Alwin Nikolais through the ages: Ririe-Woodbury's Strata

The work of Alwin Nikolais presented in Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Strata spanned three decades, but the exploratory nature of Nikolais’s work appears to transcend time. What was once progressive still feels to be so; while others have emulated areas which Nikolais pioneered, his work maintains its sense of existing on the edge, despite the ebb and flow of many dance trends.

This article seeks to place the works featured in Strata within their original contexts rather than presume new observations and, in doing so, seeks to reveal how Nikolais’s choreography, concepts, and staging hold up, or even accumulate layers, as they continue to be performed and discussed.

Nikolais’s “Tensile Involvement” 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 the company’s first African American principal dancer, 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:

“We 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 - motion, time, space, light, sound, shape and color - have greatly extended and altered in meaning during the last quarter-century.” (August 18, 1957)

Nikolais’s observation may be extended more broadly, but is certainly an apt description of his own work and intent, as embodied in “Tensile Involvement” (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’ relationships to their environs triumph here; their relation to each other is important and evident, but is perhaps only a byproduct of the primary task at hand.

Withstanding the test of multiple viewings, the premise of “Tensile Involvement” continues to feel refreshingly new; arguably, the same holds true for the test of the span of decades since the work’s 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’s 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.

“Gallery” 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 “Trio A” for the camera. New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff wrote the following after attending the opening night of “Gallery”:

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

Nikolais’s success in fully exploring one idea, living within restrictions set in place by a specific world, was a recurring impression throughout Strata, but especially in “Gallery.” 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.

“Gallery” is an embodiment of such thorough exploration, as it twists and turns through various iterations of similar themes. The dance’s 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 - laughter, shock, discomfort, surprise - in their odd renditions to an eerie sound score.  

At first, the cast of “Gallery” 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? “Gallery” explores such a full range of possibilities within its parameters that it seems for a time that they are.  

1980 saw not only the premiere of Nikolais’s “Mechanical Organ” but also those of the Pac-Man game, Star Wars’ The Empire Strikes Back, and Salt Lake City’s very own Ballet West in New York City. Nearly a year after the debut of “Mechanical Organ” at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, Kisselgoff observed the following after a Nikolais Dance Theater performance at City Center:

“An 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...As a pure-dance piece, "The Mechanical Organ" is as good as its choreography. It does not seemingly aim for the philosophical resonance of "Gallery." (February 12, 1981)

Mary Lyn Graves, in the solo described above by Kisselgoff, is a highlight of Ririe-Woodbury’s staging of “Mechanical Organ.” Quick and crisp, elegant and elongated, Graves’ performance of the doll-like solo was a perfect balancing act of precise attack and languid release.

Throughout “Mechanical Organ,” specifics of choreography remain of greater interest than the dance’s conceptual arc. While a divergence in that regard from other pieces in Strata, there was still delight to be found in Juan Carlos Claudio and Bashaun Williams’ 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.

“Mechanical Organ” featured a sound score composed and edited by Nikolais himself, who forged a new path, technologically speaking, in 1964, when his company commissioned 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 Strata (all the program’s scenic and lighting designs are also his work).

In 1985, the year Nikolais’s “Crucible” 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. William Forsythe’s first collaboration with composer Thom Willems was in 1985, the year following Forsythe’s appointment as director of Ballett Frankfurt. Jennifer Dunning wrote about the opening night of “Crucible” at ADF for the NY Times:

“One cannot help feeling that Mr. Nikolais will continue to play with ''Crucible,'' which doesn't look quite settled in. For the piece is almost at odds with itself after its first stunning and amusing moments. ''Crucible'' begins with a play with mirrors...and the nudity is meant to be one more abstract element...As is often the case with stage nudity, the bodies do become abstract and asexual very quickly. But as ''Crucible'' now stands, there is little eloquence to this design with bodies beyond a play of shapes and patterns.” (June 16, 1985)

“Crucible” 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.

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 foregone 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.

Viewing “Crucible” now, much may have settled that Dunning felt was incomplete following the work’s premiere. And, rather than sharing Dunning’s skepticism at the success of bodily abstraction, this writer wondered what lay at the heart of the interplay, even conflict, witnessed in “Crucible,” between the abstracted body and the human body. Through barriers of costuming, lighting, distance, and concept, the dancers’ 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.

By their very natures, history (both dance and otherwise) and technology have barreled ahead since the premieres of “Tensile Involvement,” “Gallery,” “Mechanical Organ,” and “Crucible.” But Nikolais’s singular and inventive use of lighting, projection, sound, costuming, concept, and movement still elicits 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's 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.

Amy Falls manages loveDANCEmore’s cadre of writers and edits its online content. She works full-time in development at Ballet West and still occasionally puts her BFA in modern dance to use, performing with Municipal Ballet Co. and other independent projects in SLC.

Ririe-Woodbury: Winter Season

Ririe-Woodbury recently performed its Winter Season at the Capitol Theatre, just a few blocks from the Rose Wagner (the Rose is RW’s rehearsal residence and where they most often perform). The evening included four separate works that dually complemented and contrasted one another, all curated like a well-balanced meal, including vintage and contemporary portions as well as environmental and social side dishes.

The company typically performs the work of the late choreographer Alwin Nikolais around this time of year. However, Winter Season did not include a Nikolais piece; alternately, “Physalia”, choreographed specifically for the company by Alison Chase and Moses Pendleton (who together created Pilobolus Dance Theater) in 1977, was reconstructed as this season’s playful, postmodernist dance.

The work was a delightful float through oceanic ecosystems. The Portuguese man o’ war jellyfish, also known by its scientific name Physalia physalis, and other sea organisms were all embodied with sustained, acrobatic movement by the dancers dressed in speckled, spandex bodysuits to clearly create unified shapes with one another.

Guest dancer Ching-I Chang Bigelow had a darker solo in which she was sprawled on the ground, belly down, her whole body precisely flapping and slapping like a fish out of water.  Mary Lyn Graves was separated from the group with a crouched, sticky foot solo. The piece was dated with the projection of various still images of deep ocean life that weren’t necessary, as the dancers already evoked  those images so fluidly.

“You and the Space Between” was choreographed by Miguel Azcue of the Swedish company Memory Wax. The piece began strikingly with sound, curtain, then lights, revealing Alexandra Bradshaw and Bashaun Williams center stage. They performed a mirrored duet, and were joined by the rest of the company paired off in duets, all moving one another’s body parts in a disjointed way as if they weren’t used to touching one another. Then, the dancers descended to the ground where they were captured live on camera from above and projected onto the cyclorama.

They moved through scenarios playfully, jumping from one horizontally-moving body/platform to a higher one, play-fighting, swinging from each other’s legs, and generally appearing to be in a video game. Eventually, everyone but Graves rose to standing, leaving her alone amongst the tops of heads on the video projection. This eye-level-to-bird’s-eye split was a compelling way to reveal two perspectives, literally and metaphorically, but after many minutes the comparison became belabored.

“Super WE” was created in collaboration between Tzveta Kassabova and Raja Feather Kelly in 2013, making this performance the Salt Lake City premiere of the work. On Saturday night, Yebel Gallegos and Graves took the stage. They rapidly executed phrase-work in circles, bobbing their heads while bent over, and trying to hold hands while also smiling at each other. The duet was fast and friendly with a frantic edge supported by Kelly’s original sound score: birds tweeting joined sporadically by a repeated “ha-ha-ha-ha” á la Laurie Anderson’s song “O Superman”. The dancers themselves sat down and began chanting “ha-ha-ha-ha”, effectively commandeering the soundtrack by making it themselves.

Graves and Gallegos had a litheness like that of the dance’s choreographers and their unison movement emphasized physical rituals - locomotion, holding hands, pointing, sitting in a chair – that the majority of humans do: sometimes robotically, sometimes with abandon, sometimes with gusto, always amidst personal dialogues, and creating meaning beyond the action itself.

I would like to take this opportunity to honor that this season is Bradshaw’s last performing with Ririe-Woodbury. The inclusion of many University of Utah dancers in director Daniel Charon’s “Snowmelt” prodded me to imagine a future member of the company, perhaps even one of the students on stage, and how they might fit into the current community of RW dancers. Bradshaw’s strong, elegant presence will surely be missed, though it is an exciting time for the company to continue to re-create itself.

“Snowmelt” concluded the evening starkly, but without very much explicit commentary on the subject of snowmelt itself due to global warming. The projections accompanying the piece depicted pieces of glacier falling into water, wind turbines, snow literally melting, a log on fire, the sun through orange haze, and bird’s-eye views of a freeway system. Sometimes the image would flip upside-down. The images were all very sharp and similar in compositional quality to the “natural” scenes of Utah displayed on giant screens in the new 111 Main building in downtown SLC. Both are highly produced and curated to demonstrate some kind of institutional acknowledgement of the natural world juxtaposed with the industrialized world. Charon’s piece did seem to acknowledge the interrelatedness of the two worlds, but only with the projections themselves which dominated the performance. “Snowmelt” was danced with rigor and physical acuity, but lacked moments of stillness to punctuate the movement or connect it to the projected images. I am interested in experiencing this highly kinetic piece without projections blatantly telling the story instead.

Winter Season was a cohesive yet eclectic evening of dance. We were plunged undersea, then swept up to the ceiling, pressed into reality of rhythm, and finally, confronted with a taste of our nature and nature itself.

Emma Wilson is a graduate of the University of Utah and a regular contributor to loveDANCEmore. She frequently jams with Porridge for Goldilocks and was a choreographer for Red Lake at the Salt Lake Fringe Festival this past summer.