Lester Horton

Horton, Lester, (1906-53), dancer, choreographer, and teacher is regarded as one of the founders of American modern dance. He developed a unique style of technique and choreography, established the first permanent theater in America devoted to dance, and organized one of the first integrated modern dance companies.

Lester Horton was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. Choosing to work in California (three thousand miles away from the center of modern dance - New York City), Horton developed his own approach that incorporated diverse elements including Native American dances and modern Jazz. Horton's dance technique (Lester Horton Technique) emphasises a whole body approach including flexibility, strength, coordination, and body awareness to allow freedom of expression.

Throughout his career, Horton combined dance and drama into a total theatrical experience. He was intimately involved in creating all aspects of a production: the costumes, sets, lighting, and music as well as the scenarios and choreography. His fascination with ethnic dance, human sensuality, and cultural history was expressed in a prodigious body of work with themes ranging from the classics to melodrama, social concerns to farce.

Horton demanded a lot from his dancers. He required them to study ballet, learn to read music, sew, work the light board, and assist in making scenery and props, participating in virtually all aspects of production, design, and execution. Horton's company members and students included well-known modern dancers/choreographers such as Alvin Ailey, Janet Collins, Carmen de Lavallade, Bella Lewitzky, James Mitchell, Joyce Trisler, and James Truitte. Horton collaborated with Lewitzky to develop the foundation of his technique; they joined forces with several other partners to found the Dance Theater in Hollywood in 1946.

sources:
* Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre - Techniques, Horton
* Wikipedia - Lester Horton

More on Martha Graham

I know you can find everthing on youTube, but I did think that finding something with Martha Graham actually in it, would be quite a feat. But well, what do you know... here's something that was filmed in 1961. This expert features choreography from her ballet "night journey", which premiered in Cambridge, Mass in 1947.

Martha Graham

Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American dancer and choreographer regarded as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance, whose influence on dance can be compared to the influence Stravinsky had on music, Picasso had on the visual arts, and Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.^[1] Graham invented a new language of movement, and used it to reveal the passion, the rage and the ecstasy common to human experience. She danced and choreographed for over seventy years, and during that time was the first dancer ever to perform at The White House, the first dancer ever to travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and the first dancer ever to receive the highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom. In her lifetime she received honors ranging from the key to the City of Paris to Japan's Imperial Order of the Precious Crown. She said "I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable."

In 1926, Martha Graham founded her dance company and school, living and working out of a tiny Carnegie Hall studio in midtown Manhattan. In developing her technique, Martha Graham experimented endlessly with basic human movement, beginning with the most elemental movements of contraction and release. Using these principles as the foundation for her technique, she built a vocabulary of movement that would "increase the emotional activity of the dancer's body." Martha Graham's dancing and choreography exposed the depths of human emotion through movements that were sharp, angular, jagged, and direct. The dance world was forever altered by Martha Graham's vision, which has been and continues to be a source of inspiration for generations of dance and theatre artists.

Graham's early dances were not generally well-received by audiences who were not sure what they were seeing. The works were spare, powerful and modern, devoid of the dreaminess and glamour of the works of the previous decades. The dances were often based on strong, precise movement and pelvic contractions, and were charged with beauty and emotion. It was a stirring period of revolution for Graham in which she would begin to establish a new language of dance which was different from everything that preceded it and which would leave everything that came after it indelibly changed.

In 1936, Graham made her defining work, "Chronicle", which signalled the beginning of a new era in contemporary dance. The dance brought serious issues to the stage for the general public in a dramatic manner. Influenced by the Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression and the Spanish Civil War, it focused on depression and isolation, reflected in the dark nature of both the set and costumes.

Those who had the privilege of seeing her perform in her prime have attested to her precision, form and mesmerizing brilliance as a dancer on stage. Though she is arguably one of the most important choreographers in the history of dance (and perhaps one of the most important artists of the 20th century) she always said that she preferred to be known and remembered as a dancer.

For more information see:
* Wikipedia - Martha Graham
* Martha Graham Resources

[1] http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/graham_m.html

I am a Dancer

By Martha Graham
(from marthagraham.org)

I am a dancer. I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.

To practice means to perform, in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

I think the reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living. Even as I write, time has begun to make today yesterday-the past. The most brilliant scientific discoveries will in time change and perhaps grow obsolete, as new scientific manifestations emerge. But art is eternal, for it reveals the inner landscape, which is the soul of man.

Many times I hear the phrase "the dance of life." It is an expression that touches me deeply, for the instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived-the human body. It is the instrument by which all the primaries of life are made manifest. It holds in its memory all matters of life and death and love. Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to the paradise of the achievement is not easier than any other. There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration, there are daily small deaths. Then I need all the comfort that practice has stored in my memory, a tenacity of faith.

It takes about ten years to make a mature dancer. The training is twofold. First comes the study and practice of the craft which is the school where you are working in order to strengthen the muscular structure of the body. The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted. The movement becomes clean, precise, eloquent, truthful. Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it. This might be called the law of the dancer's life-the law which governs its outer aspects.

Then comes the cultivation of the being from which whatever you have to say comes. It doesn't just come out of nowhere, it comes out of a great curiosity. The main thing, of course, always is the fact that there is only one of you in the world, just one, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost. Ambition is not enough; necessity is everything. It is through this that the legends of the soul's journey are retold with all their tragedy and their bitterness and sweetness of living. It is at this point that he weep of life catches up with the mere personality of the performer, and while the individual becomes greater, the personal becomes less personal. And there is grace. I mean the grace resulting from faith — faith in life, in love, in people, in the act of dancing. All this is necessary to any performance in life which is magnetic, powerful, rich in meaning.

In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength. In a thinker, there is a reverence for the beauty of the alert and directed and lucid mind. In all of us who perform there is an awareness of the smile which is part of the equipment, or gift, of the acrobat. We have all walked the high wire of circumstance at times. We recognize the gravity pull of the earth as he does. The smile is there because he is practicing living at that instant of danger. He does not choose to fall.

At times I fear walking that tightrope. I fear the venture into the unknown. But that is part of the act of creating and the act of performing. That is what a dancer does.

Looking back into the past.

I remember learning Graham walks in my modern dance class, but it was not the step that left an impression on me, it was the story behind the step that I learned, remembered and wondered about. We don't often pause to think about the steps we learn and the fact that somebody, somewhere, once upon a time had the inspiration to dance a new step.

Many years later I find myself wondering about the origins of dance techniques again. Although this time I was in a stretching and strengthening class and I thought, "hey, isn't this exercise from Horton technique? or is it an adaptation? And does the guy teaching the class even know about the Lester Horton technique?".

If you're a ballet dancer, you probably don't even know who Martha Graham or Lester Horton are. Or maybe you do, because with the need to keep ballet fresh and exciting for the younger generation dancers we find classical ballet blending more and more with contemporary dance and these days going to watch a new ballet by the San Fransisco Ballet or the Royal Ballet companies one can't always be sure whether to expect the traditional classical ballet or a more contemporary ballet. So what do the Alvin Ailey American Dance company perform anyway? In my novice opinion their dancers have better classical technique than our own South African Ballet Theatre dancers. In truth the differentiation between dance forms and techniques is no longer as simple as whether or not the dancer is wearing point shoes or not. Todays modern dancers are expected to be trained in ballet and likewise our classical dancers are expected to be trained in modern and contemporary dance... and well, dancers being dancers, they'll all probably throw in a bit of Hip Hop and Salsa too - just for the fun of it.

On this note, in my next few posts I would like to share with you some of what I have learnt and read about a few of the pioneers of modern dance that have influenced my life and whether you as a dancer or dance appreciator know it, have probably influenced your life in some small way.

The photo above was taken by Rosalie O'Connor of the work "Barbara" performed by the ABTII. The picture comes from the review by Susan Reiter on the Dance View Times website.