NS: My name is Natasha Simon, and I am sitting in my apartment on December 4, 2021. And sitting opposite me is Marcia Kelly, who is the narrator of her story. I’m just here to attend to the questions and possibly the prompts. It’s the first time I’ve conducted an interview in my apartment, so I’m sort of curious to find out how it works -- how the tape recorder works, and how Marcia works. So, let’s start with a question about your discovery of Nik. How did you discover Nik?
MWK: I discovered Nik in my sophomore year of college at the University of Michigan. The company [Alwin Nikolais Dance Theatre] performed at the university’s large performance auditorium. I was absolutely gob smacked by Carolyn Carlson [1943- ] that this woman could be incredibly facile, dance with such different qualities, could embody a technique that wasn’t read as technical, that was beautiful, and she had found a place in this multimedia event. I just was thrilled. And that was followed by a master class of course which was conducted by Nik. And he was just lovely, and delightful, and encouraging. And there was Carolyn in her leotard and I think maybe Michael Ballard [1942-1991]? He was still with Nik at that time, I think. I’m not positive. Anyway, they were standing in front of the class being demonstrators for this, that, and the other, and I just -- I said, “You know, this is for me.”
NS: Had you been in the Dance Department at the University of Michigan? Were you dancing at that point?
MWK: I was.
NS: Were you studying?
MWK: I was, but at that point – ‘67, ‘68, ’69 -- they did not have dance in any other department than education, i.e. physical education, and it was called a dance concentrate. I had gone to the School of Education to literally work on gymnastics. I wanted to be in the 1972 Olympics. That was a wild dream, but (laughter), I was very good at free-ex -- free exercise -- and I was sent to a dance class, as all gymnasts were, and I came out of that class saying, “Why am I trying to perfect ten forms when there are ten-zillion forms?” And I immediately changed to be a dance concentrate. I, I could not imagine myself spending my time doing so little -- so hard.
NS: (laughs) And so repetitively --
MWK: Yes.
NS: -- over and over and over again.
MWK: Yes, yeah.
NS: Yeah. So that, that’s your freshman year exposure to dance, and --
MWK: Yes.
NS: -- well gymnastics and then dance.
MWK: Yeah, I had danced before that but never formally. I -- in high school, which was also in Ann Arbor, I was part of the modern dance club only so that I could dance in the high school musicals.
NS: Ah!
MWK: So I danced in Unsinkable Molly Brown, and My Fair Lady, oh, what else? There was another one in there somewhere. But [00:05:00] I had never formally ever, other than probably two tap dance lessons when I was maybe ten years old, from a woman who had no other students but me, and I -- it was very strange, it was in Northern Michigan and I told my mother, mmmm, no. (laughs)
NS: How had you gotten there?
MWK: I think because I said I wanted to take a dance class but my mother had been taught how to tap dance by her father.
NS: Oh, okay.
MWK: Years, and years, and years -- when she was my age, when she was like ten. And he taught her --
NS: Was he a hoofer?
MWK: No, but he was a lover of life. He also died very young. But I think that was her concept of dance. If, if I wanted to take a dance class then a flat ball toe, a flat ball toe, one, two, flat ball toe. (laughs)
NS: Were -- was that -- I’m always curious about what happens in the home: what are kids exposed to when they’re growing up?
MWK: I was exposed to very few arts.
NS: Mm.
MWK: We lived in rural Northern Michigan, Traverse City. We had a family resort of fifteen cottages that we -- well, seventeen units I guess we had. Some were single and some were double units. They were little cottages, in a semi-circle overlooking East Grand Traverse Bay. We had 500 feet of beach, we had -- it was beautiful. But I worked there because our family ran it from age four until I went to college.
So there wasn’t a lot of art, but when I was in third grade, Louis Armstrong performed at the St. Francis school auditorium and my parents took me to that. And I just loved it, I thought it was terrific, just terrific. And everyone knew I went because the next day in school I fell asleep in class. (laughter) And I had to tell my teacher why, and you know, it was funny. She let me take a nap in the nurses’ room, but -- my real, my real arts education was Ed Sullivan.
NS: Ah-ha. Who did you -- do you remember who you watched on Ed Sullivan?
MWK: Oh, every--
NS: I mean, I can remember --
MWK: Everybody.
NS: -- like --
MWK: From Topo Gigio, to -- (speaking with accent) “It’s all right, it’s all right,” you know? (laughs)
NS: Yeah, yeah.
MWK: But I saw -- I’m sure I saw some of the early jazz dancers, I’m sure I saw, probably, early Jerome Robbins [1918-1998], some of the more modern ballet and show people, I think, made more of an impression. Though seeing the Dying Swan probably did it all. But yeah, yeah, that was my education. It was really was.
NS: Sunday night.
MWK: Absolutely.
NS: At seven? I think it was seven o’clock?
MWK: I don’t know.
NS: Oh, oh, right, because it’s Eastern Time.
MWK: Maybe here. But, yeah, I -- that was terrific. I loved it.
NS: So then you’re off to college.
MWK: Right, right.
NS: And you’re in the Education Department because?
MWK: There is no dance and arts.
NS: There is no dance -- but you’re -- but you’ve got the gymnastic bug and so you’re taking some -- you’re sent off to a dance class.
MWK: Right.
NS: And --
MWK: And I change.
NS: And then Nik appears the next year.
MWK: Well, several people appeared. I had some varied influences there. The first and foremost influence was my teacher Elizabeth Weil Bergmann [1937- ], who had just graduated from Juilliard [The Juilliard School]. And she had studied quite a bit with Betty Jones [1926-2020]. So Betty visited [00:10:00] several times and I also went to California, got a scholarship from school to do a summer session in Long Beach, and --
NS: What year was that?
MWK: (sighs) (paper rustling) I can tell you somewhere. I think it was probably ‘70 or ‘71?
NS: I have to check because I was in Long Beach in 1971 summer.
MWK: Oh my gosh, that would be too much.
NS: With -- and Betty Jones was one of the teachers.
MWK: Was Ethel Winter there? [1924-2012]
NS: Yep.
MWK: Oh my gosh.
NS: And that’s where I met --
MWK: Alfredo Corvino? [1916-2005]
NS: Alfredo Corvino, that’s where I started studying with Alfredo.
MWK: I studied with Alfredo when I came to New York.
NS: Yeah.
MWK: Yeah. Those three: Betty and Fritz [Fritz Ludin 1941- ] and Ethel Winter. I liked Ethel Winter. I had -- well, anyway, back to Liz Bergmann. She taught us Graham, Limon, Horton –- Alvin Ailey toured -- came by, taught. Betty Jones taught. The Graham Company came, Martha did not teach, but somebody taught. [Martha Graham 1894-1991; José Limon 1908-1972; Lester Horton 1906-1953; Alvin Ailey 1931-1989]. We had a -- quite a varied and --
NS: It’s a full menu.
MWK: It was a nice menu, it was a -- it was wonderful. And I, I really felt Nik’s freedom of movement, and the freedom of how you approached your body, and how you qualified what you did, was not a duplication of someone else. And at that young age, that was the distinction really that I saw and I just -- I thought it was terrific. My favorite word, terrific!
NS: Terrific! When you, when you say that he was -- I think your words were: “gentle?”
MWK: He was, he was very gentle.
NS: So his affect as a teacher at that point, that you remember him as a teacher was someone who -- fill in the blank -- was someone who when he, when he’s standing there and presenting -- either in technique or in an improv class, an improvisation class with you -- what are some other key words that you would use to describe him?
MWK: He paid attention to the students.
NS: He did.
MWK: He saw. And because he could see what was happening with individuals and with the class as a whole, he would encourage us in different ways. You know, “Think about it this way,” or -- it -- I rarely remember in the early days him saying, “Don’t do this.” It was more like “What if,” or “Let’s try,” or --
NS: “Suppose we do.”
MWK: -- “What it would feel like. What would it feel like if you’d, if you really put more energy in?” Or -- you know, it was a kinder, gentler way of teaching rather than having the sense that you, you had to be like him.
NS: Mm, mm-hm.
MWK: Or you had to fulfill a particular technical aim -- though we were -- but I think he recognized the, the individual approaches to fulfilling a desired quality. Like how I would do it would be differently approached than how you would do it.
NS: Mm-hm.
MWK: It’s something in, in your integrated wholeness of self would come at it in a different way. And I really thought he saw that and appreciated it.
NS: And, and it fit into your own psychological makeup as well.
MWK: Yeah, because I had no technical experience. I mean, from the year zero I didn’t have technical experience. I learned quickly how to be technical. I understood line; I understood a lot from gymnastics. [00:15:00] But, I used it -- I think I used it differently than some people who were peers. They came at it from a different place.
NS: Gymnasts or dancers?
MWK: Dancers.
NS: Dancers. When you -- so there’s Nik in his master class with Carolyn and maybe Michael and you left that class exhilarated.
MWK: Yep.
NS: And then you decided at that point?
MWK: Well, time would progress a bit. I was in school. I came from a family with a long tradition of women being educated, being educated and being able to be self-sufficient, and there were -- whether it’s said or not, I felt the expectation was that I needed to get my degree so I could teach because that was something that would give me security. But at the same time I was -- in my naiveté and my youthful energy -- I was flying through this stuff in school. And I think it was at the -- it was at the end of my junior year.
NS: What year are you talking?
MWK: (sighs) It would have been ‘69.
NS: Mm-hm.
MWK: ‘69, ‘70. The head of the dance department, Dr. Esther Pease [1911-1988]:she came from a long line of movement educators, you know: think University of Wisconsin, think that whole strata of teacher -- she actually asked if I would ask my parents to come in and have a conference with her. She encouraged them to allow me to go to New York because she felt that’s what I needed to do. And that left me without a year of college to finish my degree. But I had an aunt who lived in New York on the Upper West Side and her daughters were all in college so there was room in her apartment, and you know, bless my parents. My father especially. He also had connections. He was a Midwestern boy –- Normal, Illinois, you know -- (laughter) but he was a community recreation graduate of what was at the time some early form of CCNY. He left Illinois to go to New York to get his master’s degree in Community Recreation and he understood the importance of using your body and living in your body. So he and, he and my mother actually spent their first year of school-- of their marriage in New York.
NS: This was after World War II?
MWK: Yes. Uh, no. No.
NS: This is earlier.
MWK: This is earlier. So that’s another part of this story that is interesting. It all kind of dovetails in, but long story short, I went to New York. I went at the end of the school year, I had the summer. I took classes with whoever was -- I just wanted to feel like what it felt like. And I was frustrated because I couldn’t take classes at Nikolais [Nikolais/Louis Dance Theatre Lab] because their semester started in September. So I was really at a loss. Thank goodness my aunt was a lovely person and I could speak to her. But she said, “Marcia, you should just do what you want to do. You came here to do this, you should do what you want.” And [00:20:00] so, here it is August, the end of August, and I go down to 36th Street -- it’s the first year that they were at The Space.[1] They had moved from Henry Street, Nik and Murray, and they were at The Space. And I walked up to the steps. On the outside and above the steps it said Christ Church House. Christ Church House is where my father was recreational director after he graduated from school and my parents -- up in one of the upper little rooms that used to be the snack bar – FODA - was their apartment. So this, this circle occurred in the myth of our family, of my parents living in Hell’s Kitchen. I just knew I had to do it. Well, I go in, so I go in, and there’s an elevator there and there’s this --
NS: It’s like pulling the sword out of the rock. It’s like -- (laughter)
MWK: There’s this elevator operator, you might have remembered him, but he was this very old guy. And I said, “Have you been here a long time?” And he said, “Yes,” and then I said, “My father was here a long time ago in 1930-whatever it was.” He remembered my father. So, uh, you know --
NS: I’m going to cry.
MWK: I’m, I’m sitting, in myself thinking, okay. So I go up the stairs and I see this big studio. And I -- there -- I had to go up these other stairs to go up to Betty’s office.[2] And that was my first contact with the Nikolais School. And she was lovely and wonderful, and she said, “You know, you’re really lucky because I have one spot left.” So I signed up and in September we started. My main teachers were Phyllis, [Phyllis Lamhut 1933- ] Carolyn, a little bit of Bev Blossom [Beverly Schmidt Blossom 1926-2014], but she was on her way back to Illinois [University of Illinois] at that time. She came a couple of times. But it was mostly Phyllis. Nik was on tour, Murray Louis I had never seen before in my life. I didn’t know who he was, I had no idea who he was or anything. He was on tour.
And probably around November of that year, end of October, early November, Murray came back from tour and he was having a change over. Lynn [Lynn Levine Rico 1946- ] had to have a foot operation, two other people were leaving. Anyway, Phyllis had this [pause] guy come and watch class; I didn’t know who this was at all. He watched class. And after the class he came up to me and he, he said -- no, actually I was on my way up the stairs to see Betty after the class and Murray was standing on the stairs. And he said, “You’re Marcia, right?” and I said, “Yes, I’m Marcia.” He said, “How old are you?” I said, “Twenty-two.” He said, “Do you have a job?” I said, “I have a part-time job making belts with one of the people who was a student at the school.” He said, “Do you want to dance?” I said, “Of course I want to dance. Yes, I want to dance!” And he said, “Okay, come to rehearsal next Monday.” I didn’t know Murray, I did not know his repertory, I had no idea, no idea whatsoever. And that started it. It was a quick curve.
NS: That’s like, wow. (laughs)
MWK: It was a quick learning curve.
NS: Quick learning curve but also it sounds so almost preordained. It’s spooky.
MWK: It’s very strange. And, you know, in my naiveté I had enough sense to just follow it. And I remained quite naïve through much of my time with Murray. Probably --
NS: You were with Murray for about four years? Three years? [00:25:00]
MWK: Four.
NS: Three, four years?
MWK: Four. I left in the middle end of ‘75. So from ‘71 to ‘75.
NS: Were -- and those were, those were heady days. Uh --
MWK: I think it was really the best part of Murray’s career because he was still dancing with us. He was in his prime. The work that he was doing was various, he experimented with things. But for us, we had the opportunity to dance with him. Which was just such a gift. My first partner was Murray. And he did not want to rehearse. (laughter)
NS: Yeah, okay.
MWK: So I premiered with the Murray Louis Dance Company in Chicago. My parents in Michigan and all of my relatives were there.
NS: In 1970?
MWK: January of ‘70. No, maybe it was January of ‘71. Yeah. Anyway -- so Proximities [1969] was one of the pieces so I’m paired with him in all of the group sections and it was like really learning how to improvise with, with Murray. I wouldn’t know for sure how he was concentrating on things that night and I sure better be able to get up to that lift myself if I had to. (laughs)
NS: Because -- and here’s an interesting development: if someone were to be reading a transcript or looking at a piece of choreography -- by its very nature, when it’s choreography -- and that Proximities is performed in Illinois, and in Michigan, and in Wisconsin, and then goes down to Biloxi, and over to Jacksonville -- it’s the same piece of choreography. However what you’re saying is that Murray had a particular way of performing choreography that involved improvisation.
MWK: Only because he didn’t like to rehearse. But yes, it’s true, what I learned from him, which -- well, first of all, I was absolutely willing because I had been a gymnast. I wasn’t afraid of any of this stuff at all, of being lifted, of being thrown around. I didn’t -- I mean, I could go with it. But Murray didn’t like to be bored.
NS: Uh-huh.
MWK: So he would approach things differently and I had to go with it always to, you know, not have things fall on the floor. So, so it was always fun and interesting for me to actually experience that variety of approach because I mean, sometimes he, he -- the last thing he wanted to do was lift somebody and do this part of the piece -- except he was such a consummate performer that he would never let himself get that way.
NS: Yeah.
MWK: And not really, he couldn’t live that way within a piece, but his energies were different, and I learned how to understand the quality of his energy, and I could tell what was coming, and where his attention was.
NS: That’s a certain skill though, that I don’t know a lot of people have. I mean, people have that skill, some people do and some people don’t because they’re not able to read people’s energies and things. But you can. That’s, that’s a skill that you have.
MWK: Yes. It also allowed me to be less afraid because, you know, this was sort of a terror-stricken -- that’s way exaggerated. I shouldn’t say terror-stricken. I can’t say I was [00:30:00] without fear because this was a new world of performing on a level that I had never ever performed before in my life. And here I’m premiering with this company, with the head of the company as a partner in this dance. I mean, we were close. There were only --
NS: There were six of you.
MWK: Six of us! I mean -- it was very close and I had, I had to -- in my own self -- take responsibility for the choreography at a very early time in my development as a dancer, which was a gift because I learned not only about how to read energy but how to understand how one qualified their energy throughout a piece and throughout an evening, and how one colored and actually learned to speak with one’s body and one’s energy so that the choreography could come to life. Because that’s the only way I could figure it out.
NS: Uh-huh.
MWK: I couldn’t figure it out any other way than that. And as a result, I think I had maybe a more foundational perspective of time, space, shape, and motion -- not as an intellectual kind of extrapolation into movement, but I -- it helped me define all this stuff I was feeling and figuring out and trying to understand what it was that I was communicating and doing, because --
NS: You -- it sounds like you were also less encumbered by the thing, you know.
MWK: Yes. Yeah. And in a way I -- it was because I was naïve in many ways and I was really quite clearly forced into myself to understand it. You know, I couldn’t be clueless.
NS: Mm-hm.
MWK: I was too responsible a person to be clueless. (laughs)
NS: Well it’s not without discipline.
MWK: Yeah.
NS: I mean, you’re describing yourself as someone who -- it’s all very new and, and fresh, but it’s not without your sense of discipline and input and responsibility.
MWK: Right, right. But as a result of that, and also a result of being in Murray’s company with so few of us, and doing so many Artists In Schools, touring, you know, impact at that time, but I taught early on and I took to it like a fish.
NS: Teaching?
MWK: Yeah. I loved teaching.
NS: Why do you say that? I mean, when you say that you took to teaching, what’s the -- I mean there are people who have gifts as a teacher and then there are people who study methodologies of teaching.
MWK: Pedagogy.
NS: And Pedagogy. And then there are people who learn how to teach. So who are you as a teacher?
MWK: I was -- I wanted the class to, as a whole, have an experience. It’s experiential. So going forward and backward is an experience. All of, all of this stuff is an experience. So if it’s an experience then what can one offer that might be a hook for a student to identify and understand what they’re experiencing? And it’s a very creative form, teaching is, if one is interested in it in, in a way that has to do with -- I don’t know, is there -- maybe you know a word that describes experiential development. [00:35:00] It’s growth, it’s -- I don’t know what you would call it. It’s, it’s an increased awareness, it’s an understanding of what you’re feeling and sensing, and not feeling like sad, happy, what --
NS: What is the sensate --
MWK: Yeah, what are the pressures of gravity? How does it feel when it’s centripetal or centrifugal? What does it feel when your foot hits the floor hard or when it’s really soft and quiet? So that’s where I live and that’s what was so interesting to then try to communicate that.
NS: And also to have landed in a particular philosophy of movement and motion that allowed for those questions to come up.
MWK: And listening to Hanya. [Hanya Holm 1893-1992] Hanya talking about --
NS: -- and Hanya’s also teaching --
MWK: -- bombs going off, you know!
NS: But Hanya was also teaching at that point.
MWK: She was. Yeah, every week she was teaching. And, and really that and viewing – not dancing in -- but viewing Nik’s work, because, Nik’s work as a dancer is so different than Murray’s work as a dancer. In Nik’s work you’re part of an ecology of light, sound, theatrical space, the color of what you’re in, the, the quality of the costume -- it’s all a very different theatrical and performance experience than with Murray. Which really had to do with nuance, timing, very, very subtle aspects of choreography that we had to learn from Murray’s body in a way. When he choreographed, sometimes he didn’t remember the phrases that he just did, we were there to remember them, and then we would have to --
NS: You were the video camera.
MWK: Yeah, then we would have to flesh them out. Whereas in Nik’s work he -- I mean, many people have said you’re a different color on his palette, you know, he had different types of dancers, but I never quite saw it that way. I saw it more that we fit into the dynamic of that ecology and if he was working on a solo with you, whatever you had to offer to fill out that gestalt was what he wanted.
NS: Let me ask -- I want to stop you there -- the phrase you used is whenever he was working on a solo with you.
MWK: Right.
NS: So tell me about that process with Nik.
MWK: With Nik?
NS: Yeah. I mean, I’m assuming you were referring to Nik at that point.
MWK: Yes. Yeah.
NS: So what is it like when you’re in the studio with Nik?
MWK: Alone?
NS: Alone and he’s working on a solo.
MWK: Well it was interesting for me and maybe for him, I don’t know. But he had seen me dance with Murray, so he had a pretty good idea of what I was capable of or, you know, what kind of a tone of dancing I had or I don’t know, I don’t know how to describe it, but what characterized, I guess -- so anyway, he was trying to figure out in the first, especially the first solo that he did was in Aviary [1978], and he started out --
NS: You had joined the company for Aviary.
MWK: Right.
NS: And that’s 19--
MWK: ‘80, no, ‘78 and ‘79 or something.
NS: ‘79 or ‘80.
MWK: So he gave me a bunch of one-legged, [00:40:00] very extended, very long and tall-type-person -- movement to try. And he would do it, he would do part of it. He might do it small, but he would do it. And then he would say, “No, no, no, no, that’s Carolyn, you’re not Carolyn.” And it took him a while to figure out where I fit into the spectrum of, uh, I don’t know, the, the tangible thing that he could pull out for the piece.
And I think he, he finally did it by Mechanical Organ [1980], by Mechanical Organ he --
NS: That’s “the doll with the broken” --
MWK: “The doll with the broken neck,” yeah. That, that, that was the -- probably the best thing I ever did for Nik.
NS: But what you’re also pointing to -- and this is something that I don’t know very many people have explored this before -- which is a choreographer who is working with a dancer, and has a vision, and works with a specific person, that there’s an arc to that growth as well as the growth of a dancerwho’s being worked upon.
MWK: Right.
NS: And that if you’re a dedicated choreographer, then you’re always in dialogue with yourself to get to that specific person that you are -- meaning you, Marcia -- as opposed to you Nik’s vision of a dancer.
MWK: Right. It’s, it’s like: Suzie McDermaid [Suzanne McDermaid, 1947- ] could be one of the funniest people on stage, but I think Nik gave her the opportunity to be one of the deepest performers on stage as well. She has a --
NS: Which is a conscious decision on his part.
MWK: Well he -- in Tribe [1975], for example, she has a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful solo that she worked on so, so, so hard. And it’s deep. It’s a very deep solo.
NS: In what way?
MWK: [pause] I think it’s probably -- I mean, you can be very serious, a very serious comedian, you can be a very serious comedian. But she used her timing skills, and her impulse skills, so beautifully, so primally, and really… You know, when you see someone who has sort of fulfilled a role in the company as a certain kind of character; and it’s easy to overuse that if you are a choreographer. He was able to be very broad with her and it was a beautiful thing to see, really beautiful thing to see. I think that, um, it’s hard with someone, you know -- like Suzie, or like Robbie [Rob Esposito [1948- ], or, even like Jessica -- they were kind of categorized as either being long and loose, and tall and languid, or a very tight little firecracker, or, always ebullient, or -- I, I think that if one was serious as a dancer that you were given the opportunity to explore more.
NS: In fact you might even demand it of the choreographer as a performer.
MWK: Eh, I don’t know, it, it might -- no, [00:45:00] I, I wouldn’t demand it.
NS: No, I’m not talking about actually going up to Nik and saying, I want blah, blah, blah. No I’m saying that the, the energy with which you approach choreography demands --
MWK: Well yeah, it might, it might just open doors to exploration is how I would think of it.
NS: Mm, mm.
MWK: I just feel so fortunate that I worked with Murray and Nik when they were younger, when they were healthy, when they were still fairly involved. It was after I was with Murray that he started having auditions or whatever. Really I never had to audition, though when I went to, into Nik’s company, he had auditioned some people to be in that company. But at that point I was an elder. (laughter)
NS: So go back to the solo that he’s working on with you for Aviary.
MWK: For Aviary.
NS: And he’s -- and he said, no, no, no, that’s Carolyn -- then he finds you, right?
MWK: Well I, I think he didn’t even really find me in that one, but he knew, he knew what – the kind of dynamic he wanted and he figured out how to get that dynamic to happen. I mean this was really early on and it was a pretty strange solo. I felt a little bit like a frantic hen. (laughs) Or I’m not sure exactly, but it’s, it’s a funny little solo, I’ll tell you that. (laughter)
NS: What words did he use to help you along --
MWK: Oh, I can’t remember.
NS: -- or to ask of you or -- you know --
MWK: I don’t remember. I don’t remember. But if you did something he liked he said, “Yeah, do that! Do that again, do that again!” He would set up problems: go from here to there with, you know, four different places on the floor and have your leg always doing this all the time.
NS: Always pumping up and down, up and down, or something.
MWK: Or something like that. You know, there would be a challenge and either you would fulfill the challenge or you would not. (laughs) But that was just part of it, that’s how he did it. So you didn’t feel badly because you did a tour jeté incorrectly.
NS: There is no such thing in the Nikolais universe.
MWK: There’s no -- there’s nothing like that there so you just had to do the best you could to figure -- help, help him figure out how you as a dancer could best fulfill what he needed.
NS: In Aviary, cause I know I wanted to ask you about that piece because of the discussion in one of our legacy meetings[3] about the process -- and that you had said, (and I think I’m correct in saying) that what was fascinating for you about Aviary is that it had so many different elements to it in, in terms of choreography -- in what you had earlier just now described as the ecology of a Nikolais piece -- and I think that’s your first experience with Nik.
MWK: Yes, he had -- an improvisational jazz group who was creating a score for him simultaneously along with the choreography. This was all in Wisconsin in a different place than his home studio. And he had to develop everything for this piece there within a fairly tight length of time -- I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it wasn’t a long time. And it was a lot it was a lot, and I thought it was just wonderful.
NS: When you were in the studio and he’s choreographing Aviary [00:50:00] are the musicians there as well with you?
MWK: Uh-uh, no.
NS: No, so they’re working --
MWK: Not till later, not till he’s -- he might work with them in different -- like this is a, you know, “Use your elbows with very quick and tight jabbing sounds,” something like that. Or there were different qualities of sound that they were working with. But then when he’d have a section finished, he would put us together with the music that was being sort of improvised and maybe had a little bit of form to it. But then he would see how it really worked with that section, let’s say it was a section of a quartet or something. And it worked or it didn’t work. Or he would ask them to do something else, or to tone it down in this part, and make it louder in -- he was like orchestrating his whole thing.
NS: Orchestrating the whole --
MWK: The whole thing.
NS: And he has yet to put you in costume or light you yet.
MWK: He has experimented with some lighting because we had --
NS: At that point.
MWK: -- we had a whole section that had to do with shadows behind a scrim with us jumping into the air and disappearing into the air as shadows, silhouettes, so we had that section that was -- he kept working on that. And we had these cube -- these Plexiglas stools that we kept having to alight on. We had to alight and hold shapes like land on one foot and hold shapes (laughs) and the lights would move around and, you know, there was a lot going on in that piece. (laughter)
NS: Did he say, “Here are some stools, I want you to –-“
MWK: No, he said, “Here are the stools.”
NS: He said here are the -- you walk in and there are stools.
MWK: “Stand on them, with one leg, and do some -- do this –-“
NS: And arrive there.
MWK: -- yeah. “Now, now, you do these few steps here and then you jump up and you’re there” -- and you hold it, and you’re holding it, and you’re holding it, and there’s one foot, and you can’t see anything. And the -- first of all it’s a Plexiglas stool, so the surface of it is, you know, there are a lot of sensory things that are going on all at once so in order to succeed at this and not be a brick, you had to figure out how your body could fulfill what he’d want. Usually it meant by really -- it meant to relax -- it meant that you had to relax within form. Rather than hold form you had to relax within form. Which, is sort of an oxymoron, but it’s --
NS: Well an oxymoron yes, but also it takes another oxymoron to get there, which is you have to have a certain sense of adventure and daring to do that.
MWK: Right. And not fall apart after three hours of doing it. (laughs)
NS: Which is a hard task.
MWK: Right. Right. It’s very hard.
NS: Did people fall apart?
MWK: Ahhh, people would always have dips: like, “I can’t do this anymore”;, like, “This is too much for me to do right now,” and you wouldn’t really say that out loud, you would just kind of suck it up, and figure out how to do it, and do it. But it’s hard. Especially because there were people watching every step of the way, whether it was students coming through -- this was in the university so one was always --
NS: So there’s the added dimension --
MWK: Yeah.
NS: -- of it being a public --
MWK: Observed and filmed. It was being filmed so you couldn’t go below a certain level if you’re being filmed. No marking of anything. It wasn’t horrible by any means, but it, it was hard.
NS: It’s a challenge.
MWK: It was hard.
NS: It was hard to piece to figure out. And did you then once it was -- I used the term advisedly, but when it when it was codified, or in some way, then you took it on the road.
MWK: We did. And it only toured a bit. [00:55:00] It didn’t tour for terribly long. He took certain sections out of it as part of a divertissement. But yeah, I don’t think it was one of his favorite works. Honestly. I think it was something that he did and, they had a grant to do it, and he did it, and it was a useful piece.
NS: And you were new at that point in the company. Were there other people who were new?
MWK: Yes there were, there were several who were new. I couldn’t tell you exactly who would be new. Jessica was there, she was there, Lynn was there, Dale [Dale Thompson] was there, of course Gerald [Gerald Otte 1945- ] wasthere. I’m trying to think of the other men. There was kind of a -- I don’t remember if Nusha [Nutia Martynuk 1953- ] and, uh, what’s his name, [Carter McAdams 1951- ] anyway, yeah, it was, it was a fairly new company and many of the people were new. Dale was fairly new.
NS: So his process, Nik’s process is also new. When you listen to or read the oral histories of the originals, where he has the time to work on a piece or to just explore because it’s a laboratory, it’s not, --
MWK: Yeah, this was high pressure for sure. But, when you think about, you think about how much he had to control or try to grab hold of and control to serve a vision that was morphing into being… He had certain things that he had ideas about and then he had things that he wasn’t sure how you would do it. I mean, that’s just an amazing undertaking, especially that he had -- was not doing the score himself because usually he had on reserve, elements of sound that he would mix and put together to make what he would need, but he had this group of musicians to deal with, which is another big chunk for him at that point.
NS: Not the -- I’m thinking to the time that people described that -- a very specific arc of time in which he was in Florida to create Tent [1968]. But I believe he used his own music for that.
MWK: Yes, that is his own.
NS: So he had more control of the entire environment at that point --
MWK: Right.
NS: -- for that piece. Which isn’t to say that Aviary wasn’t something he undertook because it was also a challenge for him, you know.
MWK: Oh yeah. Yeah, ceremony of bird people. But it was interesting. You should know, though, that this was not my first experience working with Nik. Because back in ‘75 Nik was on tour in South America and Jessica was sick, so Murray’s company was off, and they sent me down. And also one of their technicians was sick. Jessica was sent home, I don’t know if the technician was. Well, anyway, long story short, I would, in rehearsal, learn a section or two of a piece, we would light the piece, [01:00:00] I would see where I would need to be, but I was also running a light board.
NS: Oh Jesus.
MWK: So I literally would be in costume, run the sections that I did not know yet on the light board, enter with them [the dancers] with the sections that I knew. I learned pretty much all of the repertory that was on that tour in that way. The techie came back, thank goodness. (laughs) But I was getting -- you know, I was getting light cues, and doing this, and you know, it was, it was quite an experience. And that I held myself together on that, maybe Nik remembered that. (laughs)
NS: Can I, can I say as an editorial that you have an extraordinarily facile, facile mind and body, to be able to, to pick up the choreography and the light cues.
MWK: Beth Bagnold [Lisbeth Bagnold 1947- ] and Gerald would work with me when possible and then I, I don’t even remember who was the head lighting guy at that point. But it was, it was just wild, it was wild.
NS: So did you, -- let me go back for a second, you got a call -- obviously Nik and Murray are talking on the phone every night or comparing notes and figuring out what to do -- and then, “Yeah, Nik – we’re off.” And Nik says, “Well if Jessica is sick, who can I get? Send me somebody.”
MWK: Right.
NS: And Murray says, “Well Marcia is a very quick learner.
MWK: (laughs)
NS: I’m sure that’s what he said.
MWK: Gosh. It was --
NS: Had you -- did you have your shots by then? Did you have to --
MWK: Oh yeah because --
NS: You had been abroad too I think.
MWK: -- Murray, Murray had been all over the place so, yeah. Anyway, so that was my first introduction to dancing with the Nikolais Dance Theatre. So yeah, it was wild.
NS: That’s in ‘75, right?
MWK: And it wasn’t till ‘78 that I started with the company as a whole. But I was -- it was, you know, I think back on it and I just, I’m in utter awe (laughs) of the fact that I even imagined it -- that anyone imagined one could do that but I’m sure it’s not so trying.
NS: It also helps if you’re very -- if you’re schooled, if your premise is in the value of improvisation as a principle that guides you.
MWK: Right. Well, you know the interesting thing about improvisation that I think I -- you bring up a good subject because when one’s learning a piece there’s a certain amount of accuracy that is required. That’s a given. Yet, in Nik’s work, you can actually -- I -- well at least this is how I managed it -- one can understand sort of the (I’ve used this word before), the geography, the landscape of the piece. And if you know what your path in the landscape of the piece is, or what the geography of that path is, and you trust your body enough to be able to try to realize that, it’s a different way of thinking about improvisation.
NS: What way?
MWK: Because your body is [01:05:00] conforming to something that already exists somewhere in time and space but that you may not know how to do, but you fulfill it because you know what it has to be. So I learned to trust that. I’m probably not describing it very well and it sounds a bit esoteric… It’s like when you’ve learned a piece and you’re reviewing it to make sure that you have all the -- and you’re doing it in your mind, and your body is partly doing it with you just so that you are actually rehearsing the piece in that way -- that rehearsal wasn’t of your whole body. And to allow your body to fulfill that, even though your body really doesn’t know it yet.
NS: Hasn’t been there.
MWK: Right. Right. You have to be able to trust its ability to figure it out and that then goes into gestalt. Okay, so the gestalt of the piece has a specific quality, it has a specific timing, it has a specific weight and measure to it that, that is something that one could describe. But then as a dancer you have to make it real, you make it exist in time and space, so that once you start to figure out what the gestalt of a piece is, you begin to have a little bit more freedom in your body to explore how to qualify it even more clearly within that gestalt. And that’s another aspect.
NS: Which is the framework. Which is the ecology.
MWK: The seed, the bloomed seed. It’s the fruit of the seed. I often think about improvisation as that, okay? So the ecology of an improvisation: you have five people standing in space, waiting for the first move, whatever that is, for the first impulse of motion, or whatever it is, whether it’s an atmosphere that’s being created. When you start getting those clues as to what is forming, what the gestalt is that is forming in this improvisation, then you have the freedom to let your body conform to what’s forming, and to explore within it. It’s not like you’re set out there in the desert, you know.
NS: Yeah, if you give yourself over to that gestalt, then the choices you make are going to be integrated into the whole.
MWK: Well especially if you’re paying attention. If you’re paying attention to the other people and the people who maybe aren’t quite sure what the gestalt is yet and, and maybe you’re having an interaction that is pulling it one way or the other, it’s a very fluid kind of thing that’s going to be happening. But nothing is set in it. But the ones that you see, the ones that you -- when you actually observe an improv-- that’s why I think teachers are so smart to divide up classes and have them watch, and then do, and then watch, because you can see when something begins to become something, when an improvisation becomes something.
And I think that that idea of becoming something is absolutely integral to choreography. If you’re choreographing and you have an idea, and you have this sense of something that you want to create, you’re coming at it from a different [01:10:00] direction, you’re coming with a something, not having it turn into something, you’re obliged to explore what that something is, and that’s improvisation with a different slant.
NS: I’m going to jump ahead forty years to ask you (unfortunately COVID interrupted it) -- but I do believe I’m not taking liberty in saying that the piece of choreography you were working on with Jessica, and Tito, and Peter, [Jessica Nicoll 1959- ;, Alberto del Saz (Tito) 1960- ; Peter Kyle 1967- ] has all those -- what you’ve just described in terms of choreography and improvisation -- is what you ended up doing a lot of exploration -- or not?
MWK: I did, I did. Well, first of all, these are consummate performers. They carry a great deal of dance wisdom with them and I felt like all I had to say was “What if you tried (laughs) duh, duh, duh, what would it look like?” or you know, I could use my imagination in a way that was I would say very nuanced, very nuanced, and they are all able to perform in a qualitative way that is extraordinary. So how do you validate that?
NS: Mm-hm.
MWK: Rather than see that as well, this person is sixty-five years old, and maybe they can’t jump anymore, why should you think that way? They’re, capable of working at a really what I would call a high level of expression. So, I’m glad it looks like that. That makes me happy you say that.
NS: And, and what happens for me listening to you is that you have ingested the feast that Nikolais was.
MWK: Oh yeah.
NS: And been able then to produce another menu for yourself.
MWK: Oh lots of times.
NS: And not only in dance.
MWK: Right. Everything that I’ve been challenged with or challenged myself with along the way, it’s all the same stuff, it’s all the same stuff. All the same thing. When I studied to do Chinese medical massage, which was basically acupuncture, meridian based, movement of chi through the meridians and points, it was a no brainer. I mean, I’ve been doing this my whole life.
NS: My question to you before is now why -- what was that choice that you made or why did you make that choice? To explore that?
MWK: Because I seemed to understand it already.
NS: And that tickled your fancy and you said I want to know something more about it.
MWK: Right, right. And I’ve done a lot of studying of somatics to a certain degree. I have opinions and questions about how somatics and dance intersect and are separate -- the studies of these two forms of exploration. I think there was a time when contact improv was in its heyday that [01:15:00] it was seen as a performance art and I disagree with that, I don’t think it’s a performance art.
NS: Why do you say that?
MWK: Because there’s not an intent to communicate and allow the audience to experience what the dancer is experiencing. The point of contact between the dancers is where everything is happening. And it’s not their responsibility to show us that contact. Or to be lucid in how… You might be able to observe really carefully and closely their entire energy field to feel what they’re feeling. It’s like an impossibility; it’s a private affair. And what comes of it is some really beautiful movement, but I wouldn’t call it performance art. I don’t want to put it down because I think it’s beautiful, but I feel that it’s different than the intent of including the audience. There’s always, there’s always an attendant, someone is attending a dance performance, or they’re attending a museum and looking at a painting, or they’re attending, and that means attention, and that means energy --
NS: Is exchanged.
MWK: -- is exchanged, yeah. And I, I really, I just think they’re different. I don’t think one is better than the other, they’re just different. And I think it’s an excellent experience for a dancer to be able to do contact improv, but to know the difference between a performance and the exploration.
NS: If what you’re also – and tell me if I’m on to something that you’re saying, is that there’s an intention in a performance to communicate, to engage with an audience, or with someone who is in observation. Which is different from someone who -- in a contact improvisation -- the fact that I’m watching it is incidental.
MWK: Correct.
NS: Yeah.
MWK: The other part of that is -- about the communication part -- is that I believe performers are lifted to a different level when they are performing, to communicate with an audience. And that lifts everybody to a different place, rather than just looking through a microscope and seeing this and that and the other, and that happening in -- wow, that split that way, how did it do that. You can say that but --
NS: Your involvement in it is not there.
MWK: No, it’s a different involvement, the involvement is the point of contact and it’s highly skilled. That’s just my opinion. A lot of people have different opinions about it but, but I don’t think it’s fair to an audience who perhaps paid money to have an experience. Now, if they paid money just to look at a screen or something and not be involved with it, that’s the audience member’s choice. But sometimes because dance is kinetic and because we communicate different [01:20:00] aspects of ourselves than our personality when we dance, there are, there are different exchanges that happen with an audience. And those exchanges, I think, are worth recognizing and also worth developing for the audience and the dancer alike.
NS: I mean, in very mundane terms, I’m sure you’ve had this experience where you come off stage from a performance and say, “That audience is just dead, I’m not getting anything from them.” Or you come off stage and you’re exhilarated because there’s this spark that happens between you and, and the atmospherics and the audience, you know, that --
MWK: Yeah, there are all levels of it. But I think, too, a lot of that, I don’t know, from the dancer’s point of view, one’s comfort with decentralization is important.
NS: Okay, so now you opened up that worm.
MWK: The worm.
NS: That worm. Can you talk about that? About the myth surrounding Nikolais and --
MWK: Well he wrote about decentralization, before Murray edited his writing about decentralization. So I, [pause] -- I think it’s extraordinarily important from his -- if you want to use the ecology word again, to realize that the forward facing part of the human being in his work is not related to that dancer’s personality or that dancer’s story, or the story that the dancer tells themselves, or any of the things that control that dancer’s life. It isn’t about that.
NS: Mm-hm.
MWK: It’s about how that dancer and the dancer’s energy extends itself, and interweaves itself, and interacts with the ecology of that piece. And to do that they have to be facile enough to have their attention go where it needs to go and not ask for any attention at all, but only give attention to what they’re doing. To me that’s the gift of decentralization.
NS: What I would like to introduce in what you’re saying is an interesting tension that exists between -- and it may be a question of semantics and the word -- from centering and decentering --
MWK: Mm-hm.
NS: I don’t think that as a dancer… To fulfill Nik’s concept of decentralization, one has to be a centered person.
MWK: You do or don’t think?
NS: You do.
MWK: You do. Yeah, I think it comes naturally to some people. I think for, for folks who demand in themselves a great deal of thinking about things, it’s more difficult. I think for folks who are more comfortable in their bodies, and -- that doesn’t mean skill.
NS: No.
MWK: It means that you’re more comfortable in allowing your body to feel what needs to be felt and engaging the mind through asking it to attend, and that request then obliviates all that other storytelling.
NS: Noise.
MWK: Yeah. [01:25:00]
NS: It’s all noise, yeah.
MWK: Right. And it allows you -- I mean, Nik’s idea of grain is genius because it allows your mind then to participate in visualizing what it is that you’re feeling. That’s the ticket to understanding how to take all of your energy and have it direct right, you know --
NS: To the smallest particle and to the largest landscape.
MWK: Absolutely, absolutely. And it doesn’t happen -- the thing that, you know, you can’t, you can’t rely on it happening 100% all the time. It isn’t that way, I mean, there -- it’s not like you do it or you don’t do it, it’s like that you’re always working on that to have it be that way; you are practicing that, you’re practicing.
NS: Did he talk to you about graining and decentralizing?
MWK: No.
NS: Did he -- did you ever have discussions with him about it?
MWK: No, no. Only listening to him when he was teaching or reading what he said about it. But he would demonstrate it really well. Murray demonstrates it a little bit differently, but, in the same way. I learned a whole lot when Murray put together his Dance as an Art Form film, because that was during my time.[4]
NS: Well, that was ’71-2-3 -- or something like that, that time.
MWK: So we did all of those things, and we did dances that illustrated it that were in his repertory, we did improvisations, we did all kinds of crazy things outside, who knows what we were doing, but we had to do it, we had to be it, we had to do that stuff, and it was -- that was a good sort of overview for me early on. But decentralization is -- it’s tricky -- because it’s not like the orthodoxy of this, you know, it’s not that, it’s demanded of lots of practices in many different ways, whether you’re Buddhist, or you’re doing Tai Chi, or you’re -- any of the mind -- quote “mindful arts” require it, but dance has the added communication factor that it’s not all internal. It’s not just where it grazes with the space of reality; it’s where you’re actually expressing it in your body. It’s an expression rather than just an action or a movement.
NS: And to be successful, is that the audience, the person who is engaged in the watch -- is moved.
MWK: Absolutely.
NS: And that’s the key because if the audience isn’t moved then it’s not -- it, it --
MWK: It’s not happening.
NS: -- it hasn’t happened.
MWK: It hasn’t happened and it’s not -- It’s rare. It’s rare. But, I mean, I can be moved by all kinds of things other than dance.
NS: Sure.
MWK: It -- music can be so moving. Acting is the same thing, you become this becoming of this something other than, gosh, your just – your mortal coil is something that is, is somehow working through all of this, of what you’re doing. I don’t think dance is all that special, but I think it’s worth recognizing that it’s an attempt at communication of something else.
NS: Yeah. Mm. It -- god, it’s a good place to stop but it’s also, it’s very provocative and I have a couple more -- and I want to [01:30:00] keep asking some quest-- do you want to keep going --
MWK: Sure.
NS: -- for a while?
MWK: It’s five.
NS: Oh, okay, well we’ve got some -- because I -- we could, we could go beyond everything that we’re talking now and start yakking for three hours or so.
MWK: Sure.
NS: But for the purposes of this project, one of the things that -- two things that have come up in listening to you that I wanted to get your take on too. One is that, you arrived in New York at a particular time in which both Nik and Murray were involved enough in teaching but it was not quite the laboratory that Henry Street was.
MWK: Correct.
NS: So it’s less isolated. It’s also, in terms of the context of the times, it’s really an explosion of events and time, both in dance, but also in the culture at large.
MWK: Right.
NS: So that’s happening. You’re there at The Space for Innovative Development and it’s got the Open Theater, Free Life Communications [an improvisational music ensemble] and the Multigravitational Experiment, Quog [musicians experimenting with new forms of opera], Space Videoarts and the Ralph Lee’s puppets -- I don’t know if Ralph Lee’s puppets were there -- but there’s a jazz group or there’s a music group, there’s a video group, there’s -- it’s a, it’s a --
MWK: It’s a hive.
NS: It’s a hive.
MWK: It was great.
NS: And, and not only [are] Nik and Murray there, but you mentioned that Hanya is teaching too, so you’ve got this, this arc of history that’s settled into, or that’s alit-- alighted into this hive. What’s that about for you when you’re, when you’re listening to Hanya talk? Or teach? When you’re taking class from Nik, or Murray, or Hanya, or Phyllis, you know, because you’ve got this whole generation now of people that are --
MWK: Well they’re all there and they were all vital. And I think that vitality was easily acknowledged by the openness of the culture, and the openness of the dancers who came there. I think there was a willingness to sort of accelerate understanding. So for example, I was teaching my second year in Murray’s company and it wasn’t that I was teaching something that I already knew. I was teaching something that was a dynamic that we were all experiencing by observing Murray teach, by observing Nik teach, but mostly Murray because that’s where I was spending my time.
But we had the opportunity to teach a lot of kids and, there are certain echoes of Henry Street in that, but it was more compacted. And like I say, there was an accelerant there. I think those of us who were around at that time felt that, “Yeah, I get this, I get this,” and it was okay that I hadn’t studied for ten years, from the time I was twelve or something, it was fine because I got it.
NS: Mm-hm.
MWK: I understand that. And we were able to figure out how to communicate that we understood and were allowed to do that because there was a certain trust that we understood it. You know, it, it was, I don’t know, I think accelerant is --
NS: Is a good word for it.
MWK: -- is a good word for it. It, it wasn’t consciously done; it happened that we were given more responsibilities than perhaps at another time.
NS: Mm-hm.
MWK: But we took ‘em. [01:35:00] It, it wasn’t like, “No, I can’t do that,” or --
NS: “Oh, I, I couldn’t possibly.”
MWK: No, not even, not even that, “I can’t do that,” it’s not like that. It was, it was very heady.
NS: Sure, “I’ll have it at, yeah.”
MWK: Yeah, it was a heady time. I think also, because Nik and Murray were becoming recognized, and they were becoming important in the field, and creating their own identities of -- less Nik because he’s always been the same in terms of his identity, of the kind of multimedia work that he does and experiments at that time. Murray was really defining himself, but as a soloist as well as a choreographer, because he was able and was at the prime of his dancing.
So all that was coming through all of us dancers at the same time. You know, we aspired to be like -- not to be like Murray but to, to somehow develop to a point where you could be as nuanced as he was and as skilled. And I, I, um, I don’t know, it’s the best I can describe it. But it was a different time, it was different than Henry Street, and it was different than it was later.
NS: Later. It also at some point then -- there’s Nik and Murray developing, becoming more widely known. They were coming into their own at Henry Street as well, but that the public is now recognizing.
MWK: Oh, the world was recognizing Nik.
NS: The world is. And that’s my next question. [It] has to do with the era in which you spent in Angers because at some point Nik becomes a hero of the French nation or something to that effect. He becomes the darling of a European aesthetic certainly.
MWK: I think a lot of really interesting dancers have likely come from those early years of Angers. It was like pulling teeth, you know, it was difficult to teach there.
NS: In what way?
MWK: The personalities of each of the dancers were highly formed. And, uh, one had to just give, you just, you had to just give. It was interesting, it was interesting. I wasn’t there all that long, it was a couple -- three months maybe. That’s not very long.
NS: But Nik said -- I mean, this is -- I’m impressed, I mean, Nik said, “I want you to go teach in Angers.”
MWK: Yep, yep. There were three of us there. Ruth [Ruth Grauert 1919-2020] wasthere because they were setting works and the like, and, myself, and Robbie. And they were putting together both repertory, I think, and their own pieces. Mostly their own pieces. So Nik would appear at certain times and they would do showings for him of their pieces and he would work with them. Then there was the everyday technique and improv that we provided, and a framework for doing their pieces. Ruth was helpful with that particularly. But it was a very different experience.
NS: The student in [01:40:00] Angers is different from the student in Santa Cruz.
MWK: Oh gosh, yes.
NS: In what way?
MWK: They were very self-directed. I think a lot of, at that time -- the American kids who came to The Space, as well as the ones that we met on the road, or when I was teaching at Santa Cruz -- is that when things got harder, more difficult, like when more was expected of them, they would just do something else.
NS: Huh.
MWK: And that never occurred to me, you know, as someone in the field, or learning, or -- why would I do something else. But there wasn’t always the will to, to --
NS: Uh-huh.
MWK: -- and it -- and I think the French students, though sometimes it was a little more ego than was easy to work with, they had a point of view. American kids, not so much. Some did.
NS: Why do you suppose that is?
MWK: Availability of possibilities.
NS: Experience and possibility.
MWK: Yeah.
NS: But there’s an abundance of opportunity or --
MWK: There’s an abundance but also, I think, the whole post-War, baby boomer permissiveness was a bit…it had come down to roost.
NS: Mm, mm-hm, and been internalized by the next generation.
MWK: By some, I mean not everybody. You know, sometimes the, the kid-- I learned this in Minnesota sometimes the dancers who had grown up in more isolated, more defined, and maybe even disciplined circumstances – if you’re a farm kid, you had to get up at four o’clock in the morning to start this and that before you went to school, blah, blah, or -- there, there are different ways of thinking about self-discipline, whether it’s imposed on you or whether it’s something that when you grow up just, it’s just there. Because that’s how you, how you live and survive. And I sort of came from that, it’s just there. I mean, our family ran this business.
NS: You had to maintain that -- those cottages, you had to --
MWK: You bet. I started, I started my time book -- we each had a time book -- when I was four. My dad pounded a nail in the end of the stick, and gave me a bag, and I would have to go down the road and back, and skewer the litter so that when a customer would be driving by, they wouldn’t see litter on the lawn in the morning and in the evening. Every day I collected the litter and that, that went to sweeping the walks, that went to collecting the garbage from the garbage cans, that went to cleaning cottages with a local woman, usually a farm woman, and I’d have to keep up with them. You know, I, I learned how to do that. I probably have made thousands of beds and cleaned thousands of toilets in my day, but you know --
NS: And not to mention how many times did you sweep the stage before or afterwards? (laughter)
MWK: That’s true. But, but there’s -- there is something to I think understanding work, what work is, and it’s not, other than life, it’s -- you know, you don’t go to work and you don’t live at work, and then you live at home? No, it’s a different --
NS: It’s integrated.
MWK: Yeah. [01:45:00] So I don’t know. I’m not saying that everybody was spoiled because the people who succeeded, I think, had that.
NS: Yeah, yeah.
MWK: Somehow or another.
NS: There are other, other avenues of inquiry, but I think for now let’s stop.
MWK: Sounds good. END OF AUDIO FILE
[1] 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 Theatre, Free Life Communications, the Multigravitational Experiment, Quog, and Space Videoarts.
[2] Betty Young, long-time associate of Nikolais and Louis, Executive Director Nikolais/Louis Dance Theatre Lab.
[3] The Nikolais Legacy Group: a group organized in 2012 to promote the legacy of Alwin Nikolais and to support the work of the Nikolais/Louis Foundation for Dance.
[4] Dance as an Art Form: The Dancer’s Instrument-the Body, Motion, Space, Time, and Shape. © Nikolais/Louis Foundation for Dance, 1973.
