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America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: the First 100
The daughter of Russian immigrants, Anna Sokolow (1910-2000) gained early dance experience on Manhattan's Lower East Side, first with Elsa Pohl at the Emanuel Sisterhood Settlement House and later, with Martha Graham and Louis Horst at the Neighborhood Playhouse. While performing with Graham (1930-1938), Sokolow began to show her own choreography with the Dance Unit, which appeared before labor organizations as part of the Workers' Dance League with pieces such as Strange American Funeral, Slaughter of the Innocents, and Fasçade. A 1939 engagement in Mexico led to her organization of the nation's first modern dance ensemble and a lifelong association with Mexican artists. Similarly, from 1953, Sokolow inspired and trained dancers in Israel, working with Inbal Dance Theater and founding Lyric Theatre with a group of actor-dancers. Two years later she created the masterful Rooms, which speaks movingly of urban isolation. Sokolow choreographed Broadway and television productions, directed off-Broadway and regional endeavors, and taught both dancers and actors. From 1971, she made dances for Anna Sokolow's Players Project, the Juilliard Dance Ensemble, and other troupes in the United States and abroad. www.playersproject.org/index.html
Square dance is considered the archetypal American traditional dance, embracing three separate styles that are characterized by local figures and variations. Distinctive national patterns emerged from European cultures that were shared in the New World by immigrants in frontier communities. The Northeastern type was based on the French cotillion and quadrille and spread westward, at least as far as Michigan. The Southeastern version developed in the Appalachian mountains and is actually danced in a circle, with squares formed along the perimeter as single and multiple couples visit each other and travel around the circumference. Popularized as authentic cowboy culture, the Western rendition is performed in separate four-couple sets, rather than in a circle, and features single-couple visitation. Easy to execute, square dance figures and steps are ordered by a caller who announces the sequence and encourages participants. Until the late nineteenth century, dances were preserved by oral tradition, but subsequent collections have been recorded. During the 1920s and 1930s, radio "barn dance" programs brought square dancing to a mass market, further extended by local clubs that continue to thrive. Something of an umbrella term, swing dance covers a succession of couple dances that stem from the Lindy Hop or jitterbug, generated and enhanced at the Savoy Ballroom in the late 1920s. Specific steps are danced in an unset order, with the embellishment of centrifugal spins, swing outs, breaks, and solo improvisation. Acrobatic lifts and air steps add to the general exuberance, and set routines can be interspersed with spontaneous exhibition. When swing music of big bands like those of Benny Goodman, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington became popular in the 1930s, the dance took on a smoother, more elongated shape and, in more complex performance styles, was presented on stage and screen, most notably in the movie Hellzapoppin (1941). Life magazine proclaimed swing "America's national dance" in 1943. Swing dancing underwent an intense revival in the 1980s, as a couple demonstration of some of the high risk elements of hip-hop. Frankie Manning played a major role in the early choreographic development of swing dance as well as in its recent revival. Influenced initially by African forms, the raw energy and virtuosity of swing dancing is perpetuated by more than 350 organizations and clubs in the United States and Europe.
Helen Tamiris (1903-1966), a founder of modern dance in the 1920s and 1930s, always kept a foot firmly planted in the commercial theater. She was trained in ballet at the Metropolitan Opera and by Michel Fokine, as well as in natural dancing at New York's Isadora Duncan Studio. Her early career combined a soloist position in the Bracale Opera Company with appearances in nightclub and Broadway revues. Yet her first recital in 1927 demonstrated a personal expression of abstract movement and frank social analysis. A year later she adopted the Negro spiritual as a métier for life as conflict. Politically active, Tamiris helped to lead development of the Dance Repertory Theatre and dance initiatives under the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. She founded and chaired the American Dance Association and helped to set up the Federal Dance Project. Following World War II, she turned to Broadway to attract large audiences for a modern dance aesthetic that aspired to shape consciousness of the people. Tamiris choreographed eighteen musicals between 1943-1957, artfully integrating dance into such productions as Up in Central Park, Annie Get Your Gun, and Fanny. She taught movement to dancers and actors and formed the Tamiris-Nagrin Dance Workshop in 1957 with Daniel Nagrin, who was her husband at the time.
Modern dance choreographer Paul Taylor (1930- ) made his debut in 1950 at Syracuse University and created his first choreography—Hobo Ballet—for fellow students. During the 1950s, he trained at the Juilliard School and performed in works by Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, and George Balanchine. Combining appearances on concert and commercial stages and television, Taylor evolved a quirky personal technique to express his pluralistic aesthetic. Gems among his choreography cannot be categorized, but explore diverse aspects of humor, lyricism, doom, and ritual. Among Taylor's masterworks are Three Epitaphs, Aureole, Scudorama, From Sea to Shining Sea, Esplanade, Cloven Kingdom, Airs, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal), Mercuric Tidings, Last Look, Musical Offering, Speaking in Tongues, and Company B. Frequent collaborators have included painters Robert Rauschenberg and Alex Katz and composer Donald York. Taylor formed his own ensemble in 1954 and established Taylor 2 in 1993. His autobiography Private Domain was published in 1987. Elected to French knighthood in 1969, Taylor has received more than forty awards, including America's National Medal of Arts and Kennedy Center Honors, as well as an Emmy for WNET/New York's production of Speaking in Tongues. www.ptdc.org/
The early training of Twyla Tharp (1941- ) encompassed dance styles from ballet to baton twirling and the study of several musical instruments. Her signature technique is similarly eclectic, integrating classical discipline and vocabulary with avant-garde iconoclasm. Primarily as a choreographer, Tharp has worked in the fields of dance, theater, film, television, and video. Her selection of musical composers has been equally broad, ranging from classical masters to jazz and pop superstars, sometimes combining styles simultaneously as in the score for Push Comes to Shove (1976), which amalgamates variations by Haydn and Lamb. Tharp's aesthetic evolved during the highly experimental 1960s. She joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company in 1963, but left two years later to form her own troupe. Tharp received early accolades for The Fugue (1971), which uses no music but is accompanied by sounds made by the dancers. Two years later with Deuce Coupe, to songs by The Beach Boys, she enlivened the Joffrey Ballet's innovative crossover pattern of inviting modern dance makers to choreograph for classical companies. Creator of more than ninety dances, Tharp has worked with major ballet and modern dance companies internationally and has received more than 100 awards. Her collaboration with filmmaker Milos Forman resulted in such groundbreaking productions as Hair, Ragtime, and Amadeus. Tharp's autobiography Push Comes to Shove was published in 1992. www.twylatharp.org Following graduation from Cornell University, lighting designer Jennifer Tipton (1937- ) studied dance in New York City, but changed career plans after a course in stage lighting with Thomas Skelton at the American Dance Festival, Connecticut College. Subsequently, she designed for and toured with the Paul Taylor Dance Company and gained theatrical acclaim for her work for Jerome Robbins's Celebrations: The Art of the Pas de Deux (1973) at Spoleto, Italy. Her designs were soon seen regularly in productions on Broadway and with the New York Shakespeare Festival. Tipton is widely known for her role as artistic collaborator with such choreographers as Paul Taylor, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Dana Reitz, Jirí Kylián, Dan Wagoner, and Trisha Brown, among many others. From opera productions in the United States and Europe, she has also designed experimental performance pieces such as Gandhara (1999). Tipton's work in the theater has earned professional recognition, including several Drama Desk Awards, two Bessies, a pair of Tonys, an Olivier, the American Theatre Wing Award, and an OBIE for Sustained Achievement. A professor of lighting design at Yale University, she advises, "Use what you have, and use it well and imaginatively."
As a choreographer, Antony Tudor (1909-1987) approached his craft intellectually and, while incorporating the classical lexicon, used natural gesture and movement to reveal the inner thoughts and feelings of his characters. As a result, he invented a new genre: psychological ballet. Trained in his native London by Marie Rambert, he fashioned his first piece—Cross Gartered—for what became known as the Mercury Theater. Tudor also performed with the Vic-Wells Ballet and Ballet Camargo, worked commercially, and formed the London Ballet in 1938. When war was declared in Europe during the following year, he sailed to New York and began an artistic relationship with American Ballet Theatre (ABT) that lasted for the rest of his life. Tudor was notorious for slow, mindful composition. Consequently, his repertory is not extensive, but is like a cabinet of jewels. Among the best loved are Lilac Garden, Dark Elegies, The Judgment of Paris, Dim Lustre, Undertow, Pillar of Fire, Romeo and Juliet, Echoing of Trumpets, Shadowplay, and The Leaves are Fading. While based in the United States, he also choreographed for the New York City Ballet and for international companies. When presenting Tudor with the Capezio Dance Award in 1986, Mikhail Baryshnikov, artistic director of ABT at the time, articulated the choreographer's aesthetic rigor: "Tudor is our conscience."
Edward Villella (1936- ) entered the School of American Ballet at ten and, after a five-year stint in the Merchant Marines, joined the New York City Ballet in 1957. While he is frequently associated with roles that emphasized dazzling elevation and technical brilliance—Tarantella, Thunderer in Stars and Stripes, the Rubies section of Jewels, Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux—his magnetism and range as a danseur and actor combined to make him an international star. Matched against personal virtuosity were the depth of his portrayals in Balanchine's Prodigal Son and Apollo, the classical nuances in La Sylphide, and the nearly motionless spectacle of Jerome Robbins's Watermill. Villella also made many television appearances, notably in the 1968 NBC film A Man Who Dances, and served as a consultant and producer-director for the PBS Dance in America series. Following his performance career, he served as artistic advisor to several regional companies and, in 1986, founded Miami City Ballet. As artistic director of the latter, he has created an ensemble with a distinctive personality and style, while also giving fresh life to selected works from the Balanchine repertory. Among Villella's many honors are the National Medal of Arts and a Kennedy Center Honor for Lifetime Achievement. www.miamicityballet.org
As a boy in Nebraska, Charles Weidman (1901-1975) studied with Eleanor Frampton and was inspired to become a dancer at fifteen by Ruth St. Denis in a touring performance. For schoolmates in 1919, he gave his first concert of nine solos derived from the St. Denis aesthetic. Soon after, he moved to Los Angeles and joined Denishawn, where he studied and performed for eight years. Weidman brought a very masculine approach to dancing that drew other men to the art form. His wit, "kinetic pantomime," and abstract movement added singular appeal to dances such as On My Mother's Side, Daddy Was a Fireman, Flickers, and Fables for Our Time. With Doris Humphrey, he founded the Humphrey-Weidman Studio and Company in New York in 1928. When she retired from performing in 1945, he established the Charles Weidman Theater Dance Company and, in 1960 with Mikhail Santaro, the Expression of Two Arts Theater. In memory of Humphrey, Weidman created Brahms Waltzes, a lyrical work with not a single waltz step. Other later dances include Saints, Sinners, Scriabin; King David; and Visualizations from a Farm in New Jersey. www.charlesweidman.com 
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