JoAnne Tucker shares her experiences in dance from directly a modern dance company to leading movement activities for women in prison and domestic violence survivors.
In the last blog, I wrote about the first Broadway show I saw. In this blog I share the first ballet I saw, and it was one of the best. I am not sure what my exact age was but I hunch I was about seven. Doing a little research on the Internet I found out that the Sadler’s Wells Ballet made its first tour to the United States in 1949. The tour was highly successful and yearly tours continued in the early 50’s. Since the ballerina I saw was Moira Shearer in Swan Lake and she retired in 1953, it was somewhere during these four years.
A little history about the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. During its first tour the company traveled with 75 people and 7,000 items of scenery and costumes for 12 ballets. Both Moira Shearer and Margot Fonteyn were ballerinas with the company at that time. My mom decided to take me to see a matinee of Swan Lake when Moira Shearer was dancing the lead role of Odette/Odile. I don’t remember much about the experience but I do remember that my good childhood friend Regina also went to see the production of Swan Lake but in the evening and the ballerina she saw was Margot Fonteyn. The result was a lively discussion of which ballerina was better.
Reviews praise both of them highly and of course we know that Margot Fonteyn went on to a very long career as a ballerina while Moira Shearer’s fame was mainly for her role as Victoria Page in The Red Shoes. The Red Shoes premiered in 1948 and is still one of the classic dance films. While I don’t think I saw it until my teens, it is a film that I love to return to every now and then and I do marvel at the beauty, grace and passion of Moira Shearer’s dancing.
Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes
How wonderful to have been exposed to such an outstanding first ballet, with a recognized ballerina by a first-rate company. I did get to see Fonteyn dance while I was a student at Juilliard when she had just begun a partnership with Rudolf Nureyev. Alas the ballet I saw them do was Marguerite and Armand choreographed by Frederick Ashton based on a book by Alexandre Dumas called La Dame Aux Camalias. I would have preferred to see another ballet with less pantomine. We were encouraged to attend by one of our ballet teachers at Juilliard and we were given free standing-room tickets to the old Met on 39thstreet. I found this review of the ballet which pretty much says it all.
The finished ballet capitalized on Fonteyn’s natural talents as an actress, and its depth lay less in the choreography than in the performances, the character and electric connection of the two lovers, played by the volatile 24-year-old in Nureyev, whose raw charisma unleashed a new wave of passion and freedom in the poised, 43-year-old English ballerina.
On opening night, the ballet was greeted with a rapturous response and 21 curtain calls, and it went on to become a signature piece for the couple and was performed around the world. (Royal Opera House website https://www.roh.org.uk/news/how-fonteyn-and-nureyevs-electric-ballet-partnership-made-marguerite-and-armand-into-an-icon)
Fonteyn and Nureyev in Marguerite and Armand
Fast forward to many years later when our daughters were around seven and nine and we visited New York City. I took them to see Alicia Alonso at the Met (by then at Lincoln Center), dancing Giselle. I remember their surprise when the very large chandeliers of the Met automatically lifted up right before the ballet began. Of course Alicia Alonso was quite wonderful even though she was well into her fifties and this was her last tour to the United States. Many Cubans were in the audience and the curtain calls at the end were a show unto themselves with so many bows and flowers being thrown onto the stage.
Alonso receiving flowers after a performance in her last NY tour, 1976. (She recently passed away at age 98.)
I stand in awe of these three outstanding ballerinas and am very honored that I got to see each of them in person. Do you have a favorite ballerina and/or a performance you particularly remember?
In my last blog, I began to write about my recent trip to New York City. In a later blog I’ll share more about the trip, in particular about a workshop that longtime friend and collaborator Regina Ress and I did at New York University’s Forum on Theater and Health. For now, keeping with this blog’s title of synchronicity with my recently published blogs, I now jump to my last night in NYC and attending the closing night of the Martha Graham Company’s April 2–14, 2019 performances at the Joyce. I had debated about even getting tickets for the performance, but finally, a few days before I left home I went online and purchased a ticket for Program C. I mainly selected this program because I had Sunday evening free and there was a piece by Pam Tanowitz in the program. I had never seen any of Tanowitz’s work and I was aware that she was getting lots of rave reviews.
Write-ups about her, as well as her biography, interested me, particularly reports that she was known “for her unflinchingly post-modern treatment of classical dance vocabulary” (http://pamtanowitzdance.org/bio). This spring she was not only creating a work for the Martha Graham Company but also for The New York City Ballet. That is indeed impressive and so I made sure to select a program that included the New York Premiere of her piece Untitled (Souvenir) for the Graham Company. Also on the program were two Graham classics, Errand into the Maze (created in 1947) and Chronicle(1936). Another world premiere by two choreographers who were totally new to me, Maxine Doyle and Bobbi Jene Smith, completed the program.
When I bought the ticket I felt disappointed that one of my very favorite Graham pieces, Diversion of Angels, was not being performed that evening. But I made my decision based on seeing the Tanowitz piece, as very few choreographers are able to cross over from ballet to modern commissions as she does.
So off I went to spend my last night in NYC at the Graham concert. The opening piece, Errand into the Maze, was one that I remembered seeing years ago (on one of my return trips to NYC) performed by one of my favorite teachers and Graham performers, Helen McGehee, in the leading female role. I don’t remember who performed the male role with her. I do remember her fierceness and passion in dancing. It appears that the piece had not been in the Graham repertory for 15 years when it was brought back in 1968 and Clive Barnes wrote a review:
The choreography – it dates from 1947 and has not been seen in New York for 15 years – wonderfully mixes the swift and angular lightness of the female with the heavy solemnity of the male. Set against the bones of Isamu Noguchi’s skeletal setting, and the sonorities of Gian Carlo Menotti’s score, the work powerfully conveys the archaic mythical pattern of despair, hope and achievement.
As the female, danced first of course, by Graham herself, Helen McGehee, as intense as a flickering flame, possesses just the sense of nervousness despair and faith this view of Ariadne demands and Clive Thompson’s Minotaur-Thesus, both ponderous yet buoyant, is the perfect stolid partner to her impetuous neuroticism. (The New York Times,October 26, 1968)
Errand Into The Maze opened the concert and I was pleasantly surprised at the performance it was given by Charlotte Landreau and Lloyd Mayor. A rush of positive emotion filled me as a dance vocabulary and approach I so love was beautifully performed. I have always loved how Graham turned to classical mythology for inspiration for her choreography and I remember writing a fairly long paper for an English class in High School on Graham’s use of mythology. It received an A and I held onto it for a long time but at some point, along with programs that I had kept for years, it got thrown out when we were cleaning out our papers for one of our many moves.
The second piece on the program was Deo by guest choreographers Doyle and Smith and frankly I don’t remember anything about it. Following intermission came the Tanowitz piece. I could clearly see how she was manipulating the Graham technique in a new way and found that rather interesting but that was really all I got from the piece. Disappointment was my overall reaction. I can see why critics like what she is doing and from an intellectual point of view it was fascinating but it didn’t emotionally move me in any way.
The last piece, Chronicles took my breath away. It is in three parts and I was familiar with the piece because Deborah Hanna, a dancer who worked with Avodah for 7 years and with whom I continue to keep in contact, had danced in one of the sections of the piece when she was in the Martha Graham Ensemble (a junior company of Graham in the 1980’s and early 90’s). I don’t remember getting to see Deborah in it but did know that it was being revived. The original program notes were included in the Joyce program:
Chronicle does not attempt to show the actualities of war; rather does it, by evoking war’s images, set forth the fateful prelude to war, portray the devastation of spirit which it leaves in its wake, and suggest an answer.
The first Part, titled “Spectre – 1914,” was powerfully danced by Xin Ying. She managed the huge black and red shroud with power and was a good start to what followed. Section II is entitled “Steps in the Street (Devastation – Homelessness – Exile)” and is a powerful group dance that along with Section III, “Prelude to Action (Unity – Pledge to the Future),” shows the female members of the company in an excellent light.
A review by Joanne DiVito for the LA Dance Chronicle of a performance just a month before the one I saw describes the second section wonderfully:
The second movement Steps in the Street begins with one soul, played by the incredible Anne Souder dressed in black. She backs onto the stage; step, drag, hesitate, step drag, hesitate, all in silence. This remarkable section, comments on the devastation of people caught in war. The stunning use of tiny runs, continuous jumps, and reconfigurations, static against kinetic, calls for the dancers to defy gravity and rise to all manner of challenges which this piece demands. Their sudden heroic prowess surprises and adds to the tension and release of this remarkable piece. (https://www.ladancechronicle.com/grahams-brilliant-legacy-lives-today-with-eilbers-leadership/)
But it is the last section that totally took my breath away. The women’s leaping and repetition of strong Graham phrases became heroic and so powerful that it was no surprise that the audience (a wonderful mix of young and old) rose to its feet shouting and applauding loudly, to acknowledge the beautiful performance. That kind of energy we rarely see in dance anymore – and what a treat!
Afterwards, as I ran into several contemporary fellow dancers in the lobby, one remarked, “That lady [referring to Graham] certainly had talent.” And indeed she did, for it was Graham’s two pieces, not the newly commissioned ones, that stood out. And it was a wonderful way for me to finish my trip to NYC!!
Sometimes events surprise you and life takes a turn you hadn’t expected. That happened in late May of 1962 when I was flying home having completed my first year at Juilliard. About half way through the short flight from NYC to Pittsburgh, I got a tap on my shoulder. A male voice said, “I think we know each other.” I was aware I was wearing a scoop-neck dress and I thought hmm… he must be getting an interesting sight… Anyway it turned out we indeed did know each other. Murray Tucker and I had gone out on a date a few years back when I had directed a water ballet at the country club both of our parents belonged to. His sister Lynne had been one of the youth I directed. That year’s water ballet was a bit humorous, making fun of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team. Their dad was Joe Tucker, the Voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Lynne had introduced Murray and me, and I had asked if he could do a takeoff on his father and announce the water ballet.
Anyway that was how we met and then we had gone out on an actual date to see the Ice Capades. Neither one of us was interested in the other at that time. We hadn’t seen each other since then. We chatted for a few minutes on the plane and when we walked off the plane we noticed that our parents were talking to each other. We saw each other a few times before I took off for a summer job teaching dance at a camp. We saw each other again at the end of the summer and continued corresponding and seeing each other at school breaks. Definitely the romance was building and I could see a future with Murray.
At the same time, while I loved my classes and study at Juilliard I was becoming aware of several other things. I was surrounded by many talented dancers and I saw my limitations particularly as a performer. The company I aspired to be a part of was The Martha Graham Company. I loved the technique and her choreography. I was also realistic that my chances were not great to get into the Company. And even more important was that the more I hung around the Graham studio and began to meet some of the newest members of the company the more disappointed I became. Sometimes I would help sew costumes late in the evening at the Graham studio to earn some money and would see Martha wandering around fairly intoxicated, looking for where she might find a bottle with some more liquor in it. That was shattering my illusion of a very talented creative person. I knew this was a challenging time for her as she was still performing her lead roles but not with the same energy or technique that she had earlier. She must have been wrestling with how to retire from performing. As has been documented in biographies and articles about her, this was very difficult for her.
In her autobiography Blood Memory she wrote: “[When I stopped dancing] I had lost my will to live. I stayed home alone, ate very little, and drank too much and brooded. My face was ruined, and people say I looked odd, which I agreed with. Finally my system just gave in. I was in the hospital for a long time, much of it in a coma.” (Quote is from Wikipedia; no page number is given. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Graham)
Anna Kisselgoff, in an excellent article for The New York Times writes about this period, “To give up dancing, Graham felt, meant to give up her life.” Kisselgoff continues “After a severe depression and a two-year illness in the early 1970’s, Graham actively resumed working with her company.” Here’s the link to the article, which gives an excellent picture of Martha and her company up to 1984, the time the article was written. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/19/magazine/martha-graham.html
While my time at the studio was seven or eight years before Martha’s severe depression, clearly the seeds were apparent to all around her and gave me much to think about. But I was very inspired by her choreography, her technique and her wonderful way of expressing a philosophy of life. Just Google “Martha Graham quotes” and links to a number of websites are listed. Here’s one “Top 25 Quotes of Martha Graham.” And they are not just about dance. They are about a philosophy of life. https://www.azquotes.com/author/5783-Martha_Graham
Her classes were sprinkled with inspiration on how to be a dancer, a creative person and how to reach your full potential. I was so disappointed to see such a person – who inspired and was such an innovator – not happy. Of course, I was a young 20-year old not mature enough or able to understand the challenges that life brings and also the challenges that a very passionate and creative genius deals with.
I also sensed the strong competition among the younger company members and the lack of kindness that they showed each other. Was this an environment I wanted to be part of? I was no longer sure. I was also aware that I had completed one important goal… I had made it through all three levels of Louis Horst’s Composition Program, and to be a choreographer remained a key desire of mine.
At the end of my second year I went home to Pittsburgh filled with these thoughts and beginning to consider returning to Pittsburgh and maybe building a life with Murray. The summer went well and I made the decision not to return to Juilliard and to attend academic classes at the University of Pittsburgh. I have never for one moment regretted that choice. We were married a year later and what a rich, loving, sometimes challenging and amazing journey we have been on since then.
In the last blog I mentioned that although Martha Hill had encouraged me to re-audition for Juilliard, I never had a chance to discuss this with my parents because my grandmother died at the same time. So … as planned, off I went to the University of Denver, my only backup school. After only one dance class it was clear to me this was not going to work. Within a few days after informing my parents I would not be staying at the University of Denver, I had withdrawn from school and was packed and on the train heading back to Pittsburgh. I was filled with a clear determination that I wanted to study dance with the best, and the place to do that was in New York City. There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted a career in dance. I hoped that I would have the support of my parents and that they would financially support an independent program in NYC that wasn’t connected to a particular college. I loved the Graham technique of modern dance and knew that would be where I would be taking modern dance classes. On my list was to find a good place to study ballet. I valued academics and thought I would explore what kind of possibilities there would be to enroll in one or two college courses. The long train ride from Denver to Pittsburgh gave me time to think through these different options and I found myself focused and clear on what my next steps were when I got home.
My parents were somewhat open but clearly had their own thoughts on what would be best for me, and my father in particular had a hard time with his daughter being a dancer in NYC. My father’s stepbrother was a psychiatrist and having been consulted, he suggested that when I got home I should see a colleague of his and have someone outside of the family talk to me in case there was something else going on. So shortly after I got home my parents arranged an appointment for me. I knew I needed to be cooperative because my first choice was having their financial support rather then having to support myself in NYC so I was willing to give it a few months home in Pittsburgh if I had to. They also suggested I enroll in a typing course so I might have a skill to support myself if I needed to.
So I enrolled in a typing course at a secretarial school and I had what turned out to be a single appointment with a woman psychiatrist. The appointment ended up actually being lots of fun. I explained why I wanted to go to New York and how I was planning to structure my time. She asked me quite a few questions and by the end of the appointment she was very encouraging and said that if I liked, she would have a follow up appointment with my parents and share with them that she thought my plans were very realistic and encourage them to support me.
Following their appointment a week later, it was decided that I would move to NYC after the 1stof the year. That would give me time to further explore options of where to live in the City and finish the typing course. My mom and I visited New York to explore options of where I would live. I was young and the idea of my living in an apartment was out of the question so we explored places like Y residences for women and the Barbizon Hotel for Women, where I had stayed once before. We then found a house on Madison and 68thStreet that was for women only and offered breakfast in the morning. That would be where I stayed. The neighborhood was great and the other women were a variety of ages. I think I even had my own room. I remember that living in the room next door was a model who was on the cover of Vogue,and another person living on the floor was studying acting. The house itself was a beautiful brownstone with a dramatic spiral staircase in the foyer where one entered. It was near the Cuban Embassy and there were often candlelight vigils and protests on our street.
I knew I would be taking classes at the Graham Studio which was located at 63rdbetween 1stand 2ndAvenue and an easy walk from where I lived. Next to explore was where I would go for ballet. I am not sure what made me decide that I wanted to go to the American School of Ballet which was pretty much for very serious young dancers but I got that in my mind and shortly after arriving in NYC I went for an audition and was placed in the beginning level class with outstanding teachers like Muriel Stuart. I actually loved the classes in spite of being surrounded by very thin “bunhead” ballerina types. Later I would move to studying ballet with Nina Fonaroff, totally loving her class and feeling so much more at home with her. She had danced in the Martha Graham company and also assisted Louis Horst, a composition teacher I was hoping to study with. I continued studying with her even when I later attended Juilliard. Her classes were fun and had a unique musical quality to them as she accompanied the class playing on the studio’s piano. A friend I had met at Connecticut College the previous summer sometimes joined the small class too. With the tension and competition that existed at places like The Graham Studio, School of American Ballet and later at Juilliard, it was a real delight to take class and get back in touch with the childhood joy of dancing. Nina’s combinations were fun to do and her corrections excellent. Ballet was fun – something I had not really experienced before.
One more piece of the puzzle to solve. I discovered that Columbia University had a School of General Studies that was designed for students like me who didn’t want to go full time. So I took the entrance exam, was accepted and began taking a few courses there.
While I did spend a lot of my time on NYC subways and buses going from place to place, I liked the package I had put together and enjoyed the next six months in New York very much.
The film A Dancer’s Work (1957) features the wonderful Graham teachers I got to study with including: Helen McGehee, Ethel Winter, Yuriko, Mary Hinkson and Bertram Ross. A lot of it was filmed in the big studio I remember studying in.
The following summer I returned to Connecticut College, this time focusing on composition classes and continuing to take two technique classes a day, one in Graham technique and the other in Cunningham technique which really never suited me well. The highlight for me was taking a composition class from Pearl Lang, and Louis Horst’s Pre-Classic Dance Forms. I loved both of them. In Pearl’s class I spent the full six weeks creating a laughter study and an anger study in dance. Louis’s class was a real challenge. The pieces we had to create were short with an ABA form. The theme had to be introduced in the first two measures of the A section and every movement in the A section needed to relate to something in those first two measures. He was very demanding and would stop you in the middle of a section if you weren’t following the rules of composition that he outlined. I immediately had great respect for him and knew I wanted to study with him more. So at the end of the summer I asked him if I could take his next course (Modern Forms) at Juilliard, even if I wasn’t a full-time student. He agreed and when I returned to New York in the fall I got approval to do just that. It was a few months into the fall semester when he said I should stop this nonsense of running all around New York and just be a student at Juilliard. And that is exactly what happened. With permission from the dance office and individual teachers, I was allowed to sit in on the classes like Literature and Material of Music for Dancers, and Labanotation and if I passed the mid-term exams I could get credit for those classes. I auditioned in late January, was accepted and became a full-time student at Juilliard in the winter of 1962. By the end of the school year I had completed my first year at Juilliard. Although the class had begun with about 40-plus students, when we started school the following fall there were only about 15 of us left. In the next blog I’ll share more reflections about my time at Juilliard.
I recently read Elizabeth McPherson’s book The Contributions of Martha Hill to American Dance, 1900-1995 and gained insights both into Martha Hill’s role in the history of modern dance in the United States and how she impacted my own life.
Picture of Martha Hill from the Wikipedia website. No photo credit is given.
If you have been reading Mostly Dance on a regular basis you know that Elizabeth McPherson was a member of The Avodah Dance Ensemble for seven years and that recently we collaborated on a conference presentation about Helen Tamiris. Elizabeth is currently the Editor of Dance Education in Practice, a journal of the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO), and she has beautifully edited two articles that I wrote or co-authored for that publication. I feel very lucky to have two people who shared their talents first as dancers and now as valued editors in my life, Elizabeth and Kezia (editor of this blog).
Elizabeth shares in her introduction that the seeds for the book were planted at the memorial service for Hill in 1995, as Elizabeth heard the love and devotion that students of Martha Hill expressed. For her dissertation, Elizabeth decided to focus on profound and personal ways Hill had touched those around her. Elizabeth interviewed four of Hill’s students who graduated “between the years 1965 and 1975, which was one of the peak points in Hill’s career. All four students retained contact with Hill in the years following their graduation up until her death. They also remained active professionally in the dance field” (p. 2). The four dancers are Laura Glenn, Linda Kent, Dian Dong and Danny Lewis. Linda and I are close friends. I have also known Dian for a long time, because Avodah rented space from H.T. Chen & Dancers, the company and school she and her husband run in Chinatown, and we have kept in touch. Laura Glenn and Danny Lewis overlapped one of the years I was at Juilliard.
In the preface to the book, Joseph Polisi (President of Juilliard from 1984 to 2017) puts Elizabeth and her work in an excellent perspective:
Elizabeth McPherson, scholar and Juilliard dance alumna, has provided an insightful biography of Martha Hill that gives appropriate credit to the work that she realized as one of the unsung heroes in contemporary dance in America in the twentieth century. Not only is Martha’s life thoroughly explored in this work, but McPherson also provides an intriguing overview of dance in 20th century American higher education that describes the context within which Martha Hill worked. A meaningful and touching view of Martha as seen through “the eyes of her students” adds immeasurably to understanding the person behind the legacy. (p. ii)
The first chapter is an overview of the history of dance in higher education in the United States. Elizabeth points out that from 1914 to 1932, “a free and creative form of dance, a precursor to modern dance, began to take root in the physical education departments of many colleges and universities” (p. 6).
I have long been a fan of Margaret H’Doubler’s writing in dance education, having used her analysis in many teaching workshops, so it was of particular interest to learn that in 1923 H’Doubler created a dance minor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in the Physical Education Department. It became a major with students in 1927, and a Master’s degree soon followed.
The relationship of Hill to three then-developing dance departments that I respect highly is discussed in full: New York University, Bennington College and Juilliard. Also discussed is The Connecticut College School of the Dance/American Dance Festival which grew out of the Bennington summer program that ran from 1934–1942 and which was “Hill’s vision, building her status as a giant in dance education.”
I attended two summers of The American Dance Festival at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut, and both were life changing. Although Martha Hill was no longer director, and – as Elizabeth points out in her book – Hill was either listed as “on leave” or “advisor,” it was during the summer of 1960 that Martha Hill had a profound influence on my life. The following summer it was Louis Horst who influenced me. I don’t think I fully appreciated that until I read this book.
I auditioned for Juilliard in the spring of 1960 but didn’t get in. I knew dance was what I wanted, and while I wasn’t due to graduate until February of 1961, I learned I had enough credits that if I doubled in English I could graduate in June. I knew Juilliard was where I wanted to go and I hadn’t spent much time focusing on other alternatives. As my backup I had applied and gotten into University of Denver. It only had a dance minor, but I thought I might like the school because I had had such a positive experience at Perry-Mansfield and fallen in love with the Colorado Rocky Mountains.
At any rate, I’d gone off to Connecticut College for the summer and was loving the program. I had auditioned and gotten into a special class that Charles Weidman was teaching, which ended with a performance in one of the student showcases. I remember we were going across the floor with a combination of his when I looked up and saw Martha Hill in the balcony watching class. After class she came downstairs and found me and said something like, “You know dear, Juilliard is having an audition at the end of August for additional students for the fall class and if you audition again you will get in.” I thanked her for the information and planned on discussing this with my parents as soon as I got home, which would be in just a few days.
However, by the time I got home, my maternal grandmother had died and so the emotions and energy just weren’t right for me to say anything or change the plans that were already in motion. So a few weeks later, instead of re-auditioning for Juilliard, I was off to the University of Denver. Well… I lasted only about two weeks. After my first class with the head of the dance program, I called home. I told my parents about my brief conversation with Martha Hill, and that the University of Denver was not what I wanted and that I was not staying. I was very definite about that and that I needed to be in New York, if not at Juilliard (because the fall semester had already begun), then taking appropriate classes at the Graham Studio and some strong ballet classes. They agreed that I could come home and that we would figure New York out. How I soon got to New York will be the next blog, but for now I just want to say that Martha Hill’s encouragement was what pushed me to not settle for staying at a place that I knew in my gut wasn’t the right place for me.
Now back to historical insights from Elizabeth’s book. I loved learning that although Martha Hill was a dancer briefly in the Martha Graham company, it was really her behind-the-scenes role in bringing the early creative talents of modern dance to places like Bennington that shaped modern dance in the United States. The faculties she brought together gave modern dancers like Graham, Humphrey, Weidman and Limon places to work, rehearse and create their legendary repertory.
I also found it fascinating to read about how she and William Schuman, President of Juilliard in 1951, founded the Juilliard Dance Department “upon the idea of the integration of the two forms of ballet and modern dance. Up to this time dancers had primarily studied ballet or modern” (p. 57). I really admired Martha Hill’s drive in making sure that the dance department remained a part of Juilliard in the school’s move to Lincoln Center.
A definite highlight was reading the four sections on Martha Hill through the eyes of her students. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of modern dance in the United States and how dance programs developed in U.S. colleges and universities. Thank you, Elizabeth.
Here’s a link to where you can order a copy. I was able to buy a used book for under $10 but that is not the case now.
