Alwin Nikolais: The Return of the Father of Multimedia
Modernity is not a method.
It is a state of mind,
a point of view from which to look at the world
Alwin Nikolais
If he were still with us, Alwin Nikolais, the Wizard of Oz of American dance that exploded after World War II, would turn 100 on November 25th. Choreographer, musician, set designer, pedagogue, this artist, who passed away in 1993, used to sign every aspect of his shows, including lights and costumes. It was said of him that he could transform the stage into a multimedia galaxy, where humans became part of their environment once again.
Influenced by Einstein's theory of relativity, he revolutionized the way of working on stage with the space-time relationship, simultaneously redefining dance as a visual art of motion. Thanks to costumes that altered the figure or multi-colored slide projections, the dancer in Nikolais' work became something other than themselves, the protagonist of a phantasmagoric celebration of imagination.
In New York’s era of abstract expressionism and the experiments of Merce Cunningham and John Cage on the autonomy of dance and music, Nikolais was the first to own a Moog synthesizer, with which he composed almost all the scores for his performances. His was a total theater, a polygamy of motion, shape, color, and sound, a psychedelic abstraction in which the body was de-realized in favor of a new identity with the environment.
Centennial Celebration: A Journey into Nik's Total Theater
Nikolais' repertoire is now in the hands of the Nikolais/Louis Foundation for Dance in New York, directed by choreographer and dancer Murray Louis, Nik’s (as he was always called) artistic and life partner, and Alberto Del Saz, a long-time dancer for both artists. Del Saz has been restaging the best titles from Nik's repertoire for several years with the Ririe Woodbury Dance Company.
The program presented in Rovereto is a journey into the phantasmagoric world of the American master: from the famous sacks that envelop the person in Noumenon (1953) to the elastic grid of Tensile Involvement (1955), from the ironic Kaleidoscope Suite, drawn from the famous Kaleidoscope of 1956, reworked in 1984, to the illusory Crucible (1985), from the curious city of the signature piece Imago (1963) to the celebration of costume in Liturgies (1983), and a lesser-known piece: The Crystal and the Sphere, born in 1990. This penultimate work by Nikolais, before his passing, was commissioned by the Imagination Celebration in Washington for a children's audience but, as Anna Kisselgoff wrote in the New York Times at its debut, it also has great appeal for adults: a joyful summation of the artist’s dance theater.
WHO IS ALWIN NIKOLAIS
Born in Southington, Connecticut, in 1910, as a young boy he played the organ for silent films. After the advent of sound, he accompanied dance classes on the piano. In 1933, he was struck by a performance by the German dancer Mary Wigman. He became a dancer, directed a puppet theater, and studied with the greats of modern dance. With the American army, he participated in World War II in Europe, an experience that would influence his future abstractions. He founded a school and company at the Henry Street Playhouse in New York in 1948. The first work of his revolutionary multimedia theater was Masks, Props and Mobiles in 1953. His last choreography, Aurora, was in 1992. In the early 1970s, he also made pioneering films using chroma-key technology. He is one of the great masters of 20th-century dance. He died in New York in 1993.
www.ririewoodbury.com
www.nikolaislouis.org
