Dance - its lost tradition - the misfortune of certain choreographers not enjoying the legacy they deserve - Column

Dance Magazine, Feb, 1994 by Clive Barnes

News of death arrives in many ways - a telephone call, a letter, or, if the death is that of a person of celebrity, perhaps a newspaper obituary, or even a radio or television bulletin. But occasionally, through innumerably varying twists of fate, you miss the announcement, and the news comes stealthily, more unexpected than ever for arriving in an unexpected fashion. Sometimes it could be a chance remark, or maybe a reference in a newspaper to "the late" attached to a name you thought among the quick, or, as in my odd instance, from an invitation to a memorial service.

Last September, when John Butler died, I was on the Queen Elizabeth 2 bound for New York City. Odd - it was on a ship at the beginning of that same year that I learned that Rudolf Nureyev had died. On the Nureyev occasion my own newspaper had telephoned me for comment - but Butler was obviously not so newsworthy. Indeed, his death was not even newsworthy enough to merit mention in the ship's newspaper, and.finally, by the time I had gotten home, the first obituaries were over. And, by chance, no one mentioned it to me. Therefore, the shock.

I liked John Butler very much - he was a quiet, good man, full of dry humor and reticent kindness, and if he was as haunted by demons as his looks, and sometimes his work, occasionally suggested, he kept the haunting to himself. Except, I am sure, to his very close friends, he seemed a rather private person. Yet as an artist, he was full of passion; his work was imbued with a wild theatricality, and the drama was more important to it than the shape. Formality was never his choreographic code, formalism never his choreographic language, and the electricity of his invention, galvanic and instant, far outshone, even outdazzled, its pure inventiveness. He was a showman, albeit a quiet one.

Are any of his ballets likely to survive in the repertoire. Well, people could certainly revive those two duets, After Eden and Portrait of Billie, but I imagine the large-scale works are lost forever. A pity, because Carmina Burana, for example, was a major ballet, and would he l permanent adornment to Inv repertoire. But as Richard Philp, talking about Butler in his Kickoff this month [page 5], points out: Reputations are fragile things, and memories are short." Yeah! Fragile. Short. That's about it.

These past few months there has been some talk about the "lost American dramatists" of the between-wars generation, those guys who were once doing quite well what Hollywood eventually did better, and those other guys, with New Deal social consciences, who were left waiting for Lefty while the rest of the world was waiting for Godot. A few of their plays will survive - these at least are written down, as permanent as stone, and once in a while will be exhumed by some hungry kid director anxious to put a new spin on an old property.

But is there also a lost generation of choreographers? I think so - and for various reasons. They cannot be so neatly historically pigeonholed as "between-wars" - their definition comes more from the timing of personalities than the passage of years. I am thinking of those choreographers who made their mark after, or sometimes, around the time of the first pioneers (Graham, Humphrey) and the second wave (Nikolais, Cunningham, Taylor, Ailey), but before the comparatively new kids (Tharp, Morris, Jones, Fagan).

Who are these lost souls? Well, their number is legion. I'm thinking of choreographers - and this haphazard list is partial, in both senses - such as Charles Weidman, Lester Horton, Mary Anthony, Pearl Lang, Paul Sanasardo, Norman Walker, Valerie Bettis, Don Redlich, Rudy Perez, Louis Falco, Daniel Nagrin, Elizabeth Keen, William A. Dunas. No, enough already, the list is endless.

Some of these choreographers are dead, and certainly none of the living are lost - in the sense that most of them are still in the business, making dances, teaching dancers. But they are not, I suggest, in quite the same public limelight as they once were, and Graham, Cunningham, Taylor, Ailey, Tharp, and Jones (just to pick a few) Still are. Why?

Now it would be easy to say that some kind of Darwinian natural selection has been at work here, and the best have survived and the lesser gone to the wall. Well, yes, it would be difficult to see a Cunningham or a Taylor or a Graham not surviving, but even the harshest Darwinist cannot just dismiss till these other people. Okay, reputations are fragile, and memories are short-but all the same, these were all the cream of the cream of American modern dance. These were, and are, creators of real substance.

Perhaps there are lessons in the career of the great (yes, I would say great) John Butler. Except very briefly, he never had his own company, his own instrument. He wasn't temperamentally suited to running a private troupe. Interestingly, all the all-time winners were, or at least, with help, did. Every Balanchine requires a bit of Kirstein in his life.

Then, also, there was the fact that Butler, at least for sizable stretches of his career, was better known in Europe than in the United States. This does not advance the longevity of an American reputation.