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Brussels Respite, 1959
- Wesleyan University Press
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Brussels Respite, 1959 Back home, Martha was quickly immersed in the battle for modern dance representation at Lincoln Center. Planning sessions were ongoing for Manhattan’s new arts center at Lincoln Square as President Dwight D. Eisenhower, shovel in hand, “broke ground” at an official ceremony on 14 May 1959. Tudor had joined Martha in discussions with the Juilliard architects, asking for the “elimination of uniformity” for the dance studios, which should be equipped with state-of-the-art audio, filming, and video systems. Martha insisted on windows at least eight feet from the floor to allow for mirrors. Soon after, Limón participated, too, testing samples of the all-important “sprung” flooring and determining whether they should be covered with Balanchine’s preferred flooring of gray “battleship” linoleum or the traditional choice of tung oil–treated maple. They chose wood. Their input into the wood-paneled Juilliard theater design with its gracious seating arrangement for a capacity of just over one thousand would result in what they agreed was the finest dance theater in the country. But even as the dance faculty was making architectural decisions at Juilliard, John D. Rockefeller III’s committee was making more critical decisions about the future of the “dance theater” on the plaza—to the exclusion of the dance community. Little by little, tension mounted as information about what would be known as Lincoln Center and the New York State Theater (originally named Theater for the Dance and Operetta), found its way to the New York press. Perhaps the fullest disclosure came from Horst’s little Dance Observer journal. Its the first editorial on the subject, Arthur Todd’s “Which Direction for Dance at Lincoln Center?” reported on “the most provocative dance news of the moment in America. . . . Just where American modern dance, other domestic ballet companies or the great foreign ballet organizations . . . could fit into all this is at the moment uncertain. This is but one of the many questions regarding the future of American dance at Lincoln Center that still remains to be answered.”1 In Dance Observer’s November issue, it was writer Harry Bernstein’s turn to speak of the “cumulative body of speculation” and the fate of dance in the proposed dance theater. “Is modern dance to be allowed only on sufferance and by way of the back door? . . . The future of modern dance in the United States may well be profoundly affected by the decisions and the provisions made for it at Lincoln Center.”2 The ever-audacious Helen Tamiris had come forward as its champion with the same ardor that she had invested in the 1930 and 1931 Dance Repertory Theatre series. (If decades earlier she seemed to stand alone, ignored by her contemporaries, it was because, according to Hill, Tamiris was too busy with other ventures, including Broadway. When de Mille complained openly of her own exclusion, the reason was the same.) Tamiris and de Mille’s commercial projects had earlier worked against the principled values of Hill’s contingent, but now their political acumen and tenacious efforts were much appreciated. This time, Tamiris prepared a statement for a permanent dance center. The resulting seventeen-page document quotes Margaret Lloyd of the Christian Science Monitor: “The American Modern Dance Theater is a long-held ideal, and the time is now ripe for its realization. . . . It would integrate the best of the fragmented units now practicing this native art into a composite whole.” It also quotes Walter Terry’s exclamation that “America’s modern dance . . . has changed the course of the dance art itself not only through its tenets and technical innovations but also through the choreographic masterworks it has produced .” He determined that “a ‘living’ repository in the form of a modern dance repertory company must be established.” In the statement, Tamiris calls dance an art “in which the individuals change from generation to generation. The whole of the fine achievement of the Modern Dance, both past and future, needs support, a permanent plan and a center.”3 Strong rallying for the cause took place during the next eight months, generating a proposal for a modern dance residency. Tamiris and her group submitted a three-year project proposal to the committee for a basic company of thirty-five dancers for $272,905. (A cover letter to Terry from Tamiris is signed “Thanks H,” indicating that it was Terry who delivered the unsolicited document .) A future was first posited by an eight-page “statement of purpose...