American Dance Festival: Keeper of the Flame

<v Speaker>It's the oldest dance festival in the country. <v Speaker>It's living artistic history where past, present and future merge. <v Speaker>It's the setting for constant rebellion, rebirth and regeneration. <v Speaker>It's the laboratory where the elements of dance are studied, stripped and sometimes <v Speaker>reformed. It's the American Dance Festival. <v Speaker>If other centuries are known for their artistic achievement in painting, sculpture or <v Speaker>music, surely the 20th will be known as the century <v Speaker>of dance. <v Speaker>The American Dance Festival is already honored as a home of one of the greatest American <v Speaker>contributions to art in this century, modern dance. <v Speaker>It's simultaneously a living museum, a training ground, a window

<v Speaker>on the future and performance showcase. <v Speaker>During its annual six week summer run, audiences are treated to some 40 <v Speaker>performances by up to 12 companies. <v Speaker>For about 50 years, counting the early ones at Bennington College, the <v Speaker>American Dance Festival has been a keeper of the flame for modern dance. <v Speaker>It's resided at four college campuses and spanned four generations of <v Speaker>choreographic vision. <v Speaker>Some 300 works by perhaps 50 choreographers have premiered at the festival. <v Speaker>Since 1978, it's resided at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. <v Speaker>This has always been a dancer's festival and a smorgasbord of options greet the

<v Speaker>250 students. <v Speaker>Its classes cover the spectrum of dance, ballet, <v Speaker>ethnic. <v Speaker>Broadway jazz. <v Speaker>And various modern techniques. <v Speaker>It's workshops embrace those who support the dance industry, critics, <v Speaker>therapists, TV directors, historians <v Speaker>and composers. The critics workshop has included guest lecturers such <v Speaker>as Anna Kissel Goff of The New York Times, Walter Terry of the Saturday <v Speaker>Review, Alan Kriegsman of The Washington Post, <v Speaker>Marcia Siegal of the Hudson Review and George Jackson of The Post <v Speaker>and Dance Moves. In six weeks, one can explore the universe of modern <v Speaker>dance. Yet this form is only 80 some years old with such

<v Speaker>recent beginnings. Why this range of style? <v Speaker>The American Dance Festival is so entwined with a history of modern dance that <v Speaker>it's impossible to look at one without the other. <v Speaker>The festival was there almost from the beginning. <v Speaker>The names are spoken with reverence. <v Speaker>Hanya Holm. Doris Humphrey. <v Speaker>Martha Graham. Charles Weideman. <v Speaker>Today, they're honored as the pioneers, the major creators of the modern dance <v Speaker>form. <v Speaker>But in 1934, their vision was clearly controversial. <v Speaker>They gathered at Bennington College in Vermont to launch a six week summer dance school. <v Speaker>Each had their individual approaches to dance movement, but they were united <v Speaker>in an effort to create a new serious artistic form outside of the confines

<v Speaker>of ballet. The excitement was contagious for everyone who went there. <v Speaker>Dancers and critics alike. <v Walter Terry>My first assignment on the Boston Herald was to go to Bennington for <v Walter Terry>the Bennington Festival, which is the forerunner of the American Dance Festival. <v Walter Terry>It had been going about two years and being <v Walter Terry>my first assignment of course I was terribly nervous, but very excited. <v Walter Terry>And I remember the performance that I saw was held in the big armory at <v Walter Terry>in Bennington, North Bennington itself. <v Walter Terry>And at the top of the flight of stairs was Martha Graham and Mary <v Walter Terry>Jo Shelley, who were founders of the Bennington Festival. <v Walter Terry>And I was the boy critic, 22 years old. <v Walter Terry>And I ran up the flight of stairs and they said welcome. <v Walter Terry>And that was my introduction to my career. <v Speaker>This evolving form even had its own critic advocate in John Martin of The New <v Speaker>York Times. He started a companion workshop for writers and historians. <v Speaker>It continues today with guest lecturers such as Marcia Siegel of the Hudson

<v Speaker>Review. <v Marcia B. Siegel>I found it very exciting then because I was new to <v Marcia B. Siegel>the whole thing and it was just. <v Marcia B. Siegel>A revelation to me then I think it probably may <v Marcia B. Siegel>have that effect on everybody the first time. <v Marcia B. Siegel>There wasn't anything like the dance activity in New York or <v Marcia B. Siegel>anywhere else in the country that there is now. <v Marcia B. Siegel>So that. At the festival, you could see <v Marcia B. Siegel>dance, which wasn't very readily available anywhere else. <v Speaker>History is full of artistic births like this when like minds come together <v Speaker>and create an artistic revolution. <v Speaker>It happened in 19th century Europe in music and it happened in America <v Speaker>with modern dance. <v Anna Kisselgoff>Modern dance and basically an American art form. <v Anna Kisselgoff>There some people will tell you that there's a German route to it too. <v Anna Kisselgoff>But the route that actually flowered and bloomed was American.

<v Speaker>Doris Humphrey would say this about the new art form, this new <v Speaker>dance of action comes inevitably from the people who had to subdue a continent <v Speaker>to make a thousand paths through forest and plain, to conquer the mountains and <v Speaker>eventually to raise up towers of steel and glass. <v Speaker>The American dance is born of this new world, new life and new <v Speaker>vigor. <v Speaker>At the end of the summer school, the real work of the festival was displayed. <v Speaker>New choreography for a new age. <v Speaker>During the six Bennington College years, 21 works debuted as part of <v Speaker>the new heritage. <v Walter Terry>And also the festival has been the fostering agency <v Walter Terry>for rebel ideas. <v Walter Terry>I'm not talking politically, but I mean of new aesthetic ideas of <v Walter Terry>new directions. All kinds of things of that sort that had not been tried before. <v Speaker>After World War Two, it moved to Connecticut College in New London and

<v Speaker>stayed 30 years. <v Speaker>It took on the name American Dance Festival there. <v Speaker>But the purposes set out during those golden years at Bennington became the ongoing <v Speaker>goals to teach, to support, and most of all <v Speaker>provide the atmosphere to create. <v Speaker>Martha Graham would later write a platform summing up the ideas begun <v Speaker>here. America has a characteristically percussive beat. <v Speaker>She said. <v Speaker>A dance reveals the spirit of the country in which it takes root. <v Speaker>An American dance is not a series of steps. <v Speaker>It's a characteristic time beat a different speed. <v Speaker>An accent sharp and staccato. <v Speaker>Its task is to enrich, illuminate and intensify the American scene. <v Speaker>One of the most important things about the festival is that it allowed

<v Speaker>dancers who have the opportunity to create a new kind of work to do <v Speaker>so for many years. <v Speaker>Some of the greatest names, Modern Dance, did not have sustained New York seasons. <v Speaker>After they moved to Connecticut, new choreographic voices joined the festival. <v Speaker>Pauline, Coner, Lucas, Hoving, Hosie, Lehman and others. <v Speaker>I came as a student, a work student, when this festival was up in New <v Speaker>London and it was a turning point in my life. <v Speaker>And I got started from the summer that I spent there, <v Speaker>with with a new kind of life that I wanted <v Speaker>and. <v Speaker>Certainly, it's affected hundreds of others in the same way. <v Speaker>It was supportive at a time when Americans <v Speaker>themselves were not supporting American artists.

<v Speaker>Today, students are in their teens, but during the first years, festival <v Speaker>students were primarily teachers themselves seeking to establish dance <v Speaker>as an academic discipline in their schools. <v Speaker>Today, also, the face of the festival is vastly different and broader in appeal. <v Speaker>Some 300 works by over 50 choreographers have been premiered here. <v Speaker>Yet despite the new faces in blood, the threat of the past is maintained through faculty <v Speaker>and staff who saw the beginning of modern dance. <v Speaker>Lucas Hoving is one of them, a choreographer in his own right. <v Speaker>He's danced for Hosie, Lehman and others. <v Speaker>He teaches the Choreographer Composers Workshop. <v Speaker>In 49, when I came for the first time to the American Dance west of New London, <v Speaker>the whole picture of the modern dance was much simpler.

<v Speaker>There was not a tenth of the activity that occurs at this point. <v Speaker>Betty Jones is another who keeps returning. <v Speaker>She used to dance with Jose Limon. <v Speaker>And now too teaches technique. <v Speaker>She remembers the festival in its earlier form at Connecticut College. <v Speaker>It was there in 1949 that she danced along with Hoving in one <v Speaker>of the festival's monumental premieres Jose Limons. <v Speaker>The Moor's Pavane. <v Speaker> Actually jose started his company in 1946 and <v Speaker>I joined in 47. So you can see that it was just the start of <v Speaker>his his career, really. <v Speaker>And the classic, the Maurice Piran <v Speaker>that we premiered at Connecticut College in 1949 <v Speaker>was worked on before we went in July. <v Speaker>And then we spent those six weeks.

<v Speaker>Working on on this work and finally, premier, at the <v Speaker>end of the summer. <v Speaker>Even though alternatives to ballet had been around since the turn of the century, <v Speaker>the modern form was still considered radical in the 30s and even the 40s. <v Speaker>Ballet had always emphasized the pretty. <v Speaker>It denied gravity and created the illusion of weightlessness up effortlessness. <v Speaker>It denied the body's natural limits. <v Speaker>The body was held, pulled up away from the earth and the satin toe shoe <v Speaker>and hence the illusion. <v Speaker>This had been the artistic definition of dance for almost 200 years in Europe,

<v Speaker>first in France, then Russia, the great impresario Sergei <v Speaker>Diaghilev had brought popular ballet to America. <v Speaker>His ballet roots toured in the teens, 20s and then into the 50s. <v Speaker>This pretty allusion was, of course, created through lifelong dance training <v Speaker>and practice. The beauty was achieved through rigid technique and equally <v Speaker>rigid rules. <v Speaker>Since the turn of the century, though, new voices had been speaking voices <v Speaker>like Isadora Duncans. <v Speaker>She freed the foot from the toe shoe and created dances of pure movement <v Speaker>without sets or storyline. <v Speaker>She ignored ballet's rules, yet said this, too, is artistic

<v Speaker>dance. <v Speaker>This new form found little acceptance in a ballet oriented world. <v Speaker>I interviewed Fokine, the great rebel in ballet about modern dance, <v Speaker>and his description of it was. That is ugly mother in <v Speaker>wings with ugly son who make ugly music on drum while ugly <v Speaker>daughter make ugly movements on stage. <v Speaker>Is modern. <v Speaker>This new form embraced the body where ballet denied it. <v Speaker>It emphasized weight, gravity, the pull of the earth. <v Speaker>A contemporary of Isidora used a different style, but had no less impact <v Speaker>on dance. Ruth St. Dennis started her career as a skirt dancer involved <v Speaker>vill as did other modern dance pioneers. <v Speaker>Perhaps because of these vaudeville roots, she created a very theatrical dance <v Speaker>style exotic solos based on legends of the East, with names like

<v Speaker>the Red and Gold Sari, EgyptAir and Radha with <v Speaker>her husband and partner Ted Sean. <v Speaker>She created Denishawn in 1915. <v Speaker>This joint school and company lasted for 15 years and trained later pioneers <v Speaker>like Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidemann. <v Speaker>They would later break from her and create a dance vocabulary of their own. <v Speaker>The festival has gone to extraordinary lengths to preserve this sense of history for <v Speaker>contemporary students, not only to old timers like Lucas Hoving and <v Speaker>Betty Jones teach technique, Cloner Pinsker, who is a special associate <v Speaker>of Miss Ruth, has taught her old dances to new generations. <v Speaker>The people who can still give you

<v Speaker>that old time religion are people like Florina Pinsker <v Speaker>and those who were either the pioneers themselves or we're close to the pioneers. <v Speaker>And what they have to offer is something that is unfortunately being lost for <v Speaker>the first time, I Shah Ruth St. Dennis was in Winnipeg <v Speaker>in 1914 and I was shopping <v Speaker>around to join the company and I was only eight years old <v Speaker>in for. <v Speaker>She was at her height. <v Speaker>She was at her prima I saw her, you know, <v Speaker>1914, she had just married Ted Charn in 1913. <v Speaker>If she just come back stage and I came back, she's she said aren't <v Speaker>you a little small and young to join my company? <v Speaker>I said, well I'll grow up. <v Speaker>I came in 1919 to Los Angeles. <v Speaker>Tejon. And the teacher with Tejon and Doorstopper teaching

<v Speaker>ballet. <v Speaker>Klarna classes emphasize the old style she learned at Dennis. <v Speaker>The same styles would later be rejected by Denishawn teachers and company members <v Speaker>such as Humphrey, Weidemann and Graham. <v Speaker>They would go their own way to pioneer another form. <v Speaker>The split up of the school was when everyone went to the <v Speaker>Orient. <v Speaker>Charles and dories got charge of doing Spanish dances, <v Speaker>Chinese dances, Japanese dancers wearing wigs, and <v Speaker>while they were on the road, Charles and Doris walked out <v Speaker>with the whole school and moved someplace else. <v Speaker>When Miss Ruth and Ted came back from the Thadno school, Thadno students. <v Speaker>I mean. It happens right to a 30. <v Speaker>Thirty three, thirty two and.

<v Speaker>They were destroyed. <v Speaker>But one day she said to me, I think that should be the wrap up. <v Speaker>She said to me, you know, Klarna, in Los Angeles I'm going to <v Speaker>be forgotten. <v Speaker>You're the only one can save me. <v Speaker>That'll remember, if you do that, do that, you are <v Speaker>the only one that knows what I was talking about. <v Speaker>If you carry on, they won't forget me. <v Speaker>Klarna Pinska made good on her promise. <v Speaker>She's kept the work of Miss Ruth alive for several seasons. <v Speaker>The festival has honored its vaudeville roots with a performance salute. <v Speaker>Miss Ruth's work was there, performed decades later by Elisa Montay, <v Speaker>a dancer from the company of a former Miss Ruth protegé, Martha Graham. <v Speaker>And what has happened in recent years. Here in North Carolina is <v Speaker>a recognition that the American dance is now old enough to indeed

<v Speaker>have a history to be proud of. <v Speaker>Ruth St. Dennis. Ted Sean, Isadora Duncan. <v Speaker>We're all old fashioned. They were part of our rather <v Speaker>primitive past and now they <v Speaker>are coming back into the orbit of today's dancers <v Speaker>are saying, well, they are our parents, our grandparents. <v Speaker>This is where we came from. <v Speaker>As Graham and Humphrey had broken from St. Denis, so did another generations <v Speaker>of dancers break from them. <v Speaker>Merce Cunningham and Eric Hawkins danced for Graham and learn from her. <v Speaker>So did Paul Taylor when the time was right, they began to choreograph <v Speaker>with their own unique vision. <v Speaker>The festival sponsored premieres of their work, as it had of their mentors. <v Speaker>The festival tradition of revolution and evolution had been set. <v Speaker>Martha Graham came suppose to some classes.

<v Speaker>She's very late. <v Speaker>And then I saw her for the first time. <v Speaker>She saw me in class. <v Speaker>She says she wanted the. <v Speaker>And she got me for about six years. <v Speaker>Me seeing her dad, dad's. <v Speaker>Was it an enormous impact on my choreography, on my development <v Speaker>as a dancer? I owe her a great deal. <v Speaker>Harden court. <v Speaker>There's a lot of men jumping. That's the first thing. <v Speaker>Back up in court, they looked like they've been shot out of a cannon. <v Speaker>I first went to the American Dance Festival when it was

<v Speaker>in New London in 1959, and the great <v Speaker>revelation for me at the time was Merce Cunningham. <v Speaker>Cunningham offered glimmerings of a new mindset toward dance, space and music. <v Speaker>Even though new winds had blown through society in the 1960s, the festival <v Speaker>was still mostly showcasing choreography in a 40s style. <v Speaker>If the Titans had let I have left you what? <v Speaker>What do you do? You you can't imitate them. <v Speaker>So what you do is to find your own direction, as indeed Merce Cunningham did. <v Speaker>And Paul Taylor and others, they went on to <v Speaker>a new area. They didn't completely dismiss <v Speaker>or destroy what had come before, <v Speaker>but they had to go in new directions.

<v Speaker>I think that the modern dance creativity was <v Speaker>petering out through the 50s and 60s and. <v Speaker>The real creative work in dance and modern dance was being done in New York, <v Speaker>in Judson Church and by other people. <v Speaker>Martha Graham's premise was that her function was to give substance <v Speaker>to things felt and to reveal the inner man. <v Speaker>And that was something Merce did not want to do. <v Speaker>Nor did Alvin Nicholai. They said, who cares what we think inside? <v Speaker>I mean, our feelings are totally unimportant. <v Speaker>What is important is form and shape and the relationship of the human body <v Speaker>to space design and so on. <v Speaker>That's a whole new concept. <v Speaker>There was a danger at one point that the festival would lay down some sort of dogma <v Speaker>and luckily, because there was a self willed <v Speaker>change of regime. The festival itself decided that it had to change and appointed <v Speaker>different people to run it. <v Speaker>The new person was Charles Rhinehart.

<v Speaker>He became festival director in 1969. <v Speaker>The time was right for a change in both festival funding and philosophy. <v Speaker>In the 60s, I was really the only dance management in existence. <v Speaker>And handled Paul Taylor and Glen Tetley and Meredith Monk and Donald McKale <v Speaker>and Lucas Hoving and etc.. <v Speaker>And about that time, the middle of the 60s. <v Speaker>The endowment came into existence. <v Speaker>National Endowment for the arts. As a result of the arts explosion in this country. <v Speaker>So they came to me with an idea of about. <v Speaker>Helping dance companies get off the one night trail. <v Speaker>The National Endowment for the Arts, would help sub- subsidize the presenters fee <v Speaker>so that they could have a company at least a half a week, about the same time <v Speaker>I was approached to take over the American Dance Festival. <v Speaker>Well, I think at that time when. <v Speaker>There was an expansion of all dance. <v Speaker>But especially modern dance around the country.

<v Speaker>I could see them in New York. One wasn't quite as hungry as one <v Speaker>had been. And so I think for a lot of reasons, things changed in the <v Speaker>in the orientation of the festival and of the audience. <v Speaker>Rhinehart worked to bring the old creative excitement back to the festival <v Speaker>to attract the audiences in the new exciting choreographers to reestablish <v Speaker>the festival's artistic cutting edge. <v Speaker>The next few years saw an explosion of performance and choreographic activity. <v Speaker>Performances ran throughout the six weeks.

<v Speaker>Choreographers included Laura Dean, Twyla Tharp, Meredith Monk, Martha <v Speaker>Clark, Trisha Brown, Pilobolus, Yvonne Rainer and more. <v Speaker>I mean, their only two important things that the American Dance Festival has been <v Speaker>involved in right from its beginning. <v Speaker>And today, two important things are the philosophy of the festival. <v Speaker>And they are. <v Speaker>Helping our great artists, both established and young, create our heritage, make <v Speaker>these dances. And two, raising the consciousness <v Speaker>of the American people and the rest of the world to the greatness of these dances. <v Speaker>So it's really making the dances and the delivery system how to get them out, how to get <v Speaker>people to see them, to recognize that we have today in this art form <v Speaker>are creating geniuses. <v Speaker>Dance history is recreate throughout the six weeks, the middle generations <v Speaker>performing back to back with work from the latest generations to break from them. <v Speaker>The revolution continued. <v Speaker>So did the pioneering spirit. <v Speaker>For my association, staring with the American Dance Festival way back in

<v Speaker>1974, when I was very much a <v Speaker>beginning, an emerging choreographer. <v Speaker>And I received my first commission for work from <v Speaker>the American Dance Festival. <v Speaker>If Taylor Cunningham and Hawkins were second generation choreographers in modern dance, <v Speaker>then perhaps Laura Dean, Twyla Tharp, Senta Driver, Pilobolus and <v Speaker>others could be considered third generation like their mentors. <v Speaker>They've come far since their first festival appearances as fledgling choreographers. <v Speaker>Yeah, I'm also I'm also a composer and <v Speaker>all of the music for the choreography is <v Speaker>scored and written by me. <v Speaker>We are a company of musicians and dancers. <v Speaker>I'm still learning about what comes first, whether they the score <v Speaker>comes first or the choreography comes first.

<v Speaker>I've done pieces where they both happen simultaneously. <v Speaker>You if you're collaborating with someone, you have to go to the composer and say, could <v Speaker>you please take away these 16 beats here? <v Speaker>Because that's incredible flexibility to <v Speaker>be able to have a music and dance coming from the same person. <v Speaker>One of Dean's major works, Timpani, was premiered at the 1981 <v Speaker>festival. <v Speaker>I'm definitely I'm definitely a pioneer and I'm definitely within the <v Speaker>American spirit. <v Speaker>Very much an individual, stubborn, strong willed, <v Speaker>but I think that that's what's made this country so incredibly wonderful. <v Speaker>In many ways, the festival leads the way and introduces groups such as <v Speaker>Pilobolus. This group of dancers, in a way, owes its existence in many respects <v Speaker>to the festival which convi- commission many of its works.

<v Speaker>Pilobolus, for for. From its beginning, was very interested in visually <v Speaker>sculpting images. <v Speaker>And then I think now, more than ever, we're beginning to go back and begin to consider <v Speaker>how they. These images can move through time and space. <v Speaker>More like a dance. Dancing, sculptural images. <v Speaker>Whereas before we just presented them. <v Speaker>In any making of any piece of use, we usually spend at least a week or two weeks <v Speaker>improvising and trying to free associating with any mental and physical idea <v Speaker>that that's available. <v Speaker>Oddly enough, as modern dancers move decades away from it's earth oriented <v Speaker>beginnings, the very look in some cases has become more balletic.

<v Speaker>Not only do dancers train with this as a base, many ballet companies <v Speaker>now have modern dance in their repertoire. <v Speaker>This includes not only the smaller chamber troupes, but major companies like <v Speaker>American Ballet Theater and Dance Theater of Harlem. <v Speaker>In addition, modern choreographers are requiring the control that comes from <v Speaker>balletic training. Thus, the festival includes both in its performance schedule <v Speaker>and its classes. <v Speaker>If you work at a company, at a major company today, you've got to do all the styles, <v Speaker>particularly way choreographers are working. <v Speaker>And when you have a contemporary company, a young classical contemporary <v Speaker>company, it is important that you see the melding of the styles because it then makes <v Speaker>a better artist and a much more proficient dancer. <v Speaker>And this is the exciting thing that we as American dancers can take the different styles

<v Speaker>and meld them, take them and make them our own. <v Speaker>In the early days of modern dance, in the twenties and thirties, no modern <v Speaker>dancer ever studied ballet and no ballet dancer ever studied <v Speaker>modern. Now, when I see some of the works, like Martha Graham's <v Speaker>primitive mystery's revived, something has been lost, something <v Speaker>of a kind of a crude strength because the foot <v Speaker>is a little more pointed. Because all of today's dancers take ballet lessons <v Speaker>and they should I mean, they we need that technique. <v Speaker>One of the reasons is that modern dancers today practically all study ballet. <v Speaker>You may think that's good or that's bad, but the fact is they do. <v Speaker>They're able to work in a new kind of. <v Speaker>Idiom, which is a fusion of both modern and ballet. <v Speaker>And you never would have had that, of course, 30 years ago.

<v Speaker>It's another sign of the times. Guess we'll just keep up with that. <v Speaker>One chamber troupe which prides itself on its mix of ballet and modern, is the <v Speaker>North Carolina Dance Theater based at the North Carolina School of the Arts. <v Speaker>It's toured internationally and performed at both the Italian and Charleston <v Speaker>Spoleto festivals. <v Speaker>We train our dancers both at classical ballet and in modern dance. <v Speaker>And that is precisely what the repertory, the North Carolina Dance Theater includes. <v Speaker>I mean, we've I've always tried to have an eclectic repertory. <v Speaker>Hence the name dance theater rather than ballet company or modern dance. <v Speaker>At the 1981 festival, this company tried an interesting experiment.

<v Speaker>Choreographer, Senta Driver, created a work for the 16 member ballet troupe <v Speaker>up to this time. She'd primarily worked with her own five member modern company <v Speaker>called Harry. <v Speaker>Senta Driver is in terms of a choreographer, an avant garde, what they call postmodern. <v Speaker>She is simply in the forefront of what is new in modern dance. <v Speaker>I was impressed by her work, by her company, by her concept, <v Speaker>by what it was she was trying to present. <v Speaker>Drivers' concepts were baffling to some audiences, while works by the <v Speaker>old guard such as Graham were becoming more balletic in tone. <v Speaker>This third generation choreographer was going back to basics. <v Speaker>OK. <v Speaker>I have thought very carefully about the whole history of dance. <v Speaker>Ballet, modern. I'm a little weak on ethnic dance history. <v Speaker>I have tried to teach myself what has been done and analyze it to see what <v Speaker>can be done. It is not now on stage.

<v Speaker>Where did we come from? What have we lost? <v Speaker>I go back to the early roots of modern dance. <v Speaker>I think I'm very close to the thirties. <v Speaker>My dancers and my material harks back to the weight and the power and <v Speaker>the sense of strength, the sense of <v Speaker>force, the hugeness, the grandeur in <v Speaker>physical terms. <v Speaker>The work she created for the North Carolina dance theater was called Reset, and <v Speaker>it illustrated some of her most basic dance concerns. <v Speaker>I am simultaneously trying to go back to values that have been lost <v Speaker>and investigate them again and to break up known assumptions and to challenge <v Speaker>them and attack them and cast them aside for <v Speaker>new realizations of old purposes. <v Speaker>The purpose is at the same. We still want scale. <v Speaker>We still want excitement. <v Speaker>We still want excellence. <v Speaker>We still want beauty. I consider that there are some new possibilities for that.

<v Speaker>There are new ways of looking at it. There are new. <v Speaker>There are new kinds of beauty to look at. I am restive with the traditional form. <v Speaker>I started out wanting to learn to control and usefully handle a large <v Speaker>group and to examine some concepts I had about what is <v Speaker>it, what is scale, what is large scale, what is small scale, how do you expand something? <v Speaker>How do you explode something? I took material that I had worked with before and blew it <v Speaker>up for 13 people, 13 people each do part of a solo, each do one inch <v Speaker>of a solo one after the other. <v Speaker>And that gives you a tool that I can use elsewhere. <v Speaker>I ended up also investigating and challenging some new personalities. <v Speaker>I'm in favor of of more diversity.

<v Speaker>I'm in favor of renewing the. <v Speaker>The breaking up of old standards of beauty and the finding of new ones, I am. <v Speaker>I think the vocabulary needs to be constantly challenged and renewed and all this the <v Speaker>whole esthetic. I am an enemy of the pretty. <v Speaker>A new esthetic, more diversity. <v Speaker>These have been the hallmarks of the festival from the beginning. <v Speaker>In continuation of that, the festival has commissioned work from choreographers <v Speaker>who are just emerging artist whose work merits a close look <v Speaker>but who haven't quite reached full development yet. <v Speaker>The whole idea behind modern dance in the festival programs, which is <v Speaker>that as John Martin, who was the distinguished dance career <v Speaker>in your ties for 30 years, said, modern dance is not a system. <v Speaker>It is a point of view, and the point of view has changed within <v Speaker>the festival.

<v Speaker>A highlight of the 1981 festival was the Emerging Generations program, <v Speaker>a weeklong look at the work of five young choreographers. <v Speaker>Dare we say fourth generation on their way up. <v Speaker>Bill T. Jones. Melissa Fenley. <v Speaker>Charles Moulton. Marlene Penson. <v Speaker>And Yohana Boyce. <v Speaker>The work ranged from Boys's Harp's beside a swimming pool to Moulton's <v Speaker>Precision Ball, passing to families whirlwind solos. <v Speaker>It was the elements of movement put under a microscope. <v Speaker>The laboratory of dance. <v Speaker>Judson, what's really new?

<v Speaker>Things that people are doing today are, in one sense, consequences <v Speaker>of that revolution. I'm not sure we've had a real revolution since. <v Speaker>It's a little like that. <v Speaker>Generation were explorers and naturalists who went out <v Speaker>and found strange new things, as well as old things that have been forgotten about and <v Speaker>used. <v Speaker>And the current generation has taken those findings back into the laboratory, <v Speaker>dissected them, analyzed them, done highly specialized things with <v Speaker>them, but is still working with the discoveries of the <v Speaker>period. <v Speaker>I'm interested in attempting to find a new modern dance vocabulary <v Speaker>that I am finding through the challenge of my stamina <v Speaker>and having to move real fast. <v Speaker>And the fact that I work in a spatial design <v Speaker>in which I am interested in dancers making traces

<v Speaker>of space through their pathways, and that the audience viewing that <v Speaker>scene is not so much the actual body in shape <v Speaker>that they see just pure emotion. <v Speaker>Well, my work, you know, I was once asked to say that in one word or less, <v Speaker>and I said I'd call it the theater of the mind and the heart. <v Speaker>It's because I'm trying to combine that which is pure dance with that which is theatrical <v Speaker>in nature, that which has to do with states of minds, the emotions. <v Speaker>My work is oftentimes about revealing personality and the personality of myself <v Speaker>and of my dancers. <v Speaker>It's very much about the human condition. <v Speaker>And yet, in the same way, it's very much about the pure beauty of movement and bodies and <v Speaker>space. <v Speaker>Despite the great riches available in the performances, the festival has remained <v Speaker>a dancer's festival. The emphasis is on the classes and workshops.

<v Speaker>The training of dancers and choreographers of the future. <v Speaker>Classes reflect just about the entire spectrum of dance, jazz, Broadway, <v Speaker>ballet, ethnic and the various approaches to the modern idiom. <v Speaker>Well, the lineage that Rob and I come <v Speaker>from began with Mary Bigman <v Speaker>in Germany. <v Speaker>She was really the first dancer to worked very abstractly in terms of <v Speaker>space being an equal element with motion and time in shape. <v Speaker>Very important discovery for the dance world, she. <v Speaker>Scented in a way, to the United States through her home, Honea <v Speaker>had Nicholai for a student. Ellen Nicholai and I became a teacher for Honea <v Speaker>and I was a student of Nikolais.

<v Speaker>So this is really the. <v Speaker>Step by step, progress that it's made through the generations. <v Speaker>But I must say that it isn't just style of movement. <v Speaker>It's a theory one learns the language <v Speaker>that has been developed based on four basic elements spacetime, <v Speaker>shape and motion, and how they work integrally, how they <v Speaker>are constantly interlaced. <v Speaker>We're trying to. <v Speaker>Synthesize what we've learned about it to the very contemporary <v Speaker>time that it is now, you know what? <v Speaker>So we try to translate all this information through utterly simple <v Speaker>forms, and these forms have to do <v Speaker>completely with natural laws. <v Speaker>My background is reflected in my teaching

<v Speaker>work. <v Speaker>The the work with Doris Humphrey and <v Speaker>Wassailing Mon, the principles of fall and rebound, the use <v Speaker>of body weight, plus the qualities that are <v Speaker>inherent in that use of the weight. <v Speaker>That's certainly a very strong part of my teaching approach. <v Speaker>This diversity has even extended to Broadway and vaudeville dancing, taught by <v Speaker>Broadway choreographers such as Donald Saddler and vaudeville veterans <v Speaker>such as France Falzone. <v Speaker>I tried to teach him some states presume some behavior on <v Speaker>stage, how to move, how to project and different kinds of <v Speaker>styles and movements and so on. <v Speaker>Hard to partner at lady, hard to.

<v Speaker>Just. Meet her. <v Speaker>Ah. Hold your hands out and let her put her <v Speaker>hands on your head. <v Speaker>All these little details that it makes a performance <v Speaker>more spectacular or more of whatever is supposed <v Speaker>to be. <v Speaker>Students and audiences got to see a demonstration of this type performance in a salute <v Speaker>to vaudeville program showcasing Zoni as our dojo style with partner <v Speaker>Tony Gardein Ellie. <v Speaker>You have to have a certain kind of a rapport between two of us. <v Speaker>I mean between two people when they dance. <v Speaker>And that does you in any dancing. But the doors, you as <v Speaker>usually it. It's a feeling between a man and a woman. <v Speaker>And it's has to just come through.

<v Speaker>Still reflecting the diversity of the dance world, the festivals had a major emphasis <v Speaker>on ethnic dance, this run side by side with its community outreach <v Speaker>program. Chuck Davis, a North Carolina native who's built his African <v Speaker>dance company in New York, gives seminars throughout the festival's host state. <v Speaker>His company's stage performances are among the most popular at the festival. <v Speaker>I researched the traditional dances of the continent of <v Speaker>Africa by going through the different countries of Africa and studying <v Speaker>with the various ethnic groups. <v Speaker>We learn the different movements and we learn the context in which they are used.

<v Speaker>And then as a creative artist, born and raised here in you know, in this society, <v Speaker>I take that information and I develop it for the theater. <v Speaker>The community outreach program climaxed in an African village celebration. <v Speaker>Groups from all over the state showed off their work in a recreation of a tribal <v Speaker>festival <v Speaker>that has many avenues. <v Speaker>And through the avenue of traditional African dance, we introduced that <v Speaker>to heighten people's interest in themselves as a person and in <v Speaker>dancers in tights, people came together <v Speaker>as a people rather than coming together as different <v Speaker>factions, came together as a unit, unified community <v Speaker>body somewhere.

<v Speaker>Love, respect. <v Speaker>Peace, self-respect, development of mind and <v Speaker>body want to save people all through cultural held to <v Speaker>heritage of African dance. <v Speaker>And we succeed. <v Speaker>And as well as your feet. <v Speaker>The choreographers themselves, along with their collaborators, the composers, <v Speaker>are nurtured in their own workshop. <v Speaker>Lucas Hoving teaches this one. <v Speaker>One of the aims of the Music and Composers <v Speaker>Workshop is a already title order <v Speaker>that says it to get dancers to start thinking in terms of their music. <v Speaker>There's a little bit more emphasis than just having a dance and you're going <v Speaker>to find some sort of piece of music that might fit it. <v Speaker>So we push people into working very quickly

<v Speaker>so that they have only their first primary action. <v Speaker>I've got to do a piece like so and so and I'll do it. <v Speaker>So I had to do something quickly. <v Speaker>So that's what I did. I just stretched beyond the music to sort of resolve the parents <v Speaker>situation. But I think it's good. <v Speaker>All right. <v Speaker>Everything I was working is and smooth. <v Speaker>And it just it doesn't hold my arm just like the rest of the dance. <v Speaker>And so it seems counter to the music. <v Speaker>You're drawing out longer than that. <v Speaker>I agree. I agree. It's sloppy back. <v Speaker>And when it has to be edited down to where it comes to some resolution equipment. <v Speaker>Privilege of developing your ideas, because an idea for a dance <v Speaker>is like a germ that's gradually developed to develop them along with the composer, <v Speaker>is, of course the ideal situation.

<v Speaker>And we don't get that very much a chance, you see. <v Speaker>People can walk around with an idea and start working for months, you see? <v Speaker>And it doesn't necessarily mean that it gets any better. <v Speaker>But all that long thinking and fiddling and changing this changing that is <v Speaker>isn't any way to make them a little more confident about the primary impulse. <v Speaker>You see habits. I think it's very important because the <v Speaker>more they go and intellectualize, the less we use lose the touch. <v Speaker>Is that true? Innate gut feeling of dancing? <v Speaker>In the 70s, dance moved into the television age and so did the festival. <v Speaker>The public TV series Dance in America had pioneered new techniques <v Speaker>for translating dance to the television medium. <v Speaker>For several years, series producer Merrill Brockway taught a dance production

<v Speaker>workshop for other TV directors. <v Speaker>The festival continues to encourage TV dance by hosting such collaborations. <v Speaker>The concept of dance in America, the basic underlying philosophy of it hasn't <v Speaker>changed from the beginning. In the translation of choreography from the stage <v Speaker>to television, the choreographer always has a <v Speaker>major role in the decision making process of a process <v Speaker>of how that's to be done, where it's to be done. <v Speaker>Several telecasts of Paul Taylor's work have been taped here. <v Speaker>First thing we do in the collaboration is choose, which works. <v Speaker>We're going to shoot. That's the first step. <v Speaker>Then we decide whether or not to take it into a studio or to do it <v Speaker>in a live performance. In the two instances that we worked curate ADF, Paul wanted <v Speaker>to do it for a live audience. <v Speaker>He wanted the response of the audience. <v Speaker>I then took some record tapes of of each of the ballets,

<v Speaker>and I watched them with Paul and we decided. <v Speaker>Just generally how things should be seen. <v Speaker>We've talked about shots, whether something should be seen, if there was a full group <v Speaker>ban. <v Speaker>Should this be seen from from wing to wing, or <v Speaker>could you go in on a particular detail? <v Speaker>Works that don't seem to have a story like Ardern Court or Auriel. <v Speaker>It's pretty clear, but in dramatic works like Stockroom Rite of <v Speaker>Spring, it was very important for me to have Paul's input. <v Speaker>When there are large groups of people on the stage, where is the focus? <v Speaker>There are 10 people on stage and somebody is picking up a bag full of jewels. <v Speaker>That's where he wants you to look. <v Speaker>Television hasn't been done. <v Speaker>The right machine hasn't been made yet. <v Speaker>They can reproduce a live performance because <v Speaker>the live performance has an excitement that apparently

<v Speaker>is due to the audience being there. <v Speaker>And I mean, take a big picture of an audience clapping their hands together. <v Speaker>But it doesn't send the same waves of excitement that the real <v Speaker>thing does. There are all kinds of things you can do to enhance it a little bit. <v Speaker>But even so, under the best of circumstances, it's never going to be as. <v Speaker>Our background where we are now is because of what has happened in this festival, <v Speaker>basically the very early ones of Dennington head Honea. <v Speaker>Martha, Louis, Horst. I mean, those were the people that started <v Speaker>it all. And that's where all of us have come from. <v Speaker>Nothing else exists in the states like that. <v Speaker>Nothing. And I think that's really the most value that it has <v Speaker>that we can get a perspective of just what the art is, not what the <v Speaker>just the training is or just the.

<v Speaker>Outward appearance of what a dancer is, but what the artist. <v Speaker>And we tend to lose. <v Speaker>Lose our view of what the art is when the student spends hours and hours and hours <v Speaker>and hours in the studio working on technique. <v Speaker>And not really knowing what it's going toward here, you get the history of it, <v Speaker>you get constant performing. <v Speaker>You see you see it. <v Speaker>That's what you're working for. <v Speaker>You see and see. <v Speaker>That's what you're working for. <v Speaker>The American Dance Festival is both living history and catalyst for the future.

<v Speaker>It embraces much of the modern dance backdrop, but remembers its beginnings. <v Speaker>In 1981, it created the Samuel H. <v Speaker>Scripts Award to honor its greats and its first honoree was quite naturally <v Speaker>Martha Graham. The award was presented by former first lady Betty Ford. <v Speaker>In its process of evolution and revolution, modern dance does not discard <v Speaker>its roots. <v Speaker>All the pioneer spirit that has gone into the early days <v Speaker>of American modern dance is still

<v Speaker>with us. And that in even though we may be reaching <v Speaker>financial difficulties, there is no way that that art of dance, <v Speaker>the and the creativity can be stifled if it <v Speaker>will go. <v Speaker>Go on. Because of the nature of its strength <v Speaker>and beauty. <v Speaker>Each period in our civilization. <v Speaker>Usually has a specific art form, one or two, which achieves <v Speaker>great heights. <v Speaker>This century is the century for creating our heritage in dance <v Speaker>for our geniuses to be alive. <v Speaker>When the historians in the future look back upon this age, <v Speaker>they will focus in on American modern dance and call it one of the greatest artistic <v Speaker>explosions ever to happen in the history of mankind.

<v Speaker>We are also lucky to be here and to be living it today. <v Speaker>It's a great joy and it's wonderful for this American dance festival born <v Speaker>of it to continue serving it. <v Speaker>Bring your feet together. <v Speaker>Correct your posture. Hands in meditation and to yourself <v Speaker>say and dear one thank you for all the riches you've <v Speaker>bestowed upon us. <v Speaker>Thank you. Thank you. <v Speaker>Thank you. <v Speaker>This is financial enterprise brought to you by grants from Elkhart

<v Speaker>County Employment and Training Administration. <v Speaker>Elkhart Private Industry Council. <v Speaker>And by this and other public television stations. <v Speaker>Your host for financial enterprise is Wendell Webb with special guest <v Speaker>Donald. I Hovde, undersecretary, U.S. <v Speaker>Department of Housing and Urban Development. <v Speaker>Hello and welcome again to Financial Enterprise. <v Speaker>I'm Wendell Webb. This is my second week in Elkhart, Indiana, at the National Symposium <v Speaker>on Affordable Housing. On this program, I'll be focusing on the manufacture <v Speaker>of a home. I'll be taking an inside look at the modern manufacturing plant of <v Speaker>all American homes in Decatur, Indiana. <v Speaker>I'll take a look at the construction procedures of Holiday House and Nappanee, Indiana. <v Speaker>Also, I look at the new American neighborhood. <v Speaker>My special guest for this program is the undersecretary of the U.S. <v Speaker>Department of Housing and Urban Development, Donald Hovde.

<v Speaker>Before we explore a manufactured housing, let's see what's happened. <v Speaker>Nation's marketplace this week, 13 week Treasury bills increase <v Speaker>to seven point nine nine five percent, up from seven point nine <v Speaker>five six percent and twenty six week Treasury bills declined <v Speaker>to eight point two oh five percent from eight point two five four percent. <v Speaker>And the rates for savings showed a slight increase this week. <v Speaker>One day saving certificate said banks and savings and loans and.