walter Sorell wrote that, “When she went out on her own, something decidedly Eastern could get a hold of her, as in her solo And the Wind, which I thought was ‘a masterpiece in a minor key,’ a work in which she proves her power of expression in three different sets of mood.” The peak years of her choreographic output were between 1964 and ’71, when she brought her company to the Y almost every year.

Graham respected Yuriko’s choreographic efforts so much that she included her in a 1948 presentation of works by three of her most promising dancers. The other two were Merce Cunningham and Erick Hawkins.

Yuriko met Charles Kikuchi in 1946 through the post-camp grapevine. They had both been interned at Gila River but had never met—even though he was well aware of her dancing. Their first child, Susan Kikuchi Kivnick, was born in 1948. Because Graham thought of Yuriko as the daughter she never had, she treated Susan like a beloved granddaughter. Susan grew up feeling that the dancers of the Graham company were her second family.

In 1951 Jerome Robbins chose Yuriko for the main dancing role of Eliza in The King and I. She was so vibrant that she became identified with the role, and appeared in the 1956 movie. She brought her daughter to rehearsals of this and other musicals, so it was natural that Susan, starting at age 7, was cast in productions of The King and I, South Pacific and Flower Drum Song. When Yuriko directed the 1977 staging of The King and I starring Yul Brynner, Susan took over the role of Eliza.

At the American Dance Festival in 1964, Primitive Mysteries was revived, with Yuriko in Graham’s role as the Virgin. According to Ernestine Stodelle, in her book Deep Song: The Dance Story of Martha Graham, Yuriko had the “luminous mystical quality” necessary for the role. Critic Eugene Palatsky wrote: “Yuriko, primarily motionless, conveys an inner feeling of such adoration, anguish and awe—merely by raising her head to gaze at the invisible Crucifixion or by extending an arm to bless a suppliant—that a watcher is almost forcibly drawn into her soul to feel the thousand emotions that her mute face expresses.”

At that time, Yuriko was experiencing tensions with Graham. A Guggenheim fellowship in 1967 enabled her to leave the company and concentrate on her own work. But she returned in the late ’70s to restage Dark Meadow.

In 1982, Yuriko taught a three-week course in technique and repertory that became the seed for a second company. The Martha Graham Ensemble, initially led by Yuriko, is now called Graham 2.

After Graham died in 1991, Ron Protas and Linda Hodes, who were co-directors of the main company, named Yuriko an associate artistic director. But she left a few years later because of disagreements with Protas, who was Graham’s problematic (and some say destructive) legal heir.

In 1991 Yuriko won a Bessie Award for reconstructing “Steps in the Street,” a section of Chronicle (1936) that revealed the power of Graham’s all-female choreography.

Reaching a time in her life when she wanted to give back, Yuriko founded the Arigato Project with Yasuko Tokunaga, former director of dance at The Boston Conservatory. (“Arigato” is the Japanese equivalent of “thank you.”) Prompted by an invitation to Susan to stage Appalachian Spring in 2000, the project grew into a series with Yuriko staging Primitive Mysteries, Diversion of Angels and Night Journey, sometimes with Susan. The project extended into setting “Steps in the Street” on students at New York City’s High School of Performing Arts and The New School.

The former Martha Graham dancer Miki Orihara regarded Yuriko not only as a coach and mentor, but also as her “New York mother.” Recalling the way Yuriko demanded the best from each dancer, Orihara said, “She wanted the truth from everybody. She didn’t want anything fake. And she could see it, and she’d say, ‘That’s not it.’ ”

The Martha Hill Dance Fund honored Yuriko with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012, and the following year the Japanese government bestowed upon her the Foreign Minister’s Commendation. While accepting the latter, she said:

“Somehow I often went back to Japan for a creative source. I am 100 percent American, but deep down in my guts, Japan stayed with me. So artistically, I’m also 100 percent Japanese.”

Emiko Tokunaga, Yuriko’s biographer (and sister of Yasuko Tokunaga), commented on Yuriko’s influence on women of Japanese descent, saying, “You have crossed cultural and racial boundaries, which contributed to the mutual understanding and respect for Japan and for America.”

On her 100th birthday, the Martha Graham Dance Company made this video tribute to her.

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The contest, 19 Poses for the 19th Amendment, is part of The Eve Project, the company’s two-year-long celebration of the centennial of the amendment that gave women the right to vote. It’s a way to honor not only the suffragettes, but also Graham’s revolutionary approach to showcasing powerful, complex female characters onstage.

The post Channel Your Inner Martha for the Graham Company's New Instagram Challenge appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“I don’t see this love story,” Greenwalt says. “I see—there isn’t consent.” To her, Siegfried seems predatory, Odette seems far too apologetic, and the Odette/Odile duality reinforces toxic tropes about women who are either dangerously sexy or not sexy enough.

“Not to mention he’s been presented with every human woman in the land, and he goes for a bird,” she says with a laugh. “Like, you’re never enough.”

Greenwalt decided to make her own version of Swan Lake for the company she co-directs, Coriolis Dance. Working on her piece, Danses des Cygnes, she initially felt daunted taking on one of the most famous works in the ballet canon. But in the age of #MeToo, with women asking for their stories to be heard and sexual assault a major topic of discussion, she also saw an opportunity to bring the age-old work into a very contemporary conversation.

In her version, Odette is a human woman who chooses to become a swan, drawn to the sense of community among the birds, and Siegfried is a swan who violates her. “I felt like, Here’s my chance to take a story I find deeply problematic, and a vocabulary that’s really familiar to audiences, to be able to retell my own story,” she says. “My ballet is a commentary on what I experience in seeing Swan Lake, more than trying to replicate what I think it is.”

The post Are We Too Precious With Classic Dance Works? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

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We’re excited to share that a feature-length documentary titled Nureyev is slated to make its North American premiere next month. Nureyev will be shown in major U.S. cities starting April 19, giving you just enough time time to brush up on your Nureyev history before the Ralph Fiennes directed biopic, The White Crow, hits U.S. theaters on April 26.

The post Nureyev on the Big Screen: A New Documentary Hits Theaters Next Month appeared first on Dance Magazine.

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In a sun-soaked studio in Manhattan, members of the Martha Graham Dance Company (all women) lie on the floor with their feet and heads hovering off the ground. Choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith encourages the dancers to be unapologetic about being looked at as their bodies begin to tremble with exhaustion and they move into a new formation.

The post Bobbi Jene Smith and Maxine Doyle Talk Instinct and Trust in Collaboration appeared first on Dance Magazine.

What inspired this project?

In Berlin in 2013, I was invited to participate in a festival, celebrating the centennial of The Rite of Spring. I looked at The Joffrey Ballet’s reconstruction of Nijinsky’s original version, learned the movement, deconstructed it into snippets and danced it with an essay by my husband, David Kishik, who was there finishing his postdoc. Then, I did it at Judson; it perplexed people, and I thought that perplexity feels generative.

Are there more masters to come?

Well, there are six at the Pillow, including the Nijinsky: Graham’s Night Journey, with a scholar from Williams; Ailey’s Revelations, with Tommy DeFrantz; five works by Cunningham, with a different scholar at each tour engagement; Fosse’s Sweet Charity; and Balanchine’s Agon. It’s the obvious suspects in some regard, but, with what the scholars are bringing, not so expected.

I want audiences to think in other ways about the dances. In fact, I’m working with two scholars on the Balanchine; one who’s in the literature department at Berkeley who is blind and one from New York University’s Center for Disability Studies; they’re talking about Balanchine through disability, rehabilitation and race.

Photo by Paula Lobo, Courtesy Yerushalmy

And I’m sure some of the scholars will think differently about dance as well. The project really has legs. Why do you think that is?

It’s sexy; a lot of people are thinking about legacy right now—Stephen Petronio, Boris Charmatz, Jérôme Bel, Paul Taylor…I don’t know if we’re just dehydrated from a post-Judson obsession.

And you don’t have to twist around to make it fit into getting grants, like “What are your engagement strategies?” because it’s all engagement strategies. Who will come and listen to these works and either open their eyes to dance for the first time or to a lot of other issues and then come and talk to us about it? It’s about conversation in a real way, about making something that’s part of a lot of larger circles—dance, questions about feminism, or whatever—and all of us can partake in some of that.

The post Netta Yerushalmy is Changing the Way We Look at Balanchine. And Fosse. And Ailey. appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Most recently, American Ballet Theatre principal Isabella Boylston was scrutinized when she shared this post on her Instagram.

Her post was met with a barrage of insults from commenters who felt she didn’t have the right to share her opinion on topics “outside of her expertise.” Unfortunately, dancers who are brave enough to share their political thoughts receive these comments all the time—so much so that former ABT dancer Sascha Radetsky wrote a whole piece about whether or not dancers should get political online.

But if we look back at some of the most captivating dancers and choreographers in history, we find that dance and activism have always been deeply intertwined:

Katherine Dunham

Had Katherine Dunham not been bold enough to tackle social injustices with dance, she would’ve never created Southland, her controversial ballet that confronted the enduring racism in the South and culminated in the contentious depiction of a black man being lynched. The ballet was performed twice abroad but never made it back to the U.S. as it was labeled “anti-American.” Dunham’s later requests for funding from the U.S. State Department were all denied, but the negative response to the ballet only reinforced the necessity of its message.

Katherine Dunham, courtesy Dance Magazine Archives

Dunham also shatters the idea that dancers can only be activists onstage. In 1993 she led a 47-day hunger strike to protest the U.S. deportation of Haitian immigrants. Following a performance in Kentucky, she announced to the audience that her company wouldn’t return until the theater was desegregated.

Despite the endless backlash and attempts to threaten her into silence, Dunham seized ever opportunity she had to start a conversation about political issues, even if the world wasn’t ready to have them.

Martha Graham

Like Dunham, modern dance legend Martha Graham never shied away from commenting on politics in her pieces, as we can see in her beloved Chronicle. This 1936 work was Graham’s response to the rise of fascism in Europe and the consequences of war. That same year, she denied the Nazi’s invitation for her company to perform in the Summer Olympics Festival in Berlin.

“I would find it impossible to dance in Germany at the present time,” she wrote. “So many artists whom I respect and admire have been persecuted, have been deprived of their right to work, and for such unsatisfactory and ridiculous reasons, that I should consider it impossible to identify myself, by accepting the invitation, with the regime that has made such things possible.”

Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey’s politics shaped the very fabric of his company. After growing up in a segregated America, Ailey was determined to create an integrated dance company. “I am trying to show the world that we are all human beings and that color is not important,” he said. “What is important is the quality of our work.”

Ailey‘s Revelations, which he created during the thick of the civil rights movement, put the African American spirit on display like no choreographer had ever done before. Had he been too fearful of making a statement, we would’ve missed out on one of the most widely celebrated modern works in history.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Revelations. Photo by Gert Krautbauer, Courtesy AAADT

Onstage, dancers tackle heavy topics like war, racism and immigration. So why are we surprised when they’re compelled to speak up about them offstage, too? We’re not sure why some people have decided that being a dancer means you forfeit your right to activism, but no one should be disqualified from sharing political opinions just because they can do 32 flawless fouettés in front of a packed theater.

After all, they’re just doing what dancers have always done.

The post Anyone Who Says Dancers Should "Stick to Dancing" Doesn't Know Their History appeared first on Dance Magazine.

We sat down with Graham artistic director Janet Eilber to talk about bringing back older Graham works, working with new choreographers and what Martha would have to say about today’s wave of feminism.

MGDC in rehearsal with artistic director Janet Eilber.

How do you decide which choreographers would be a good fit for the company?

There are a number of things that go into it but one is the theme of our season. We launched Sacred/Profane last year at The Joyce Theater and it continues this year at New York City Center. We commissioned Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui because he’s known to do spiritual works, which he did in creating Mosaic. Where as Lucinda’s work goes more under profane. Her signature is to take everyday movement and manipulate it into choreography which she does brilliantly. Lar’s work is a mixture of both. He came to us and asked if we would be part of his 50th anniversary and we were honored.

When it comes to reworking pieces from so long ago, how do you stay true to Martha’s voice?

With Martha’s work it’s easy because she was a leader in the modernist movement. Her work is really stripped down to the elemental—to what will evoke a reaction from the audience. Even though Embattled Garden was choreographed in 1958, the elements are so strikingly modern, I think they still have a powerful impact.

We also have to incorporate the facility of the new dancers which was also something Martha was always aware of. The mission is to do what she did; to maintain the very direct emotional impact and the message that she intended, rather than let it get diffused by things that get added. We keep it clean so that it speaks the way she intended.

Embattled Garden was originally created on the cusp of the sexual revolution. What do you think Martha would have to say about today’s wave of feminism?

I think she was always instrumental in empowering women. She claims she never felt any inhibitions placed on her nor felt contained by male power. She was always someone who said what she wanted to say and she was all about personal empowerment—which she expressed through her art.

The post In The Studio: The Graham Company On Staying True to Martha's Vision and Voice appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The couture tie-in? The dancers’ costumes are designs from Prabal Gurung, The Row, Rick Owens, Loewe and Craig Green. Together, the garments are surprisingly Graham-esque with their stark, architectural details.

Mantle blends the dramatic and the obscure. Photo Courtesy Barneys New York.

Mantle
stars MGDC’s Charlotte Landreau, Lloyd Knight, Ben Schultz and Xin Ying, but it’s not a celebration of youth flaunting high fashion. They’re flanked by an ensemble of eight former company members, whose ages range into the 70s. The result is an enthralling blend of soundscape, style and dramatic, intricate movement. The best part? You can be transported there too. Here’s how:

— For the complete Samsung Gear VR experience, head to these Barneys New York flagship locations: Madison Avenue (New York City), Downtown (New York City) and Beverly Hills.

— You can also view a 360° version of Mantle in its entirety via barneys.com. Click and drag to explore the choreography and environment from different angles. No VR headset needed.

— Hitting the mall anyway? All other Barneys locations across the U.S. will be showing a non-immersive, standard video version of Mantle.

Check out the teaser below to get a taste:

The post Check Out This Surreal 360° VR Experience from Martha Graham and Barneys appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The 1926-27 Broadway season was just ending when DM began publication, and of its 200-plus shows, dozens were new musicals. One, a Ziegfeld revue called No Foolin’, listed more than 80 performers. Such huge ensembles of dancers and singers were common, whether in revues, operettas or musical comedies.

And why not? The ’20s were roaring, and Broadway was flush. But that wasn’t the only difference between then and now. Dance in the theater was only tangentially related to a show’s content. It was window dressing—however extravagant, it remained mere entertainment.

But just look at who was providing it! Fred and Adele Astaire had become the toast of the town two years earlier in Lady, Be Good! Its “musical staging” was credited to Sammy Lee, whose six shows in DM”s inaugural season included Oh, Kay!, with “Fidgety Feet” and “Clap Yo’ Hands,” and A Night in Paris, the second Broadway outing for a young dancer named Ray Bolger, who would gain lasting renown in The Wizard of Oz. (In 1932, his rubber-legged hoofing was on the opening-night bill of Radio City Music Hall, along with the Roxyettes and Martha Graham.)

Ray Bolger
Courtesy of DM Archives

The Cocoanuts
featured not just the Marx Brothers but famed ballroom dancers the De Marcos. They went to Hollywood, along with stage luminaries like Eleanor Powell, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Busby Berkeley, who’d been “arranging” dances.

But “choreography” was making inroads. In 1926 Berkeley was credited as choreographer on The Wild Rose, an operetta set in Monte Carlo; George Balanchine weighed in in 1936 with On Your Toes. “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” made dance a channel for detailed storytelling, and the choreographic milestones that followed brought us to this season’s Bandstand, in which Andy Blankenbuehler evokes the psychological burdens of its World War II veterans with heartbreaking battle choreography.

Earlier, in 1927, Show Boat had already proven that musicals could tackle serious social issues while providing glorious song and dance—with hardworking Sammy Lee choreographing; Agnes de Mille fused dance with the plot and invented the dream ballet in 1943 for Oklahoma!; Jerome Robbins made standard dance breaks look old-fashioned in 1957, with the nonstop choreography of West Side Story.

At that point, stardom could still attach itself to Broadway dancers. Chita Rivera joined Gene Kelly and Gwen Verdon as a household name. Fame and fortune were by no means certain—Katharine Sergava’s star performance as the first Laurey in Oklahoma!”s dream ballet landed her on DM‘s cover, but she disappeared after only two more Broadway shows (though The New York Times gave her an extra 15 minutes in 2003 by erroneously reporting that she had died). But celebrity status was still possible.

Gwen Verdon
Courtesy of DM Archives

However, as times changed, Broadway musicals tried to keep up. Spectacular pop operas like Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera were too bulky to move much. And director Harold Prince and composer Stephen Sondheim were pioneering a new kind of show that delved into serious material that didn’t necessarily accommodate the featured dances that had become de rigueur in musical comedy.

Still, the first of their collaborations, Company, in 1970, had “musical staging” by one Michael Bennett, and featured a chorus dancer named Donna McKechnie. You know the rest. Along with other Broadway gypsies, McKechnie took part in the all-night conversations and workshops that in 1975 became A Chorus Line.

It changed how musicals were created, the definition of a hit, the look of Broadway ensembles and the way dance was perceived. “It really exposed what it means to be a dancer, what drives one to become a dancer,” says Nikki Feirt Atkins, founder and producing artistic director of American Dance Machine for the 21st Century, which reconstructs and performs significant work by theater choreographers like Jack Cole, Bob Fosse and Gower Champion.

But in glorifying ensembles, A Chorus Line changed the terms of Broadway stardom. Shows no longer produce marquee dancers, and it’s not just because AIDS robbed the theater of so much artistry. Apart from McKechnie and Tommy Tune, whose breakout role was in Bennett’s Seesaw, dancers have not become above-the-title performers.

Savion Glover is an exception, because musicals like Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk were built around his talent. Atkins points out that Robert Fairchild’s stunning work in Christopher Wheeldon’s An American in Paris did not bring him the super stardom he might have achieved in another era.

Josh Groban and the cast of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812
Chad Batka, courtesy of Matt Ross PR

Lately the focus has been on ensembles, and choreographers like Wheeldon, pushing and pulling at the musical’s boundaries. Susan Stroman’s Contact and Twyla Tharp’s Movin’ Out made dance the main narrative vehicle; for this season’s Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, Sam Pinkleton’s split-level choreography surrounds the audience and sends the ensemble on a taxing, exhilarating marathon of movement that would shock—and probably thrill—Ziegfeld. Here come the next 90 years!

The post Choreography's Constantly Shifting Role on Broadway appeared first on Dance Magazine.

With his dance background and ease with social media platforms, Hurwitz seems to have stumbled into a vacuum that no-one had really realized was clamoring to be filled: well-produced, sophisticated short films that evoke the excitement of live performance and the creative process behind it. By showcasing ballet’s athleticism and rigor, he makes it feel spontaneous and of our time.

I caught up with Hurwitz recently in New York, and we talked about how he got started, and where he thinks his strengths lie.

Photo via ezrahurwitz.com

How did you get into film?

I was working for a photographer in Miami while I was dancing at Miami City Ballet [2006-2014]. Later, I started shooting photography for the company.

I always knew I wasn’t going to dance forever, and I had other interests, so I would use our layoffs to work in other areas.

Then, I got injured, and I came back to New York to rehab. I was bored, so I started working with Ellen Barr in the New York City Ballet video department. She had been producing content for NYCB, and I thought it was great. No other company was doing anything at that level. I was also naïve. I thought: What’s the reason for that? I didn’t realize there was a price tag attached; film is really expensive.

Then I left Miami City Ballet, went to Columbia University for business strategy and film, and simultaneously started taking film-specific classes at the New School for some hands-on experience.

What was your first dance film?

I made a short film with my boyfriend, Gonzalo García of NYCB. I filmed him in our apartment with our cat. He walks to the Koch and rehearses by himself. Now I look at it and I think it’s terrible, but at the time, people were impressed by it. And I did something similar for Sara Mearns. That’s kind of how I got started.

Are you a film buff?

Right now I’m watching 20 Stephen Spielberg films—that’s my goal for the summer. I work with a lot of film buffs; a lot of directors of photography want to be directing or creating feature films. I kind of feel like because I already had a really artistically fulfilling career, I’m not as precious as some of the people I work with. I was that diehard artist trying to give everything for the art-form; and now this is a second career.

What are your favorite dance movies?

The Red Shoes.
I like the cinematography because it’s classic, golden age of cinema. And there are those crazy shots, and that surreal dream sequence that seamlessly transitions from performance to something more subjective. I definitely think it informs the way I plan the narrative in my dance films.

And Wim Wenders’Pina.

What do you think of dance on TV in series like
Dance in America and Live at Lincoln Center?

Those kinds of things are really important because they bring dance to so many people. If you love dance and you have an awareness of the choreographers and the legacy of the work, then that content is appealing. But what the dance companies are trying to do now is bring in new audiences and new eyes.

How important is creating a narrative in your films?

Even if it’s not an explicit narrative, you need an arc if you want people to remember something or take something away.

You don’t necessarily tell the story the ballet is telling.

For things that haven’t premiered yet, no-one knows what the ballet is going to become. You’re taking a leap of faith. But I try to use the vocabulary of the ballet. For example, for Justin Peck’s In the Countenance of Kings, I wanted to show examples of the movement from across the 30-minute work, all in one minute, so we had to link together steps that weren’t necessarily sequential, we had to find transitions that weren’t there, and set steps to music that they weren’t set to in the piece.

In the films I made for Myles Thatcher’s Ghost in the Machine and Peck’s Heatscape, I also featured the choreographer. We wanted to engage people in the excitement of the new work being created and what that looked like. When people have more context, then they have a greater appreciation for the work when they see it for the first time.

In many ways, it sounds like you’re acting as a choreographer, using pre-existing material.

Yeah. I always try to show angles you wouldn’t be able to see in the theater. And that involves some restaging. For Ghost in the Machine, I wanted to film a minute and a half of uninterrupted choreography. We had a steady cam weaving through the dancers, but we didn’t want the dancers to be visible as we were moving, so we had the whole cast running with us behind the camera.

Have you worked with any modern dancers?

I did a film with the Martha Graham dancers. I loved them. I was so impressed by how vulnerable and exposed they could be in a second.

How important is musicality to your approach?

It’s very much informed by my training at the School of American Ballet. Especially in the editing; you want to use the editing in a way that feels musical and interprets the music as it’s meant to be interpreted. It has a lot to do with rhythm. Even when you’re editing in silence, you feel an internal rhythm.

How big is your team?

I don’t do anything without at least 5 people. There’s a director—me, most of the time. A director of photography, an assistant camera operator, usually a steady cam operator, and a producer.

What are some of your non-dance projects?

I’m working right now in live entertainment doing things for Broadway. And I’m doing something for Humana Health Insurance. I love the idea of figuring out how to make this insurance spot look beautiful, and they can afford to make it look beautiful!

What do you see as the relationship between the films that you make and the works that are the subjects of your films?

For some people, this is the closest they’ll get to these dances. If you’re in a flyover state and don’t have the money to go to one of these metropolitan areas, I would love to offer an experience that feels directly informed by what you might see at Lincoln Center. That is always going to be a unique experience, but the stage for that kind of art is larger now and there are different ways to experience it.

Why do you think you turned to film?

I saw how beautiful things looked on film and I felt I that it would allow me to keep something for myself in a way I couldn’t when I was dancing. I wanted to have something concrete and tangible to hold onto.

The post Dancing with the Camera: Ezra Hurwitz on Capturing Dance on Film appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But we also discovered something that makes us love Angelou even more—and gives us a new perspective on her writing. Before she became renowned for her poetry and memoirs, Angelou was a bonafide professional dancer, touring Europe in a production of Porgy & Bess, studying with Martha Graham and performing with Alvin Ailey (she was even one of Ailey’s first partners!).

She was also a professional singer and recorded an album called “Calypso Lady,” according to NPR. “I was known as Miss Calypso, and when I’d forget the lyric, I would tell the audience, ‘I seem to have forgotten the lyric. Now I will dance.’ And I would move around a bit,” she said in a 2008 interview.

Of course, later in her career Angelou acted in various movies and television shows, including the mini-series Roots.

Sadly it doesn’t look like any video footage of Angelou dancing exists. But we’re sure she was as captivating onstage as she was in her writing.

The post Before Maya Angelou Was a Poet, She Was a Dancer appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Yes. You read that right. With Legos! Who doesn’t love Legos?

And the level of detail—from the figures’ positions to their costumes and the accompanying sets—shows a keen understanding of these iconic moments.

Browse through some of Seet Dance’s set-ups below, and put your own dance history knowledge to the test. How many do you recognize? Scroll to the bottom for the choreographer and name of each work, and links to clips of these memorable performances.

#1

All photos Courtesy Seet Dance

#2

Courtesy Seet Dance

#3

Courtesy Seet Dance

#4

Courtesy Seet Dance

#5

Courtesy Seet Dance

(Get ready for a close-up, Lego men and women. So clever!)

Courtesy Seet Dance

#6

Courtesy Seet Dance

#7

Courtesy Seet Dance

#8

Courtesy Seet Dance

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If you still don’t know what you’re going to be for Halloween, don’t panic just yet. Dance Magazine has your back. Whether you’re heading to a party, dressing up for technique class or doing some good ol’ trick-or-treating, there are countless costume options that take inspiration from modern, ballet and Broadway. (Chances are you already have the basic pieces in your closet!) Snag one of these ideas, or riff off one to create a unique look. Happy Halloween!

Cartoon by Jessica Love in The Juilliard Journal via juilliard.edu

Go Modern: Want to transform into Martha Graham? Purple fabric can do wonders. You’re sure to get some confused looks from your non-dance friends. Bonus points if you do an excerpt from Lamentation and give a mini dance-history lesson.

If you’re even nerdier, you can create your own version of one of Alwin Nikolais’ imaginative costumes. Back in college, I showed up to a party for dance majors in this gem, based on “Mantis” from Imago. Peruse the racks at Goodwill for colorblock clothing, paint your face white and fashion a hat out of a Styrofoam cup and elastic.

Left: “Mantis” from Imago. At right: Madeline Schrock’s take on the original.

Cat costumes also require meowing. The cast of Broadway’s CATS. Photo by Matthew Murphy, Courtesy DKC/O&M.

Broadway Bound: Characters from the Great White Way provide endless costume ideas. If you’re looking for French flair, try these dreamy pieces inspired by An American in Paris. Flouncy skirts and wrap sweaters in pastel shades evoke the fashion of late-’40s Paris.

For a classic musical theater look (but still with plenty of “razzle dazzle”) rifle through your drawers for fishnets and a black leo. Or, check out these costumes based on iconic looks from Chicago.

If you’ve ever wanted to be a Jellicle cat, now’s the time to make use of that unitard at the back of your closet. Add some fur trim, ears and creative makeup based on your favorite feline from CATS.

Dressing up as a founding father doesn’t have to be stuffy. Borrow a look from the cast of Hamilton, by pairing a ruffled blouse with a military jacket and boots.

Graceful Ballet Looks: Take a page from American Ballet Theatre principals James Whiteside and Daniil Simkin and dress up as your favorite ballet legend. Last year, the two transformed into Gelsey Kirkland and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

If you are addicted to “The Walking Dead” and ballet, this costume is for you. “One year as a last-minute costume, I was a zombie ballerina,” says DM assistant editor Lauren Wingenroth. “It’s a super-easy one if you need something in a pinch—use an old ballet costume that you don’t care about getting dirty, and paint your face white with dark eyes. Fake blood optional.”

Escoyne as Terpsichore (far left), next to Nijinsky’s faun

A Balanchine look is timeless and doesn’t require too much planning. “When I was getting my BFA, we all got really into Halloween and would have themed days for an entire week,” says DM assistant editor Courtney Escoyne. “For ‘Mythical Monday,’ I decided to pull some inspiration from Mr. B and go as Terpsichore from Apollo: classic white leo, white ballet skirt, pink tights. It was easy to put together, plus I got to pretend to be an NYCB ballerina for a day.”

Last but not least, Halloween is the perfect excuse to dress up anyone’s baby who may be crawling around the studio. Suzannah Friscia, an assistant editor at DM, says, “My very first Halloween costume as a baby was dance inspired: I was a purple Sugar Plum Fairy with a sparkly tutu and a little wand.”

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“Musée de la danse” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Photo by Julieta Cervantes, Courtesy MoMA

They were part of an exhibit titled “Musée de la danse: Three Collective Gestures,” a collaboration with the French choreographer Boris Charmatz presented by MoMA’s Department of Media and Performance Art. The program, which was promoted as “re-imagining the function of dance and its relationship with the body, society and the institution,” is an example of a growing trend of postmodern dancers and dance companies performing site-specific works in museums. In recent years, MoMA has also showcased the work of Yvonne Rainer, Ralph Lemon and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, positioning these “outsider” artists firmly within the establishment. It’s a move that’s given a sense of weight and permanence to a traditionally ephemeral art form.

Of course, the idea of live dancing in museums isn’t entirely new. Steve Paxton’s 1972 performance series at New York City’s John Weber Gallery, Trisha Brown’s 1974 residency at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and other “happenings” at that time explored the relationship between movement and public spaces for art.

But over the past several years, these presentations have moved from the margins of the art world to inside leading cultural institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London. The choreographer Liz Santoro even won a 2013 Bessie Award for her site-specific work Watch It at New York City’s Museum of Arts and Design. The facts that MoMA created a department for producing performances in 2008 and the Whitney Museum of American Art hired a full-time performance curator in 2012 suggest that dance today is seen as a core component of programming, not an occasional novelty. These museums are aware of the current popularity of performance art, and have invested in helping to direct its transition into the mainstream.

Above: Shen Wei Dance Arts at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

“What happened with photography—it was not originally considered fine art
—is happening now with dance,” says Muriel Maffre, executive director of San Francisco’s Museum of Performance + Design and a former principal with the San Francisco Ballet. “It’s being recognized by a bigger group of people and finding a place next to great paintings.” Ana Janevski, a curator of the “Musée de la danse” exhibit at MoMA who describes dancers as “living archives,” agrees. “Dance is not only about movement, but about space and writing and thinking,” she says. “What we’ve tried to show is how dance is not just a footnote or sporadic event but an art form contained in itself.”

This recognition has helped to elevate dance, which is often perceived as less serious than fine art, says Diane Madden, associate artistic director of the Trisha Brown Dance Company, who has set the choreographer’s works at MoMA, the Tate Modern, Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Getty and Hammer Museums in Los Angeles. “People go to a dance performance expecting to be entertained, but people go to an art museum expecting to put thought and time into what they’re seeing,” she says. “It does give it a little more validity to associate ourselves with these more accepted art forms.”

It also provides a profoundly different way to experience dance. Unlike a traditional theater, where the audience is fixed and their attention is focused on a proscenium stage, site-specific works in museums often allow viewers to move throughout the performers, shifting their proximity and perspective. As a result, these pieces are more intimate and interactive. “It shows the humanity of the dancers,” says Madden, who recalls how during a performance of Roof Piece Re-Layed at MoMA in 2011, a group of middle-aged women started doing the steps along with them. The dance, which is about the transmission of movement, really resonated “in a space where the audience can be with them instead of looking upon them.”

For Shen Wei, whose company has performed everywhere from the Metropolitan Museum to the North Carolina Museum of Art to the Collezione Maramotti in Italy, this reflects a larger mission. “When we perform onstage, it’s showing,” he says. “But more current dance works are not about showing something. They’re about discovery. And those things fit well in these kinds of surroundings.”

Maffre believes this immersive quality appeals to dance and non-dance audiences alike. “More than ever people are looking for experiences,” she says. “In the past museums were considered temples of art, but museums are becoming more of a place of exchange and encounters.” As Evan Copeland, a member of Shen Wei Dance Arts, puts it: “Museums are sacred ground—don’t touch—whereas we’re like, ‘Please touch, be part of this, contribute.’ We’re making the space accessible.”

Site-specific works can also make dance more accessible
, engaging audiences who might never set foot in an opera house. But they require certain sacrifices of the artists. Because these spaces weren’t designed for dance (awkward layouts, no sprung floors), steps have to be modified and rehearsals are limited. And dancers used to performing in theaters have to get used to people staring them in the face.

“There’s not that distance of the stage, so you’re very vulnerable,” says Copeland of works like Undivided Divided, where the practically naked performers dance and roll around in paint on 7×7-foot squares while the audience wanders among them. But he ultimately enjoys the sense of community this generates with the viewers, just as Shen finds the location constraints stimulating. “It makes you create something you wouldn’t think of before you saw the space,” he says.

And since many cities lack affordable performance venues, alternative spaces like galleries provide more opportunities for dance artists to present their work. But as with all trends, there’s the chance that dance in museums will become too ubiquitous. “The challenge is how to continue to reinvent and not enter into certain patterns,” Janevski says. “If you’re really interested in breaking down the fourth wall and trying to push how an audience views art, that’s awesome,” adds Copeland. “But if you’re just using the space to dance around, personally I don’t find that interesting.”

Shen stresses that just like dance in a theater, the quality of site-specific works varies. But he believes the potential for connecting with audiences—both new and old—and making dance come alive outweighs any risk of this becoming a gimmick.

Madden agrees, citing the reactions she’s seen as proof of the powerful impact of these pieces. “Inevitably, there’s some joyful surprised discovery that happens among the audience, and I just love that. It tells me we’re on the right track.”

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