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America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: the First 100

Eugene Loring as Moses as a child in the Dance Players production of The Man from Midian (1942). (Photograph by Fritz Henle; from the Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

A pioneering choreographer who fused ballet, modern, and jazz styles in the creation of a distinctly American idiom, Eugene Loring (1911-1982) was born in Milwaukee. He made his debut with the Wisconsin Players, a small dramatic group, for which he created his earliest dances. In 1934 he went to New York to study at the School of American Ballet, danced in the company of Michel Fokine as well as with Balanchine's American Ballet. For Ballet Caravan, the small touring company founded in 1936 by Lincoln Kirstein, he choreographed several works, including Billy the Kid (1938) the greatest of the era's Americana ballets. A charter member of Ballet Theatre, he founded his own company, Dance Players, in 1941. Although he continued to choreograph for the ballet stage, Loring did some of his best later work for Broadway and Hollywood; among his successes were the film versions of Silk Stockings (1955) and Funny Face (1956). In 1948 he founded the American School of Dance in Hollywood and in 1965 the dance department at the University of California at Irvine.

Iolani Luahine (1915-1978) was esteemed as a performer of chant-accompanied hula, an older form of the ancient dance, and recognized as one of a handful of individuals responsible for the survival of this form in the twentieth century. Praised by Ted Shawn as "an artist of world stature," she was trained by her aunt Keahi Luahine (1877-1937) and subsequently taught and coached her niece Hoakalei Kamau'u (1929- ), passing down performance details directly. Luahine was featured in several television programs, as well as in the documentary films Hula Ho'olaule'a (1960) and Iolani Luahine: Hawaiian Dancer (1976). The growing popularity of Hollywood films in the 1930s, along with increased commercial sponsorship of the hula as a tourist attraction, promoted the more recent song-accompanied hula, threatening extinction of the chant-accompanied form. Luahine's superb talents, attractiveness to audiences, and personal commitment kept the earlier art from being lost. Her career is testament to the adage that dances are passed down like myths, from one artist to another.

Matteo and Carola Goya. (Photograph by John Lindquist; © by the Harvard Theatre Collection, The Houghton Library.)

Contemporary Spanish and ethnic dancers, Matteo and Carola Goya formed a highly successful partnership in 1954. Goya was born in New York City, trained at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, and studied with La Quica and others in Spain. She danced for President and Mrs. Roosevelt at the White House in 1936, toured Europe and South America as leading dancer in José Greco's company, and was the first to play the castanets as a solo instrument with various symphony orchestras. Born in Utica, New York, Matteo received a master's in dance education from Springfield College and later studied at the "Met," La Meri's Ethnologic Dance Center, and with La Quica and Balasaraswati. He introduced the study of ethnic dance forms at the High School of Performing Arts. Married in 1974, Goya and Matteo have lectured, toured, and taught extensively; together they directed the New York-based Foundation for Ethnic Dance, founded in 1967. Matteo is the author of The Language of Spanish Dance, published in 1990. Goya died in 1994 at the age of eighty-eight in New York City.

A 1963 photograph of Donald McKayle. (Photograph from the Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

A pioneering African-American dancer, choreographer, and teacher, Donald McKayle (1931- ) was born in New York City and grew up in Harlem. He began his dance studies at the New Dance Group and made his professional debut in 1948, subsequently appearing with the companies of Anna Sokolow, Martha Graham, Jean Erdman, Mary Anthony, and Merce Cunningham. He also danced on Broadway and did extensive film and television work. McKayle's vibrant choreography, exemplified by such classics as Games (1951), Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder (1959), and District Storyville (1962), reveal both his interest in examining the human condition and his commitment to exploring African-American material. Donald McKayle and Company, which he founded in 1951 and directed until 1969, featured many outstanding African-American artists from Mary Hinkson and Carmen de Lavallade to Alvin Ailey. In 1974 he won an Emmy award for his work on Free to Be You and Me; the following year he received a Tony award for his staging of Raisin. A professor of dance at the University of California, Irvine, he is resident choreographer of the Limón Dance Company.

Meredith Monk. (Photograph by Monica Moseley; used by permission.)

One of the most innovative and multifaceted artists to emerge from the Judson Dance Theater, Meredith Monk (1942- ) was born in Lima, Peru. She studied piano from age three and both music and dance at Sarah Lawrence College. Settling in New York City in 1964, she performed with Judson but soon began creating large interdisciplinary events that in their combination of media—film, video, dance, cabaret, music, monologue, and dramatic tableaux—continue to defy description. In 1968 she founded The House, a company dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to performance; this was augmented in 1978 with the Meredith Monk Vocal Ensemble. Many of her works—Education of the Girlchild (1973) is one example—have an epic dimension. Others evoke a dream world or manipulate the geography or history of a specific site; still others attend to personal catastrophe within the larger cataclysm of war. She refers to many of her works as operas, although they are performed using highly stylized movement. In 1995 she received a prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur fellowship. www.meredithmonk.org

Dancer, teacher, historian, and author, Lillian Moore (1911-1967) was born in Chase City, Virginia. She received her dance training at the Peabody Conservatory, Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, and the School of American Ballet, as well as from various private teachers. She danced for several years at the "Met," with George Balanchine's American Ballet, and the Cincinnati Summer Opera Company; she also appeared in various USO shows during World War II. In 1938 she published her first book, Artists of the Dance; this was followed by numerous articles that by the 1950s established her as the leading American dance historian. She wrote criticism for the New York Herald-Tribune from 1950 to 1965 and briefly served as acting curator of the New York Public Library's Dance Collection. She taught for several years at the High School of Performing Arts and Robert Joffrey's American Ballet Center. Moore was one of the first American dance scholars. Her research was thorough, her writing accurate. She had an insatiable curiosity about the American dance past and rescued numerous figures from oblivion.

Mark Morris in O Rangasayee (1984). (Photograph © 2000 by Beatriz Schiller; used by permission.

One of the foremost dance artists to emerge in the 1980s, Mark Morris (1956- ) was born in Seattle. He studied flamenco, ballet, and folk dance; he made his debut as a choreographer when he was fourteen, and performed with various folk dance groups. In 1976 he moved to New York where he danced with the troupes of Eliot Feld, Lar Lubovitch, Hannah Kahn, and Laura Dean. In 1980 he gave his first concert, and the Mark Morris Dance Group was born. His talent was quickly recognized. Richly musical, his dances are full of wit, ribald humor, and parody; they also reveal the humanism of older modern dance. In 1988 Morris became dance director of the ThéÂâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, where he created his first grand-scaled masterpiece, L'Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato, His brilliantly original version of Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, in which he played the heroine, followed in 1989. Two years later he returned to the United States. Morris has choreographed for many ballet companies and enjoys a close relationship with Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project, which has performed several of his works. www.mmdg.org

Arthur Murray with an unidentified partner. (Photograph from the Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

A native New Yorker, Arthur Murray (1895-1991) combined a talent for dance instruction with keen business acumen. He invented the concept of home dance instruction by mail. Murray studied with and was a teacher for Irene and Vernon Castle and, simultaneously, earned a degree in business administration at Georgia Tech University. Murray's innovative ideas and savvy advertising techniques built an international empire through mail order, lessons at studios, and a television series, The Arthur Murray Party, which ran for seven years in the 1950s. With his wife and partner Kathryn Kohnfelder, he built the major studio on East 43 Street in New York into a six-floor dance learning emporium with 150 teachers. Murray ran what seems to be the first American franchise business, encompassing between 350 and 500 licensed studios in the United States and Europe, while also sending instructors to hotels and resorts. As a dance promoter par excellence, he helped to build dance participation at the grass-roots level.

Seth Chief Eagle (Rosebud Sioux), age 5, competes at the 1997 Heard Museum's World Championship Hoop Dance Contest, Phoenix. (Photograph from the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona; used by permission.)

Native American social and ceremonial dance traditions cover many forms and territories and include social traditions, ceremonial traditions, and in today's world, the newly developed forms that become traditional over time. Traditional Native American dances reflect cultural beliefs: they define value in life, in the environment, and in relationships within Native societies. They transcend time, enforce group belief systems, and unify groups through shared experience and participation.
     Now, traditional Native American dances are rapidly disappearing from the American dance landscape. As Native American demographics change (70% of all Native Americans live in urban environments), the separation from home communities and land bases deplete traditional dance forms. Similarly, access to traditional dance and ceremonial sites by practitioners is less and less available. Time and place are keys to cultural survival in Native communities, and traditional knowledge and value systems are swiftly being replaced by popular American culture. As land resources and animal populations decrease, access to materials—feathers, skins, and plants—used by traditional Native dancers are increasingly unavailable.
     However, against this backdrop of change, many forms of traditional Native American social and ceremonial dance survive; some in fact are in a period of reawakening, as Native people seek to strengthen their identities within home communities and from distant environs. Supporting this survival are popular social dance forms and activities such as powwows, which reinforce common understanding and values across diverse Native group cultures. Exhibition dance forms, such as the Fancy War Dance and the Hoop Dance in time have become traditional dances, strengthened by the values and meanings that are added by practitioners and tribal groups.
     In the kiva, in the longhouse, and in the sun dance lodge—distant from the eyes of outsiders—Native people retain their life ways through ceremonial dances. Similarly, dances that are open to the public and to community outsiders are endangered by a changing socio-political world. As Native people practice the songs, prepare the foods, make musical instruments and clothes, and participate in dances and ceremonies, they struggle to retain unique ways of life that reflect the strength of our culturally diverse American society.
     In recognizing Native American traditional ceremonial and social dances as among America's irreplaceable—and endangered dances—the importance of language, land, and belief systems, which are imperative to the continuity and understanding of dance in Native communities, are acknowledged. The number and types of traditional dances that reflect Native American life are as distinct and numbered as the 300 groups that they represent, including the Comanche Scalp Dance, the Hopi Snake Dance, the Shoshone Choke Cherry Dance, the Cherokee Stomp Dance, the Iroquois Bread Dance or Women's Dance, the Tewa Buffalo Dance, the Hopi Snake Dance, the Apache Crown Dance, the Kiowa Gourd Dance, and the Yaqui Deer Dance to name only a few. Some of these dances will survive on their own merits; others will survive as a result of group tenacity. Those who are concerned with the continuity of dance and culture in the modern world have a responsibility to honor, respect, and support self-determination of culture by tribal groups that maintain these traditional dance activities. Under these circumstances, these traditions will continue to be a treasured part of our national cultural heritage.

Founded in 1932 by left-wing students from the New York Wigman School and originally called the Workers' Dance League, the New Dance Group aimed to make dance a weapon of the working class and a recreational activity for all. It sponsored concerts that often took place at union locales and offered inexpensive classes in modern dance and other forms. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s the Group remained committed to social justice. It was a major training ground in New York City for African-American dancers, and among its alumni were Pearl Primus and Donald McKayle. Its faculty, which included such outstanding teachers and choreographers as Jane Dudley, Sophie Maslow, Jean Erdman, and Jean-Léon Destiné, mirrored the breadth and interests of New York concert dance; its curriculum was refreshingly nonsectarian, and its showcases, led by the Dudley-Maslow-Bales trio, which it supported from 1942 to 1954, espoused humanist as opposed to purely formal concerns. After more than seventy years, the New Dance Group remains a thriving institution, occupying studios in the heart of New York's theater district. www.ndg.org