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

What’s going on with these newly announced institutions? Are ballet and modern dance retrenching back into their separate silos?

Just when the dance world has become so stimulating with its jumble of influences from all over the world, and when classical ballet and contemporary dance are criss-crossing in interesting ways, we have recently seen announcements for two major initiatives that stake out claims for a certain kind of dance—a limited kind of dance that is easy to name.

The two are Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance  and Jennifer Homans’ Center for Ballet and the Arts. There’s a ring about each name that implies that the form in question is endangered, and that these initiatives are meant to protect them in their purity.

Some of the most exciting dance I’ve seen lately would not fit into either category. Wayne McGregor’s Chroma, Arthur Pita’s Metamorphosis, JR’s 8-minute Les Bosquets for New York City Ballet, Mats Ek’s Bye for Sylvie Guillem. I suspect that these hybrids are exactly the kinds of things these two initiatives are protecting against. But if you take a quick look at the most successful festivals, they are the ones that juxtapose different styles next to each other, for example Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, NY City Center’s Fall for Dance, and the Vail International Dance Festival. Audiences—especially young audiences—like seeing the mashup of genres that reflects our current culture onstage.

It seems to me that both Homans and Taylor want to stop time. Clearly when she wrote the notorious last chapter of her book Apollo’s Angels (posted as “Is Ballet Over?”  in The New Republic in 2010), she was mourning the loss of Balanchine. Her book judges all of current ballet against that frozen standard. But it’s a different time now and we’re seeing an explosion of vibrant experimentation from Crystal Pite, Helen Pickett, Akram Khan, and many more.

Paul Taylor’s Esplanade, photo by Lois Greenfield

Regarding the Taylor effort, modern dance morphed into postmodern decades ago when Merce Cunningham broke from Martha Graham. His aesthetic was so entirely different that we needed a new name. Merce blew two big ideas wide open: structural unity and the close relationship of dance to music. Neither has been the same since. Of course there’s a historical value in the grounding of Taylor’s company in American Modern Dance, but the American influence that has spread across Europe is that of Cunningham’s and post-Cunningham dance artists like Trisha Brown and Steve Paxton.

At the most visible modern dance company in the world—Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater—Robert Battle is breaking boundaries. He’s extending beyond the modern dance idiom with works by Rennie Harris, Aszure Barton, and Wayne McGregor, while still carrying the torch for Revelations.

Chroma, by Wayne McGregor, with Ailey dancers
Vernard Gilmore, Alicia Graf Mack, and Linda Celeste Sims

In the case of Homans, she seems not to be aware of what’s going on in the dance world. Ballet companies have been embracing contemporary dance for years. The Royal Ballet, which commissioned Wayne McGregor’s astounding Chroma in 2006, just announced that it is acquiring Israeli choreographer Hofesh Schechter’s Uprising. In years past, the Paris Opera Ballet has commissioned Trisha Brown, Sasha Waltz, and Saburo Teshigawara. I’ve heard that, with the arrival of Benjamin Millepied, the dancers of the world’s oldest ballet company may be improvising gaga-style.

In addition to classical dance companies, some of the top international ballet stars are getting tired of dancing the classics and are seeking stimulation in contemporary dance. Three current examples are Wendy Whelan’s Restless Creature, Osipova and Vasiliev’s Solo for Two, and CONTEXT: Diana Vishneva, a festival of contemporary dance that she inaugurated last year in Moscow.

The description of the Homan’s Center for Ballet and the Arts makes it clear that it will elevate ballet, albeit in collaboration with the other arts, as the form of dance worthy of serious study in the university.

While it’s necessary and wonderful to preserve existing art forms, it seems to me like these two initiatives are going backwards, holding on to a time that is past.

Isaac Akiba of Boston Ballet in Forsythe’s The Second Detail, photo by Gene Schiavone

The good news is that since Apollo’s Angels was published in 2010, Homans has discovered some of the leading lights of ballet, like William Forsythe (with whom she conducted a mutually admiring BAM talk last fall) and Alonzo King. These two key figures have exerted a huge influence on the ballet world for decades, but in Homans’ 600-page history of ballet, Forsythe was mentioned only in an endnote on page 440, and King not at all. So I say kudos to Homans for beginning to open her eyes and seeing what’s around her. This bodes well for the think tank—because before you can think you have to see.

Likewise, Taylor has changed too. When he first announced his idea in February, he was quoted as saying he wanted to remount masterworks from Graham, Humphrey, and Limón. Well, someone must have clued him in to the fact that the Graham and Limón companies themselves are struggling to find audiences for their masterworks, because the later announcements have shifted the emphasis to supporting a new generation of choreographers.

Hopefully, once these two centers are up and running, their initial ideas will continue to evolve. But the similarity between the two makes me ask, What would I want to protect in the dance world? I think it would be the cross-pollination between ballet and modern dance. Since 1973, when the Joffrey dancers joined the Tharp dancers in her ground-breaking Deuce Coupe, the intersection has been exciting to me. But tracing that history is another story….

There is something pleasant about letting your eye and ear rest on a person whose gender is ambiguous. Partly it’s a guessing game, and partly it’s an opportunity to see how inter-related femaleness and maleness are. You can leave the stereotypes behind and just watch one human being’s bundle of contradictions. We all have contradictions, and we all have both female and male attributes. But some of us live on that line between male and female more precariously than others.

Ilvs Strauss

I felt this kind of tingly pleasure watching Ilvs (pronounced Elvis) Strauss’ solo Manifesto in June at Seattle’s On the Boards. Boyish, even childish-looking, but with a witty, bemused, feminine voice, Strauss presents a perfectly androgynous look and tone. In the taped monologue, she somehow connects her fascination for the California red sea cucumber (a slimy creature whose excrement is supposedly cleaner than its intake) with her horror of pregnancy. But she needs to be creative, she needs “to make something.” She leaves the space, and when she re-enters, she’s wearing something she’s made—a California red sea cucumber costume. Thus encumbered, she moves to the song “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman.” It’s quite ridiculous and makes us giggle or guffaw. Maybe this is the ultimate in the current explosion of gender identity. If you’re trying out different genders, why not choose a creature whose biology is already fascinating?

In contrast to Strauss, Amy O’Neal embraces her femaleness. Part b-girl and part pomo choreographer, O’Neal turns butt-shaking into a scholarly investigation. She’s still sexy but also defiant. Switching her focus from female to male in her current work, Opposing Forces, she explores the soft side of the macho swagger of b-boys.

Rehearsal of Amy O’Neal’s Opposing Forces at Velocity

Strauss and O’Neal are among the 17 artists performing in the Seattle Dance Showcase Sept 5–7 at Velocity Dance Center. As chance would have it, some of the other people in the showcase are also taking interesting gender trips.

But…. maybe it’s not just chance. When I asked Tonya Lockyer, the visionary director who is behind Velocity’s recent surge of success, she had a lot to say.

Orange, by Pat Graney, slated for 2015, photo by Tim Summers

“There’s a history of dance artists doing interesting work with a lens toward gender in Seattle,” she said, “where they are subverting audiences’ expectations of gender.” She mentioned two major figurers in the Pacific Northwest: Pat Graney and Mark Morris. Both have been pretty brazen in shaking up gender expectations, opening doors to this kind of experimentation for younger artists. O’Neal, who worked with Graney, talks about her influence in our “Choreography in Focus.” 

(By the way, Gina Gibney, who for many years had an all-woman company, has told me that both Graney and Morris were also big influences on her when she was in Seattle.)

Lockyer feels that Velocity has become a kind of home to the new categories of sexual identity. “Velocity is a trans-safe space. When talking to some of the trans in our community, what came up is that it’s a space where they can have a life as a queer person, a trans person.”

Tonya Lockyer at Velocity, photo by Bettina Hansen, Seattle Times

Also, Lockyer points out that Seattle artists are very connected to the city’s indie music scene, the Burlesque scene, and the fashion and design element. As Gigi Berardi wrote in “Seattle Takes Off” in Dance Magazine, dancers often collaborate with artists in other disciplines in this vibrant arts community.

In today’s New York Times Magazine, Taffy Brodesser-Akner writes in “The T Word” that this is a “pivotal moment for transgender people, who are emerging from culture’s margins.” I suppose Velocity is on the margin of popular culture, but it’s in the center of dance culture, and in the center of  Seattle’s gay-friendly Capitol Hill. (Also in Capitol Hill is the arts/social justice Nova High School, where transgender kids are welcome. Plus, Washington State recently legalized same-sex marriage.)

Lockyer says, “I think really what folks are investigating is not just gender identity, but the fluidity of gender identity, sexual orientation and even racial identity and how these things are interconnected.” Because some of the work slated for this showcase reflects that fluidity, I’m including Lockyer’s descriptions here.

Cherdonna Shinatra in Worth My Salt, photo by Eric Pagulo

• “Chardonna Shinatra does bio-drag. She’s a biological female female impersonator. She’s exposing how drag queens are constructed by a male gaze, but she’s also a full-throttle postmodern choreographer caught in this gloriously theatrical tragicomedy of trying to figure out who she is in a place where how she’s perceived can change depend on context.”

Gender Tender

• “The duo Gender Tender are dedicated to resisting any kind of binary. Will Courtney identifies as a white trans man, and Syniva Whitney, a gender-non-conforming mixed-race black person. Often in their work they take binaries as choreographic tools and play with subverting and deconstructing them. Gender Tender has been described as ‘dance meets standup comedy.’ It has that pull-at-your-heartstrings-while-making-you-laugh quality.”

• “In Tahni Holt’s world premiere, Duet Love, she’s trying to challenge how gender is constructed in performance. She’s looking at how audiences have perceived the masculine and feminine and are constantly projecting that onto what’s behind the decisions these dancers are making. She does this with unrelentingly thoughtful nuance, and it’s incredibly beautiful visual theater.”

Tahni Holt’s Duet Love, photo by Eugenie Frerichs

More thoughts from Lockyer: “Seattle artists are upending expectations about gender and maybe releasing some of the energy contained in certain taboos. They are wanting to provoke the sublime or provoke something beautiful. A Seattle artist here, Wynne Greenwood, calls it ‘cultural healing.’ It’s why someone would choose Seattle, where you can have a trans queer life, and you can keep redefining yourself without having to be politicized in that choice. I don’t see the desire to shock in the work. There’s a transgender body but it’s not necessarily about being transgender.”

Click here for more info on the Fall Kickoff/Seattle Dance Showcases.