Dancing (the) legend: the art of Frances Alenikoff

Celebrating impossibility by vaulting time and the dancing body with an uncanny allure and gamey theatrical charisma, Frances Alenikoff has been reinventing the dancing legend with her recent solo Re-Membering that she initially debuted as a healing dance after recovering from a near-fatal bout of Babesiosis (a disease transmitted by a deer tick). On October 15, 1994, eight weeks after being released from the hospital, this spunky septuagenarian strode onto the stage of the Vineyard Theater on East 15th Street near Union Square in New York City, as part of an inaugural landmark evening of performances by vintage choreographers, many of whom shared common ground during the 1960s at Dance Theater Workshop, now sponsored by The Field, another presenting organization. ¹

Figure 1.

Frances Alenikoff. Photo: Courtesy Daniel Falghero.

Figure 2.

Frances Alenikoff. Photo: Courtesy Don Manza.

One reason Re-Membering makes such a formidable impact is because of the affirmative statement, and case, it makes for, and on behalf of the mature dancer, and the encouragement it holds for dance being a medium of expression throughout one’s entire life. Unlike many other cultures (India, Bali, Brazil), one inadmissible price that western civilization has paid for the consumerist ethos of its oversold, technically idealized ballet mania is the flagrantly imbalanced insistence that dance is only for the young, with the unfortunate shortchanging of the art. Just when a dancer is gaining the momentum of his or her life experience comes the undue pressure to retire. Less than a new movement per se, but a definite groundswell nonetheless, comes an emerging cadre of older dancers who are showing just how much fire, passion, and invention is still possible. The 1996 concert season included Maya Plisetskaya at City Center performing on pointe at seventy; the Netherlands Dance Theater III at the Joyce Theater, a company that specifically features seasoned performers; Masters in Performance: Breaking the Age Barrier presented by the American Dance Guild at the New York University’s Frederick Loewe Theater, and Prime Time copresented by the organizations Dancers Over Forty at Dance Theater Workshop, both of which recently hosted Frances Alenikoff’s Re-Membering, a work that exemplifies this most curious historical congruence and important crossroads of modern dance challenging traditional norms about career, time and capacity. Hers is the dance that several generations now will remember as the one that kept them dancing! And as one that teaches and illumines a creative mystery. (She has recounted with rapt dedication the impact of seeing the great Spanish dancer, Escudero, whom she saw perform when he was in his eighties, “exquisite and delicate with a gentle power,” that still inspires her.) Often when asked how she does it, she just laughs!

Frances Alenikoff’s contribution is an intriguingly unitive one—hers fuses the performative capacities of several arts—she is an energetic, vibrantly spirited multimedia artist whose instrument is the body, with a grandiloquent voice (and perfect diction—remember diction!), a writer and painter as well whose magical touch turns all her efforts into an extended poetry. Call her an holistic protomodernist. She begins Re-Membering almost blithely by informing the audience forthrightly about the severity of her medical crisis and age (past seventy-six): “When I was seventeen my mother took me to an astrologer, a short plump lady with gray hair who lived in a trailer . . . she wore a blue flowered dress and a beige bandana—silk, with purple patterns. . . . She told me I would die at seventy-three. On August 20th, 1994, I celebrated my seventy-fourth birthday, five days after having been discharged from Southampton Hospital where I had almost died,” she explains, as her leg shoots effortlessly overhead in an easy, resilient high kick, her hand stretching forward to touch her toe, a dropdead clincher that suddenly begins a series of masterful transformations. This, and the resonantly reverberant Buddhist-like chants and chant songs that follow immediately change the frequency of her body and virtual parameters of the room shifting registers and dimensions. “MAAAAAA MAAAAAAA...