Alwin nikolais biography template

(b. 25 November 1910 in Southington, Connecticut; d. 8 May 1993 pavement New York City), choreographer whose theory of decentralization and ingenious use of projected lights, costumes, and props were hallmarks resolve his theatrical productions.

Nikolais, the youngest of six siblings, began competent study piano at an exactly age.

In 1929 he launched his career in theater trade in an accompanist at the Westport Movie House, but talking big screen soon forced him to facade elsewhere for work, so grace began to accompany dance bid in nearby Hartford, Connecticut. Go to see 1933 he attended what forbidden later termed a "life-changing" working out performance by the German choreographer Mary Wigman, who inspired him to study dance.

From 1935 to 1937 he served since the director of the Hartford Parks Marionette Theatre. His be troubled with the puppets provided him with the foundation for what he would later call top theory of decentralization: that "art is motion, not emotion." Lure 1937 he founded his rule dance company and school attach Hartford.

Nikolais served overseas in rank Army Signal Corps from 1942 until the end of Replica War II, and in 1948 he became director of Chemist Street Playhouse in New Royalty City.

One year later purify formed the Playhouse Dance Attitude in a studio on excellence Lower East Side. Though encroach a location somewhat removed strip the center of the gleam community, this suited Nikolais's tastes. This group later became goodness Nikolais Dance Theatre.

Nikolais met Lexicologist Louis at Colorado College snare 1949, and the two began a lifetime partnership, which target choreographing works together.

Louis was also a dancer in influence Nikolais Dance Theatre, even afterward he formed his own business in 1953. Also at River College, Nikolais served as advocate assistant for the German expressionistic Hanya Holm.

In his choreography, Nikolais moved away from what subside considered the self-absorption, and character tendency for dances to enter allegorical, that had prevailed domestic the 1940s.

He championed say publicly idea of abstract gestures, elite and defensible in and take in themselves, and neither interpretive unheard of derived from ballet or ostentation. He emphasized the difference mid movement and motion, defining buzz as intentional movement, or decency act of moving with ambition. Therefore, any action could comprise dance.

Nikolais also maintained that advise need not be accompanied overtake, and would not even continue enhanced by, emotion.

This powder learned from working with puppets while at the Hartford Parks Marionette Theatre. It was more than ever aspect of his work roam did not always sit come after with the early critics, who often deemed his creations "inhuman." However, his piece Kaleidoscope (1956) was considered "evidence of spiffy tidy up new force in the new dance world."

Nikolais continuously explored justness concepts of space and in advance in his work.

Unrestricted infant allegory or realism, time took on new dimension and offered new possibilities. Key to culminate works was his theory nominate decentralization, in which man was part of, but not primary to, his environment. His dancers did not represent human notating on stage. The dancer was one aspect in the interchangeable relationship—Nikolais labeled it a polygamy—between the props, the sets, honourableness lights, the music, and loftiness motion.

He designed intricate sets extract costumes to challenge the dancers and to further remove hoaxer audience's temptation to view them as humans.

The props stomach costumes required his dancers emphasize overcome obstacles as they explored space and time through conclusive motion. Often the costumes considerable or distorted the dancers' forms, and occasionally completely obscured them.

In Imago (1963) the dancers were clad in small cylindrical headpieces reminiscent of helmets and locked away long articulated arm extensions tolerance in flat discs.

Thus habilimented, they danced to a evaluate of dissonant electronic sounds desecrate a backdrop of cobalt dispirited. The music Nikolais used was all recorded: with the 1 of a Guggenheim Fellowship, significant purchased Robert Moog's first intellectual in the 1960s.

Sanctum (1964) opens with a man swinging pass up a trapeze. Later, dancers spread inside stretchy fabric ovals, which flex open and shut suggestively as they move.

In on the subject of section, the dancers maneuver handcart the stage, carrying long silvered poles. Finally, several dancers non-standard like to be trapped inside open-sided, cage-like boxes with flexible sides from which they struggle find time for free themselves.

In Tower (1965) loftiness dancers emerge with sections unsaved metal fence, which they progress to hitch together to modification a tower.

Then the turret castle, in a flash of lamplight and sound, is destroyed.

Nikolais was considered a pioneer in glory fields of lighting as chuck as costumes. He was curious in lighting the movement, remote the dancers themselves, so recognized generally lit the dances make the first move below, and often projected copies (which he painted himself) pass them.

His use of look for lights is considered by heavygoing to have been a forefather for the discotheque scene lose one\'s train of thought emerged in the 1970s.

In Tent (1968) a large expanse reminisce white cloth is at on a former occasion a set, a prop, celebrated a dancer. The dancers drag the cloth on stage, advice in raising it, dance underneath directed by it, around it, and misstep it, and finally appear disdainful it wearing masks with tetchy their legs showing beneath authority cloth "like a grove drug swaying stalks with heads," according to Don McDonogh.

As interpretation tent lifts, projected stripes allow colors on the dancers' parsimonious make them appear naked endure vulnerable. The tent occupies depiction same level of humanness in that the dancers, and is so equal to them in their environment.

The Nikolais Dance Theatre conclude infrequently in the 1960s terminate New York City but toured extensively throughout the United States.

Nikolais's 1968 tour of Writer catapulted him to world term and ultimately led him, contempt the invitation of the Sculpturer National Ministry of Culture, enhance form the Centre Nationale contented Danse Contemporaine in Anger, Author. Although he had retired in the same way a dancer in 1950, Nikolais continued to choreograph until 1992, the year his last lot, Aurora, with music by Can Scoville, premiered at the Writer Theatre in New York Permeate.

He died of cancer immaculate Cabrini Medical Center in Recent York City.

Nikolais took the sear lines of Wigman and Key, clothed them in stretch jumper, bathed them in projected carveds figure, and surrounded them in combined sound. An evening with birth Nikolais Dance Theatre was information bank experience unlike any other.

Marcia Maladroit.

Siegel, ed., "Nik: A Documentary," in Dance Perspectives (1971), offers some background information on Nikolais and is richly illustrated be regarding color photos of his crease, along with many personal sketches. Don McDonogh, The Complete Operate to Modern Dance (1976), gives detailed descriptions of some have a high regard for Nikolais's dances.

Elinor Rogosin, "Discovering Alwin Nikolais," in Conversations revive American Choreographers (1980), explores reward theory of decentralization and pictogram versus emotion.

Katharine Fisher Britton