November 25
Born Today:
Alwin Nikolais
Visionary choreographer Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) was appointed the director of the Henry Street Playhouse in 1948 and proceeded to create a remarkable world of dance, joined by longtime collaborator, Murray Louis (1926-2016) for the next 40+ years. Nikolais’ work pioneered multimedia performance and his dancers interacted with props and full-body costumes to soundscapes of his own devising.
Also Born Today: Postmodern choreographer and Judson Dance artist Trisha Brown (1936-2017) created site-specific pieces featuring people walking down the sides of buildings and dancing on rooftops. She formulated a choreographic method called Accumulation - long strings of movement that continuously added one more movement on the end before repeating, much like The Twelve Days of Christmas song, without all of the birds.