After I posted my Monday Dance Magazine blog about  the amazing Asian women who have danced with the Martha Graham Dance Company, I received a message informing me about the other gender. David Hochoy, longtime director of Dance Kaleidoscope, Indiana’s premiere contemporary dance company, told me of the Asian men who danced for Martha: Henry Yu in the mid-70s, Young-Ha Yu in the late 80s, and himself, from 1980 to 89. It was Hochoy’s specialty to impersonate Martha at the company’s annual “Graham Follies” gathering—more on that later.

Hochoy in El Penitente, 1980s, photo by Martha Swope

Hochoy also filled me in on the topic of her liking to be mistaken for an Asian, which I had only heard about second-hand. Here is what he said:

“I’ll tell you a story that she told me one afternoon in her apartment. She was young and on tour with the Follies. She was in Atlanta and walked into a Chinese restaurant. The waiter, who was Chinese, said to her ‘You Chinee!’ Martha shook her head. ‘Yes, you Chinee!’ the waiter insisted, and brought her special food. Martha delighted in being taken for Asian. Which is not surprising because at Denishawn they worshipped the Orient and all things Asian. I think she thought of herself as Asian.”

And of course, there was the Asian man Isamu Noguchi, whose spare set designs did so much to complete her vision. Actually performing with those austere works of sculpture, though, was a different story. Artistic director Janet Eilber has written a humorous article revealing that dancing on them was “teeth-grindingly, bone-achingly uncomfortable.”

David Hochoy as Martha, Halloween, 1988, photos courtesy Hochoy

Someday, I hope to see David Hochoy do his rumored-to-be-wicked Martha impersonation. In this photo from Halloween 1988, it looks like Martha finally got to be Asian.

The Grand Union was a pivotal improvisation group that was unforgettable for downtown dancers in the 1970s. This short-lived collective broke every rule in the book, opening up a chaotic field of possibilities for any adventurous performer. It was an amazing collection of individuals—Yvonne Rainer, David Gordon, Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton, Douglas Dunn, Barbara Lloyd Dilley, among them—and maybe it was inevitable that the group would be pulled apart by the force of such strong voices.

I recently heard a sideways crack belittling the Grand Union that sent me into a tizzy of wanting to mount a defense. It was made at the last “Bill Chat,” and later I realized that not much is known about this group that, from 1970 to ’76, gave the most daringly unpredictable performances around.

Grand Union performance to benefit te Committee to Defend the Black Panthers at NYU’s Loeb Student Center, 1971, L to R: Becky Arnold, Nancy Lewis, Barbara Dilley, Douglas Dunn, Yvonne Rainer; under cover: Steve Paxton, David Gordon; photo © Peter Moore

Last month I watched some videos of the Grand Union at the Getty Research Institute that confirmed for me how groundbreaking they really were. (Another set of the same videos is lodged with the Fales Library and Special Collections at NYU’s Bobst Library.) The wit, the hedonism, the way absurdist motifs accumulated, the uncanny sixth sense the performers had about each other, the sheer imagination spurred by spontaneity, have not been matched since.

Barbara Dilley, Douglas Dunn, photo by Robert Alexander

The Grand Union grew out of a group piece that Yvonne Rainer was working on with fellow dancers from Judson Dance Theater. At a certain point she decided to forego her leadership role and make the group into a collective.

In 1976, I wrote this about them: “We follow their triumphs, disappointments, dares, and frustrations almost too keenly to be bearable. We feel the challenge of spontaneity, the chaotic assortment of possibilities as we do in our own lives. We know that there is no plan. We witness the trust that allows them to bring their personal doubts into play.” (The whole review appears in my book.)

Even better, listen to what Trisha Brown said about performing with the Grand Union in Sally Banes’ book Terpsichore in Sneakers: 

Steve Paxton, Trisha Brown, David Gordon

“It was my intention to deliver an unpremeditated performance each time. The blank slate approach.…There was no way to do something wrong in the Grand Union, improvisation includes error. In the beginning, we were raw and the form unformed and I never knew what was coming next. Steve Paxton arriving with a burning candle installed on his hat symbolizes that period for me…Subversion was the norm. Everything was fair game except fair game. We were ribald…Hilarity pervaded…There were time lapses, empty moments, collusion with the audience, massive behavior displays, pop music, outlandish get-ups, eloquence, bone-bare confrontations, lack of concern, the women’s dance, taking over, paying deference, exhilaration, poignancy, shooting one’s wad, wadding up one’s wad, making something out of nothing, melodramarooney, cheap shots, being oneself against all odds and dancing. Dancing and dancing and dancing.”

David Gordon, Nancy Lewis, Trisha Brown, Douglas Dunn aloft, photo by Babette Mangolte

Because Trisha and the others broke from the group to develop their own work, it petered out in 1976. There are no big anniversaries of the Grand Union to celebrate their accomplishments. Just those videotapes…and whatever people can recall. So I asked some Facebook friends for their memories:

Stephanie Skura I remember admiring the way they’d spontaneously set up a situation & courageously stay with it so it became honest high drama of a sort.

Lisa Kraus They were like high-wire artists. Quite fearless and utterly committed. Something interesting was that they reviewed their shows by watching the video afterward. They studied the choice-making—there was method in the madness!

Irene Borger Yes. The wit of them. The slowed down playful family feeling of them.

Jody Oberfelder I remember sitting up in the balcony of La Mama, legs dangling over the edge, marveling at the quick-witted choices made in the moment. There seemed to be no leader, but humorous and bristly attempts to take over. Situational, yet non-narrative. Familial, and like families, functional and sometimes dysfunctional.

Margaret Eginton I remember laughing out loud and wondering how you got to be so good at improv. We had improv twice a week [at Sarah Lawrence College], but not quite like that!

Cathy Appel I was an older student at SLC, but tuned in to the Grand Union around the same time Meg did and was blown away! Fell in love, too. I would run out immediately to see them tonight if the Grand Union was miraculously performing again!

Lois Welk I remember going to a performance of the Grand Union, smiling through it, enjoying the playfulness. I remember dry humor, great freedom, and lots of props.

Pat Catterson Off the top of my head, seeing Becky Arnold with a papier-mâché globe over her belly when she pregnant at the Whitney in Continuous Project—Altered Daily, the piece that led up to the Grand Union. Seeing Barbara Lloyd and Steve Paxton crawl through a very long tube of pink material at Eisner Lublin Auditorium and emerging at the other end naked having removed their clothes along the way. Their slapping on a Dylan song on a phonograph player and, arms around waists, Nancy and David jogging in a circle to the music around the space. Yvonne, I think she was pretty stoned, being passed along the laps of the audience prone I think at the 14th street Y. It was toward the end of her time with them. I remember the performances they did while Yvonne was in India, and I was in one in which David had a bunch of us who took Yvonne’s classes on Greene Street do his “sleeping” piece. I remember a show at 112 Greene when some pals began playing harmonica and the GU frolicked to it. I remember the kids Ain Gordon and Maia Garrison, whose mother Roberta Garrison [who had danced with Elaine Summers] was often at those shows and Barbara’s son Benji sometimes wanting to get in the act. I remember a bit when David kept saying “I’m going down” and doing a slow-motion fall…and lots more….

L to R: Barbara Dilley, David Gordon (on floor); Douglas Dunn (standing); Nancy Lewis, Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton (sitting). All photos courtesy Douglas Dunn.

I heard these words spoken by a venerable black choreographer in reference to the Grand Union, that groundbreaking, influential improvisation group of the early 1970s. The full sentence was something like, “The only reason the Grand Union was more successful (or more avant-garde) than my group was because they were white.” The claim, uttered during the “Bill Chat” at New York Live Arts last Sunday, met with a nod of agreement from Bill T. Jones. I’ve gotten used to his role as provocateur and can take it in stride, but I was surprised by Dianne McIntyre’s statement.

I think the combative tone that Bill T set during this panel, the last of three “Bill Chats,” fostered a kind of reverse racism. I hasten to add that the first two Bill Chats were more driven by Bill T’s curiosity than his determination to “prove something,” and the whole series has served the dance community in that it has sparked both conversation and agitation.

In the first one, titled The Decrepitude of Art, Bill T. sincerely asked Damian Woetzel why Lincoln Kirstein trashed Merce Cunningham and John Cage—along with all of modern dance—in a 1971 letter he wrote that was reprinted in James Klosty’s book Merce Cunningham. Here’s an example of Kirstein’s lambasting: “I am personally very fond of Merce and admiring of John, but I think they are self-restricted to an audience which is both blind and deaf to the orthodoxy and apostolic succession of four centuries…I feel they have missed the big boat and console themselves with charming hand-hewn yachts.”

Woetzel was articulate and impassioned in explaining Kirstein’s embrace of “orthodoxy” as the one true path. And it was moving to witness Bill T earnestly trying to understand. When the talk was over, I saw Woetzel, Heather Watts, and Robert LaFosse showing Bill how Balanchine’s preparation for pirouettes differs from other methods. (You plié only on the front leg.) Of course, there are many true paths in dance, which I tried to say in this posting. 

The second Bill Chat mulled over the question, When was the downtown established? Clearly Bill T wanted to open up what could be considered “downtown”: Was Clark Center on 51st Street, where Ailey sometimes rehearsed, downtown? The Cubiculo (which was open to dancers of all colors, including myself)? Could Harlem be considered downtown? Or was “downtown” only the Kitchen, Danspace, and DTW and assorted loft spaces? In my mind, “downtown dance” started with Judson Dance Theater in 1962 at Judson Memorial Church on West 4th Street. (Members of Judson became the nucleus of the Grand Union.) But Bill had specified that he was focusing on the years from 1965 to ’85, so I didn’t bring it up.

By the end of this discussion, Bill T declared that he’d like to ban the term “downtown.” I don’t see the menace in this word because I never felt that downtown excluded anyone who was interested. And certainly many professional dancers had no interest in downtown—then or now. In any case, during this second Bill Chat, I learned a lot about the other pockets of dance around the city at that time.

Bill Chat on When did the avant-garde become black? L to R: Ishmael Houston-Jones, Bebe Miller, Adrienne Edwards, Bill T Jones, Dianne McIntyre, Charmaine Warren, Ralph Lemon, Brenda Dixon Gottschild

The third and last Bill Chat, which posed the question “When did the avant-garde become black?” became belligerent as Bill T goaded people both on the panel and in the audience in an unpleasant way. I was the only “white person” who spoke up voluntarily. I will leave it to Eva Yaa Asantewaa to say frankly how the discussion veered off into a domineering, goading dare-fest that was far from the constructive dialog it could have been.

Now, back to Dianne McIntyre and her remark, which I interpreted as denigrating to a group that was consistently mind-blowing during its six-year existence. I feel that the Grand Union’s anarchistic performances caught the feeling of the times, but broke up because the strong individuals within it—David Gordon, Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton, Barbara Dilley, Douglas Dunn—wanted to go their own ways. Without the benefit of longevity and anniversary shindigs, the Grand Union only lives on in what people say about it.

Since most of the dance artists on the panel, including Bebe Miller, Ralph Lemon, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Charmaine Warren, and Bill T, arrived in NYC after the Grand Union fell apart in 1976, I’ve written a simultaneous posting for them and anyone else interested in the heyday of experimentalism in New York dance. Click here to find out more about the legendary Grand Union.

One of the most gripping pieces I saw at Arizona State University last week had no music. Of the 47 works presented in the West region of American College Dance Festival (I was one of three adjudicators), only this one was in silence, while many were performed to music that overwhelmed the dance.

Alpha

This was a duet called Alpha, made by two guys from Grand Canyon University who looked more like wrestlers than dancers—Adam Astorga and Christopher Biles. Each decision about their contact points was crystal clear. The silence allowed you to see first how they leaned against each other back to back in visual harmony, then how they engaged in an ambiguity that mixed combativeness with affection, and finally all-out brutality, butting and crushing each other. The times when they stared each other down, nose to nose, were intense because you could see hostility mingled with affection…maybe even love. None of the complexity was lost or blurred. And in the end, the winner, after defeating his opponent/friend, slowly lowered his head in…doubt, shame, and maybe reflection. Thankfully there was no music to sentimentalize or dramatize that moment.

Susan Rethorst’s “208 East Broadway,” performed at Bryn Mawr, photo by Johanna Austin

Back in the 1970s when I was making dances with Susan Rethorst, we often chose silence. Today she is one of the few choreographers who can carry it off and create a mood without music. I think it has to do with the everyday-ness of her gestures, done at just the right moment to reveal something about the performers and their relationship to their environment. I think that music, any music, would impose itself too much on such subtle moments.

Of course, we know from John Cage’s book Silence that pure silence doesn’t exist. “There is always something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.” So, even if there is no music, we are hearing ambient noise, and that is the accompaniment.

Trisha Brown’s “Glacial Decoy,” photo by Babette Mangolte

I also worked with Trisha Brown in the ’70s, and almost everything she made at that time was in silence—or the ambient noise of us murmuring reminders or stage directions to each other. Once, during a lec-dem on tour, someone asked, “Why don’t you use music?” Trisha answered with another question: “When you look at a piece of sculpture in a gallery, do you ask, Where’s the music?”

That gave me a clue to how Trisha thought of her dances: as equal to visual art works. Even when she started choreographing for the proscenium stage, she regarded her dances more as art than entertainment. For her first stage work, Glacial Decoy (1979), she enlisted the help of visual artist Robert Rauschenberg. He projected a panel of ever changing photographic slides that moved from stage left to right across the backdrop. The dance also shifted from side to side, spilling out laterally. Together, the art and the dancing created the illusion that the piece kept going beyond the proscenium frame. If there had been music, you might not be able to discern this brilliant, convention-breaking concept. Not to mention that the shifting projects gave it a definite rhythm. As for the audience response, usually you can hear a pin drop during this piece. Some presenters think their audience won’t sit though a silent piece. But the Paris Opéra Ballet took a chance with Glacial Decoy, which was set on them by Lisa Kraus—and the French audience did not riot.

NYCB in Robbins’ “Moves,” photo by Paul Kolnik

In the ’80s the Joffrey Ballet acquired Jerome Robbins’ Moves (1959), which is now in NYCB’s rep. The silence seems to put every wrist rotation, every stomp, every bit of partnering into high-definition. By the end, you almost feel exhausted—but exhilarated. You feel like you know so much about each dancer and and the relationships between them.

Mark Morris, known for honoring his chosen composers through dance, recently revived his 37-minute composer-less Behemoth (1990) at BAM. As with Moves, I felt the sound of silence allowed the details to be sharply etched in space. I was so continually intrigued by this piece that it made my “Best of 2010” list. 

Mark Morris’ “Behemoth,” photo by Gene Schiavone

Yes, we all love music; it’s a bone-deep, basic pleasure. When a child hears music she or he bounces or sways along. As dancers, it is music that spurs us to move, engages our muscles, and carries us on its momentum. As choreographers, our work is immeasurably enriched by music. But I do enjoy the stark clarity that silence can bring to what I am seeing onstage.

Tell me about your favorite silent dances.