James Waring: A Rememberance

James Waring: A Rememberance David Vaughan James Waring (1922-1975) was one of the most influential figures In the New York avant-garde In the fifties and early sixties. From 1952 onward he regularly presented extraordinary dance works in concerts given by his company or shared with others. He was a "guru" for the generation of choreographers who emerged from the Judson Dance Theatre in the late sixties-people like Toby Armour, Lucinda Childs, David Gordon, Deborah Hay, Aileen Passloff, Yvonne Rainer, Marian Sarach, who had studied with him and/or danced in his pieces. The composition classes he taught at the Living Theatre In the late fifties, especially, were as important as those taught by Judith and Robert Dunn at the Merce Cunningham Studio in formulating the Judson aesthetic-the Idea that any movement could be used in dance, for example. Jimmy, who was himself a maker of exquisite collages and drawings (not to mention the costumes he made for his own dances), actively sought the collaboration of contemporary visual artists-George Brecht, Red Grooms, Al Hansen, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Larry Poons, Robert Watts, and Robert Whitman were among those who designed decor and/or costumes for his dances. His collage-like method of making dances certainly influenced the painters who made Happenings and other performance pieces. Musically, his collaborators included MacRae Cook, Philip Corner, Rudy Crosswell, Albert Fine, Terry Jennings, Malcolm Goldstein, Hy Gubernick , Marga Richter, and, especially, Richard Maxfield and John Herbert McDowell. On occasion, he even wrote his own music. This period was, of 'course, also a kind of golden age for the off-offBroadway theatre, when young poets were all writing plays full of glittering, hilarious, or disturbing imagery. There were memorable evenings at the American Theatre for Poets (or the New York Poets' Theatre, as it was usually called), presented by Diane di Prima and Alan Marlowe in various locations (the Off-Bowery, New Bowery, Bridge, and East End Theatres); at Joe Cino's Caffe Cino on Cornella Street; at the Judson Poets' Theatre; at Judith Malina and Julian Beck's Living Theatre on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street-evenings when one could see plays by writers like Diane di Prima, Robert Duncan, Kenward Elmslie, Maria Irene Fornes, Paul Goodman, Kenneth Koch, LeRol Jones as he then was, Frank 108 "Curtain Dream" from Stanzas for Meditation, 1964 (Choreo: James Waringiaololst) 109 O'Hara, James Schuyler. Jimmy was active there, too. He directed plays like di Prima's Murder Cake and O'Hara's Awake In Spain and Love's Labor, as well as Wallace Stevens's monologue Carlos Among the Candles, and he wrote plays himself. One of the first was a kind of chance play, A Compendium of Everyone's Remarks, which we did at one of Jimmy's dance concerts ; a series of overhead remarks (and some that Jimmy had made himself, like "My favorite play by Chekhov is the Cherry Sisters"), were typed on cards and dealt out among the readers; while we read them, Ray Johnson displayed a number of his paintings. Jimmy's method as a director was, as might be expected, choreographic, not only in terms of the movements and groupings but the lines as well. He devised an action to go with texts whose literal meaning was usually elusive; like everything he did, this action was meticulously detailed and precise. He expected the performers to follow his directions exactly. Even the line readings, Nick Cernovitch recalls, were given to one like music. Jimmy usually worked with a cast that Included both actors and dancers, the latter of whom were likely to respond to his direction more readily than actors trained in the "Method." Jimmy could If necessary always give one an absolutely precise reason for doing anything, but he tended to work in terms of specific moves and Inflections rather than Images or objectives. His own plays invite similar treatment. Nights at the Tango Palace (not to be confused with the play of a similar title by Maria Irene Fornes) was performed in late 1961 by the New York Poets' Theatre, at the Off-Bowery Gallery on East Tenth Street, under Nicholas Cernovitch...