NS: My name is Natasha Simon, and it is February 15th [2017]. We are sitting in the living room of Phyllis Lamhut’s apartment at 225 West 71st Street in New York City. And this is an oral history interview conducted for purposes of recording those people who have been associates and associated with Alwin Nikolais. So it’s technically the Alwin Nikolais Oral History Project. And the narrator of this story is Jim Van Abbema. So I think I would like to begin with just some personal data or information. Tell me a little about yourself. Who you are and -- I’ll let you go from here.
JVA: Well, currently, I am a webmaster, and I am the coordinator of a couple of scientific conferences. One which will appear -- which will occur this spring, in March, is a seminar of three scientists speaking for the New York Turtle and Tortoise Society. I’m also the coordinator of Natural History Week at Camp Bearnstow in Mount Vernon, Maine, and that will take place the last week in June. And I’ve been doing that for about five years, and Turtle Society conferences I’ve been doing since 1985. So, uh, that’s --
NS: That’s the current.
JVA: That’s, that’s current. That is continuing.
NS: Well, let’s, let’s delve into the dark past -- as it were.
JVA: Well, one of the things I think would be -- make sense is to retrace how I got to [the] University of Colorado and to first meet Murray Louis [1926-2016].
NS: Ah.
JVA: I was a biology major and a speech and theater minor at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. I graduated, and then promptly went to Iowa State University to do graduate work in microbiology. I was a little sidetracked with all the chemistry and the math. I should have been in the zoology department. That would have been more fitting for me. But I continued on.
NS: What year are we, --
JVA: We’re talking about graduating from, uh, Morningside College in 1963. And then from ’63 to ’65, I was at Iowa State University. And as a grad student, I was also doing extracurricular work in theater, writing plays and, other productions. I decided that it was time for a change.
NS: From science to arts, or --
JVA: Science to arts. And I followed the then-technical director in the theater department to the University of Colorado, who got me a position as a grad student at the University of Colorado. And my specialty, of course, was going to be lighting, and specifically lighting for dance, because I had been involved in lighting dance concerts.
NS: At Sioux City or --
JVA: At Sioux City and at Ames, at the university -- Iowa State University as well. It was the fall -- well, I went -- in the fall of ’65, I went to Colorado, and it was the fall of ’67 that I was lighting a student concert and Murray Louis visited the campus. He had a three-day teaching and performance residency there. He was not with his company. He came alone. But, uh, he sat next to me, as I was lighting the dance, and gave me special pointers. And --
NS: Like what?
JVA: Well, he said, “You’re making magic there. Don’t destroy the illusion.” That was his, that was his key point then, you know. And he, he said, you know, “Careful of the light levels. Mold them so that you maintain that magic illusion.” And that, that was, that was a special insight to me, because I had not thought in those terms before.
NS: Were you thinking -- if you were to say what your practice had been before Murray said…
JVA: Traditional dance lighting. Light up the sides, and then you, you know, mold the body and -- you didn’t -- you weren’t that careful. [00:05:00] But being more careful in maintaining the illusion gave, gave a sense of purpose to it. Um. I, I met and came to know Murray then at that time. And I had -- was aware of Nikolais, and I was aware of the major dance companies in New York, and I was aware that Murray Louis was also -- had his own company. Um, but it was not until March, in 1968, that Time magazine came out with a full spread of the major dance companies in New York.[1] And they included Cunningham, and Graham, and Paul Taylor, Erick Hawkins, Alwin Nikolais, Murray Louis[2]. And the, uh, treatment of Nik and Murray was pretty substantial. There was one photo, double-page spread, of Somniloquy [1967][3] that showed Nik’s work and the splendor of his work, and that grabbed me, and I said, I want to go work for these guys.
NS: What grabbed you about the photograph that you saw?
JVA: The photo is -- well, hard to visualize, just by talking about it, but the photo is a full-stage, uh, image of dancers being designed in dark blue -- well, kind of psychedelic patterns. And Murray Louis and Phyllis Lamhut [1933- ] as a duet in the center flo-- almost floating in that space.
NS: Mm-hmm.
JVA: Because they were lit separately and apart from the space. And the other dancers were, were there, but they were designed with patterns of light, a very subdued dark blue. Murray and Phyllis were brilliant orange red.
NS: Ah.
JVA: And they, they were figures that were floating in that space. It was a magic picture, magical picture. Uh, so that, that really grabbed me. I said, this is, this is just awesome, you know?
NS: Yeah.
JVA: So I went to visit a friend, a student then at Henry Street Playhouse, Gerald Otte [1945- ]. I went to visit for a week in April, following that March article.
NS: Wow. That’s a quick turnaround.
JVA: And he said, he said, “Well, come to New York, come to New York.” Full week. And airfare was very inexpensive then, so Denver to – Denver airport to LaGuardia was less than $100, so -- roundtrip. So I came to New York, and I visited the Playhouse, and I saw Murray, and, uh, Murray said, “Hey, doll!” as he always would say. And I chatted with him, and I said, “Well, you know, I’m really interested in technical work with dance companies.” And he says, “Well, I know you know about lights. And I know you know about how to manipulate lights, and the technical parts and so forth. Do you know anything about sound and amplifiers and speakers and such?” I said, “Well, sure. I’ve been working with them all the way through.” “Come in and meet Nikolais.” So in I went to the office to --
NS: Upstairs?
JVA: Upstairs, upstairs at the Playhouse. In I went to his office, where I was ready to meet the great -- to me -- the great, white-haired father of American modern dance. And I sat down at his desk, and he said, “Well, Murray tells me you know about lights. You know about dimmer boards and so forth. Uh, tell me what you know about sound.” And I said, “Well, I’ve worked with amplifiers and speakers, and, and so forth.” [He said,] “Are you free tomorrow?” I was. [laughter]
NS: Ah! How wonderful.
JVA: And I went out the next day to upstate New York with the combined Murray Louis and Nikolais company. They were dancing each other’s works. So there were both works on the program at that time. And so I went out to three upstate engagements in April. [Then] I went back to Colorado.
NS: What did you do when you went on the trip upstate?
JVA: Oh, I was, I was hired as a sound engineer.
NS: OK.
JVA: As a sound technician. I was running the sound. Ruth Grauert [1919-2020] and the late Jon Garness [1930-1995] were the other two members of the crew. Ruth called the show. Jon ran our own light board, in coordination with the house light board. And I ran the sound. And that pattern continued through the next two years, where I was charged with the responsibility of the sound, [00:10:00] and I would set it up at the beginning of the setup. And of course I’d worked with Jon and Ruth to wire the lights and focus and so forth, but during the lighting session, I was free to sit out in the house next to Nik and watch him light. And that was my education. That --
NS: I’m going to, I’m going to interject here from Harold Schonberg's article in the New York Times Magazine[4] and I quote from his quote of Nik. “I tried to destroy realism in lighting the same way as I tried to destroy realism in dance. I was not concerned with natural light. I wanted light as an illusion. Lights all over. Lights from the top, bottom, and sides, including shadows.”
JVA: Absolutely. That was all part of making that magic onstage. And one of the, one of the, um, one of the principles that Nik used in lighting was to light the space and the dancer separately. That’s how we achieved this floating effect -- of Nik and Murray -- of, of Phyllis and Murray -- in the middle of this sea of moving dancers in Somniloquy. And he would, he would wash the stage with, with light, and the cyclorama with a pattern.
NS: So tell -- so explain to me, or -- and to the world, what -- when you say “wash the stage” --
JVA: He would -- he used, he used deep, saturated colors to light the floor. He also had a series of floor lights that streaked across the floor to help design the floor. They also lit the dancers, but not principally. They gave, they gave color richness to the dancers.
NS: And by color, you’re talking about gels?
JVA: Yes, dark, dark, saturated colors, for the most part, were in the lights that streaked across the floor. They made -- well, he developed his own technologies for the, for the, the stage light. He called these streaked floors, these lights that streaked across the floor, he called them X’s.
NS: X’s?
JVA: X’s, because they kind of -- completed an X-like pattern across the floor.
NS: OK.
JVA: Um, he called the principal, what are known now as shin-busters -- he called them escorts. And that came from an old stage manager at the Playhouse who called the booms by female names. The ones in the first wing were Barbara and Susie, then going upstage, Sally and Mary. Each one of the booms in each wing had female names from the stage manager. So when Nik added the floor lights that would come across and have an uplifting effect on the dancer, they became Barbara’s escort, Sally’s escort, Susie's escort, whatever, on upstage from wing to wing. There were other lights that used special names, but that’s, uh, that’s the origin of these special -- the special terminology.
NS: Uh-huh. So you had X’s and escorts.
JVA: X’s and escorts. And then, in the, in the beginning Nik wanted some front lights, so he put a pair of lights on the floor, out on the apron, and they became A’s, for apron.
NS: OK.
JVA: Eventually he added an upstage A, which served the same function, in terms of its focus and color, as the apron lights did. And then he had a mid-stage A, and eventually we had A’s in every wing along with escorts. Just serving a slightly different color, tone, to the lights that, that, uh, were illuminating the dancer, apart from the environment.
NS: Now, was that standard, or did you see it evolve --
JVA: It evolved.
NS: -- as the year -- progressed?
JVA: Well, it evolved with me a little bit, when I finally took over Murray’s company two years later. Because I sat next to Nik and was able to learn his approach to lighting -- and that was a -- it was just -- it was accidental, really, because I had nothing to do during the lighting session itself. The dancers -- the dancers’ pace in this -- this is, this is not the normal dance company. As Phyllis will tell you, they didn’t -- they, they were required to mark through every position onstage, and in Phyllis’s day, in costume. Later they were able to carry it, but in costume. And this is a long, tedious period of time for the dancer, but -- dancers -- but in his company, they knew they needed to do this. So during that time, we didn’t use sound. Nik was [00:15:00] concerned about setting the lights in each particular moment of the dance.
NS: So when you’re sitting next to him, are you --
JVA: I’m taking mental notes, and occasionally I talked to him, and he would talk to me about what he was doing.
NS: And what would he say to you when you noticed something -- say you noticed something onstage, and he noticed it --
JVA: Something that seemed wrong or whatever?
NS: Yeah.
JVA: Yeah, I mean, obviously I could make comments, like, “Well, we need to fix that upstage escort, because it’s spilling here.” You know, technical things like that. I would ask him from time to time why he would do certain things, and his answers were always very right on. I mean, there was a purpose to everything.
NS: Do you have a specific memory of one of those interchanges?
JVA: Not, not specifically, no. I mean, just in general, his, his, his, uh, accessibility then, unless it was a terribly tense moment where we had to get through, was remarkable. He was very open and, and happy to teach. So I had that special advantage, which no one else did. And then, when there became enough -- there was enough demand for both companies separately, they began to tour independently, and I was chosen as Murray’s stage manager and lighting director.
So I took Murray’s company out --and -- simultaneously with Nik’s company -- and we toured independently through the early ’70s. Largely, in part, thanks to the National Endowment’s[5] three-day touring residency program.[6]
NS: When you went on the road, you took your own equipment with you?
JVA: That’s right. We basically duplicated Nikolais’s equipment. We didn’t carry as many projectors, but Nik did design a cyclorama -- uh, a cyclorama design for each of Murray’s dances. So we carried the basic, uh, apron -- um, first pipe projectors that lit the cyclorama. We had another pair that -- for special effects. Occasionally we’d do a slot across stage, but not, not as elaborately. But we carried the same complement of lights -- escorts and X’s and A’s -- for the, for the lighting of the floor portion of the complement of instruments. We would depend upon the house to provide overhead lighting and boom lighting and front of house. So we would operate our own board independently --
NS: And you brought your own boards with you?
JVA: We brought our own light board, yes.
NS: When you’re sitting in the house and Nik is working on a new piece --
JVA: That would be –- yes, that would be at the Playhouse or at the Space, uh, during my time.[7] [Nikolais/Louis Dance Theatre Lab] Later, continuing on 18th Street.
NS: Mm-hmm. So that process is obviously different, because he has -- you know, you have instructions on how Somniloquy is lit, or Imago [1963] is lit, or one of the pieces is lit.
JVA: That gets developed all the time. And each one of Murray’s pieces, the ones that he already had, he pulled up lighting that he had done for Murray in the past, for Murray’s pieces. If Murray was doing a new piece, then we’d sit together and Nik would make suggestions and develop it, and --
NS: So, so Nik is involved in Murray’s --
JVA: Initially, Nik -- initially, Nik sets the lights for Murray for each one of his pieces. Then it’s my job to duplicate that on the road.
NS: Now, let’s go back. Now, you’re in the house and you’re sitting next to Nik, and Murray has a new piece.
JVA: Mm-hmm.
NS: And what, what, what happens? Does -- has Nik seen the work --
JVA: Well, yes.
NS: -- out in the studio?
JVA: Oh, yes, yes. Nik -- Murray will have developed a piece with his company. Uh, Proximities [1969], for example, was one that occurred when I was there. And it’s quite bright, of course, but there are moments when, when there’s an atmospheric, uh, illusion taking place. Um. So Nik would have watched Murray’s dance and would have ideas about how to light it, and [00:20:00] we’d go through, section by section, and he would set cues for it.
NS: When you say he would have ideas --
JVA: Oh, well, he would have a vision of what the stage should look like at a given --
NS: And does he say that? Does he talk about it, or does he --
JVA: Not --
NS: -- say, “Let me see” --
JVA: Yeah.
NS: -- “X’s at four,” or...
JVA: Right, right, he would -- that’s more of approach. He would say, “Well, let’s try” -- and he’d call upon the lights to come up and, and -- with, with figures onstage, and work with them that way.
NS: “No, no, no, that’s not what I mean. I want it to be...”
JVA: Mm-hmm, exactly. Right.
NS: “Yes, that’s it. Perfect.”
JVA: Mm-hmm.
NS: Right?
JVA: “Record.”
NS: Uh-huh, OK. OK.
JVA: And so, and so it would evolve that way until it was, until it was finished. And then nothing was written in stone, because on the road, you had lots of variables. Some lights were working better than others, some didn’t -- we, we always had our own lights that were saving us, because that is where the most important lighting occurred. But the coloring of the space, the front of house lighting, the overhead lighting, uh, was better sometimes and not so good other times. So you had to adjust accordingly.
NS: Well, and because Nik is very much the proponent and the, the champion of improvisation --
JVA: Mm-hmm.
NS: -- it extends, naturally, to sound and light as well.
JVA: Absolutely. Absolutely. So that -- so that in, in, in a given situation where you were obliged not to depend much on the extra house lights, we depended pretty much on, on our own equipment. I used to say, “Well, you know, our equipment is the thing. It’s what ultimately saves the show.” And it was true. We -- many cases, we had only our equipment. We had -- in, in an outdoor amphitheater situation, we may have had some high side lighting, or, uh, a modicum of front of house. But it was our own lights that really lit the show.
NS: Do you want to share some war stories?
JVA: Oh. I think of places like, like Chickasha, Oklahoma.
NS: OK.
JVA: Where we arrived onstage, and they had not fulfilled -- they had not even attempted to fulfill the contract. Because we would send out a technical rider with the company contract, specifying a minimum number of lights to have been mounted and wired according to our plot, prior to our arrival. Now, that didn’t always happen. They would be there, hardly ever properly wired, uh, but, but we would -- they would usually have some lights that were -- Chickasha, the poor place had nothing.
NS: Oh no.
JVA: They had no house lights at all, and they were trying very hard to find some around campus. This was a small, very small, extension of the University of Oklahoma, I guess. But, uh, I felt sorry for the crew, but the administration of the school was responsible. So, uh, I said, “Who do I call to talk about this? Because this is a big problem.” And the person in charge, the technical director, so to speak, gave me a phone number on campus, and I called, and I was talking to the president of the college. And I said, “You know, this is a big problem. You were supposed to provide us” -- “We don’t have any lights.” “But you were supposed to get some.” So I was on, I was on the phone to New York, and I said, “Well, what do we do about this?” And basically, we did what we could. And it was, it was satisfactory. Because we had our own equipment.
NS: And the president said to you, “Well, I” --
JVA: President said, “Well, just, you know, just dance.” I said, “That’s not the show. The dance requires -- each piece requires an environment, and in order to create that environment, your part of the bargain is to provide those minimum, uh, list of -- this minimum list of equipment that’s in the technical rider.” He said, “Oh, well, we can’t do that.” I said, “Do you want a show tonight?” I mean, we -- it got a little heated.
NS: Yeah.
JVA: And so I said, well, all right, let’s make -- let me -- you know -- it did not -- the phone call did not end well.
NS: Oh, OK.
JVA: So I called New York, and, and [00:25:00] New York called the president and said, “You know, you are, you are in breach of the contract, and we have every right to cancel the show.” You know, that’s not why we were there. So ultimately, we did the show. It was acceptable. But we had a number of places like this, where --
NS: Some people are dancing in the dark.
JVA: Well, they’re dancing in minimum lighting situations, sure.
NS: Yeah. So actually, when you’re on the road, it’s not only a master class for dancers, but the technical crew of the host is also --
JVA: Yes.
NS: -- learning an awful lot about --
JVA: Oh yes. Oh yes. I mean, there were excellent places that, that we, we would -- I mean, the Zellerbach auditorium [Zellerbach Hall] on the campus of Berkeley, for example, where you couldn’t -- you couldn’t ask for a better place.
NS: Mm-hmm.
JVA: The crew was professional, and everything was done for you, you know. Mexico City, at the Bellas Artes Auditorium [Palacio de Bellas Artes], um, was frightening, because we set up our equipment in the morning, and then we had to take a break, because the Ballet Folklórico was performing in the afternoon. An army of crew came in and struck everything we had set up. Gone.
NS: Ah!
JVA: Everything. And I, I was panicked, and I said, “How are we going to put it back together correctly?” The Folklórico performance ended. Same army of crew came back and set things up perfectly, just the way it was. They even focused it almost exactly for us. I was so impressed.
NS: Oh, wow. [laughs]
JVA: This happened, this happened throughout Europe, too, much -- in the larger houses, where the crew was -- there was a certain pride in the crew’s work, especially in Europe, and especially in, um -- in the United States and large places, not so much. Except for notable exceptions, like I’d mentioned, in Berkeley.
NS: Why do you suppose that is?
JVA: Well. We used to blame the unions because there was a job to do, and it was boring for them. There wasn’t the same pride in their work as there was in Europe. I think that’s changing now. I think there’s pride in being involved in, in, in this art. And it’s regarded more as, as participation in, in the art.
NS: Mm-hmm.
JVA: Many times, the crew was just biding its time and doing -- not being as astute as they could have been. But I think it’s changing now.
NS: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I, I want to go back just a bit, because, to the layperson, when you say, well, they even focused the lights --
JVA: Yes.
NS: -- can you talk a little about what that process is like? When you say what it means to focus a light or -- let’s assume that no one knows what you’re talking about.
JVA: Yeah. There are, there are a number of different kinds of spotlights.
NS: OK.
JVA: There are a number of different kinds of lighting that are not spotlights. You have floods, and you have strips, and you have other means of, of illuminating the stage. The most important light in the -- oh, in the 20thcentury, that was developed, um, maybe ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, was the ellipsoidal spotlight. It allowed for very specific focus and shuttering, so that you could cut the edges of the light to very specific space. The other lights that were most common were what we call a Fresnel spotlight, which is a -- which is a, uh, sophisticated development of the PC spotlight. It’s a plano-convex lens with a, with a clear lens.
That was popular in the beginning, from the early -- when electricity first came to the stage, the first spotlight that was useful, that really was a spotlight, was the plano-convex spotlight with a bulb, a little reflector bind and a lens, which was a big plano-convex lens, which [00:30:00] created a hard, round circle. Couldn’t do any with it. Then the lens became -- the new lens that was developed by a fellow called Mr. Fresnel, or Monsieur Fresnel -- he was French -- he cut the lens into concentric circles and collapsed it. One of the advantages of that was that you could have the light -- the bulb close to the lens, and not have it break. Because it was much thinner. Yet each one of these concentric circles maintained the curvature of the lens. It just was collapsed down. And it gave a softer, much softer, edge spot. This was useful in washing the stage, for painting the stage in different colors, for example. But the most important of our lights that, uh, that lit the dancer were our -- were the ellipsoidal spotlights, both from the booms and from the floor -- our escorts and X’s. We could control them very specifically.
NS: And sculpt?
JVA: Yes, yes.
NS: Essentially, you were --
JVA: Coming in from the side and maintaining a low level on the floor. That is to say, keeping -- lifting the bottom edge of that light off the floor, so that you had this feeling of lifting up the dancer.
NS: Hmm.
JVA: That contributed greatly in separating the figure from the space.
NS: Um. Can I interject another quotation --
JVA: Oh, absolutely.
NS: -- from Nikolais? Actually, it fits perfectly here. Um, where he says, um -- or I think this is Schonberg who says that there’s this [Schonberg is quoting Nikolais] “fantastic extension in communications, man can live today in a multidimensional time and space.” [op.cit.] He goes on to quote [him] that the dancer should therefore “lift his antenna into the multidimensional galaxy to entice the harmonies of the new song, new poetry, new fact.” Schonberg continues that “the way to achieve this is to move in the direction of a kind of abstraction that begins to speak of basic natures.” So that what you’re describing in very technical terms, about how you can lift the light from the stage, is exactly what Nik is talking about, where he says –
JVA: In very necessary terms, yes.
NS: -- that, that the dancer can smash time, space, and sound.
JVA: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
NS: Right? Um, to create something that’s a new aesthetic.
JVA: Yes. And it’s -- the dancers onstage are creatures from another world.
NS: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
JVA: Um, Nik was accused of hiding his dancers, and being, oh, um, mechanical, and not -- but the dancer, even though he or she were -- they were maybe disguised in bags, or in limb extensions, or all kinds of, of costume devices, they were always the energy that made things go. And it was that energy that they -- that he’s talking about there, that made the magic happen. And some of the reviewers were just totally blind to seeing that that magic was built out of the energy from the dancers.
NS: Don McDonough, dance critic, has written of Imago. [in Schonberg, op. cit.]
JVA: Mm-hmm.
NS: He says, uh, “A seemingly microscopic world full of electromagnetic energy, light waves and force fields, through which the inhabitants move in accordance with the pull of various forces.” So...
JVA: I disagree.
NS: OK.
JVA: I think they were their own force.
NS: Ah.
JVA: They took command of this special environment, and they marched, they ran, they bumped into each other, they jumped all over the place, and it was from them that the energy took place. They weren’t pulled by strange forces. They created the force. So there I have a disagreement with the critic.
NS: Well, and I think what you’ve just said is a crucial point to be made when you -- when people talk about Nikolais’s work.
JVA: Mm-hmm.
NS: Um, because of that, that sobriquet that he’s got of being a dehumanizer.
JVA: Yes --
NS: And --
JVA: -- that is the word I was looking for. Accused of being dehu--
NS: And then --
JVA: -- of dehumanizing the dancer.
NS: And what you’ve [00:35:00] just described, however, is that he has en-humanized. He’s made them -- you know.
JVA: And because he creates such an other world --
NS: Yes.
JVA: -- you are in a place where you should not expect someone to come out and do a grande jeté for example.
NS: Uh-huh.
JVA: It’s not -- that’s not what, what this is about. This is about creating this special world of this piece, of this ballet in a unique way.
NS: For some reason, I’m starting to think, is that what made you turn from microbiology to theater?
JVA: Well, one of the things that I -- no, not really, because I was doing both at the same time.
NS: OK.
JVA: And I came back to biology. After -- I toured with Robert Small [1949- ; Robert Small Dance Company], I toured with a couple of other companies after leaving Murray. But I was heavily involved in the New York Turtle and Tortoise Society, which I mentioned before. And so I, I came back, I came back to science. In 1993 the Society co-sponsored, with the Turtle Recovery Program at the American Museum of Natural History, a conference on the conservation and restoration -- of tortoises and turtles. It was the international conference. We held it up on the campus of Purchase -- SUNY campus of Purchase. And there were some 250 attendees. There were 80 speakers. Most of -- many of them from foreign countries. This was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Art-- for the -- no, National Science Foundation -- and a couple -- and the Bureau of Land Management. It had some good private support as well. So I, I was involved in setting up the technical aspects of that because we were in a theater. And then, because I had done a newsletter for a number of years for the Society, I was elected to do the proceedings of that conference. And getting together with some of the speakers and scientists of that event we decided to make it a peer review publication. So four years later and 500 pages later, we came out with the proceedings volume.
NS: Oh, wow.
JVA: So that took much of my time through the ’90s. And I also worked with the Natural History magazine as well -- and was doing their website as well. Anyway, that’s really sidetracking --
NS: That’s post. Well, but it relates to one statement that you made to me earlier, much earlier, which was that one of the reasons that you were attracted to Nik was that he was particularly keyed into what you termed the “science of the art.”
JVA: Yes. Yes.
NS: Can you talk a little about that?
JVA: Early on he was enamored of Albert Einstein and his approach --
NS: How do you know that?
JVA: Oh, he said so. He said he appreciated what Einstein -- and he read Einstein, as a matter of fact. But his approach to dance had a certain clear logic to it. He laid out the principles of space, time, motion, and shape, in a way that made scientific sense. You know? Well, not literally, but it had an appeal that made sense to me from a science background. So that was one of the reasons I was attracted to it. And the magic, of course, that he would create onstage.
NS: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
JVA: And, and the technology behind it was so simple and direct. It was a Kodak Carousel Projector, creating -- 24 of them, as a matter of fact. On occasion, 26 of them. He --
NS: Stop, stop. Back up. Twenty-six projection --
JVA: Kodak Carousel Projectors. In, in some of those -- and, you know, I worked with them. We would -- we modified them so we could control the lamp and the motor separately, so we could dim them in and out, and cross-fade them. This was -- at the same time there were tape machines down on Wall Street, doing, doing shows that were [00:40:00] all not computer-controlled, but tape-recorder-controlled. And Nik and I went down there and we watched some of these shows, and he said, “Eh, I like it manual better.” And I said, “You know what? We can do more than all that.” Now everything is computer-controlled. But what was done there manually helped make the magic live, you know?
NS: Can you explain that? What do you mean by manual? You were --
JVA: Because there was a person operating the movement of slides, the movement of the design, the movement of the tent. I was the first tent operator.
NS: You have to backtrack. You have to explain what the...
JVA: OK. In April 1968, I said -- he said, “Are you free tomorrow?” I went out with the company. May, I went back and closed everything down, and I said, “Sorry,” to my advisor -- “I have a job in New York.” Came back in June. We spent the entire month at the University of South Florida in Tampa, and there Nik created Tent [1968]. He brought his synthesizer along, and Jon -- Ruth was not on this, because she was at camp [Bearnstow]. But Jon Garness and I went to the K-Marts and the variety stores and what was equivalent of, I suppose, Wal-Mart now. It was before Wal-Mart’s time. But, we went into the fishing department to deal with monofilament line, and weights and ways of suspending that tent and making that tent fly. And we --
NS: Did Nik say, “Go to the store”?
JVA: “Go find, go find some stuff to make this work.” So Jon and I went into these stores, and we bought heavy fish line, we bought weights, we bought elastic, and then we found the plastic balls that were -- half-spheres that were put together and painted silver, and dog clips and so forth, and... Frankie built the tent. Frank Garcia [1929-2002] came with us.[8] He sewed the tent together, and it was premiered at the end of June at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
So -- and I became that first tent operator, because we divided -- and it was, it was always different, because the dancing was always different. And so we moved that piece of cloth, that parachute, as it had been referred to, as the dancers varied in their choreography. Because every stage was different, it was slightly different spacing. So -- but the tent had to move with them. But it had its life of its own. It moved on its own as well, and the dancers responded to it. The dancers did what is -- I think gave it the energy. They had -- the tent had to move to become an entity in itself. It did move separately from the dancers, but to me, the dancers were always the energy force behind -- because they brought it in. They marched in at the beginning. They set it down. They laid it out. They connected it to the descending balls and elastic clip-ons. And then, and then they responded -- -- what does the magician do when he conjures up --
NS: Prestidigitation or something.
JVA: Yes. Because with them, the tent rose, and it wasn’t on its own. It was the dancers who were creating this magic.
NS: And you.
JVA: Well, yes.
NS: Because you were --
JVA: I was back there -- making it do this, making it do their bidding, so to speak, yes.
NS: So in essence, what you’re describing, too, is a real collaborative effort.
JVA: It was, yes.
NS: Both initially, in the creation, but also, then, in the performance.
JVA: Yeah. Oh, it’s great fun. It really was. It was a magic time.
NS: How did Tent travel throughout the world, then?
JVA: Oh, it was easy. You just wrapped up the rigging and put it in a box, and you carried it with you. But the rigging became a challenge in certain places, like July 30th in 1969.[9] We were in Baalbeck, Lebanon, and we performed in front of the Temple of Bacchus, in the ancient [00:45:00] Roman ruins in Baalbeck. And it required stringing airline cab-- because there was no fly at all. It required stringing airline cable some 300 feet across from one side of the stage to the other. And our rigging, the loops and so forth that carried the monofilament that suspended the tent, needed to be attached to the cable, and then the cable was pulled up. And it tended to twist, so we were going crazy at -- we spent quite a number of hours in the hot afternoon sun to make it work. But it worked. And again, this was a magic moment all the way through, because the tent clos-- Tent closed the piece. [closed the evening] I think maybe it was Tensile Involvement [full company work, 1968] that opened the show.
NS: Oh God.
JVA: But the show was held up two hours, because so many people were traveling from Beirut, that little two-lane black -- 40 mile, that little two-lane blacktop road from Beirut to Baalbeck.
NS: Wow.
JVA: There was a row of cars, and it kept coming and coming. They estimated the final audience to be 5,000.
NS: Oh, wow.
JVA: Tensile Involvement was the first opening piece, and then during intermission, the festival director came out onstage and made an announcement in Arabic, English, and French. He told us that Apollo 11 had just landed on the moon, and that man had taken their first steps. And the audience went wild. And you could see, just above the towers of the adjacent temple, the crescent of the moon. It was so clear. So that -- that’s a magic moment on tour. Later, in the hotel room, we watched a replay in a tiny little black-and-white [television] -- 17-inch black-and-white -- maybe it was 12-inch, it was so tiny. In the hotel lobby, we watched this murky little replay of the first steps on the moon, gathered around that TV set after the show.
NS: And there you were, performing, in -- how old is that temple?
JVA: Oh, Temple of Bacchus, -- that’s Roman period. Two or three --
NS: Millennia?
JVA: 200 years AD --
NS: It’s like two millennia.
JVA: Yeah, mm-hmm.
NS: Extraordinary.
JVA: Yeah. Phyllis and I were just talking before about that performance, because at the end, the tent is supposed to come down and cover the dancers. But the wind came up, and so the tent blew way upstage! It never came down! And so, as the lights faded, you saw the dancers scampering up the back steps and into --
NS: Ah. [laughter]
JVA: Very funny story. But -- but it made no difference. It was magic no matter what.
NS: Well, and because that environment --
JVA: It was -- an awesome environment, certainly.
[pause]
NS: What was Nik’s reaction at that point?
JVA: Oh, he loved it. He didn’t care. You know, he said, “Oh, wow. Tent flew, didn’t it, tonight?” It flew like a sail. It was up -- the wind -- at the very end -- the show was fine all the way through. And then at the very end, for whatever reason, this gust of wind came in and it blew the tent, and it was like a sail up against the back of the stage. So that the dancers -- well, it’s supposed to come down on them, and then the lights were supposed to go out, and then the tent’s supposed to rise, and then they’d go take bows. And they -- there was no tent coming down. It was blowing upstage. Uh, so they ended up -- we just basically took the lights down as they scampered upstage. It could have been a legitimate ending for the show. But the wind was kind of a deus ex machina.
NS: Yes. Sure.
JVA: Push it up onstage.
NS: Were you calling the show at that point?
JVA: No, I was running the tent.
NS: Running the tent. Oh, you were the tent master at that point. I’d be curious to know what the discussion backstage is about calling the show at that point. It’s like, lights down, lights up, what do we do? How was it --
JVA: Jon said, “Well, all right, fade to black.” And he said, [00:50:00] “All right, you know, fade to black, and then standby for bow lights.” And then what we -- what I did then was to pull the tent up as high as it was possible, which was the usual pattern anyway, because they would take their bows from bright lights underneath it, just forward of it anyway. It was still blowing away like mad, but not as much, because it didn’t have as much cable holding it. So I just pulled it up, and it was fluttering above them as they took their bows.
NS: And I’m sure it was greeted with --
JVA: Oh, they -- the audience was so appreciative. And because of the moment, the moon landing, it was --
NS: Extraordinary.
JVA: Yeah.
NS: I ask this of everyone that I talk with, but it’s sort of the reverse of what is normally the question, which is what did Nik teach you. But it’s, what do you think that Nik learned from you?
JVA: Oh, I don’t know that he learned anything from me. [laughs]
NS: Really?
JVA: He would -- well, he, he appreciated what I did on the road.
NS: Uh-huh.
JVA: Uh, to the extent that he had me on a couple of occasions, when we did large joint performances [Nikolais Dance Theatre/Murray Louis Dance Company] -- I know we did a joint company performance in Philadelphia, we did one at the city center in -- the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and he more or less put me in charge as the stage manager.
NS: Uh-huh.
JVA: Because Nik had his own stage manager, -- but he needed help and support. So, so he appreciated what I did, certainly. Um, whether or not, whether or not he learn-- I don’t think he learned -- he -- Nik could -- no, he didn’t learn anything from me. [laughs] I was just there, and I was useful. The same is true of Ruth over the years. They worked so well together for 40 years.
NS: Your work with Ruth at this point -- at Bearnstow. Can you talk a bit about that?
JVA: Well, I [was] always aware that Ruth ran off [in] the summer to camp, and I knew she’d operated a camp for many, many years, and I had no idea what it was like. But I have a couple of friends who lived in Maine, on the coast, and they had a dog, and they were going to go on vacation. And because I had taken care of their dog when they were on sabbatical in Japan -- I, I had the dog here in New York -- and then they said, “Well, we’re going to go on vacation. Can you come up and take care of Tomo for three weeks?” And so they flew me up to their place on the coast, and I was there with the wonderful German Shepherd they had, and the use of the car. So Tomo and I got in the car and we went off to Camp Bearnstow for the very first time. And this was around 2000. And I had no idea what a magnificent place it was. I said, this is incredible. Sixty-five acres of pristine forest, along 2,400 feet of rocky shoreline, in the most clearest lake you can imagine. You can stand on the ledges, which is a rocky shelf, and you can look down eight, twelve feet and see the bottom in the clearest water. Ruth founded the camp. Bought the camp in ’45, 1945. Started the camp, founded the camp, in 1946, and since that time, when tests have been made, the lake’s water has never tested unsafe for drinking.
NS: Wow.
JVA: So, -- the water, of course, by law is chlorinated and purified. But in any case, there was so much potential there, from a scientific standpoint, I said, “Let’s do something to bring people here to appreciate what you -- what is here.” So five years ago, I started the Natural History Week. And it’s grown so that there are – it’s five days of lectures and woods walks by different foresters, biologists, ecologists. Herpetologists, of course.
NS: Of course. [laughs] We can’t forget turtles.
JVA: Well, you know, two years ago, we had a herpetologist from [00:55:00] Cape Cod, who worked for the National Forestry Service, I believe. [United States Forest Service] And he came in and he did a thorough coverage. And in our little brook, he found five species of salamanders. Now, that’s significant, because most of the time it’s only a little trickle of water. But, when I first talked to him about it -- this is a fellow that’s come – that’s in New York and has given lectures to the Turtle Society, too, so I knew him quite well. I said, “Well, I don’t know how many herps you’re really going to find. We have a snake once in a while. We might -- there are some turtles in the lake, I think, and there’s a frog or two.” And he said, “Well, you’ve got a few more. You have a few more than you expected. Two species of frogs, five species of salamanders. There are two species of turtles.” And he set out a trap, and got a reasonable-sized snapping turtle that he held up. It was great fun, great fun to have him. So there’s turtle people there, too. [laughter] But, but forestry, forest and forestry, and lectures in citizen science, and -- so, it just -- very successful week. And it’s at the beginning of the -- it’s during orientation week for the interns, and they don’t realize, but they get a crash course in ecology when they first come. And they learn what’s really there. Students who take the week workshop are mostly involved with what’s being taught and don’t get out of the forest area much. We encourage them to do so. But the interns now know where -- know what’s out there, and they can take them on trips and so forth. So that, that first week of orientation, they are there, well-equipped.
NS: And I’m also -- you know, I’m, I’m guilty -- I plead guilty to being a kind of synthesizer in the way in which I see things, and that there appears to be this integration in the environment, with the science and your week-long workshop, and the environment that Ruth creates for the arts there, so that it -- there’s this -- it’s an integrated microcosm --
JVA: Yes. Integration is the keyword. There’s always been -- from the very founding of Ruth’s camp, there’s always been a dedication to the -- and respect for -- the sense of place. Because you’re really in the environment. But not only integration with the environment, but integration of people, too. Ruth founded this as a multi-cultural, multi-denominational, totally open and affirming environment for the students. When she founded the camp, there was no such thing as blacks attending a white camp. There was no such thing as Jews attending a gentile camp. They were all separate.
And she was very innovative in creating a multi-cultural and totally integrated environment for the children. For many years, it was a children’s camp. A 10-week children’s camp through the summer, until the ’90s, when it -- and we -- and they still run a two-week day camp for the local area, but then it gradually evolved into a set of week-long workshops for dance, and other, other arts --too. We’ve had watercolor workshops. We’ve had music workshops.
NS: Theater. Yeah.
JVA: And theater, yes.
NS: It also -- when you were talking, too, about Ruth’s vision -- I’m also thinking about Nik’s vision, and that, you know, that -- when you talked about, you know, that, that it was an integrated group, it was, it was based on the ability of a person to, to, to move, to be excited by molecular excitement.
JVA: Mm-hmm. Yeah, [01:00:00] the traditional modern dance, which was mostly derived from Graham, and obsessed with sex -- that turned Nik off, you know. He, he worked with Hanya Holm [1893-1992], who was a student of Mary Wigman [1886-1973], and was largely influenced by the Bauhaus. And the -- this, this sense of structure throughout everything influenced him greatly. And his -- and the, and the, uh, exploration of the abstract was very important to him.
NS: Do you see, do you see dance now? Do you go to --
JVA: Not so much.
NS: -- concerts at all?
JVA: Not so much, not so much.
NS: Do you -- where do you see Nikolais’s work, say, 50 years from now, or, or...?
JVA: Well, I hope that this principle will be carried forward. His former dancers have developed their own -- have pulled from that experience, but have always developed their own take on it. We have -- at camp, for example, we have Sara Pearson and Patrick Widrig. They have their own special take, but they are out of that Nikolais experience. Certainly Peter Kyle [1967- ] is. And certainly so is Ruth.
NS: Mm-hmm.
JVA: She has found another dancer who is a choreographer really, Susan Rethorst [1951- ], who, to our knowledge, has no particular relationship with Nik, but her principles are right on -- right in line.
NS: Hmm.
JVA: And they’re expressed a little differently -- but you can see that that sense of understanding -- she doesn’t use the term shape, motion, space, and, and --
NS: Time.
JVA: -- and time, but she works with them in an amazingly similar way. -- And she understands those principles, so that if you were a Nikolais dancer returning and taking Ruth’s Rethorst workshop you’d be right at home.
NS: Wow. Yeah.
JVA: So, you know, we -- and, and there’s a lot of Nikolais, uh, being taught at camp through these workshops. Other, other choreographers who are there – K.J. Holmes, Robin Gilmore, Claire Porter [1942- ] -- are not Nikolais-derived, but they -- they’re in tune with it and with the camp.
NS: Well, and also what you said earlier is that because there is this, this, this dedication to place --
JVA: Mm-hmm. Yes.
NS: -- that it sounds very much as if they, in their own way, are dedicated to place. And maybe that’s where, um, where we could end it, really, is to say that Nikolais does have a sense of place.
JVA: Oh, absolutely. Sure. For sure. Any final question?
NS: No, that was it. Shall we finish?
JVA: I guess that’s -- I think we’ve covered a lot.
NS: A lot. OK. I’m going to turn it off.
END OF INTERVIEW
[1] Time, March 15, 1968.
[2] Merce Cunningham, 1919-2009; Martha Graham, 1894-1991; Paul Taylor, 1930-2018; Erick Hawkins, 1909-1994.
[3] Time’s caption identifies this photograph as Triptych [1967].
[4] “Choreography, Music, Costumes, Sets, Etc., Etc., by Alwin Nikolais”, December 6, 1970.
[5] Established by Congress in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent federal agency. It is the largest funder of the arts and arts education in the United States.
[6] Developed under the direction of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA, established in 1965), The Dance Touring Program was an important source of touring support for primarily modern dance companies in the ‘60s and ‘70s. By 1985 the NEA stopped its sponsorship of the DTP.
[7] The Space for Innovative Development: Built in 1903, ‘The Space’ was originally the Presbyterian denominational Christ Church. The Samuel Rubin Foundation purchased the abandoned building on West 36th Street in New York City’s garment district in 1970. Its purpose was to support experimental theatrical groups in need of rehearsal and performing space. Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis Dance Companies were the Space’s original tenants and were subsequently joined by the Open Theater, Free Life Communications, the Multigravitational Aerodance Group, Quog, and Space Videoarts.
[8] In Dance Perspectives 48, winter 1971, p.42; Commentary written by Nikolais in summer of ’71 Nikolais referred to Garcia as ‘costume tailor.’
[9] Company performances: July 20, 21: Temple of Bacchus, Baalbeck, Lebanon; July 26-28: Baalbeck Festival, Baalbeck, Lebanon. Gitelman, Claudia and Randy Martin, eds., The Returns of Alwin Nikolais, Middletown 2007, p.258.
