The Modern Dance: Seven Statements of Belief

NO MAN FROM MARS

Alwin Nikolais NO MAN FROM MARS i IT is impossible for me to be a purist; my loves are too many for that. I am excited by things very old and also very new, and by so many things in between as well. Thus, I cannot be content as only a choreographer. As such, my dominant concern should be motion; yet I cannot forego my attraction to the shapes and forms of things. Therefore, 1 do not hesitate to stress a sculptural form to the exclusion of motional excitement. Nor can I divorce myself from strong passions for sound and color, so I invade the fields of the composer and the painter as well. In truth, then, I am not a devoted husband to dance, for I choose to marry the lot of my inamorati rather than swearing fixed fidelity to one. I look upon this polygamy of motion, shape, color, and sound as the basic art of the theatre. To me, the art of drama is one thing; the art of theatre is another. In the latter, a magical panorama of things, sounds, colors, shapes, lights, illusions, and events happen before your eyes and your ears. I find my needs cannot be wholly satisfied by one art. I like to mix my magics. We are now in a new period of modern dance, and it is a period of new freedom. All the arts, we find, are now becoming vitally concerned with the direct and poignant translation of those abstract elements that characterize and underline an art subject. Not that earlier periods have ignored the inner substance. They have, however, usually spelled it out in terms of a literal scene. Freedom from the domination of the concrete is a logical manifestation of our times. One of the most striking characteristics of the new art is the Alwin Nikolais (photo: Eric Sutherland: Walker Art Center) 63 freedom from the literal and peripheral self of man. The artist need no longer channel his subject through a finite scene, nor need he distort , enlarge, reduce, or eliminate part of it to release its inner content . What is more, he is free of the subject-vehicle demanded by fixation and referenceto the literal scene. The early modern dance explored the psyche. Its concepts involved man's concern with the joys and pains of self-discovery. The idea was poetically translated into a kinetic language enacted by the dance character through whom a moment of psychological drama transpired. In the new art, the dance character is no longer dominant. The new dance figure is significant more in its instrumentalsensitivity and capacity to speak directly in terms of motion, shape, time, and space. It is the poetry of these elements, speaking directly out of themselves and their interrelationships rather than through a dominant character. The character may be present, but if it is, it is in equilibrium with the aggregate of all the elements in operation. I see things best in abstract terms. To me, abstraction does not eliminate emotion. Certainly the comparison between a Bach fugue and MacDowell's "In an Indian Hunting Lodge" well illustrates this point. I look upon statements that describe my work as cold, calculating, and out-of-this-world dehumanization with considerable skepticism. I feel that some of these reflect a limited view of humanity . The greatest gifts given to man are his ability to think in terms of abstraction and his ability of transcendence. From these he derives his imaginative power. These are part of his major distinction from the lower animals. Although we need our moments of hearts and flowers, we need also to see the other side of the universal fence. Today we hear much talk about the "non-verbal" aspects of communication. In the main, this refers to man's facility to sense meaning beyond the literal and materialistic surface. Now we can find meaning in this way, both with the hearts-and-flowers subject and with the dadaistic relation to a cigar-store Indian and a stripteaser . Each can be an aesthetic triumph or a dud. The form of the communication is less important than the aesthetic semantics of the event itself. (In a recent review of a dance-theatre recital, I was ap64 palled to find that the critic had singled out the piece that was the weakest aesthetically as the only worthy one of the evening. This judgment seemed to...