Hunter College shares the legacy - The Teach-Learn Connection - student dance conference - Brief Article

Dance Magazine, August, 2002 by Wendy Perron

FOR THREE DAYS IN MAY, DOZENS OF DANCE students from seven colleges convened with major figures in the field at Hunter College in New York City, and six of the schools performed rarely seen works from the American concert dance heritage. The students also had the treat of studying directly with a living creator of this heritage, the renowned Katherine Dunham.

Jana Feinman, director of the dance program at Hunter and organizer of the "Sharing the Legacy" conference, explained the impetus. "The future generation of dancers should be knowledgeable about the past generation of dancers. Unless the students know where they came from, they don't know where they're going. If you understand it in the body, then history has a totally different meaning."

Prior to the conference, students from Duke University, Five College Dance Department, Hofstra University, Hunter College, University of the Arts in Philadelphia, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the University of Utah learned, from key dancers or Labanotators, works by Alvin Ailey, Trisha Brown, Hanya Holm, Jose Limon, Alwin Nikolais, Pearl Primus, Helen Tamiris, Antony Tudor, and Charles Weidman.

Two stimulating panels discussed methods and problems of preserving the modern dance heritage. From the first panel, "Preserving the Legacy," David Vaughan, archivist of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, observed that Cunningham prefers to draw stick figures for a private record. Sylvia Waters, artistic director of Ailey II, spoke of the importance of conveying the Ailey spirit, as well as the actual steps, when passing on Ailey's work.

During the second panel, "Passing on the Legacy," Carolyn Adams, curator of the American Dance Legacy Institute at Brown University (and a former Paul Taylor lead dancer), said that the core of a work can be taught, but dancers need leeway to enliven the choreography. Christine Dakin of the Graham company agreed, arguing that every reconstructed role involves a large dose of individual interpretation. About reconstructing Graham's Celebration (1934), she said, "A lot of hilarity ensues when everyone remembers something different."

Dance historian Claudia Gitelman, who reconstructed the Holm work for the concert, said, "The greatest legacy is to encourage artists to take that extra step to be original--not to follow the masters, but to renew the art."

Speaking from the audience, the Limon company's artistic director, Carla Maxwell, recalled that Jose Limon and Anna Sokolow felt that choreography depended on who was dancing it. She also noted that in two documentary films of Limon's masterpiece The Moor's Pavane, shot ten years apart, Lucas Hoving danced the role of Iago differently each time.

A high point of the conference was Miss Dunham's workshop, which she conducted from her wheelchair. She began by asking us to touch our own palms, and bring them up to our faces. She told us how precious our bodies are and that we must care for them. With Dunham associates Gaynell Sherrod, Julie Belafonte, and Walter Nicks demonstrating, the class progressed to percussive contractions ("You should have purpose in your pelvic movements"), leg swings, and jumps. Occasionally Dunham took a pair of sticks and showed the drummers the rhythms she wanted. At the end, she played a CD of Richie Havens singing, "Lay, Lady, Lay" (a Bob Dylan song), repeating the line, "Lay across my big brass bed" with gusto. When she started swaying in her chair, no one could keep still. She called over one boy who wasn't moving fluidly, and she took his hands and placed them on her hips. He came away beaming, having felt the life force of Katherine Dunham with the palms of his hands. And thus the legacy gets handed down.

See Dance Magazine on the Web (www.dancemagazine.com) for a complete listing of works performed in concert May 3, 2002 at The Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College.

Wendy Perron, the New York editor of Dance Magazine, moderated the first panel.