{"id":37140,"date":"2018-02-22T17:08:13","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T23:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=37140"},"modified":"2025-11-04T17:10:51","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T00:10:51","slug":"alwin-nikolais-through-the-ages-ririe-woodburys-strata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/alwin-nikolais-through-the-ages-ririe-woodburys-strata\/","title":{"rendered":"Alwin Nikolais Through the Ages: Ririe-Woodbury\u2019s Strata"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and guest artists in Alwin Nikolais\u2019s \u201cTensile Involvement\u201d (1955). Photo by Tori Duhaime.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The work of Alwin Nikolais presented in Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company\u2019s\u00a0Strata<\/em>\u00a0spanned three decades, but the exploratory nature of Nikolais\u2019 work appears to transcend time. What was once progressive still feels to be so; while others have emulated areas Nikolais pioneered, his own work maintains its sense of existing on the edge, despite the ebb and flow of many dance trends.<\/p>\n

This article seeks to place the works featured in\u00a0Strata<\/em>\u00a0within their original contexts rather than presume new observations and, in doing so, seeks to reveal how Nikolais\u2019 choreography, concepts, and staging hold up, or even accumulate layers, as they continue to be performed and discussed.<\/p>\n

Nikolais\u2019 \u201cTensile Involvement\u201d premiered in 1955; to place it historically, this was both the same year Arthur Mitchell first joined the New York City Ballet, later to become\u00a0the company\u2019s first African-American principal dancer<\/a>, and the year the polio vaccine was approved by the FDA. Around the same time, Nikolais himself wrote the following in a piece for The New York Times:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe speak of dance necessitating humanistic relationships and concern, but new semantic meanings of man and his relativity within our present historical strata are constantly being redefined. The tools of the dancer \u2014 motion, time, space, light, sound, shape and color \u2014 have greatly extended and altered in meaning during the last quarter-century.\u201d (August 18, 1957)<\/p>\n

Nikolais\u2019 observation may be extended more broadly, but this is certainly an apt description of his own work and intent, as embodied in \u201cTensile Involvement\u201d (if not equally embodied throughout his repertory). In the piece, dancers cavort, energetically but purposefully, weaving paths back and forth across the stage with long, ribbon-like cords. The dancers\u2019 relationships to their environs triumph here; their relation to one another is important and evident, but is perhaps only a byproduct of the primary task at hand.<\/p>\n

Withstanding the test of multiple viewings, the premise of \u201cTensile Involvement\u201d continues to feel refreshingly new; arguably, the same holds true for the test of the span of decades since the work\u2019s premiere. Perhaps this is also to credit the bright performance quality brought out by the spirit of the dance and the inherent quality of Nikolais\u2019 movement: energy radiating from the eyes down to the metatarsals, and, in this case, even still outward along the full length of the cords, from the floor all the way up into the fly-space.<\/p>\n

\u201cGallery\u201d premiered in 1978 as part of a two-week run at the Beacon Theater in New York; in the same year, the U.S. would launch the first global positioning satellite and Yvonne Rainer would perform her iconic\u00a0\u201cTrio A\u201d for the camera. New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff wrote the following after attending the opening night of \u201cGallery\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201c[The] metaphor of an ordinary fairground shooting gallery representing humanity is typical of Mr. Nikolais\u2019s way with a message. Yet it comes as no surprise that he also seduces his public with the dazzle and wit of his technique\u2026 It is one of Mr. Nikolais\u2019s strongest works, in which he has achieved a great deal of variety within self-imposed restrictions.\u201d (April 20, 1978)<\/p>\n

Nikolais\u2019 success in fully exploring one idea, living within restrictions set in place by a specific world, was a recurring impression throughout\u00a0Strata<\/em>, but especially in \u201cGallery.\u201d Harkening back to composition class, the idea of exploring one thought completely before moving on to the next is tantamount to choreography; a thorough exploration is akin to sweeping out all the nooks and crannies, unlikely to leave a viewer wanting.<\/p>\n

\u201cGallery\u201d is an embodiment of such thorough exploration, as it twists and turns through various iterations of similar themes. The dance\u2019s dominant imagery consists of red and green targets, bobbing heads, DayGlo masks, and dancers serving as abstractions of goofy yet macabre caricatures. While far from appearing human, the mime-like performers still elicit human responses from the audience \u2014 laughter, shock, discomfort, surprise \u2014 in their odd renditions to an eerie sound score.<\/p>\n

At first, the cast of \u201cGallery\u201d seems to be in control of the fairground shooting gallery they inhabit: popping their heads up and down, going in and out of view, swirling back and forth along the counter they are behind, doing the backstroke, eventually creating elaborate counterbalanced shapes on two stacks of tables in front of the counter. But by the end, all are compelled to return to the confined gallery space from whence they came, and are subjected to invisible projectiles that render the mask-like targets in front of their faces shattered. Were they ever in control? \u201cGallery\u201d explores such a full range of possibilities within its parameters that it seems for a time that they are.<\/p>\n

And 1980 saw not only the premiere of Nikolais\u2019s \u201cMechanical Organ\u201d but also those of the\u00a0Pac-Man\u00a0<\/em>game, Star Wars\u2019\u00a0The Empire Strikes Back<\/em>, and Salt Lake City\u2019s very own Ballet West in New York City. Nearly a year after the debut of \u201cMechanical Organ\u201d at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, Kisselgoff observed the following after a Nikolais Dance Theater performance at City Center:<\/p>\n

\u201cAn ensemble precedes the best moment, a solo beautifully danced by Marcia Weadell-Esposito. Like a lean wildcat pacing in her cage, she darts and whirls, discovering her own shape and yet still alluding to the mannequin image, her own head lolling atop her neck\u2026As a pure-dance piece, \u201cThe Mechanical Organ\u201d is as good as its choreography. It does not seemingly aim for the philosophical resonance of \u2018Gallery.\u2019\u201d (February 12, 1981)<\/p>\n

Mary Lyn Graves, in the solo described above by Kisselgoff, is a highlight of Ririe-Woodbury\u2019s staging of \u201cMechanical Organ.\u201d Quick and crisp, elegant and elongated, Graves\u2019 performance of the doll-like solo was a perfect balancing act of precise attack and languid release.<\/p>\n

Throughout \u201cMechanical Organ,\u201d specifics of choreography remain of greater interest than the dance\u2019s conceptual arc. While a divergence in that regard from other pieces in\u00a0Strata<\/em>, there was still delight to be found in Juan Carlos Claudio and Bashaun Williams\u2019 virtuosic duet, in which they leapt over and rolled under each other, and supported each other in hinges and other counterbalances, and in an all-male quintet that took place largely on the floor for a transition from male bravura to more meditative contortions.<\/p>\n

\u201cMechanical Organ\u201d features a sound score composed and edited by Nikolais himself, who forged a new path, technologically speaking, in 1964, when his company\u00a0commissioned the first commercial Moog synthesizer. Nikolais used a synth to create jarring, discordant, computer-y sound scores for decades of dances, including for all those featured in\u00a0Strata<\/em>\u00a0(all the program\u2019s scenic and lighting designs are also his work).<\/p>\n

In 1985, the year Nikolais\u2019 \u201cCrucible\u201d premiered in Durham, North Carolina, at the American Dance Festival, many now-common technologies were in their infancies, including the Internet Domain Name System, the Nintendo home console, and Microsoft Windows.\u00a0William Forsythe\u2019s first collaboration with composer Thom Willems<\/a>\u00a0was in 1985, the year following Forsythe\u2019s appointment as director of Ballett Frankfurt.\u00a0Jennifer Dunning wrote about the opening night of \u201cCrucible\u201d at ADF for The New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cOne cannot help feeling that Mr. Nikolais will continue to play with \u2018\u2019Crucible,\u2019\u2019 which doesn\u2019t look quite settled in. For the piece is almost at odds with itself after its first stunning and amusing moments. \u2018\u2019Crucible\u201d begins with a play with mirrors\u2026and the nudity is meant to be one more abstract element\u2026As is often the case with stage nudity, the bodies do become abstract and asexual very quickly. But as \u2018Crucible\u2019 now stands, there is little eloquence to this design with bodies beyond a play of shapes and patterns.\u201d (June 16, 1985)<\/p>\n

\u201cCrucible\u201d employs optical illusion to create its otherworldly choreography; a sloped mirror duplicates hands, arms, and legs that poke upward, first like flora, swaying and multicolored, then metamorphosing into fauna, pecking and chopping. The emphasis here is truly on form and limb, and the kaleidoscopic imagery is successful due to the abstraction of bodies, which enables the eye to see a whole rather than a sum of many.<\/p>\n

However, as the dancers begin to reveal more of their bodies above the slanting mirror, the abstraction wavers. Though the original nude dance thongs are forborne here for more SLC-friendly nude unitards, the focus very quickly shifts to the human body as, transparently, a conglomeration of its parts; the audience audibly tittered and even whistled as the dancers turned (the illusion of) nude rear ends to face them.<\/p>\n

Viewing \u201cCrucible\u201d now, much may have settled that Dunning felt was incomplete following the work\u2019s premiere. And, rather than sharing Dunning\u2019s skepticism at the success of bodily abstraction, this writer wondered what lay at the heart of the interplay, even conflict, witnessed in \u201cCrucible,\u201d between the abstracted body and the human body. Through barriers of costuming, lighting, distance, and concept, the dancers\u2019 bodies still appeared as unrelentingly un-abstract to many in the audience. It is a testament, perhaps, to the power of the body to announce itself, no matter its additional trappings.<\/p>\n

By their very natures, history (both dance and otherwise) and technology have barreled ahead since the premieres of \u201cTensile Involvement,\u201d \u201cGallery,\u201d \u201cMechanical Organ,\u201d and \u201cCrucible.\u201d But Nikolais\u2019 singular and inventive use of lighting, projection, sound, costuming, concept, and movement still elicit strong response. Among a relatively small canon of enduring choreographers, Alwin Nikolais has proven what is unique about a dance may remain so, and that new layers may even be acquired in a dance\u2019s lifetime. This writer fancies that is because of, rather than despite, not only continued performance of the work but continued conversation and criticism surrounding it.<\/p>\n

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This article is published in collaboration with\u00a0loveDANCEmore.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and guest artists in Alwin Nikolais\u2019s \u201cTensile Involvement\u201d (1955). Photo by Tori Duhaime. The work of Alwin Nikolais presented in Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company\u2019s\u00a0Strata\u00a0spanned three decades, but the exploratory nature of Nikolais\u2019 work appears to transcend time. What was once progressive still feels to be so; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1521,"featured_media":37141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3124],"class_list":["post-37140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance","tag-alwin-nikolai"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/tensileinvolvementphototoriduhaime.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-29 20:34:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37140"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97693,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37140\/revisions\/97693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}