AMERICAN DANCE
LEGACY INSTITUTE
DANCING REBELS
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On August 10 through 14, 2005, the ADLI held a dance conference called, The Dancing Rebels at the National Dance Museum in Saratoga New York. It was attended by some of the coutry's most famous choreographers. The New York Times ran the following article about this historic event. |
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Honoring Rebels With a Social Agenda by ROSLYN SULCAS New York Times Published: August 16, 2005 SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y., Aug. 13 - "Wow, that was intense," the choreographer Robert Battle said, emerging from the American Dance Legacy Institute gala performance at Skidmore College here. Mr. Battle, along with about 50 dancers, choreographers and educators, was in Saratoga Springs as part of a five-day conference held by the institute. Its focus was the New Dance Group, a now largely forgotten but once influential collective of dancers, teachers and choreographers during the 1930's, 40's and 50's, whose work was featured at the gala. "The group was the most important voice in dance when I began in the 40's," said the choreographer Donald McKayle, who was honored during the conference. "There was nowhere else in New York City where you could take classes in all kinds of modern dance techniques, as well as in ethnic dance forms. And it had a real social agenda: it was racially mixed, and classes cost 10 cents, so that no one was excluded." Mr. McKayle, a tall, genial man who looks at least a decade younger than his 75 years, is well known in the dance world and has had a successful choreographic and academic career. But many of his teachers and choreographic peers at the New Dance Group - Sophie Maslow, Jean Erdman, Hadassah, Valerie Bettis - remain, at best, names from the history books, even to dance lovers. "The New Dance Group had fallen through the cracks by the 70's," said Carolyn Adams, a former Paul Taylor dancer who founded the American Dance Legacy Institute in 1994 with her sister, Julie Adams Strandberg. By the early 1990's, they decided that something had to be done about dancers' lack of access to this kind of seminal historical repertory. "It's as if drama students could never read Shakespeare, or music students listen to Mozart," Ms. Strandberg said. The women were not exactly short of things to do: Ms. Adams has directed the New York State Summer School of the Arts modern dance program in Saratoga Springs for 17 years and serves on several dance advisory boards; Ms. Strandberg started Brown University's dance program and is associate artistic director at the summer school. Still, the American Dance Legacy Institute was created to shepherd a project the sisters had thought about for a long time: the development of several "Etudes," reasonably priced packages of videotaped and written material that would offer a distillation of a choreographer's work in the form of a solo, with footage of detailed coaching, historical background, a Labanotation score, musical score and costume designs. "For $75, it lets people have concrete physical experience of a choreographer's work without that choreographer having to be present," Ms. Adams said. "It's an incredible educational tool." To date, nine such Etudes, in various stages of completion, exist, and the project remains the principal goal of the institute, which is based at Brown, in Providence, R.I. (Ms. Strandberg's dance students there have participated in research on and reconstruction of near-forgotten works.) Several Etudes have documented New Dance Group members: Mr. McKayle, Anna Sokolow, Daniel Nagrin and Pearl Primus. The others are on works by Jose Limon and by a younger generation: David Parsons, Danny Grossman, Danny Buraczeski and Mr. Battle. This year's institute conference celebrated the Etudes and also the opening of an exhibition about the New Dance Group, Dancing Rebels, at the National Dance Museum here. Organized by Ms. Adams and Ms. Strandberg and attractively designed by Ralfe Lawson, it offers a brief but fascinating look at the group's history and work, notably the socialist ethic that motivated these choreographers from the group's inception in 1932. "Dance Is a Weapon in the Class Struggle," one poster proclaims. The exhibition (which will run for a year) and the presence of several original members of the group - Mr. McKayle, Mary Anthony, Jean-Leon Destine, Muriel Manning, Billie Kirpich - provided a thought-provoking context for the gala Friday night. At a panel discussion before the performance, the question was posed: Is there still a place for dance with a social conscience? The enthusiasm of the audience, which included many summer-school dance students, seemed to suggest an affirmative response. Among the many affecting performances, Eve Gentry's 1938 Tenant of the Street, a solo about homelessness that uses tensed, drawn-out movement to draw a portrait of inner fear and loneliness, was beautifully danced by Mary Anne Santos Newhall. In The End, a solo from Anna Sokolow's 1955 Rooms, Amy Taravella demonstrated the economy of physical means with which intense emotion can be displayed, as did Mary Ford in Mary Anthony's Lady Macbeth. Some of the pieces were historical curiosities; Jean Erdman's Balinese-inspired Creature on a Journey, and Hadassah's Shuvi Nafshi show the interest at the time in ethnic and folkloric dance forms. But Mr. Nagrin's 1948 Strange Hero, a stylized rendition of a cigarette-smoking gangster brought to vivid life by Shane O'Hara, looked entirely fresh, as did Mr. McKayle's Rainbow Étude, movingly danced by Jude Sandy. And Mr. McKayle's 1972 solo, Angelitos Negros, performed by Stephanie Powell, proved the highlight of the evening. Ms. Powell wielded every inch of her long, sinuous body with impeccable power and control, effortlessly conveying the grandeur and pathos of the words to which she dances: "Though the Virgin may be white, Paint little black angels for me, For they too go to heaven." "To see the works that pioneered the art form is incredibly important," Mr. Battle said Saturday morning, after teaching a class to summer students. "At that moment, those choreographers were daring, and it encourages me to go into the unknown, to think about what impact I might have 30 or 40 years from now."
In addition ADLI makes these dances available to studios, schools, independent teachers and their students. ANYONE and EVERYONE has access to these masterworks thereby allowing many more people the opportunity to experience exceptional choreography. ADLI has nine Etude videos available or nearing completion*. The video shows the complete dance, an overview of each section (for larger moves) and a more detailed discussion which covers finer movements and intent. When dancers are moving differently, but at the same time, there is a color-coded visual breakdown of who's doing what when. Each video comes with a labanotation, music for the dance (in cd format) and biographical, historical and related information. ADLI provides all this at a very low price, quite comparable to any dance video, but these have been exhaustively researched and beautifully constructed to provide quality instruction. In addition, ADLI has six video documentaries on famous choreographed dances and folk dances as well as eight Research-Based Curricular Materials with lesson plans included for teachers interested in providing an in-depth historical and sociological context for their students. More details, an order form and how to order are available at the ADLI WEBSITE. | |||||||||||