The Teach-Learn Connection - founder of Ballet West Willam F. Christensen honored - Brief Article

Dance Magazine, June, 2000 by K.C. Patrick

Salt Lake City, Utah--Willam F. Christensen--a pioneer of U.S. dance and still going strong at 98--will be honored at the CORPS de Ballet International Conference 2000, June 23 through 25, hosted by the University of Utah. The Council of Organized Researchers of Pedagogical Studies (CORPS) of Ballet, formed in 1998, is a professional organization dedicated to the development, exploration and advancement of ballet in higher education and to furthering the art of ballet. The conference will have presentations, movement sessions and panel discussions. Its highlight will be the organization's first annual individual award, given to Christensen, the founder of Utah Civic Ballet, later Ballet West, and the oldest existing U.S. ballet company, San Francisco Ballet. Ballet West will perform its tribute on June 22. Christensen, known for his staging of the first full-length American Nutcracker and Swan Lake, has often been honored with his brothers Harold and Lew--the Dance Magazine Award in 1973 and the Capezio Dance Award in 1984--but less frequently for his extensive teaching and participation in dance education. Christensen founded his first school in 1932 in Portland, Oregon; after moving to San Francisco in 1937 he founded the San Francisco Ballet School, whose library is dedicated to him. In 1951 Christensen returned to full-time teaching and founded the University of Utah Ballet program in the Theatre/Fine Arts Department, arguably the first university dance program not resident in music or physical education, and its summer program at Aspen, Colorado. Later--as director emeritus of San Francisco Ballet and professor emeritus of the University of Utah--Christensen founded the Christensen Academy in Salt Lake City. He still participates in the staging of his works, such as Nutcracker, Coppelia and Nothin'Doin'Bar. For more information on the conference or tribute, contact Barbara Hamblin at the University of Utah, Ballet Department, 801/581-8231 or B.Hamblin@m.cc.utah.edu.

New York--Lincoln Center Festival 2000, besides presenting a grand array of performances each summer, also presents symposia and related events. Most are free and open to the public at the Lincoln Center's Rose Building, 165 West 65th Street. During July, a sample of discussions includes choreographer Wim Vandekeybus and composer David Byrne, Bill T. Jones, Meredith Monk, Vladimir Vasiliev and Alexei Fadeyechev of the Bolshoi and Judith Jamison of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The festival's hotline is 212/875-5928 and its Web site at www.lincolncenter.org/festival lists its extensive program.

Sometimes it's just who ya' know

Goucher College's Dancers in Action had original choreography set on them for their spring concert on their Baltimore, Maryland, campus by artists-in-residence Robert Hill (principal with American Ballet Theatre) and Kevin Wynn (former soloist with the Jose Limon Dance Company). Meanwhile, the Playhouse Dance Company of the Point Park College Conservatory of Performing Arts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, performed Randy Duncan's Inside Your Heart and Daniel Ezralow's Read My Hips. Ezralow allowed the student company to perform the work because Joseph Mooradian, a graduate and former Hubbard Street Dance principal who was in the original cast, restaged it. "These may be the only college performances of any of Daniel Ezralow's works," said Associate Artistic Director Lynda Martha-Burkel.

Catch Up on Film Dance History

Each Friday and Saturday during June, the Turner Classic Movies cable television channel will run a thirty-eight-film celebration of dance in the movies from 1930 to 1961. "Footwork: Dance in the Movies" will be hosted by choreographer Marguerite Derricks. Themed days include Classic Male Hoofers, Sophisticated Ladies, and Great Dance Teams. The three decades show a range of styles and personalities in an era when--in the words of Ann Miller--if you didn't dance and sing, you didn't get hired. For example, On The Town (1949, MGM)--loosely based on their own musical by Adolph Green and Betty Comden with music by Leonard Bernstein--was directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, with songs and dances designed by Kelly. The first great post-World War II musical, its style set conventions for future musical films. The films are a special treat for students who don't recognize the names Astaire, Cagney, Caron, Champion, Charisse, Keeler, Kelly, LeRoy, Miller, Nelson, O'Connor, Powell or Rogers.