Juilliard – Mostly Dance

Front cover image, Daniel Lewis in La Malinche, choreography by Jose Limon, photograph by Eddie Effron, courtesy Daniel Lewis archives.

I found this book particularly fascinating and fun to read because it enriched and filled in gaps in my knowledge of modern dance from 1962 to 2011. I was active in the New York City dance scene some of the time from 1958 to 2004, and I knew, or knew of, or saw perform, many of the people that are a part of this book.

The format of the book is unique. It is jointly written by Daniel Lewis and Donna Krasnow. Each chapter begins with a paragraph written by Lewis, followed by information about that period in Danny’s life in a biography format drawing on “60 archival boxes of photos, programs, letters, newspaper articles, reviews, posters. And even old airline tickets.” Danny also gave Krasnow a list of people to contact and interview. Included in the book are sections called “Through His Friends Eyes.” Krasnow identifies the friend and how he/she knew Danny and then provides a direct passage from the friend.

As is pointed out in the preface, “[Danny’s] life covered every aspect of the field – dancer, teacher, choreographer, collaborator, artistic director, administrator, mentor and benefactor.” By the time I finished the book I had an inside look at all these facets of his life. While I have only briefly met Danny, I think at a Juilliard alumni event, I do remember watching him in class at Juilliard. I was a second-year student and he was a first-year student. The first year I had to take modern dance technique developed by Jose Limon and technique by Martha Graham, but the second year I did not. I was clearly a Graham person, but one day (and I am not sure why) I was watching the Limon class and was struck with how beautifully Danny moved across the floor in various combinations.

It was really interesting to learn that during his Juilliard student years:

Danny was teaching as a substitute for Jose when he couldn’t be there and demonstrating regularly for his classes, so Danny had a strange kind of in-between role as student and faculty. He was still friends with the students as well as having close ties with Martha Hill and Jose Limon. Finally in 1967, Danny was hired by Martha as a regular faculty member when he was only twenty-three years old.

Krasnow describes in the preface how she took classes with Danny, and the importance of his unique approach to teaching the Limon technique. She describes his gift so clearly, and I quote:

He situated the technique in a larger vision of Limon as the choreographer, the musician, and the artist. We were learning exquisitely gorgeous movement phrases with intricate rhythms, precarious balances, and complex multilimbed coordinations, but all the while, Danny was expressing in analysis and imagery the principles of the work: fall and recovery, suspension, opposition, isolation, and always weight and breath . . . .

After reading about Danny’s style of teaching, I certainly wondered if I wouldn’t have liked Limon technique much more if I had had classes with Danny. How fortunate for Juilliard students who came just a year or so after me, that Martha Hill recognized Danny’s talents and had him teaching!

It was also in his first year at Juilliard that he began touring with the Limon Company. Danny shares that “the experience of touring, performing and having dances created on me by a master artist shaped me not only as a dancer, but as a choreographer and person.” In this section of the book we learn a lot about Jose Limon and the company. I have loved seeing a number of Limon’s works, particularly There is A Time, The Moor’s Pavone, and Missa Brevis, so I found this section right on target. Danny became Artistic Director of the Limon Company from 1972–1974.

One of the most helpful parts of the book is a chart that gives the timeline of Danny’s life from his birth to the present. Since the book isn’t written in strict chronological order, it is helpful to refer back to this.

From 1987 to 2011 Danny was the Dean of Dance at New World School of the Arts (NWSA). I really loved reading about, and have huge admiration and respect for, the innovative way that Danny developed the dance program at the NWSA. It was very interesting to read how he slowly built the program. He would re-evaluate the curriculum each year and see ways to improve it. One unique aspect was that the school always kept a “broad range of dance styles from various cultures.” The program began first as a high school and then developed into a college program with its first graduating class of ten students in 1992.

Among the students who studied at NWSA is Robert Battle, who is now the director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Battle’s section on “Through His Friends Eyes” was one of my favorites. Battle reports, “Danny told me that one day I should have my own company.” Indeed Battle did have his own company, and now he leads one of the major dance companies in the United States. Battle also shares:

When I returned to NWSA to set a work … sitting in the office talking with him was like watching a circus act. Danny would be doing multiple things at once – on the phone, solving problems and making things possible. I came to appreciate this quality in my own life, the job of juggling many balls at once . . . .

When Battle spoke at Danny’s retirement ceremony, he said, “I can only quote the words of Patrick Henry, ‘I know of no other way of judging the future but by the past,’ and so I seriously doubt Danny is retiring.”

As a friend of Danny’s on Facebook, I can see this is true. Danny continues to play an active role in the dance community in a variety of different ways.

My goal in this review is to point out a few of the parts of the book that strongly resonated with me and to encourage you to read the book for yourself. I have left out much about the time Daniel directed his own company and many important people in the dance community such as Anna Sokolow that he worked with or the numerous things he did while at NWSA . Learn more by ordering the book and by following some of the links at the bottom of this blog. The book is easily available via Amazon. I enjoyed reading it on my Kindle here in Costa Rica. Thank you, Danny, for your outstanding contribution to dance and for making the documentation of your life work available for the dance community!

Other recommended links:

https://daniellewisdance.com/videos/

https://daniellewisdance.com/awards/

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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.

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Tag: Juilliard

Book Review: Daniel Lewis: A Life in Choreography and the Art of Dance

Some Thoughts After Reading Elizabeth McPherson’s Book on Martha Hill