I was recently wowed by a YouTube of Buddy Ebsen as an eccentric dancer. And another one with Earl “Snake Hips” Tucker. And another by Ray Bolger.

Buddly Ebsen

All these men were  top-notch dancers, but they were weird, crazy, eccentric. They were even labeled “Eccentric Dancer.” They were not dreamboats like Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire but marginal objects of fascination.

However, if you look at their dancing in these clips, you’ll see astounding virtuosity and originality. They don’t do split-leap acrobatics like the Nicholas Brothers, but movements that are insanely specific to their bodies. Similar to the idea of traditional clown acts, they go deeply into who they are as individuals. They may look drunk, but what they are doing in their legs is extreme. It’s serious, soul-deep silliness.

For starters, take a look at the glorious goofiness of Buddy Ebsen in Born to Dance from 1936. His legs look too long for his body, and his knees seem to fold in the wrong direction —  which make him  all the more lovable.

Ray Bolger

We know Ray Bolger as the boneless scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. He is perhaps the first proponent of release technique. But take a look at those legs in this amazing clip from The Harvey Girls (1946). He’s expertly wayward and the utmost in self-effacement. And yet it takes a superlative dancer to go that far off center. (By the way, he was Balanchine’s first tap dancer in On Your Toes in 1936.)

Earl “Snake Hips” Tucker

Earl “Snake Hips” Tucker (1905–1937) was one a famous act during the Harlem Renaissance. Also known as the “Human Boa Constrictor,” he acquired the nickname “snakehips” via the dance he performed in the 1920s. In this clip, you can see him  collapse his hips, falling way over to the side. You can’t believe he could support himself…kind of like Lil Buck on his ankles.

OK, now take a look at Dick Van Dyke’s penguin dance from Mary Poppins (1964). He has hyperactive knees, rubber legs, and a blithely innocent face. (This clip has a sharper image but the wrong music has been overlaid.)

Closer to home for New Yorkers is Bill Irwin. He’s the Eccentric Dancer of our time, with a spectacular command of both clowning and tap dance. In this clip of Irwin’s own 1983 piece, Largely New York (after a Broadway-style intro by Angela Lansbury), you get a taste of these skills.

Ailey’s Samuel Lee Roberts in Naharin’s Minus 16, photo by Paul Kolnik.

I started thinking, Who else would be called Eccentric Dancers today? One answer came when I saw Ailey’s Samuel Lee Roberts in the opening solo in Ohad Naharin’s Minus 16 again. In this role he improvises as the audience files in after intermission, or, in the case of Fall for Dance, as a prelude to the rest of the piece. He’s been given instructions to play with the audience, and he does this in a delightfully legible way. As the curtain behind him slowly rises, he sinks underneath it and spreads out as though being pulled upstage. When the music changes, he suddenly pulls himself together, gets debonair, and dances really small. When he bounds in a circle around the stage, he lets us see how the bounding becomes twisting, then thudding. We’re with him. We laugh at his exploits. He’s not showing off; he’s showing us his story—or stories. Like a mime, or like a clown.

As we head into Thanksgiving, I give thanks for these crazified dancers; they don’t try to be exquisite or romantic or technically dazzling. But they are somethin’ wonderful, and I can watch these clips again and again.

Usually political dances are not high on artistry. They tend to blare their messages for the sake of emphasis rather than subtlety. But recently I’ve seen a number of pieces focusing on social justice or the environment that moved me, not so much with their message but with artistry: Liz Lerman’s Healing Wars, Kyle Abraham’s When the Wolves Came In…, and Jill Sigman’s (Perma)Culture. Also, via the screen, Eiko’s A Body in Fukushima. They speak to us gently rather than stridently. (The first three have made more explicit socially-minded works in the past.) Yes, it’s mostly preaching to the converted, so they are not going to change many minds. But it is less about preaching and more about creating a poetic experience out of something they passionately believe in. And that’s inspiring.

Paul Hurley in Healing Wars, photo by Marina Levitskaya

When Healing Wars came to Peak Performances in Montclair, NJ, a few weeks ago, the audience entered the theater through backstage, coming upon scenes that prepared us for Lerman’s onstage story about the civil war. We saw a woman in a hoop skirt change into a man’s military uniform. (Many women disguised their gender so they could fight.) We saw an Iraqi war veteran on a bench talking casually about his prosthesis. When we took our seats in the house, those characters were fleshed out in greater complexity and poignancy. A narrative on the history of wartime healing guided the flow of the action, text, and visual design. The most moving section was when Paul Hurley, the amputee, relived the attack in which he lost his leg and his best buddy. The pairing of Hurley with Keith Thompson, a former Trisha Brown dancer, as the buddy, in a slow-mo re-enactment was a highpoint.

The Gettin’, photo by Ian Douglas

In Abraham’s “Gettin’,” the third piece in his trilogy When the Wolves Came In… at New York Live Arts, I felt only distantly aware that this was about civil rights and apartheid. The projections on the backdrop showed images like a “Whites Only” sign, and the music by Robert Glasper was based on “We Insist!” (Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite). But it was Abraham’s slippery/strong movement amalgam that claimed my eyes. (Siobhan Burke has a great description of it in her review.) It was only when singer Charenee Wade let out some serious hollering that the sense of struggle reached the pitch of rage.

Sigman’s (Perma)Culture at Danspace, photo by Eric Breitbart

And in Jill Sigman’s (Perma)Culture at Danspace, the dancers improvised within a structure, allowing their individuality to surface. No text, no speechifying about the virtues of sustainability. But at the end, when they started placing small clay objects on each other and invited the audience to join them, the trust between performer and audience member made you feel part of a community of people who care about the environment.

Eiko in Fukushima, Photo © William Johnston

And finally, Eiko’s online A Body in Fukushima, a series of chilling photographs by William Johnston, reminded me about the devastation of radiation—in the most poetic way possible. Eiko put her body in danger to bring attention to the environmental catastrophe that the explosion at Fukushima brought on. A title card reads, “By placing my body in these desolate places, I thought of the generations of people who used to live there.” Meaning the thousands of people who now live in refugee camps far from their still irradiated homes. (The work was originally shown as a photo exhibit earlier this month in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. You can find updates on this project here.)

None of these dances heralded surprising messages. But they encouraged us to be more conscious of—and maybe do something about—the social and environmental injustices in our midst.

Interest in the 60s seems to come in waves. Anna Halprin, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, Lucinda Childs, Trisha Brown—these are artists associated with that glorious decade who have never stopped working. At the moment they all are very active, and I can just feel that 60s wave of influence come rolling in. Dance artists of that decade taught us about collaboration, non-conventional structures, and cutting down the theatrics of heroism to the human scale. Below are some of the recent and upcoming events showing the work of these artists.

Steve Paxton in Music for Word Words 1963, a precursor to Physical Things at Nine Evenings, photo by Al Giese

• In SoHo, Cathy Weis has set up “Sundays on Broadway,”  a series that shows documentary films about the notorious “Nine Evenings: Theater and Engineering” in 1966. These have included fascinating screenings and discussions, led by Julie Martin, on John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Yvonne Rainer, and Steve Paxton. (I helped moderate the discussion on the Rainer piece.) The Oct 5 episode focuses on Robert Whitman, who created interdisciplinary pieces that were a cross between theater and happenings. Among his performers were dancers like Simone Forti and Lucinda Childs. Some of the films shown are available through ArtPix DVDs.

Billboard of Rainer exhibit at Getty Center

• This week in L. A. a work in progress by Yvonne Rainer titled The Concept of Dust, or How do you look when there’s nothing left to move? is being performed at the Getty Center, co-commissioned with Performa, It’s paired with last year’s Assisted Living: Do You Have Any Money? (2013). Both combine Rainer’s austere yet humorous juxtapositions of movement material with texts drawn from many sources. These performances, Oct 3–4, come at the tail end of the excellent exhibit Yvonne Rainer: Dances and Films, which is at the Getty till Oct 12. Her work also recently enjoyed a retrospective in London’s Raven Row.

• On October 11, Fall for Dance presents a pre-show DanceTalk titled “The Last Seismic Shift: How Did Judson Dance Theater Choreographers Challenge Modern Dance?” Panelists are Lucinda Childs, Yvonne Rainer, and Diane Madden of the Trisha Brown Dance Company. (The companies of both Lucinda Childs and Trisha Brown are performing in Fall for Dance.) Lucky me, I am moderating it.

Rehearsal of Yvonne Rainer’s Chair Pillow at Raven Row, photo by Eva Herzog

The Beast by Steve Paxton, premiered at Baryshnikov Art Center, 2010, photo by Julieta Cervantes

• “Steve Paxton: Selected Works” at Dia: Beacon Oct 17–26 offers a rare chance to see four of his most uncompromising pieces. The program includes the absurdist Flat from 1964, the dance with the one action of its title, Smiling of 1969; the surreal ordeal of Bound (1982), performed by Jurij Konjar; and The Beast from 2010. When he premiered this last piece in 2010, I wrote, “A daunting, awesome stubbornness takes over and he seems possessed.” This program continues Dia’s commitment to showing Paxton’s work. Last year Dia: Chelsea presented the Night Stand, the spare, haiku-like collaboration between Paxton and Lisa Nelson. (I posted my thoughts about it here.) On the subject of Paxton in the 60s, there is no better voice than that of his compatriot, Yvonne Rainer, as reflected in her tribute to him last spring. For full information, click here.

• Anna Halprin’s ground-breaking workshops of the period are the subject of an exhibit in Chicago called “Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966–1971.” You can see that Halprin’s teaching was a precursor to the current craze for site-specific work. The exhibit resides at the Graham Foundation in Chicago until December 13.

“Building Environments Score,” Kentfield, CA, 1968. Experiments in Environment Workshop. Courtesy Lawrence Halprin Collection, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania