Musings on Dance
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Black Dance History Month - Inspiring Dancers Who Broke Through Barriers
Matching dancers and students with dance professionals who share their birthday is an excellent way to foster connection with the history of dance. To celebrate Black History Month, here are a few inspiring dancers born in February who broke through barriers to pursue a career in dance.
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Born February 2, 1935, ballerina Raven Wilkinson (1935-2018) began dancing with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1955, becoming the first African American woman to dance for a major ballet company. She performed with the company for six years and for the Dutch National Ballet until 1974, when she returned to the United States to perform for the New York City Opera until 2011.
Tap dancing legend Gregory Hines (1946-2003) celebrated his birthday on Valentine’s Day. His career included both Broadway shows, such as Sophisticated Ladies in 1981 and Jelly’s Last Jam in 1992, and films, such as White Nights in 1985 (alongside ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov) and the 1989 movie Tap, which featured several generations of tap dancers. Hines advocated for the creation of National Tap Dance Day in 1989, now celebrated annually on May 25, and his image is featured on a postage stamp issued in January 2019.
Contemporary dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones (born February 15, 1952), originally a student-athlete, was inspired to dance after taking contact improvisation classes. His dance works include spoken word and video along with dance, and these works often explore issues of race and identity. Jones had a hit show on Broadway, Spring Awakening (2006), that has also been produced at the West End in London.
Houston Ballet’s Lauren Anderson (born February 19, 1965) broke barriers even before Misty Copeland’s historic promotion to principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. Anderson became one of the first black principal dancers performing for a major American ballet company in 1990, dancing with the company until 2006.
And rounding out the month, tap dancer Bunny Briggs (1922-2014), born on February 26, was inspired to dance after seeing legendary tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson perform live. Briggs learned to dance like many tap artists—by watching and mimicking other tap dancers—and he began performing at the age of five. He toured with big bands in the 1940s and appeared on TV variety shows in the 1960s. He became a mentor to Savion Glover, one of the next generation of tap dancers, during the revitalization of tap dance in the 1990s.
Hispanic Heritage Month - Dancers
During Hispanic Heritage Month, celebrated September 15 - October 15, we honor the contributions of Hispanic dancers to our shared dance heritage throughout September and October. Here are a few inspiring dancers who spent their careers living in or touring in the United States and whose perseverance inspired others to dance.
La Argentina (born September 4, 1890)
Antonia Mercé y Luque, also known as La Argentina, initially studied ballet, but when she turned 14, she began studying Spanish dances and is credited with formalizing traditional folk techniques and regional dances. She was beloved by Kazuo Ohno (1906-2010), an early Butoh dancer, who dedicated a solo to her memory.
Rosie Perez (born September 6, 1964)
Actor Rosie Perez might be best known for her distinctive voice, but she was a dancer on Soul Train in the early 1980s before being discovered by director Spike Lee. Perez choreographed dance videos for Janet Jackson (1966-) and Diana Ross and she choreographed and danced in routines for The Fly Girls on the TV show In Living Color in the early 1990s.
Pilar Rioja (born September 13, 1932)
The daughter of Spanish immigrants, dancer Pilar Rioja grew up in Mexico and learned traditional Mexican and Spanish dances as a youth. She began presenting dance concerts in 1947 and in 1950 she moved to Mexico City to study professionally and continued visiting Spain to study flamenco in the 1960s. She met influential dance teacher Manolo Vargas in 1970 and in 1972, she danced in the opera Carmen accompanied by singer Placido Domingo, cementing her reputation as “The Queen of Flamenco”. Rioja toured internationally well into her seventies, getting better and better with age.
Amalia Hernández (born September 19, 1919)
Dancer and choreographer Amalia Hernández was instrumental in the presentation and preservation of Mexican folklóric dance. Early in her career, she studied ballet with Nellie Campobello (1900-1986) at the National School of Dance in Mexico City, but Hernández was captivated by the breadth and variety of traditional Mexican folk dances and indigenous dances inspired by Mesoamerican cultures. She founded Ballet Folklórico de México in 1952 and an invitation to perform on TV two years later brought her company national recognition and support from the Department of Tourism. The company has represented Mexican folk dance in North America and on international tours and they still perform weekly at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.
Edward Villella (born October 1, 1936)
Ballet dancer Edward Villella danced with the New York City Ballet from 1960-1979. During his dancing career he performed in several of George Balanchine’s televised ballets including Harlequinade (1975) and The Nutcracker, and he also appeared with partner Patricia McBride (1942) on multiple episodes of The Ed Sullivan Show, making him a well-known personality to TV audiences in the 1960s. Villella founded and ran the Miami City Ballet from 1985-2012 and was both a Kennedy Center Honoree and a National Medal for the Arts recipient in 1997.
Follow along during September and October to enjoy more dancer birthdays at the Today in Dance project at: Today in Dance and tune in to the Today in Dance podcast.
Dancefilmmaking.com wants to be the ‘Netflix of dance’
Nadav Heyman has big plans for small dance films. A dancer and filmmaker himself, he has a deep understanding of the disappointment felt after screening one’s latest project in a festival and then condemning that film to the endless ocean of YouTube obscurity. Heyman is the founder and executive director of dancefilmmaking.com, a site dedicated exclusively to showcasing and promoting dance films. He beat me to saying it – “we want to be the Netflix of dance films” – but his extraordinary team’s vision is so much larger than simply streaming dance films, big or small. They want to provide dance filmmakers a forever home for their creations, a currently unexplored niche that holds space for a creative product - a museum of dance film, if you will, that is dedicated to helping filmmakers secure funding and build audiences for their work.
The website separates their services into watch, learn, and submit, providing visitors with a searchable place to watch films that are lovingly curated with brief statements sharing “why we love this film” and “words from the filmmaker”. And, perhaps most importantly, all films are free to view at any time. The learn tab is currently under construction, but will soon house dance filmmaking master classes for aspiring artists who want to learn the basics about filmmaking for dance. University dance programs hoping to add film to their departmental offerings can find an accessible and cost-effective way to share the art of dance filmmaking with students.
And lastly, the submit tab delineates the basic artist agreement – for a very, very low fee per film, the work will be showcased on the website, on their YouTube channel, and social media, and can be eligible for exclusive partnerships and opportunities including gallery screenings, film commissions, and guest judging invitations from partnering dance film festivals – it’s an ever-expanding list of festivals including LA Dance Film Festival, the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema and Lisbon Screendance Festival.
So take notice dance filmmakers - they are adding films weekly and accept submissions on a rolling basis, so check them out as a home for your dance films. For teachers and dance film fans, dancefilmmaking.com is a rich trove of delights that are searchable by runtime, genre, region, and style, making the site a one-stop-shop in your search for unique videos to show your classes. If you represent an organization interested in partnership or in funding the initiative, contact them right away for a chat. This is a very exciting venture, and the Today in Dance podcast wishes them all the best and we hope to have updates about them very soon.
Meanwhile, go watch some dance and be inspired.
Dance Review: Lei Lines by Maria Roca
Maria Roca performs Lei Lines at the PLVTFORM showcase event in London - March 2023
It is believed by some that ley lines connect historic structures with hidden power, and one can tap into this energy network as our pagan ancestors did, tuning in with the earth along these magical bands. Initially popularized by English rambler Alfred Watkins nearly a century ago, the idea of ley lines has sparked the imagination of many who traverse the English countryside. Originally from Spain, dancer/choreographer Maria Roca explored the body’s connection with lines and power in a contemporary hip hop solo performed at the PLVTFORM showcase event in London in March 2023.
Roca began hunched over, hands resting on thighs, with a large black band binding her lower legs together. Dressed in a black tank top, baggy beige pants and tennis shoes, she was restricted by the band, which she pulled at repeatedly before tumbling to the ground and pushing herself up, still rooted to the floor. Her movement vocabulary was a deft combination of tutting gestures resembling spellcasting, hip hop popping and waving movements, and a fluid contemporary sensibility in the supple upper body undulations. Her phrasing interspersed a slow-motion wringing torso with punchy arm sequences, and all of it was strongly connected to the music.
Freeing herself from the band with gestural movements and zig zag direction changes while the music solidified into a solid beat, her knees celebrated with a wild flapping before revisiting the spellcasting gestural phrase, this time full-bodied and boisterous. As in many endeavors, there was yet another limitation binding her — this time at the wrists. This struggle hit a bit differently, instead showcasing the connectedness necessary for the ingenious gesture-making as her hands attempted to fly free. Although I would have liked to see more attention paid to ridding herself of the first band, the second binding ended with great satisfaction and a celebratory rippling movement through her outstretched arms. Once she rid herself of the bands (or lines) holding her back, she found her power to fly, performing several high-octane and full-bodied acrobatic movements seen in break dance (and in ballet, for that matter) as she gave herself over to three-dimensional space and the freedom it affords to those who fling themselves headlong into the universe.
Roca’s performance seamlessly and skillfully wove together contemporary dance and hip hop vocabularies so that one never forgot she belonged fully to both techniques. And although I do love watching a talented dancer perform hip hop to see interesting movement, it is a balm to the soul to see a talented technician also tackle a thematic issue with both strength and delicacy. It will be very interesting to see where this emerging choreographer goes from here — watch this space.
Check out the Human Kinetics publication Dance Appreciation, by Dawn Davis Loring and co-authored by Julie L. Pentz, also available from Amazonand other booksellers, and go see what dancer shares your birthday at the Today in Dance project: www.dawndavisloring.com/todayindance.
You can also tune in to the Today in Dance podcast, available from Apple podcasts.
I Claim Kate Bush for Dance!
Here’s the Stranger Thing — Kate Bush has the heart of a contemporary dancer.
The anthem for summer 2022 appears to be Running Up That Hill (1985), by Kate Bush, featured in a key sequence in episode four, season four of Stranger Things. Besides introducing her artistry to another generation of listeners, new fans will also be watching her music video featuring a contemporary dance duet performed by Bush and dancer Michael Hervieu. Cast aside by MTV as “too esoteric,” this video gem shows Bush at the height of her dancing prowess and deserves a closer analysis. Kate Bush presents her vision as a dance and she sought out the training to be able to perform it herself, and that makes her a dancer in my book. Take a look:
Running Up That Hill - Kate Bush
Bush used her sizeable advance from EMI records to take class with noted UK dancer and teacher Lindsay Kemp, who introduced her to both mime and contemporary dance principles. He had been a student of famed mime Marcel Marceau and directed his own dance company in the 1960s, later staging shows for David Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust days and choreographing work for high-profile dance companies such as Ballet Rambert. Influential dance teachers who helped Bush shape her movement style at this point in her career were modern dancer Robin Kovak and choreographer Dianne Grey, who created the dance piece for the video.
Description
Filmed mostly in blue tones, Bush and Hervieu, dressed in fitted blue leotards and wide-legged blue Japanese hakamas, reach toward the same spot while wrapping around each other, often with Bush inverted upside down and carefully cradled. After allowing her to spill on the ground, Hervieu gathers her close as she frantically pulls away from him toward the windows.
She eventually breaks away from him and with legs firmly planted on the ground, and twists her upper body, arms aloft, trailing her torso like flags, a percussive motion he mirrors before dumping her over his shoulder. Now on the floor, she dives between his legs to emerge on the other side of his voluminous pants. Caught for a few breaths on his outstretched arms, she readies for another dive, but he emerges instead. Bush instead dives over his shoulder to again be cradled and spilled onto the floor. As she relaxes back, he again cradles her and they roll back and forth repeatedly until she breaks free and stumbles over him while running away.
Now outside of the windowed room, they run and take turns tackling each other along a straight ribbon of road, and it is at this point that everything changes. The room, now dark and more starkly lit, envelops the two dancers, who perform a slower version of the percussive twisting phrase in unison, with elbows leading and bodies lagging behind. Their arms pull back as if readying an arrow on the string of a bow and she is lifted with outstretched arms, culminating in a dizzying spin.
As he draws away to a corner, the room floods with a blue-clad crowd intent on pushing past Bush to walk down a narrow hallway encased in glass windows. The crowd alternately wears masks resembling Bush and Hervieu as Bush tries in vain to escape the mob, but she is swallowed up. Flashbacks feature variations of the outstretched arm lift, the spin, and a poignant moment when they both spread their arms back as wings. Eerily, the hallway turns red as more shadowed figures emerge from the other end and approach menacingly. The changing color reveals a landscape on the other side of the glass reminiscent of that pivotal scene in Stranger Things. The last image of the video is Bush and Hervieu repeatedly pulling an imaginary arrow back from an outstretched arm, reaching directly to the viewer.
Analysis
Much of the movement focuses on opposing forces such as contract and expand, gather and scatter, and the use of breath to initiate movement, punctuated by tender gestures repeated around her face. Bush competently demonstrates expressive sequential movement of the arms, spine, and legs, when folding and unfolding around her partner and she shows a facility for comfortably connecting with the floor while performing sliding, falling, and spilling actions. And finally, she maintains a strong core throughout and utilizes spiraling motions, developed by Martha Graham, to help propel her through space with economy and Bush maintains a solid hip-to-hip connection with her partner during the wrapping lifts.
Interpretation
The movement choices, particularly the oppositional forces of contract and expand, reinforce themes within the lyrics of the song, which expresses an ongoing struggle and an exchange, or swapping of places, made evident in the use of differing levels for the two dancers, or in the framing of a shot to show an alternate point of view. The choreography exhibits varying degrees of connection with singular gestures and full-bodied contact, and uses alternations of timing to indicate either violence or tenderness. The male continually returns to cradle or hold the female in a tight grip, perhaps indicating mutual dependence or control, so that when the female breaks free and eventually tackles him, she is flipping the script and exerting a measure of control over her partner. They appear to lose each other in the crowd, but find their connection again at the end, swapping places as they aim their imaginary arrows.
Evaluation
For a choreographer, it is relatively easy to stage a dance around a lead actor or singer who can dance a little, and still make the audience feel like the lead is dancing. It’s much harder to impart contemporary modern dance concepts to a performer who is unfamiliar with that style of dance — it can’t be faked or fudged easily. In 1985, Kate Bush demonstrated her dancing chops by performing in a duet with a professional dancer, intent on presenting dance as an expressive force in music videos. Her training is evident and her support of dance as an expressive art in the popular music realm is admirable. Kudos as well to her choreographer for choosing both a meaningful and accomplishable movement vocabulary to express Bush’s vision. Imagine if MTV had released the video as planned in 1985, and what that small act might have done for the discipline of modern and contemporary dance and how it might have changed its relationship to popular music.
For Further Study
Bush continued working with dance before she took a long break from the limelight starting in 2005. She wrote, directed, and starred in the 1993 short film/video album The Line, The Cross, and the Curve, accompanying her album release The Red Shoes. Although not as focused on contemporary dance concepts, the ambitious project, which featured Kemp and actor Miranda Richardson, connected the singles through dance and is still enjoyed by film afficionados.
The Line, The Cross, and the Curve - Kate Bush
Some more recent takes on using contemporary dance in popular music and TV include singer Pink in her 2012 video Try and Mac’s Dance Scene from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. What are your thoughts about these dances?
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia | Season 13 Ep. 10: Mac’s Dance Scene | FXX
Dance in May: Celebrating the Contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
In May we celebrate the contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to our shared dance heritage. Here are a few inspiring dancers who spent some or all of their careers in the United States and whose perseverance inspired others to dance.
Sun Ock Lee (born January 14, 1943)
Dancer Sun Ock Lee studied traditional Korean dance from the age of nine and relocated to the United States in 1969, forming her company in 1974. In the 1980s she published two volumes about Zen dance and began preserving traditional Korean dance forms.
Li Cunxin (born January 26, 1961)
The story of Chinese-born ballet dancer Li Cunxin is featured in the movie Mao’s Last Dancer (2009). Invited to study in the United States by the Houston Ballet in the 1970s, Cunxin defected and danced with the company for 16 years. After a stint as a stockbroker, he accepted the post of artistic director of the Queensland Ballet in 2012.
Yuriko Kikuchi (1920–2022)
Known simply as Yuriko, the modern dancer survived World War II Japanese internment camps and went on to study and perform with choreographer Martha Graham (1894–1991) for 50 years.
Yuan Yuan Tan (born February 14, 1977)
Ballerina Yuan Yuan Tan was promoted to principal dancer at the age of 20, the youngest such appointment at the San Francisco Ballet.
Michio Ito (1892–1961)
Dancer and choreographer Michio Ito studied modern dance in Germany before relocating to the United States in 1916. He inspired fledgling modern dancers on both coasts through his symphonic dance concerts and tours until his repatriation to Japan during World War II.
Harry Shum, Jr. (born April 28, 1982)
Dancer Harry Shum, Jr., is best known for creating the role of Mike Chang on the TV series Glee(2009–2015) and for appearing in dance films You Got Served (2004) and Stomp the Yard (2007) as well two Step Up sequels (2008 and 2010). Born in Costa Rica, he grew up in San Francisco and left college to pursue a dance career, becoming a backup dancer for Beyoncé, Missy Elliott, Jennifer Lopez, and other artists.
Baayork Lee (born December 5, 1946)
New York–born dancer Baayork Lee premiered on Broadway in the original version of The King and I (1951) as one of the featured young princesses and went on to appear in Flower Drum Song (1958) and Promises, Promises (1968) before originating the autobiographical role of Connie in A Chorus Line (1975), choreographed by her high school friend Michael Bennett (1943–1987).
Reiko Sato (1931–1981)
Dancer Reiko Sato worked with choreographer Jack Cole (1911–1974) and danced in a featured role in Kismet for both the Broadway and Hollywood versions during the 1950s. She also danced in the dream ballet in the movie Flower Drum Song (1961).
Kei Takei (born December 30, 1946)
Tokyo-born postmodern choreographer Kei Takei relocated to the United States in 1967 as part of the Fulbright scholarship program and founded the Moving Earth dance company, creating an enormous series of pieces entitled Light.
The Top 10 Funniest Dance Quotes
Because dance doesn’t always take itself seriously.
I have a secret that many dancers don’t want you to know. If I tell you, I might get my Dance Professional status revoked, so don’t share this secret with anyone. Can I trust you? Here goes: When we are together in groups of just dancers, we laugh. A lot. At ourselves. At each other. And, most shocking of all, we laugh at our beloved dance field. Often it is gallows humor, because…well, everything going on lately. But sometimes a turn of phrase makes us realize how well the author knows dancers, really understands the struggle and accepts our foibles and eccentricities with love. It also means that they are well-placed to slay us with some well-deserved ribbing because we can take ourselves a bit seriously.
Apparently, this has been going on for quite a while, because while I’ve been researching dance quotes to pair with the 366+ Today in Dance podcastepisodes, I recently ran across some remarkably funny quotes from the 20th century about dance by famous dance professionals and *some guy who wrote plays* that needed to be shared.
“Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.” — George Bernard Shaw
Even though he was *only a playwright* and not a dancer, I have to include the snarkiest of snarky remarks about dance by the inimitable George Bernard Shaw. In the recent past, I taught dance lecture courses in college and some wise soul took the trouble to write this quote on the title page of Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen’s landmark dance criticism book, What is Dance? (1983) to answer the fundamental question of the text. The quote makes me laugh every time I pick up the book. And indeed, Shaw could see through all of us. I’m not even mad.
“Toe dancing is a dandy attention-getter, second only to screaming.” — Agnes de Mille
Coming from the dance scholar and choreographer who could dish like no other person in the modern dance community, de Mille spoke from experience. Anatomy foiled her destiny as a ballet dancer and her firsthand experience with the hardships (and antics) of the pioneers of modern dance (she was a good friend of Martha Graham) sharpened her tongue…and her pen. De Mille is best known for choreographing the groundbreaking musical Oklahoma! in 1943 and for writing Graham’s biography.
“Ballet is the one form of theatre where nobody speaks a foolish word all evening…nobody on stage at least.” — Edwin Denby
Considered by many to be the best dance critic of all time, the poet Edwin Denbywrote dance reviews in the middle of the 20th century for the New York Herald Tribune and other publications, but he could never find a full-time gig that would support him. Sound familiar, struggling dance writers? The best part about his quote is how it throws heaps of shade on the theatre world, but saves plenty for dancers and dance audiences.
“You haven’t got anything to dance about until you’re over thirty-five anyway.” — Bert Balladine
As a post-35-year-old dancer, I can say with all certainty that this is true. And it isn’t not true. I had a lot of IMPORTANT things to say before the age of 35 as a choreographer and I got to say all of it. Now all I want to do is make dances that say UNIMPORTANT things because it amuses me. Also, even after spending several years collecting biographies of dancers for the Today in Dance project (go see what dancer shares your birthday)I didn’t know who Bert Balladine was before writing this article. I am glad I looked him up. He studied ballet, modern dance, Spanish dance, and is best known for performing Middle Eastern dance. He also performed in musicals and in nightclubs with dancer Josephine Baker, which all means that he has seen everything and knows what he speaks.
“I think Balanchine and Robbins talk to God and when I call, he’s out to lunch.” — Bob Fosse
This is Bob Fosse totally being Bob Fosse — wry, self-deprecating, and not a little envious of his peers. Even though he won all of the awards (an Oscar, Tony, and Emmy — in the span of a year and some change), he still felt like an imposter amongst ballet (and Broadway, and movie) choreographers George Balanchineand Jerome Robbins. His autobiographical movie, All That Jazz (1979) is a cautionary tale that he could not escape from and that makes his story all the more poignant. Please stop reading this article and go watch Cabaret (1972) right now, because Fosse was way ahead of his time.
On dancing on pointe: “Why don’t they just get taller girls?” — attributed to comedian Henny Youngman
Makes sense to me. Why didn’t someone think of this sooner? This is why you want to hang out with people who see you and your work from an outside perspective. This is a brilliant solution, I tell you!
“Beginning Dancer: knows nothing
Intermediate Dancer: knows everything; too good to dance with beginners.
Hotshot Dancer: too good to dance with anyone.
Advanced Dancer: dances everything, especially with beginners”. — Dick Crum
Because this quote is so good, it deserves the last four spots in the top ten. I’m also hoping you won’t notice that I only have seven quotes in this top ten list. Folk dancer, teacher, and researcher Dick Crum slyly divided every dancer in the field into four perfectly defined categories. I have been all of the above at different points in my career, some of them multiple times. All dancers have. This is a truth bomb none of us can ignore. Replace dancer with any other activity and you can join in the laugh that hits really close to home. I try to spend time more time with beginners now because they keep me honest.
Thanks for spending some time giggling with me. If you enjoyed this article, please check out my more serious pieces:
Today in Dance is now a podcast as well! Available on Apple Podcasts.
What Carol Burnett Taught Me
Everything I Needed to Know About Being Both a Performer and a Decent Human, I Learned from the Carol Burnett Show
Everything I Needed to Know About Being Both a Performer and a Decent Human, I Learned from the Carol Burnett Show
“It’s the Dawn Davis Show, starring Dawn Davis!” rang out every week, to the chagrin of my family. I took questions from the audience, sang songs (using my brother’s music stand as a microphone stand) and performed dances and skits. I played all the parts, of course. And at the end of my show, I tugged on my earlobe to signal my grandmother while singing the ending song, and I encouraged my “guest stars” to sign my red autograph book. If the format looks familiar, it is: I stole it from the best — Carol Burnett.
During the Summer of COVID 2020, nearly 40 years later, I decided to relive my youth and I watched every episode of the Carol Burnett Show available on Amazon Prime — all 11 seasons. The original show ran from 1967–1978 and won a total of 25 Primetime Emmy Awards, and was in syndication for a very long time afterwards. It was an illuminating experience to watch the episodes in order, as most of what I remembered about the show came from the 30-minute segments in syndication, typically shown out of order. The Carol Burnett Show remains in the bedrock of my performing DNA and I would like to share what I learned after revisiting Carol, Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner, and the eclectic roster of guest stars.
Burnett cared for her audience. Burnett’s warmth and respect for the audience were apparent from the first episode to the last — when she asked if the techs could “bump up the lights” the audience could ask her anything, and quite often the requests were for a hug or a kiss. Her infectious laugh invited guest stars to feel at ease and audience members often brought her wacky — and sometimes questionable — homemade gifts, which she accepted with grace. Famous actors came to watch her show, including Rock Hudson and Lawrence Olivier, and they sat in the studio audience, rubbing elbows with regular folks. Burnett would personally thank them for coming, give herself a few seconds to be star-struck, and then commence with the show.
Burnett modeled generosity. She allowed the other cast members to shine, giving time to Vicki Lawrence to sing her hit song, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” she presented a generous baby gift onstage to announcer and new father Lyle Waggoner, and she encouraged the creation of a Harvey Korman fan club. She also let guest star Tim Conway get away with murder every week. Although the skits were filmed in front of a live audience, the cast recorded each skit twice on the same day so the best version could be used. It is said that before the second taping, Conway would enlist prop, costume, and set-makers to make changes. Unbeknownst to his usual victim, Harvey Korman, Conway often surprised him with ad-libbed dialogue and an unexpected, but choreographed, physical humor stunt. Watching him being dragged aloft by a pulley system for garments in a dry cleaner shop or using a rolling chair to prop up his over-medicated limbs in a dentist’s office usually undid Korman, along with the audience.
Burnett wasn’t afraid of making mistakes. Burnett and her major players were expert physical comedians who inhabited their characters and were fully committed to the skit. But, some of the funniest sketches are the ones where everything unraveled or someone had to overcome a late cue, a costume malfunction, or an ad lib from a colleague. And quite often she would use the hilariously-flawed version instead, because it was funnier.
Burnett surrounded herself with talented guests. Each week, Burnett invited popular singers, Broadway and film actors, and budding comedians on her show. She also invited a broad selection of some of the best dancers of the time. All of them have been profiled for the Today in Dance publication. A partial list includes:
George Chakiris, from West Side Story — Today in Dance profile
Betty Grable, movie musical star — Today in Dance profile
Gwen Verdon, Broadway star and wife of Bob Fosse- Today in Dance profile
Chita Rivera, from Chicago — Today in Dance profile
Donald O’Connor from Singin’ in the Rain — Today in Dance profile
Edward Villella, ballet dancer — Today in Dance profile
Rita Hayworth from Down to Earth — Today in Dance profile
Debbie Reynolds from Singin’ in the Rain — Today in Dance profile
Violette Verdy, ballerina — Today in Dance profile
Paula Kelly, from Sweet Charity — Today in Dance profile, Dancers Lost in 2020
Janet Jackson — Today in Dance profile
Sammy Davis, Jr. — Today in Dance profile
Shirley Maclaine, from Sweet Charity — Today in Dance profile
Rita Moreno, from West Side Story — Today in Dance profile
Dick Van Dyke, from Mary Poppins — Today in Dance profile
Ben Vereen, from Pippin — Today in Dance profile
Carol Burnett will always be remembered in my household as a gracious performer, an inspired comedian, and a darn good dancer. She inspired this dancer to explore humor as an option for dances and I will never forget how fun it is to make an audience laugh. I’m so glad we had this time together last summer.
Day 367: Today in Dance
What I learned after writing about dance every day for a year.
I considered joining the ILLUMINATION challenge from a few months ago and create 1000 posts about something I love — DANCE — but I was already deep in the middle of another dance writing project — Today in Dance. Once I finished the rough draft of our college and high school textbook, Dance Appreciation (co-authored with Julie K. Pentz and published by Human Kinetics, January 2021), I embarked upon a project I had been wanting to do properly — make dance instantly personal for students by pairing them with a dancer sharing their birthday. And as of August 1, 2021, I have completed my year-long mission to research and write 365 dancer profiles.
Of course I didn’t limit myself to one dancer per day, because how can you say no to all the amazing dancers? Some dancers profiled are very well known and many I had never heard of, but all lived a life of dance that I wanted to honor and document. I created a Medium publication, Today in Dance, to house all 365 of my dancer profiles, and I have been posting them daily on my website and on Medium since August 2020.
This was a project that I thought would take 3–4 months, tops, but I found myself going down the rabbit hole nearly every day, researching, watching videos, and learning about my field from an entirely new perspective. During my year of daily dance writing, I found that some days I couldn’t wait to begin researching and uncovering fascinating connections. And some days it was a complete and utter slog. But it was the stories of the lesser-known dancers that kept me focused on finishing. I learned a great deal about my field and I re-learned some key life lessons by approaching dance from a different perspective.
I re-learned the practice of humility.
Even though I have been teaching Dance Appreciation and World Dance for a while and I am well read in my field, I found dancers I had never encountered and dance worlds I never knew existed. Quite often these dancers and choreographers labored in obscurity or just didn’t have the luck, opportunities, or advantages of their more-famous colleagues. Indeed, too many black dancers and other dancers of color were denied the right to train or claim credit for their contributions to the field in the 20th century, yet these artists persisted, regardless of roadblocks and adversity, to make their contribution. Their dedication humbled and inspired me.
I re-learned the practice of inclusion.
I also learned (again) that projects always expand and that is okay. Almost immediately, I expanded the initial scope of the project to include dance movies, Broadway musicals, and dance events, so that students would be able to make further connections and to make up for the fact that I couldn’t find a birthday for every single day until I was halfway through the project. I also chose to expand the project to include dancers from all over the world in the hopes that this project could inspire others to question and break down the barriers between dance appreciation (usually Western European and dance forms that originated in the United States, and world dance classes (everyone else lumped together). Because hierarchies hamper everyone. Luckily, I happened upon an excellent resource hidden in my personal dance library and was able to locate a dancer for every day, drawn from countries all over the world.
I re-learned that legacy is everything.
The dance field is chronically under-funded, undervalued, and under-examined, and that is a shame. Too many young dancers have not been connected with dance history — their history — and cannot appreciate their own role in supporting the field. And many of us spend our careers just trying to hang on to the field and not drop out due to poverty and familial obligations. To take a page from Hip Hop dance, it is just as important to share The Knowledge as it is to share the steps. The richness and variety of this art form is unlimited, and it remains my mission to share the dance legacy — my heritage — with everyone. I can immediately connect everyone to dance just by knowing their birthday, and that is empowering.
Of course I didn’t limit myself to one dancer per day, because how can you say no to all the amazing dancers? Some dancers profiled are very well known and many I had never heard of, but all lived a life of dance that I wanted to honor and document. I created a Medium publication, Today in Dance, to house all 365 of my dancer profiles, and I have been posting them daily on my website and on Medium since August 2020.
This was a project that I thought would take 3–4 months, tops, but I found myself going down the rabbit hole nearly every day, researching, watching videos, and learning about my field from an entirely new perspective. During my year of daily dance writing, I found that some days I couldn’t wait to begin researching and uncovering fascinating connections. And some days it was a complete and utter slog. But it was the stories of the lesser-known dancers that kept me focused on finishing. I learned a great deal about my field and I re-learned some key life lessons by approaching dance from a different perspective.
I re-learned and re-framed Dance Appreciation.
Over the course of the year, I developed a deeper appreciation for dancers and dance artists and I realized that to give students a sense of dance happening all over the world and to help them see themselves in the field, that the classes of Dance Appreciation and World Dance need to overlap more often. I presented some of my findings at the National Dance Society (NDS) conference in late June and my colleagues were so supportive of the project, even as a work-in-progress, and several promised to use Today in Dance in their fall classes. I am looking forward to presenting again at the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) Conference this October and re-introducing my colleagues to our shared heritage.
And now that I have completed the Today in Dance project, I am going to change direction slightly and focus on longer-form essays about dance topics as they arise throughout the year. Watch this space!
Dancers Always Die Twice
“A dancer dies twice — once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful.”
As a dancer deep into middle age, I feel this pain keenly. My gray hair whispers my age and my body, thicker in the middle than before, echolocates the world with clicks and pops, navigating space with a little less ease as each decade passes. I know there will be a point when I will no longer be able to perform — and this day have may already happened.
I last performed in front of an audience in 2014, with my forever dancing friends. Newly back in Austin, I gathered my old dance company back together to rehearse and perform one of my favorite humorous dance theatre pieces — Danceopoly. It’s “the game of a dancer’s life” and although the underlying message of unrelenting artist poverty and toiling in obscurity is dark, the piece is played for laughs like a cheesy game show. Of course the game is rigged and each throw of the enormous fuzzy dice is manipulated to ensure that the choreographer loses all of their money producing a concert. We even have “hoops” for the choreographer to jump through while trying to secure extra funding. No really…it’s actually funny.
Most performers don’t know when their last performance will happen. We savor each show and hope for more to follow, but each one has the possibility of being the last one. The thought used to fill me with dread.
I’m now in the tertiary portion of my career and I take great joy in teaching classes and writing about dance. I published a Dance Appreciation textbook in January and I recently completed Today in Dance — a daily celebration of the lives and careers of dancers on their birthdays. I’m more interested in sharing the legacy of dance with students right now and less interested in creating live works. But filmed dance beckons…
However, I can’t imagine resurrecting some of my pieces because they represent a different stage in my life, a simpler time before I had a child, followed by a devastating divorce, and finding the great love of my life. Updating a dance/theatre piece about breasts and body image would bring too much reality to the humorous take on my too-big-for-a-dancer bosom. I would have to discuss my utter disbelief and disappointment at the large mammaries that never produced any milk. This dose of unfiltered reality would probably shatter the lighthearted tone of the original piece.
Instead, I look forward to putting repertory on my students and revisiting older works set on different bodies. There is so much left to do and I’m not sure I want to be dancing in the work. Maybe I just want to choreograph.
So, if the show in 2014 was my last performance, it was a fitting end. We made the audience laugh in all the right places and they loved the piece. In fact, we killed. Perhaps, then, the death of my performing career might not prove to be the end of me.
Journal of Dance Education Book Review: Futures of Dance Studies
Susan Manning, Janice Ross and Rebecca Schneider, Eds.
The University of Wisconsin Press, 2020.
Published online: 21 Oct 2020
The Power of the “Dream Ballet” in Charlie Kaufman’s movie — I’m Thinking of Ending Things
It is an act of unparalleled artistic bravery to allow an audience to make of your work what they will. The audience has a burning desire to “get it” and quite often they will rifle through the attics of their experience (or the basement) to search for the lost piece of the puzzle, the one they are certain will make sense of the rest. Amongst the jigsaw pieces scattered throughout I’m Thinking of Ending Things, I found the connection that brought director Charlie Kaufman’s movie into sharper focus and led to a deeper understanding of the work: the “Dream Ballet”. More than just an homage to the musical Oklahoma!, the dance is the icy core of the film.
The “Dream Ballet” is a clever device utilized by 20th century choreographer Agnes de Mille in 1943 to solve the practical problem of actors who couldn’t dance and dancers who couldn’t express themselves verbally. Her “Dream Ballet” nimbly replaced actors with idealized dancer versions of themselves, who could work out their own meaningful solutions without the burden of words. De Mille, the niece of director Cecil B. DeMille, and a dancer/ ballet choreographer, came to the attention of the creative team Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein when they were looking to create their first joint show, Oklahoma!.
Amidst the ubiquitous Broadway musical revues featuring a disconnected collection of song and dance numbers (a formula popular since the vaudeville era), the Broadway show Oklahoma! (1943) distinguished itself by unifying all of the performative elements in order to serve the story. The show combined dramatic action with songs and dances that expressed character motivations and desires. And Agnes de Mille’s groundbreaking choreography used dance to explore the psyche of lead character Laurey, and to decisively move the plot forward. De Mille’s “Dream Ballet” filled with Freudian imagery neatly encapsulated Laurey’s quandary — choosing life with Curley or life with Jud. Curley represented marriage, social approval and a hopeful future, while life with Jud resembled a staircase to nowhere, a choice which would prostitute her — a fate she was desperate to escape. In the climax of the ballet, Laurey’s internal distress manifested itself as a visible storm as she helplessly watched Curley’s murder by Jud during a fight. Shattered, Laurey awakened from the dream as her dream self was carried off by Jud, only to find him ever-present and towering over her rocking chair on the porch of her home.
Like choreographer Agnes de Mille did all those years ago in Oklahoma!, Kaufman uses dance to unify the pieces of his unruly film and to express the life-changing choice facing the main character. The film unfolds disjointedly, like a dream. In the claustrophobic car-bound first act of the film, a couple are driving in a snowstorm to visit his parents on their farm. The man, Jake, mentions that he has seen multiple productions of the musical Oklahoma!, and that it is one of his favorites. The second act finds his girlfriend, Lucy, uneasily wandering through the barn and farmhouse, the lonely rooms of Jake’s house/mind, much like the hapless Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard’s play, intruding upon scenes already underway, laced with meaningful conversations she cannot understand, a worm’s-eye point of view. Pigs feature prominently in most of the spaces as figurines, gruesome farm stories, or even as a ham dinner. Before they leave, Lucy/Louisa/Lucia descends the farmhouse staircase multiple times in quick succession, going nowhere as she realizes her only role is validating Jake.
It is in the second act of Kaufman’s film that the audience first sees a glimpse of dancers from a high school production of Oklahoma!; teenagers performing a snippet of the love duet between leads Curly and Laurey, rehearsing a series of multiple lifts as Curley vaults Laurey in increasingly larger and higher leaps — a nod to Agnes de Mille’s choreography in the movie version of Oklahoma! (1955). Except, in this rehearsal, performed in a hallway lined with lockers, the teenage cowboy falters and the couple runs into the lockers, all while the aging janitor slowly passes by with his rolling cart.
Back in the car on the dark ride home, Jake reveals empathy for another movie character he describes as ‘powerful and horribly wronged,’ as he attempts to communicate with Lucy, who by now just wants to go home. She misunderstands or ignores many of the clues he reveals to her, and Jake chooses what he hopes will be the comfort of a familiar ice cream stand, yet another ploy to prolong the evening, as uncomfortable as it remains. Jake, like Jud, wants to be known and resists feeling like an outsider. Both of them want to fulfill the dreams ‘dancing in their heads,’ but Jake knows that, contrary to Curley’s claims earlier in the musical, no one mourns for Jud Fry when he falls on his own knife.
It is in the final act that the film reassembles the fractured pieces of Jake’s personality and the film crystalizes as a Jud’s-eye-view of Oklahoma!. In the musical, Jud’s world is filled with folks who would prefer he hang himself and the girl he wants likens his attentions to a pig salivating over a meal. Jake, too, feels the world’s coldness toward him, he regrets his wrong turns and no longer believes that things will get better or that anyone will make an effort to understand him. It is the “Dream Ballet” that makes it possible to communicate the conflicts and decisions Jake cannot bear to verbalize.
Lucy finds herself in a high school parking lot, abandoned in Jake’s freezing car. Unexpectedly, after she seeks refuge from the blizzard inside the high school, Lucy and Jake are replaced by their idealized dancer selves, choreographed by Peter Walker. Dancer Lucy (Unity Phelan) flings herself willingly into Dancer Jake’s (Ryan Steele) arms. He lifts her into the same multiple leap sequence and dip practiced by the high schoolers, this time performed smoothly and expertly as the metal water fountains shoot streams into the air and the music swells. Hands clasped, they continue their romantic duet, traveling down an abandoned locker-lined hallway, pausing only briefly to diligently shut the open lockers as their arms endlessly whip overhead in excited loops. Dancer Lucy extends a leg to the side and lunges, reaching across Dancer Jake with both arms. He tenderly lifts her arm to embrace her and carefully lifts her curled form across his body, ending the phrase on his knee in a proposal. Mirroring Oklahoma’s“Dream Ballet,” they are wed as the bridal veil drops into place on her head, but their first kiss is interrupted by a younger version of the high school janitor, standing in for Jud as he roughly pulls her away. The janitor attempts the same dance phrase, except Dancer Lucy’s response is to desperately reach away with both arms taut with fear. He grabs one of her outstretched arms and she breaks away from him only to be slung across his body before she escapes to the gym, where it is snowing.
The two men fight amidst the blowing snow, pushing and kicking each other away as Dancer Lucy watches helplessly. The janitor brandishes a knife and stabs Dancer Jake, killing him, and pulls the distraught Dancer Lucy away to an unknown fate. The original Lucy and Jake slowly approach the dead man on the floor of the gym, covered in snow, having bled red scarves, and they walk away in separate directions. The modern-day janitor dispassionately sweeps up the slaughtered remains as one would collect a mess destined for the trash.
Although connections to Oklahoma! are placed throughout the film (the farm, the pigs, the staircase), it is not until the “Dream Ballet” that it becomes clear the characters of Jake and Lucy are warring aspects of the protagonist’s personality and that the film has been building to this battle, played out in dance. There is a decision that needs to be made, a life-changing decision, and the ineffable beauty of dance allows the protagonist to face his fearsome choice. Just as Oklahoma’s “Dream Ballet” helped Laurey puzzle through her decision, the “Dream Ballet” in I’m Thinking of Ending Things clicks the jigsaw pieces into place for the audience, who realizes that the protagonist of the film is actually the aging janitor. His dream of being loved or understood is lying dead at his feet. He has no other choice but to give in to the welcoming cold.