|
|
America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: the First 100
A self-taught tap dancer, Honi Coles (1911-1992) hung out on street corners in his native Philadelphia and entered amateur talent shows in early attempts to perform. In 1931 he joined the Miller Brothers and resolved to crack New York. After a year of daily eight-hour practice sessions, he had incredibly fast feet and a complex rhythmic tap style. Coles played the 1934 opening of Harlem's Apollo Theater. Teamed with Charles "Cholly" Atkins, the partners toured with the big bands of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Cab Calloway and made short films for television. The duo's slow soft shoe routine to "Taking a Chance on Love" was considered the definitive "class act." Coles performed on Broadway in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949) and subsequently toured with Kiss Me Kate. In 1965 he was featured with "Cholly" in a CBS-TV Camera Three program and was prominent in the TV movie on which The Tap Dance Kid was based. Back on Broadway for Bubblin' Brown Sugar (1976), Coles won a Tony award in 1983 for his role in My One and Only and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1991. Considered the dean of American composers, the ballet compositions of Aaron Copland (1900-1990) embrace some of his most popular and beloved works. Copland's fascination with movement resulted in a number of compositions for dance that epitomized the spirit of American dance in the 1930s and 1940s. Commissioned by Ruth Page, Hear Ye! Hear Ye! (1934) was Copland's first composition to be choreographed and, even though it was not a critical success, the jazzy score, flashy costumes and designs, as well as the leftist commentary of the action, fit the national mood of the time. Copland's next ballet, Billy the Kid (1938), was commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein for Ballet Caravan and choreographed by Eugene Loring. It was the first ballet in which Copland used American folk tunes and was also his first work to explore the "open prairie" feel that was to become an important element in later ballet and concert works. Although resistant to compose another "cowboy ballet," in 1942 Agnes de Mille persuaded Copland to write the score for the pastoral, lyric joke Rodeo. Choreographed by de Mille for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo with sets designed by Oliver Smith, Rodeo enjoyed enormous popularity. The concert suite, which closes with the energetic "Buckaroo Holiday," is one of the composer's most often played works. Copland's masterwork for dance, Appalachian Spring (1944), is regarded as the quintessential American ballet. Commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge for Martha Graham, the work was premiered at the Library of Congress. Graham supplied Copland with several scenarios for the work but Copland was largely free to compose one of his most expressive and touching works. Other works for dance include Grohg (1922-1925) and Dance Panels (1959).
Born in Centralia, Washington, Merce Cunningham (1919-) has been the dominant force in modern dance since the 1960s. Trained at the Cornish School, Mills College, and the School of American Ballet, he danced with the Martha Graham Company from 1939 to 1945, creating lead roles in a number of works, including Appalachian Spring. He began to present his own choreography in the 1940s and in 1953 founded what became the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Those first concerts initiated a collaboration with the composer John Cage that lasted for five decades. Under Cage's tutelage, Cunningham rejected psychological and dramatic content from his work. He experimented with chance procedures, worked closely with avant-garde artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, and developed a collaborative approach that insisted upon the autonomy of music, design, and dance. Cunningham's controversial choreographic methods and technique, which emphasized balletic leg action and flexibility of the back and torso, influenced generations of dancers and choreographers, beginning with the Judson group. Ever a vanguardist, in the 1990s he began to choreograph using the computer program Life Forms. www.merce.org
Asadata Dafora (1890-1965) came to the United States from Sierra Leone and in 1929 formed Shogola Oloba (Dancers and Singers) to present dance dramas based on West African myth and lore. He was the first artist who attempted to present authentic African forms—virtually unknown at the time—outside a tribal setting. His 1934 production of Kykunkor (The Witch Woman) enjoyed sixty-five sold-out performances in New York. Dafora also created the dance dramas Zunga and Zungure and was co-author, with Orson Welles, of the radio play Trangama-Fanga. Under WPA auspices, his company became the Federal Theater African Dance Troupe. With Welles and John Houseman, he collaborated on the Federal Theater production of Macbeth set in Haiti and choreographed the Vodun Witches. Dafora excelled as a singer, composer, dancer, choreographer, and writer, instilling black musicians and dancers with pride and appreciation for the African heritage. As a result of Dafora's work, artists such as Pearl Primus were inspired to incorporate African elements in choreography and performance.
The Dance Notation Bureau's (DNB) mission is to record dances in a way that will allow them to continue to be performed. DNB produces dance scores, using a symbol system called "Labanotation." Dance scores function for dance in the same way music scores function for music; each provides a blueprint of the work to which the performers add their artistry. Along with the score, DNB collects production information, music scores and tapes, videotapes, photographs, and any other information needed to stage the dance. DNB's archive has more than 650 dances by over 160 choreographers. Founded in 1940 by Ann Hutchinson Guest, Helen Priest Rogers, Eve Gentry, and Jane Price, DNB is the only American institution of its kind, assisting dance companies and scholars around the world. A wide variety of works is notated each year; in addition, between forty and fifty dances are staged from the score. Much of our dance heritage has been lost, but due to foresight in notating works, the dances of some artists are performed more now than in their lifetimes. www.dancenotation.org A vital performing art center and producer, Dance Theater Workshop (DTW) epitomizes the use of innovation and program expansion to sustain an organizational mission to nurture artists, while broadening the audience base, interactive dialog, and public context for creative work. Founded in 1965 by Jeff Duncan, Art Bauman, and Jack Moore, DTW began as a choreographic collective, furnishing sponsorship and practical support to emerging artists. A multifaceted approach has resulted in eight separate programs that provide visibility, resources, and services to independent artists, as well as increased public involvement in the arts. From a home base at The Bessie Schönberg Theater in Chelsea, DTW has reached locals through such neighborhood opportunities as Family Matters and has enabled international performers to cross cultural boundaries with The Suitcase Fund. Nearly 1000 emerging and mid-career artists have had work produced by DTW, under the executive direction of David R. White. Additional recognition has been generated for artists by DTW's New York Dance and Performance Awards (a.k.a. The Bessies), initiated in 1983. DTW won the 1989 Village Voice OBIE Award for sustained achievement in theater presentation. www.dtw.org Founded in 1969 by former New York City Ballet principal Arthur Mitchell, the Dance Theatre of Harlem is the oldest black classical company in continuous existence. Initially, the repertory was neoclassical in orientation, with several ballets by George Balanchine, who waived his royalties and took an active interest in the new company, as did Lincoln Kirstein. In the 1980s nineteenth- and twentieth-century works and classics were added, including the much-praised Creole Giselle, Bronislava Nijinska's Les Biches, and Agnes de Mille's Fall River Legend, all of which proved a great personal success for the company's leading ballerina, Virginia Johnson. Works by black choreographers—Geoffrey Holder, Louis Johnson, Alvin Ailey, Alonzo King, Robert Garland, as well as Mitchell himself—have created a truly multiracial artistic profile. With many of its dancers going on to perform with major national companies, the Dance Theatre of Harlem has been instrumental in significantly lowering the color bar in ballet. The company's school, which Mitchell initially directed with the late Karel Shook, has become an international force as well as a major Harlem institution. www.dancetheatreofharlem.org
Born in Russia, Alexandra Danilova (1903-1997) studied at the Imperial Ballet School in Saint Petersburg. In 1920 she entered the former Maryinsky company, where she was soon dancing solo roles as well as participating in George Balanchine's Young Ballet. In 1924 the two left the Soviet Union and joined Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, where Danilova created roles in works by Balanchine as well as Léonide Massine. In 1933 she joined Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes, where she remained until 1938, when she became the prima—and much loved—ballerina of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Danilova had a sparkling personality that endeared her to audiences and a repertory that encompassed nineteenth- and twentieth-century classics, soubrette as well as dramatic roles. In 1946 she collaborated with Balanchine on a staging of the full-length Raymonda and created the role of the Sleepwalker in Night Shadow. In 1951 she left the Ballet Russe, formed her own concert group, and in 1957, in Tokyo, danced her farewell performance. In 1964 she joined the faculty of the School of American Ballet, where she organized the first "workshop" performance. She died in New York City.
Chuck Davis (1937- ), performer and artistic director, began dancing professionally after college graduation, appearing with Olatunji Dance Company and with the Afro-Cuban ensembles of Eleo Pomare and Bernice Johnson, among others. Inspired by the Sierra Leone National Dance Company at the 1964 New York World's Fair, he pursued African themes in his choreography for the Chuck Davis Dance Company, founded in 1968, and took the troupe to Nigeria in 1977 to perform during the first of many visits. In 1980 Davis was invited by the American Dance Festival to be in residence with ADF's Community Service Program in Durham. Four years later the African-American Dance Ensemble was formed with musicians and dancers identified or trained through Davis's outreach efforts. "Peace, love, respect for everybody" is both the characteristic aesthetic and interactive mantra that ends all performances, celebrating traditional African art as a resource to encourage multicultural understanding. Davis also leads group visits to West Africa to experience direct contact with dances that are deeply integrated into the fabric of village life. http://users.vnet.net/aade/mem.html
The grande dame of American dance, Agnes de Mille (1905-1993) was born in New York City. Her father was a playwright who went to work in Hollywood, and it was there, inspired by a performance of Anna Pavlova, that she took her first ballet lessons from Theodore Koslov. She attended UCLA, received a degree in English, then resumed her dance studies in New York, where she made her solo debut in 1928. The following year she staged the dances in a revival of The Black Crook. In the 1930s, in London, she studied with Marie Rambert, danced in the premiere of Antony Tudor's Dark Elegies (1937), and worked on concert pieces that inspired her successes of the 1940s. Among these was Rodeo, the Americana classic she choreographed for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1942, and the dances for the Broadway musical Oklahoma! in 1943. Oklahoma! was a turning point in Broadway history: the dances were fully integrated into the "book" and required training in ballet and modern dance. During the 1940s de Mille created a number of works for Ballet Theatre that revealed the light touch of her Broadway choreography and the interest in American material that inspired her to form the Agnes de Mille Heritage Dance Theatre in the 1970s. A gifted writer, she is the author of several books, including a highly-regarded biography of Martha Graham. 
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
