New York Stories: A Volcano of Memories

PN: Your letter makes me realize on one level how incredibly LUCKY I was. For some reason I wasn’t burdened with “expectations.” In terms of encouragement— nobody bothered to discourage me. All anybody could really say about me was “you have nice feet.” I was short waisted, not very flexible, and had my knee history. But I had a passion for dancing! Still remember, Ruth St. Denis didn’t think much of young Martha Graham, turning her over to Ted Shawn!

In the end of the fifties, Helen Tamiris, formed a company. Her husband, Daniel Nagrin, had started touring his solo program two years before, and I guess she wanted to provide a way to keep him near her. When we were all in Sedgwick, Maine, the first summer, Daniel got an offer to do something else, and he and Helen had a fight that one could hear all through the building. The company never really made it. I stopped apprenticing with them after knee operation #2. Daniel was a soloist at heart. He left her in’64, I think, and she got cancer and died in ‘66. What made her important to me as a teacher was her approach to choreography, which came from an almost Stanislavski-like approach: Who are you specifically - animal, vegetable, mineral. Where are you? What are you doing? Take an action, transfer it to another part of the body, creating motivated abstract movement. For her it was actions and transition; she never taught us about working with groups… Working on that principle, I created the dance I did when I came back to Wilson in ’62… It was accepted for the first Clark Center Young Choreographers concert that May. Apprenticing for Tamiris-Nagrin meant that I took attendance, ran the tape machine for rehearsals, and was Daniel’s gofer— learning where to shop for costume material, where to go to have a performance tape made, etc. In the winter of ’61 the company studio was torn down, and Daniel and Helen moved classes to their apartment on the Upper West Side, moving their home next door. To cover the rent, they invited me to live in the dressing room. This gave me space to work after hours, hence my first solo—

JM: I still have vivid memories of visiting you at that apartment/studio that winter and walking through Central Park in the snow!

PN: After two summers in Sedgwick, the Company had a summer program at C.W. Post College on Long island; I was demoted to taking beginner classes there - tough on the ego, but ultimately nicer to be the best in the class rather than the worst! But when Helen needed a dancer for her wonderful WOMEN’S SONG, I got the part—partly because I knew the dance so well from seeing rehearsals in the past. But then Daniel and Helen decided to double my rent, suggesting that I get a roommate! I moved out instead, taking an apartment in the South Village for only a few dollars more a month. It had DC current, a Water closet (I had only seen such a thing in a plumber’s advertisement showing the history of the toilet!), a sink and a washtub in the kitchen, but, being in a Mafia neighborhood, it was quite safe, as I was told! That was the beginning of my separation from Tamiris-Nagrin. I was beginning to see that there was no future there. My second knee operation finished things. It was that fall, however, that Studio NINE was formed, by Elina Mooney (a year younger than me). She was at Deerwood Music camp when I was and told me “take Modern.” She was in the second summer at Sedgwick, then joined the Company. Cliff Keuter, who was my age and also in the first Summer workshop, later joined the Company. Becky Arnold and Abigail Ewert also became part of it, along with Margaret Beals and Trudy Sydam.

Studio Nine continued for a while. In the spring and fall of ‘63, we took our work to Washington D.C., Elina’s hometown, where her old teacher had a performance space. We were thinking of some kind of New York performance. We had an appointment with a producer on the day Kennedy was assassinated. I remember hearing the words, “Somebody shot the President” when waiting for the elevator. We all sat in shock in the producer’s office. That same fall my second solo was on the 3rd Young Choreographers Concert at Clark Center. Somebody suggested that I attend the workshops down at Judson Church. (Oops! I forgot to mention Gus Solomons, Jr. as one of the Studio Nine members.) In ’64 Studio Nine finished as a cooperative, I kept the space and rented it out to people to cover expenses, one of whom was Meredith Monk, fresh out of college. Meanwhile I was a regular at the Judson Dance Workshops, where Dancers, Visual Artists, and Musicians were all exploring together. I became acquainted with people who later chose me to work with them. One was Judith Dunn, my formative Cunningham teacher, with whom I performed in ’64— in my first professional appearance! Later I worked with Elaine Summers, one of the pioneers of improvising, and Carolee Schneemann’s Kinetic Theater works. Kenneth King, on leave from Antioch College, accosted me. He had just read John Cage’s SILENCE, and knew I was involved in the Judson Dance scene. He wanted to know if I would like to be in a dance he was creating? So was born CUP/SAUCER/TWO DANCERS/RADIO - all described on the soundtrack as having the same value. It was an idea taken from the writings of Alain Robbe-Grillet.

The concert where it was presented (along with Meredith Monk’s solo BREAK) was reviewed in the NYTimes by Allan Hughes, the second-string critic— breaking John Martin and Walter Terry’s agreement NEVER to review anything Downtown! My dance for Kenneth, Meredith and myself, MOVE, had to wait another two years to get performed— in the first concert we shared at Judson Church, thus becoming the Second Generation—

To continue about my Dance career— Helen Tamiris’ approach to choreograph from an acting point of view made it possible to do technical things that were beyond one’s skill in class. My first solo was all on one leg. For a twenty-one-year year old with virtually zilch training to be selected for a Young Choreographer’s Concert was something! The weakness was the lack of formal structure for group work that characterizes Doris Humphrey’s work - work that falls into the category of Chamber Dance, if such a thing exists!

But to go back to Meredith, Kenneth King and me— We gave our first concert together at Judson Church in 1966— we were all under twenty-five, and the older Judson people looked upon us as young upstarts. After that Kenneth went his own way. Meredith and I shared one more concert before she too took off on her own. It took me a bit longer to start to find myself. But at the end of the ‘60s, Al Carmines decided that people were freeloading on the Judson Church reputation (and free space!) and stopped presenting dance. But Dance Theater Workshop was developing. A new alternative space opened up Midtown. The Cubiculo was a black box theater, seating about 50 people owned by a Shakespeare Company. It offered dance performances on Monday and Tuesday and because those nights were not in conflict with the usual performance scheduling, critics came who wouldn’t have come otherwise. A number of careers were launched in that space! Again, the space and publicity were free, although we had our own mailing lists and supplied our own lighting designer. I think that it had been Agnes DeMille’s studio at one point. It had a good wooden floor. It had a brief life, closing in’75. By then, other venues had opened up: Washington Square Methodist Church on west 4th Street, the Riverside Dance Festival, and DTW moved to the Jerome Robbins Dance Lab on West 20th Street. Elina Mooney and friends bought a space on Broome St., an amazing space. I think it was the play space of an orphanage. They started giving studio concerts there.

JM: I am completely fascinated by your early exposure and training in dance. How fabulous that you were connected not only to dance but to acting as well! What a dynamic combination!

This is turning out to be a terrific history of the young dance scene in NYC in the early second half of the 20th century.

I certainly have recollections of the venues you mention here and realize that some of these years overlap with the time I lived on an army base in Virginia. Upon returning to MOMA, I became active in what ended up being the unionization of the Professional and Administrative employees of the museum. It was certainly a vibrant time both in the burgeoning scene of artistic "young upstarts" and political unrest. [Interesting that today marks the 50th anniversary of Kent State] All of the 50th anniversaries of events we are now celebrating bring back so many memories of both the tragedies and the triumphs during those early years in NYC. There was the beginning of women’s liberation, birth control, legalizing abortion, assassinations, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights protests, the first man on the moon, the first Earth Day. What massive events, it feels like whiplash!

I followed a rather circuitous path over the early years but found myself constantly being pulled back into my dance experience in one way or another. Into my second marriage and once my daughter was in grade school, I began exploring further studies in movement and its healing capacity, having been exposed to the work of Dr. Lulu Sweigard at Juilliard. She conducted a posture laboratory to address neuro-muscular habits of balance and movement. It was my first experience in the power of muscle memory and the capacity of the body to hold and eventually to heal traumatic experience. I attended classes at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, the Dance Notation Bureau and many other classes, workshops and seminars which eventually formed the basis for the pursuit of my master's degree at NYU. Over the following years, I pursued the necessary class requirements at NYU and completed the certificate in Rubenfeld Synergy with Ilana Rubenfeld in order to formulate a Project Thesis in the NYU Gallatin Division of Independent Study for a master's in the application of mind-body therapy to co-dependent women. As you know Rubenfeld Synergy combines Alexander, Feldenkrais and Gestalt therapy. Working with Ilana, who had been a conducting major at Juilliard, was quite an intense experience. I did team up with a certified Rubenfeld Synergist and accredited social worker to devise a short-term therapeutic group modality for co-dependent women based on mind-body techniques. It was successful on many levels, but during the 80's the concept of mind-body was not embraced in the scientific and medical community, and was skeptically considered an "alternative" method of healing at best. When my marriage failed, I decided it prudent to pursue a "job with benefits," and I began working at the Mannes College of Music as the Director of Records and Registration! (Organization and attention to detail were skills that I always had… but tried hard to deny.) When I applied for the position of Registrar at Mannes, which was by that time a part of The New School, the University Registrar thought that my Juilliard and psychology background would be beneficial in working with the classical musicians at Mannes. It was quite an experience, and I worked hard to balance the registrar structure with the "creative" minds of the musicians! As I was getting ready to leave New York several years ago, I had the terrific experience of hearing Dr. Richard Davidson talk at the Rubin Museum about his work as a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin and his movie, Free the Mind. He has done incredible work with both autism and veterans with PTSD using mind-body work and meditation. Finally, the power of the work had come out of the closet!

PN: In the early ‘70s, a friend of mine who was a Juilliard graduate, turned me on to a class at the NYU’s School of the Arts taught by André Bernard. It was called “The Kinesthetics of Anatomy.” I don’t precisely know his relationship to Dr. Lulu Sweigard, except that their work stems from Mabel Ellsworth Todd of THE THINKING BODY. I studied with him for a year or two. Then one day Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen did a demonstration at Nancy Meehan’s Studio where I was taking classes. As a result, I took a private session with her in order to work on my bad knee. I then attended some of her classes. However, money was limited at that time, and mine had to go into funding my choreography! She moved to Amherst and started the School for Body-Mind Centering. I was not impressed as news trickled back about them studying the organs, and then the glands.

Ten years later, after knee operation #3 that turned out badly, I saw a medium who suggested that the knee problem was a wake-up call and suggested that I study either Reiki or Therapeutic Touch. Since I’d always had a vague fantasy of wanting to have healing hands, I immediately found a Reiki Master and studied with her up to the second degree. Later I also worked with Dolores Krieger RN, PhD, a pioneer of healing touch, in a course at the Open Center. In my second year of teaching at UCLA, Bonnie presented a workshop that I took. I felt like Saul on the road to Tarsus; it was a revelation. Immediately after, I called to sign up for the Certification Program - only to hear Len Cohen tell me that it was full up. I prayed all week for someone to cancel so that I might get in. And I did.

It was the first monster Certification program. There were one hundred people from not only the US but also Germany, Holland, Canada. It was an experience in group dynamics! The Program dealt with learning experientially about the bones, muscles, organs, glands, nervous system, etc. It also included studying Infant development, basic neurological patterns, reflexes. It spanned four summers and was supplemented by the requirements of studying traditional anatomy, kinesiology, physiology, nutrition, and counselling— a major undertaking. In the middle of this, I was introduced by a classmate to Cranial-Sacral Therapy; it was immediate love! I was Certified in’89 and went on to assist in the next session as part of the teacher training program. I became a Teacher in ’94.

One of my fellow students started the first European Program in ’95. Since I had expressed interest, I became the first teacher from the US in that program. When I had first gotten involved with all this, I had a vague idea of having a skill that I could take anywhere in the world. And it had happened!

The certificate training for Body Mind Centering required so many hours of Counseling training. There is so much history locked up in the body, which can erupt when exploring the different body systems. I had my first experience when we were exploring the lungs. In Cranial-Sacral Therapy one encounters Somato-Emotional Release, when an Energy Cyst in the body is unblocked. There may be an emotional element, which is released in the process. Dr Upledger describes it as a tape playing and erasing itself. I had cancer during the era of Bernie Siegal and his Exceptional Cancer Patients. I had a therapist then for a while. Now there are so many Body Based Therapies: Focussing, Hakomi, Rubenfeld Synergy- and the Fritz Perls work. The Focussing Doctor, whose name eludes me at the moment, talks of the Felt shift, when the client feels a physical change. THAT makes sense to me! Becoming a Certified Teacher/Practitioner of Body-Mind Centering® was wonderful but required a talent for marketing!

My dances were my children. Somehow, I lacked any maternal instinct! There are dances that mark the end of my first romance, the end of my marriage, my not having children (I made NANA POR NADA for a friend, whom it turned out, couldn’t have children!) and my Cancer Adventure (I danced with a skull). But Helen Tamiris’s approach— taking an action and transferring it to a different part of the body (hence keeping the movement quality but removing it from a literal action) - kept the dances from being “self-expression.”