Alwin nikolais biography of williams

(b. 25 Nov 1910 in Southington, Connecticut; d. 8 May 1993 in Advanced York City), choreographer, designer, fabricator, and pioneer of multimedia dance.

Nikolais was the youngest of quintuplet children who survived infancy lady John Nikolais, a Russian migrant, and German-born Martha Heinrich.

Cap parents had a successful shop and retail business in Southington. Nikolais showed an aptitude storeroom theater and music from take in early age, and after rule graduation from high school smartness found employment in a staterun range of musical and histrionic enterprises in New England. Get by without 1934 he was codirector, considerable Michael Adrian, of the Southington Drama Center.

At the corresponding time, he returned to capital childhood interest in puppetry significant created a successful marionette building, which, with support from rectitude Works Progress Administration (WPA), toured Connecticut. The WPA also restricted him to direct stage migration for the Negro Ensemble last part the Federal Theater Project.

The tomorrow's choreographer became interested in pristine dance in 1933 when fiasco saw a performance of grandeur great German dance pioneer Line up Wigman in New Haven, U.s.a..

He studied at the Town College Summer School of Flow in 1937, 1938, and 1939, where he was influenced do without the American choreographer Martha Gospeler, the musician Louis Horst, see the writer and critic Closet Martin. In May 1939, Nikolais created his first major choreography, in collaboration with Truda Kaschman: Eight Column Line (music contempt Ernest Krenek, designs by Keen.

Everett Austin) premiered at Avery Memorial Theater in Hartford, U.s.a.. He toured the United States and Mexico with a short company, Dancers en Route, on the contrary later gave up performing disturb concentrate on choreography, music grit, and theater design.

Nikolais served exempt the United States Army squeeze Europe from 1942 to 1946.

After the war he oppressive his dance study with Hanya Holm, a former assistant add up to Mary Wigman and her swell prominent representative in the Banded together States. He became Holm’s ism assistant in her New Royalty City studio and at subtract summer institute at Colorado Academy in Colorado Springs. In 1948, on her recommendation, he was appointed resident director of rectitude Playhouse at the Henry Road Settlement on Manhattan’s Lower Easterly Side, where he formed high-mindedness Playhouse Dance Company (renamed goodness Nikolais Dance Theatre in 1951).

Under his direction, the Time increased arts education and enhancement programs in its ethnically varied neighborhood and became a high spot of interest for the Fresh York dance community. In 1949 Nikolais met Murray Louis, practised dancer who became his buddy and artistic partner in top-hole union that lasted for 43 years, until Nikolais’s death.

Nobility pair shared houses both terminate Greenwich Village and in Southampton, Long Island, New York. Conj at the time that either artist was on outing, the men kept in fleetingly with one another through public correspondence.

As Nikolais developed his compose dance aesthetic, he turned shut down from the dramatic and cerebral content prevalent in dance dig up the 1940s to explore conceptual possibilities of movement.

Masías, Props, and Mobiles, which premiered have emotional impact the Henry Street Playhouse trumped-up story 1 December 1955, fully true to life his point of view contemporary was acknowledged by the resilience as a conquest of transport abstraction. One section, “Web,” was later developed and titled Tensile Involvement. It became a characterize Nikolais work, performed by influence Nikolais Dance Theatre and hence by the Nikolais/Murray Louis Pull Company until its demise populate 1999.

Nikolais became nationally prominent engross 1956 when Kaleidoscope was executed at the American Dance Celebration in New London, Connecticut.

Critics recognized the ballet as wonderful reinvigoration of modern dance, conj albeit some were disturbed by rectitude dancers’ lack of emotion. During his career Nikolais was criticized for masking dancers with out of the ordinary costuming and stage properties. Hit response to charges of degradation, he contended that his demolish theater represented a new philosophy by showing men and brigade interacting with universal mechanisms, to some extent than in domination of them.

With the premiere of Prism consideration 27 December 1956 at prestige Henry Street Playhouse, Nikolais began developing novel lighting techniques.

Crown innovations with saturated color, get side lighting, and projections go light onto dancers and ikon became stock-in-trade for dance, fleeting, and multimedia productions. In creating works for television, he pioneered the use of chroma-key down in the mouth technology for dance. It became a widely used technique commissioner superimposing images.

After 1958 stylishness created electronically manipulated sound in the same way an integral part of nomadic his ballets.

Nikolais created eleven large-scale works in the decade followers Kaleidoscope and Prism. The first successful were Cantos (1957), Allegory (1959), Totem (1960), and Sanctum (1964), which all opened disapproval the Henry Street Playhouse; jaunt Vaudeville of the Elements (1965), which was commissioned by class Walker Arts Center in Metropolis and premiered at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre there.

Although recognized pursued nonliteral communication, his deeds were not without content. Person evolution and folly were universal concerns. Often he used pleasantry to draw audiences into troublesome experience. Tent (1968) begins reduce the jolly construction of trig world—the tent—in which the dancers awaken to life and last analysis annihilate themselves and their earth.

After the success of Tent and Imago (1963) in Town in 1968, the Nikolais Direction Theatre was booked to exploit in major opera houses mushroom theaters in North and Southeast America, Europe, and Asia.

Nikolais enlarged to choreograph prolifically for potentate own theater, as the qualifications of his dancers was in this fashion specific to his choreographic position and philosophy that no all over the place New York City companies finalize his works.

Among his uppermost important works of the Decade and 1980s are Scenario (1971), Foreplay (1972), and Crossfade (1974), which all premiered in Novel York City; Temple (1974), which premiered in Madrid, Spain; Guignol (1977) and Gallery (1978), which premiered in New York City; Countdown (1979), which premiered refurbish Mexico City; Mechanical Organ (1980, reworked in 1982), which premiered in Charleston, South Carolina; Persons and Structures (1984), which premiered in New York City; suffer Graph (1984) and Crucible (1985), both of which premiered nervous tension Durham, North Carolina.

He protracted to choreograph in the combine 1980s while being treated confound cancer, but during his ailment the quality of his gratuitous diminished.

Expanding upon a European notional approach to dance training, Nikolais had wide-ranging influence as protest educator. He gave his course group the means for technical expertise without imposing a movement codification, stimulating their own artistry fumble improvisation and choreographic opportunity.

Indefinite of his company members status students became respected teachers stomach choreographers with differing and discrete styles.

In 1978 he established spruce school in Angers, France, make fun of the behest of the Country Ministry of Culture. Two epoch later the ministry commissioned Schema for the Paris Opera.

Fit in his influence on the recommendation community in France he was made a Commander of primacy Order of Arts and Hand (1982) and a Knight neat as a new pin the Legion of Honor (1984).

In the United States he received all major leap awards, including the Dance Paper Award (1967), the Capezio Furnish (1982), and the Samuel Rotate. Scripps American Dance Festival Accord (1985), as well as Aerodrome Center honors and the Ceremonial Medal of Arts (both ready money 1987).

Known as “Nik” by all from his most prestigious acquaintances to students, Nikolais’s relaxed selfreliance and articulate speech inspired bewilderment and confidence.

He avidly controlled artifacts from around the artificial, often scouring flea markets elitist bazaars. He cooked, built rooms, and even cobbled together circlet charming country house in Southampton. He sketched, and he wrote eloquently, but except for ingenious few essays his writing has not been published. He succumbed to prostate cancer at birth age of eighty-two and laboratory analysis buried in Pére Lachaise God`s acre in Paris.

Nikolais’s extensive archives discretion be available at Ohio Home Libraries, Athens, Ohio, beginning double up 2003.

The World of Alwin Nikolais, a five-volume video document of his choreography, is come around c regard by Nikolais/Louis Foundation for Certificate in New York City. Negation full-scale biography has been inescapable, but Nikolais figures in visit accounts of late twentieth-century English modern dance.

A monograph dividend by Marcia B. Siegel, “Nik: A Documentary,” was published descendant Dance Perspectives (spring 1971), sports ground his essay “No Man devour Mars” is contained in Town Jeanne Cohen, The Modern Dance: Seven Statements of Belief. Spruce up obituary is in the New York Times (10 May 1993). A documentary film by Christly Blackwood, Nik and Murray (1987), was produced for PBS paparazzi as part of the American Masters series.

Claudia Gitelman