NS: I’m sitting across the table from Joan Woodbury[1], who is going to narrate her story today. We’re at 830 Broadway, in the home of Doris and Tom Caravaglia[2] in New York City. It’s February 12th, 2016. I don’t want to cover a lot of the ground that’s already been covered in other oral histories that you, Joan, have, have been so gracious to do. So the focus of this conversation will be on you and Nikolais.
JW: Okay.
NS: Or Alwin Nikolais, known as Nik.
JW: That sounds great.
NS: But can you, before you do that, just so we ground ourselves -- can you, in -- I don’t want to say a hundred words or less -- but in a short little capsule of who you are -- where you’ve come from and, you know, a brief sort of vitae shall we say.
JW: I’ll try. But when you get my age, it gets longer. (laughs)
NS: (laughs) That’s true. Well, just pick out the important things.
JW: (laughs) Okay. All right. Well, I’m from Cedar City, Utah. I went to school there. I was very involved in movement. That’s how I knew myself, is through motion. And I enjoyed all the sports. I enjoyed anything I could do that was moving. When I went to school, one of my teachers recognized something about me: that I, uh, -- I loved dance. I never thought I’d be a dancer. It just didn’t occur to me that there was a -- a profession like that, you know, that I could aspire to. But when I went to college there, a two-year college, she said to me before -- just before I graduated, “Joan, you need to go to the University of Wisconsin. There’s a woman there that’s a wonderful woman. I’ve heard about her. I studied there for a summer. You have to go to Wisconsin.” My father, being a nice -- he was a cattleman rancher, and my mother a pianist -- said, “How are you going to earn a living with dance?” That was his concern. And I said, “Dad, it’s gonna work. I can do this.” But it was this wonderful teacher named LaVeve Whetten [1911-1997] that went to my father and literally talked him into sending me to Madison. So I applied that spring. I got in. Got on the train to Madison, went -- by myself, I’d never been out of the state.
NS: You were brave. Brave you.
JW: Well, you know, it’s interesting and then got to Chicago, changed [at] Chicago, went to Madison. Got there at midnight, got to my house, cried all night. (laughs)
NS: Awww. (laughs)
JW: It was so lonesome. But I spent four years with that incredible woman, Margaret H’Doubler [1889-1982] – and her primary technique and improvisation teacher, Louise Kloepper [1910-1996], who had been a dancer for Hanya Holm. [1893-1992] And by the time I graduated, in four years, I felt so lucky to have had that experience. It was kind of a miracle that I got there. And it was Marge -- Marge was the -- the -- a real wonderful philosopher. And so it was she that I -- I developed my philosophy about dance, and about its value for everyone. Everyone. And that it should start at a very, very young age. I used to think it should start in school. I think it should start when you’re nine months old. I think children should experience motion very early in their lives. And while I was there, of course Louise Kloepper had danced with Hanya, and studied with Wigman [Mary Wigman, 1886-1973] -- I got very, very interested in Wigman, and Hanya through her -- and we were at the time also in school, sending care packages to -- I think it was to Dresden -- for Mary[Wigman], who was teaching in a little -- in her house. And the dancers there didn’t have any leotards or clothes to wear. So Louise’d ship costumes to her. And I began to realize that there’s a history here.
NS: And this is 1946 – 7?
JW: -- I went there in 1947. And in 1949, Louise said, “Why don’t you -- Joan, I think you should meet Hanya Holm, and study with her.” So I went to Colorado Springs [3], as did a couple of my roommates went there. Don Redlich [1929- ] was there and a girl named Sunny Boland [00:05:00] And Gladys [Gladys Bailin, 1930- ] I met there. But when I got to Colorado Springs I was not put in Hanya’s advanced composition or improvisation class. I was put in the class of a man named Alwin Nikolais. Lucky, lucky, lucky.
NS: Lucky, lucky.
JW: It was incredible. Oliver Kostock [1913-1995] taught there that summer, too. But from Nik, my eyes just started opening. He gave the most incredible choreography and improvisation problems that Louise somehow hadn’t done at the University of Wisconsin. It wasn’t the same.
NS: So can you talk about the difference? Or do you remember -walking into the studio and seeing this giant of a man --
JW: Yeah.
NS: -- I mean, he’s not huge, but in your psyche he is this giant.
JW: He is a giant of a man. I just remember -- I have to say this first. Murray Louis [1926-2016] was also there. (laughs) So here we were --
NS: Okay. This constellation of --
JW: This constellation of -- and there was also an aura surrounding that. Where Murray had been – had studied with Anna Halprin [1920-2021], who had studied with Marge H’Doubler -- I didn’t make that connection, uh --
NS: At that point?
JW: -- Natasha, no. I didn’t -- until much later. And I thought, because I knew that Murray had some of the same philosophy that I’d just been working with, and it was -- anyway. Anyway.
NS: Well, the stars were aligned --
JW: They were aligned.
NS: -- it sounds like they were --
JW: It was just a -- it was an absolutely joyous summer. Just joyous. I just remember going in the studio with Nik and of course sitting at his feet and having him give an improvisation problem and I remember one specifically. He said, “I want you to fly. Your problem is flight.” And, we’d had a lot of other problems too. And I thought, “Flight? How can I do this? It would be so silly to run around the room and flap my arms.” So I remember -- I remember standing up and thinking, “Okay.” And I just -- I crouched down and then I just held it for -- and then I began elongating myself, and rising. And then, you know, I got up, I -- I’m almost gonna cry -- I got up on tiptoes. I was -- I felt -- I was soaring. [pause] And then the room broke into applause.
NS: Oh, Joan.
JW: Oh. But it’s things like that, that, you know, you just -- you -- you want to do something you’ve never done before. You did anything for that man. I’d have jumped off a cliff. (laughs) He -- it was so exciting.
NS: You know, it’s telling… I’m fortunate to have listened to other people’s histories as well. And recently I sat down with Coral Martindale [1935- ], who worked with both Murray and Nik.
JW: She -- she told me your story about the wall.
NS: The wall. And I asked her to describe it to me. And she said, “You know, the problem was, Nik asked us to run up the wall. And I couldn’t imagine how I would do it. And I just stared” --
JW: But he said also -- she said last night -- “The wall is the floor. The wall is the floor.”
NS: Well, she describes staring at that wall for the longest time --
JW: That’s what I did.
NS: -- taking the time to -- to know what that wall was. And -- and then she just took off. And she climbed the wall. And everyone in comp class was astonished. And it’s the same story again -- as you tell about flight. So what is it about Nik that elicits from you, from Coral, from other people that --
JW: I think it’s his -- I think it’s his trust in you. You know, I studied with him later. And we -- we were talking a little bit about the notebooks. And I have notebooks about all my classes that I took, and what I did after the class and what I failed and what he said about our comp problems. And -- and the first one he said, “Well, that’s a little bit too decorative.” That’s all I wrote. And the next year he said, “Oh, you’ve gone a little astray on the problem.” And then about the fourth year [00:10:00], the fourth summer he came to Utah, he said, “That was beautiful. You solved it. You solved the problem.” And I thought, you know, all this time I’d been - you just try so hard and you don’t realize that you’ve either gotten off track or taken another view of it or haven’t asked enough of yourself -- so, he asked you to go to places that you had never gone before. And he gave you such clear definition of the elements that we were working with, time and shape and space and motion so that you began to understand decentralization. You know, it took a while to get there, to discover what that really meant for you --
NS: What does it mean for you?
JW: For me, it means -- it’s a taking the center of yourself, which includes your ego and removing the ego from the place that you want people -- that you are concentrating with --and that’s the place that you want people to see. You want to put your center someplace else in your body so that the motion of the body, or the point in the body, or where you’re going is the center of the focus at that moment.
NS: I wish we had a video camera now --
JW: (laughs)
NS: -- because you are so eloquent. (laughs)
JW: Oh, thank you. (laughs)
NS: In motion. (laughs)
JW: Well, you know, it was just such a joy. And then we became very dear friends. In fact Murray and [Nik] kind of took me under their wings that summer for whatever happened.
NS: Oh, how nice. Yes.
JW: I feel like a hayseed. (laughs) I was this kid from Cedar City -- and, -- for instance, Hanya made me the stage manager of L’Histoire du Soldat. [1929]
NS: Oh.
JW: I wanted to do the main role, of course. (laughs) And I said, “Nik, what does this mean? What do I -- what’s my job? I don’t know what a stage manager is?” And he says, “Well, you make sure that everybody gets on stage at the right time. And you tell people what to do.” And I’d go to him and I’d say, “Now what do I do?” So he just -- he walked me through that role… He was wonderful. I’ve told the story about going to the movies together?
NS: No.
JW: Oh, I haven’t? (laughs) They were so cute. I’d fallen in love with Nik and Murray. And they’d fallen in love with each other. I got to go to the movies with them so they could go to the movies together. (laughs)
NS: Aha. You were their escort.
JW: I was their escort. And I wonder why I didn’t sit in the middle. Oh, and so I just had a great time. And Murray was -- Murray was an inspiration. He was so articulate. But, you know, sometimes I said, “That kid doesn’t point his toes." Then you began to realize, “Oh my God.”
NS: What’s a pointed toe when --
JW: What’s the point --
NS: -- when the eloquence is personified?
JW: He was incredible.
NS: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: So, and then, we danced a dance of Nik's called Extrados [Nikolais, 1949] and I think we danced Trend [1937] of Hanya’s that summer, too. I wasn’t quite sure -- it was a section of Trend. But at any rate, I came away from there, went back to Madison, and realized again the strong connection between Nikolais and Louise and Mary -- so I started doing some research about it. But when I graduated from Madison, things were different in those times. You didn’t have to write a resume. You didn’t have to send your resume out. Betty Hayes [Elizabeth Hayes, 1911-2007], from the University of Wisconsin, had studied at Madison as well. And she called Marge H’Doubler and she said, “I need -- I’m gonna hire for the first time a full-time dance faculty. Do you have someone there you think would be great?” Marge said, “Oh, I’ve got the perfect person for you. And she’s from Utah.” And so she suggested me and Betty called me but in the meantime, I’d sent some stuff to New York because I thought I was gonna go to New York and you know, just try it out.
NS: Try it out.
JW: So, I -- I went to Utah. And I met her. I thought she was incredible. I felt so at home with her. The faculty at that point was only about 2,000 people. I met all the departments. I taught some classes. And she asked me to take the job.
NS: 1951?
JW: Fifty-one.
NS: When you say you didn’t have to send resumes out, but I also think that what was going on then in this country was this tremendous energy that had been pent up after the war, and that people were -- well, certainly men were going back in droves under the GI Bill --
JW: Exactly.
NS: -- and there was this sense of, “Okay. We’ve been through it. Now, let’s -- let’s --”
JW: Right. Right. Right. [00:15:00]
NS: “-- let’s go for it--”
JW: Yeah.
NS: So there’s this built-up pent-up energy that -- that gets unleashed --
JW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
NS: -- in places like Utah and Wisconsin and New York and Colorado and -- yeah.
JW: -- well, and actually, what’s interesting -- I -- I find very interesting is the fact that with Hanya’s school here and all of her dancers, and the whole Bennington thing -- Betty Hayes had studied at Bennington, [Bennington School of the Dance, Bennington, Vermont, held summers 1934-1942] too -- so she knew Hanya.
NS: As did Nik.
JW: Yeah. Thank you. That was good. But I’m just putting the connection together. All of the dancers that were flooding into the universities at that time were mostly Hanya’s dancers except on the East Coast. And then they came from Martha Hill [1900-1995] and, uh, I can’t think of her name. It’ll come to me. But she’s a very, very wonderful, famous woman.
NS: Bessie Schonberg?
JW: Schonberg. [1906-1997] Yes. But schools then had this -- this Wigman philosophy --
NS: Uh-huh.
JW: -- all over the country. And here we were, and I was, you know, I was just bound and determined to --
NS: You were just eagerly lapping it up.
JW: Eager -- eagerly. But then, a girl named Shirley Ririe [1929- ] had studied with Elizabeth Hayes, and had thought of going to Wisconsin, but she didn’t. She came to NYU. And went to school at NYU. So when I was in Utah, she was teaching at Brigham Young Utah, which is 50 miles away. Betty said, “I know this woman that you’d love.” And she said to Shirley, “I know this woman -- I have this -- this faculty member you’d love.”
JW: We met and we did. (laughs)
NS: Yeah, oh, lovely.
JW: We had the same -- we both had the same philosophy. So she’d gotten her philosophy, which is a -- was a Wisconsin school --
NS: Sure. Yeah.
JW: -- through, uh, Betty Hayes. But while in New York she’d studied with Nik. So here’s this thing: and so in about 19-- 1954, well, in the meantime, I married in 1952. And, to Charles Woodbury, great guy. (chuckles)
And in 1954, I decided I had to meet Mary Wigman. So I just -- I wrote a -- for a Fulbright scholarship. But I didn’t send it to the University. I thought, I’m gonna just send it to the Fulbright. Well --
NS: I’m just gonna get on that train and go to Madison --
JW: I’m gonna get on the train. I’m gonna go. So I sent in the Fulbright [application], and lo and behold, they accepted me. Except by that time, Natasha, I was pregnant. So I said to Charlie, I said, uh, “Hey, if I -- if I get a scholarship to go to Germany, would you come with me?” And he said, “Sure.” And I said, “Okay. Let’s pack our bag. We’re going in August.”
NS: We’re going. (laughs)
JW: And I wrote the Fulbright Scholarship and said, “I’m pregnant. Is that okay if I come?” They said, “Oh, we love to have families.” So I went over -- eight and a half months pregnant and had my baby two weeks after I arrived there. Anyway. (laughs)
NS: Wow.
JW: Wow. You know, it didn’t occur to me that I might have some difficulty.
NS: The can-do pioneer spirit that says --
JW: So I decided, “I need to find out where -- where’s the -- the fountainhead of this whole philosophy,” is what I felt.
NS: Because you had -- in -- in all these places, in Madison and in Colorado College --
JW: Right.
NS: -- you -- you’d had --
JW: Touches.
NS: -- little touchstones --
JW: Touches. Right, right, right.
NS: -- and you wanted to go to --
JW: Yeah. Yeah.
NS: -- you know, the -- the -- the fountain.
JW: Right. Yeah.
NS: Did you find, in taking class and studying in Berlin with Wigman --
JW: Mary.
NS: -- did you find that it was -- aside from geography and aside from Wigman, was it different --
JW: Oh, very.
NS: -- than studying with Hanya and Nik at Colorado or with Marge in Wisconsin? What -- how -- what’s the filtering?
JW: Well, it’s interesting. Because I found where a lot of things came from. She [Wigman] has her classes scheduled so they were -- each day was a specific day. Like one day -- one day might be -- I can’t remember exactly. I do remember that Thursday was turning day. I remember that - and I’ll tell you why. Monday might have been arm and hand day. Tuesday might’ve been körper day -- the torso. Wednesday, space. Thursday was always turning -- drehen. And -- Friday was always legs and leaping in the air, okay? And so the whole day, the concept of the day would be based around that subject. You came in the morning and had a technique class. And it -- [00:20:00] very much, the technique of the, from Nik and Murray, but different of course. The teacher was Til Thiele [1907-2002], a teeny little gymnast. And here I came, after two weeks being pregnant and the first thing I did was bend over and roll over on the floor. Come into the second position. And I tweaked my back that day which lasted the whole year.
NS: Shoot.
JW: I couldn’t -- it was just one of those irritable things that… and now, actually, when I get cold or I’m tired, that muscle says, “Hey, remember me?”
NS: Remember in 1955 -- on the floor. In Berlin. (laughs)
JW: But what was interesting, of course, is it was all in German. And I learned German very quickly. I can speak about dance in German (laughs).
NS: You can count in German.
JW: I can count in German. I can count in German.
NS: You can name body parts in German.
JW: Yes, yes, yes. (laughs)
JW: But we had about an hour or an hour and a half technique class. It started at 9:00. And then by 11:00, or 10:30, first of all, you’d go to the studio in very cold Berlin days. Cold. It was cold and wet. And you couldn’t wear slacks then. So you ha-- I had tons of underpants on. And big skirts.
NS: Layers.
JW: Layers and layers of clothing. And then you get to the studio and go up the stairs, and into a cold, cold dressing room. And the German kids, by that time, some of them were going into the showers with little sticks. Cold showers, and beating themselves nicely warm and I was huddling in the corner taking off one piece at a time and putting on anything I could as fast as I could. It was cold. But as soon as you got in the studio --
NS: And then your engine started to work.
JW: -- you know, it got very warm. Then your engine started going. And the studio got very warm. But by about 10:00, Mary would arrive. And she would hit the gong at the bottom of the stairs. And we’d all come down the stairs. She was always dressed in black with little white socks or a white blouse. And go into the studio. And she had a big chair at the end of the studio from which she taught.
NS: Why do you think she did it that way? Was it because she was now, what? 70?
JW: She was 70. But she was very mobile. But there was -- there was a formality about the -- a real formality about it. And she had -- the piano was down at that end. And there’d be Mary. And then of course she’d move around. And a wonderful pianist named Ulrich Kessler [1905-1984] who was fabulous. And then we’d start the day. And occasionally -- there -- there were three Americans there. Plus an -- woman named [Emma Lew(is) Thomas, 1932-2021], American -- but she was dancing with Mary. She would take class occasionally, not always. But she was dancing with her. So occasionally Mary would turn to you and say a word that put you on track. If you looked like you didn’t know what you were doing. In the -- in the movement class, you got it very quickly. Because you could see. And she -- she demonstrated enough. About like Nik. Not -- not quite as much, though. Nik -- Nik -- I don’t know. But, anyway. And then in the afternoon, we’d come and we’d have an improvisation class. That was when we needed the translation occasionally.
NS: Do you remember some of the improvisation problems?
JW: Yes. Yeah. Her improvisations were more dramatic than Nikolais’. He moved really into the elements of dance when you improvised. At the beginning stages. And as you got better and better, he could add other elements.
NS: But he started from bare bones --
JW: But he started bare bones --
NS: -- bare bones abstractions.
JW: -- and she very often started from -- I remember one of them was “to be old.” And I remember her -- I’ve got a photo of her -- you know, this is what she looked like when she [said] “Be old.” And so you’d get a sense of how you’d deal with that. But you had to find -- we’d go up and improvise one at a time very quickly one a time, not in a group. Like -- Nik would usually get you warmed up, remember?
NS: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: You’d warm up all together and then --
NS: Together --
JW: -- you’d and then --
NS: -- and then you would have groups.
JW: -- groups that would work.
NS: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: These, we’d go up one at a time. So you’d watch and hope you weren’t first. (laughs)
NS: (laughs) Okay.
JW: And then you’d watch to see what people did so that you tried to find something about how you were gonna start or what you were gonna do that was really different. And at the same time, solved the problem.
NS: And I venture to say, too -- that you -- it’s like a communal meal, almost.
JW: It is. It is.
NS: Where you get -- it sounds hokey to say “inspiration” but -
JW: But you do.
NS: -- but you end up in this comm- [00:25:00] communal endeavor --
JW: Right.
NS: -- each class.
JW: Exactly.
NS: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: And then we’d have choreographic problems that we’d bring in.
NS: That you would bring in or that she would? --
JW: That she’d give us.
So we’d have to -- we did work. But she couldn’t do that too much because there were only -- there were some West Germans. Most of her students were pouring in from the East. And they’d have to be gone by 5:00. They’d have to be out of there by 5:00. And she’d never know how much work they would be able to do. So, interesting.
But, then we’d have Lehreprobe [demonstration lesson], where we -- teach -- teaching. And sometimes her choreographic problems would be like this. She would start. She would put some students in space. And she would start choreographing with them. And she -- she’d move them around and tell them where to go and what to do. And then she’d say, “Okay, Joan, you go on from there.”
NS: So her composition class --
JW: -- very often was teaching you form and shape and design. And she’d tell you what the problem was. For instance, I’m sure she has a dance called the Wailing Wall. And that might’ve been the problem for the day. So you just try to make the next gesture believable and -- and on the right track with where it had gone thus far. And the further along it got, I think the easier it got. It was just those first steps of -- of making sure that it kept the seeds of what had started. So it was a very interesting way to do that. I found that very interesting.
NS: It is an interesting… I mean, it seems unique.
JW: It is. It was.
NS: I don’t know of anybody else who --
JW: After that I didn’t --
NS: -- approaches that --
JW: -- after that I didn’t.
NS: It is also interesting that the contrast exists between Wigman’s improvisation classes and Nikolais’ improvisation classes.
JW: Yes, it is.
NS: I would be curious to know, aside from personality, why that is.
JW: Well, I think -- well, it may be --
NS: Personality. (laughs)
JW: Personality. That’s what I was going to -- It may be personality.
NS: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: Because, Mary was really a very dramatic dancer. And -- and yet she abstracted her work. But --
NS: But she approached abstraction from --
JW: -- approached it from -- from the drama.
NS: And Nik --
JW: Nik goes the other way ’round.
NS: Yes.
JW: I’m sure there’s a -- I’m sure there’s a subject matter that has a drama in it when he works for sure. I mean, when you look at Tower. [1968] The subject matter’s pretty clear. (laughs)
NS: Pretty cle-- absolutely.
JW: But it’s -- and isn’t it amazing that he finds his way into these kind of otherworldly, sinister --
NS: -- dark places.
JW: Sinister. Dark. Dark.
NS: Yeah.
JW: Yeah, yeah. And yet it’s totally entertaining. It’s just incredible.
So, then as I said Thursday was turning day. Any -- it’s circular space. So it might be hexagons, not diagonals, but turning. So you learn -- I learned very quickly, you know, you turn, and you turn, and you turn. I spent half my time in the john in that class.
NS: Oh, my gosh.
JW: I’d go in and throw up. I’d come back and walk back in and join it again. After maybe a month or so I didn’t do that anymore. But you began to get so that you knew (whispers) what the secret of a turn was.
NS: The -- and the constant points in space.
JW: And the -- and the constant points in space. Incredible. And then sometimes her classes were -- sometimes her classes would be, you know, all about the vibrazionne -- the class -- vibration classes. She did that a lot. And I loved that. And I -- and I recognized afterwards that some of the material in those classes had come from her Hexentanz. [Witch Dance, 1926] And it wasn’t until I saw -- she di-- I -- she may have told us that. I didn’t hear it. But I saw videos -- the video of Hexentanz that the -- Allegra Snyder Fuller [American dance ethnologist, 1927- ] had and I realized, “My God. That’s what we did in class.” And hands. We’d do things with the hands and the claws and the symbols and systems and one thumb up, one finger down -- designs that are really meant to -- signal, they were. So, her classes -- they just felt very exotically different for me.
NS: Well, I mean, look at your references. I mean, she’s German.
JW: Right.
NS: And very, very, specifically culturally German. [00:30:00]
JW: Exactly. Exactly.
NS: And you’re pioneer Utah, the far West.
JW: Exactly. English.
NS: And English.
JW: English. And I think Welsh, and yeah, yeah, yeah.
NS: Yeah. Yeah. And I -- I suspect that the-- I mean, you were -- you were having a--
JW: I was having a cultural --
NS: -- a transcultural moment.
JW: I was. I was.
NS: (laughs) Yeah. Yeah. Can we go back to Colorado College again?
JW: Yes.
NS: Or can you go back to Colora-- (laughs)
JW: I’ll try. I’ll try. (laughs)
NS: Because at some point you mentioned decentralization. You also, in another interview, had talked about Nik’s classes then. Where he was dealing in those elements of being present.
JW: Right, right, right.
NS: Being, transcending psyche. Decentralization.
JW: Right, right, right.
NS: And you alluded to it as the difference between how Wigman approached something and how Nik approaches --
JW: Right.
NS: Can you talk a little bit more about those classes with Nik in which he -- he was exploring? It’s clear that you’re talking about a time in Nik’s career when he’s also exploring.
JW: Yes I can. Now that you mention it, I hadn’t thought about it. But what impressed me so much about him was that in those classes I just remember being just so glad to go in there and discover things. But I remember doing an improvisation with him in which he’d given us some things to do. And what he was getting from us was somehow not even close to what he wanted. And he said, “Let’s stop this. I’m not quite sure where I’m going. Let me think about this and we’ll come back.” So he’d veer and go in another direction. So I’ve seen him actually do that several times, which I thought was quite wonderful.
NS: Yes.
JW: He was trying to get somewhere. And, you know, when I listened to Coral last night, she said, “He’d stand there sometimes with his -- tapping his face with his fingers just not saying a word. And just waiting. Waiting for the right moment so that what he could say was something that would trigger you to find a way to get somewhere else.” And -- and -- and really the most, I guess that was the experience that was so wonderful with him, is you really felt you had transcended. You were -- you were otherworldly in a way. It was so spiritual. To work with him. I don’t think I ever came away from class with him -- even if it had been the simplest thing of, as we were talking about, that is “stop” and “go” -- and what’s a “stop” and what’s a “go?” And how do you personify that -- that action?
NS: And at the same time, it’s interesting that you choose the word “how do you personify” because it’s absolutely essential that the person become “stop.” And that the person become “go.”
JW: Become go. Oh, that the -- yeah. Yes, exactly. It’s -- it’s the psyche. It’s the total body that has it. Total body. Psyche, emotions, the physicality, everything.
NS: Let me jump now 50 years. Do you find those kinds of questions when you’re working with contemporary dancers now? How do you approach that question?
JW: I find it with our company. In the early days, when Shirley and I were just starting a company, all of these dancers had worked with us, so we were all on the same page. There was no question about it.
But with the dancers now, I find it very -- not enough of this -- this technique, I shall call it, is being taught now in this country. And it saddens me because it’s kind of a heart, really, of what the profession’s about. So dancers don’t understand what stop is -- they don’t understand really what space is. What projections of space is. [00:35:00] They don’t understand the points in space. And so they are not as able to decentralize because the sense of going and stopping is one thing. The sense of being pedestrian is another. And it’s out of time. But when you’re going and stopping you’re totally in time.
NS: Yes. Yeah.
JW: So, it’s wonderful to take the works of Nik that Tito [Alberto del Saz, 1960- [4]] has brought to the company and each year help them understand how to be present in the work. And how to perform the work. So they know what vertical is. They know what going down is. And they know what width is. They know how to shift the -- the miraculous, chameleon body into different facets of the work to make it come alive.
NS: It’s almost as if we’ve -- we’ve so sanded down the notion of technique. It’s like we’ve taken the wood and sanded it until there’s absolutely no grain there --
JW: Exactly. Exactly.
NS: -- and -- and so to -- to try and at least recover the -- the -- the honey or the --
JW: Perceptual --
NS: -- or the perceptual --
JW: The touch.
NS: -- touch of --
JW: We’re both here rubbing our fingers.
NS: (laughs) Yeah.
JW: (laughs)
NS: And in that sense it’s become far more sterile. And that
JW: I agree.
NS: -- to recover the -- the time and the sense of exploration.
JW: Yeah.
NS: And the -- and the --
JW: The really sentient values. It’s interesting that a lot of people are awfully great technicians. Good grief. People are doing now things that -- if I had done this as a kid, you know (chuckles), it’s amazing. You look at it and say “Oh, my gosh.” And they really are wonderful dancers now. But if they had all the other stuff (laughs). So it’s -- it’s that. It’s finding -- it’s making -- keeping people very curious.
NS: Well, and that curiosity, I think is very key, because what you describe: how you describe Nik’s process in an improv class or in a composition class is that he’s also curious.
JW: He is.
NS: And he’s willing to be curious and more curious.
JW: Right.
NS: And take the time to be curious.
JW: He is. He is. I think about him sitting there, just with those drums… Away you go. And his talking and beating and helping people to kind of keep a motor going. And, -- and you feel like a bunch of Valkyries or (laughs) -- when -- you know, you just -- it’s -- begins to -- your juices are going. You’re -- you’re totally involved in what you’re doing. Oh, what a guy. (laughs)
NS: Yeah. Oh. So when you came back to Utah after your Fulbright and you were teaching at the University, then Nik and Murray come on summer session --
JW: This is what happened. I came back -- oh, when I left, I said, “Betty, would you like to have Shirley? Could Shirley substitute for me?” She loved her. She’d always loved her as a student. Loved her. “That would be fabulous, Joan,” she said. So Shirley had substituted for me for that year. I came back. I had a child. She had a child. I said, “Shirley, would you like to share this job? How could we share this job?” So we went to Betty, and she said, “That’d be wonderful.” She was so happy, because, really, Shirley’d been her baby. And so the two of us, like Bobbsey Twins, marched over to the President of the University and said, “President Olpin [A.Ray Olpin, 1898-1983], we’d like to job-share.” And he said, “What does that mean?” (laughs) “Well, we’ll take this much pay and we’ll split it and we’ll do the job.” And so we did. For I imagine almost ten years. It couldn’t’ve been that much but it felt -- I’ll bet it was. Sure it was. Sure it was. Before we each got a position. What we were doing is: the technique classes were three days a week and we moved them to five.
Improvisations were three days. We moved them to five. So everything got expanded. Nobody paid any more money. The students didn’t pay anymore. We weren’t paid anymore. Until, of course, they caught on to it. And then they’d realized they’d make it a class. But that’s the way, with Betty, we were making that department grow.
NS: And -- and growing the profession, but also --
JW: Exactly.
NS: -- spreading -- I mean, it’s like the seeds are --
JW: Yeah. Yeah.
NS: -- are now even more [00:40:00] -- fertile
JW: Yeah. And we had had a little company when we first started -- met together in ’52 -- we started a company called Choreodancers. Because we felt it wasn’t fair for us to dance with the students. So there were a bunch of people. There were people from, uh, Bella Lewitzky’s [1916-2004] company, there were two people that studied with Graham [Martha Graham, 1894-1991], two men so there -- another group of people had got together and worked together to have a little company. And we started performing, et cetera -- but gradually they’d leave and get jobs, and Shirley and I were there. So we just collected other people around us. Plus students, some students. And then in 1953 or ’2, I’m not sure which, Betty made me the Chair of the summer workshop program. And I thought, ”Ahahh.”
NS: Oh, great. Ahhh. (laughs)
JW: I know who I want here. (laughs) Ding, ding. So I called Nik to see if he’d come out and he said, “Yes. I’d love to. I’d love to.” I was thrilled. So he said to me, “I’d like to bring Murray, too. Can he come too?” And I said, “S[ure]--” Well, I thought, “I don’t have any money but I have my salary.” So I said, “Yes, he can have my salary.” So he came out that summer. And the two of them -- for him, he didn’t have anything to do. There was nothing except explore on these dancers. And everybody was there willing to do anything for him.
And he taught from 9:00 in the morning until 9:00 at night. We’d do classes all day, and then we’d have production at night. We’d start a production right then in the beginning. And so we were making this thing for him, and he was putting our works into them and at the end of those three weeks we’d do this production. He’d go: “How did we ever get there?” And that’s when he was writing his philosophy, too. So he was really building his philosophy in those formative years in the ’60s -- for about five years.
And so he came out, and then Murray came the next year. Nik couldn’t come and Murray did the same thing. And he also created a dance for a bunch of children --for Virginia Tanner’s [1915-1979] kids who’d never had anything like this. And he sat and he said, “What shall we -- what shall we make a dance about?” And they sat and they sat and then he says, “Anybody got any ideas?” And he looked at them, he and he says, “Okay. Well, let’s make a dance about boredom.” (laughs)
NS: (laughs)
JW: So that’s what they did. (laughs) He was a genius, too.
NS: Well, and what that says to me -- what I hear also is that there’s this certain -- it goes back to what you were talking about, the trust.
JW: Right.
NS: Trust that out of this environment will arise --
JW: Something will come.
NS: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: Something will come.
NS: Yeah.
JW: So then Nik came back, three more years, and by that time, Charlie and I had bought an old church in Park City. And renovated it. So we had the classes up in this church. The community thing had a layer and a floor and down in the basement was a floor. And we had a big City Hall right next to us that we could go in for classes. And that’s when Nik was still playing piano for his classes.
NS: Oh, wow. Nice.
JW: So… Oh. The summers were -- they were magical. Just magical And he’d say, “Read my -- read this. What do you think?” And I’d say, “Oh, it’s fabulous.” He wasn’t happy about his own writing at all. Because Murray was -- Murray was very --
NS: The wordsmith.
JW: The wordsmith. He was wonderful. Nik – Nik was -- I just thought it was wonderful. But you sometimes had to read a sentence three times before you really understood what he meant with it. As did I with my own notes. I’d take notes. I’d say, “What does that mean?” you know?
NS: It’s very dense.
JW: Dense. He was dense.
NS: There’s a real density that --
JW: There’s a density to it. Yeah.
NS: -- that you have to peel the layers --
JW: Yeah. It’s true. It’s true. The third year he came, Shirley and I were deciding well, the second year, I guess. It was 1964. That we’d kept this little group around us and we were improvising a lot and doing things and we decided we’d show him some of our work. And he said, “You -- you should start a new company.” And he said, “Call it by your own names.” And I said, “Ririe and Woodbury? You got--” or Woodbury, either way -- He said, “Well, that’s what we do, Joan.” So we chose the one that was the easiest to say.
NS: Ririe-Woodbury.
JW: It’s easier. And he gave us a dance. He gave us “Striped Celebrants” from Totem [1960]. Did I tell you he came out on that Rockefeller grant. Rockefeller had given Virginia Tanner a grant -- She wanted brick. She wanted a building. And they said, “No, we don’t build buildings, but have you got any other ideas?” And she said, “It would be wonderful if you could bring these choreographers like Alwin Nikolais, Helen Tamiris [1905-1966], José Limon [1908-1972], Betty Jones [1926-2020] and to [00:45:00] do works on the students. And in that way she got a faculty position, on the University, by bringing this funding in. So that’s what he was there for.
NS: Under that umbrella. Yeah.
JW: No, wait. That’s not quite true. He came out first for the workshop but the next time he came under the umbrella. And so that’s when he did full-length Totem there. We had to find 15 dancers at that time. I think 15. So he’s had a great influence on many people in Salt Lake as well. Plus what happened later. What was lovely about that is, he asked me at one point would I be interested in teaching with him, because -- I don’t know whether you knew this. He wasn’t happy to have his dancers teach because he wanted to work with them. He wanted them to be available for him. Whenever he wanted them, so he just asked me if I’d like to come and I was thrilled to come to New York. And then he took me when they made Tent [1968] in Florida with Phyllis [Phyllis Lamhut,1933- ] and then I taught with him in England, in Sussex, in Angers, in Avignon. So I’ve had most wonderful experiences --
NS: When you did teach with him, he would -- his focus was on choreography and the -- the work he was producing? Or was he -- were you working --
JW: Very often he would have his company there. But not always. What he would do is he’d say -- he’d write a list. He says, “This is the focus of this week. The focus is structure.” And so everything that we taught -- so he outlined what the teaching was to be. For the week. And then what I would do is -- he’d -- he’d take the advanced students. I would take the less advanced students. And then he would set the improvisation. He would tell me what the improvisation problem was. I would do the improvisation problem. And then we would select -- anyway, we came together at the end. And we brought problems together at the end. And then he would talk about those things that they did. Either their improvisations – or it sounds like choreography to me.
NS: But also composition classes.
JW: Composition as well. I think so too. Yes, it was – it was. Because he would do technique and improvisation in the morning, composition in the afternoon and then we’d come together after that. See what comes. Which was so wonderful. Because all the way along, I was having his mentoring as I worked. So --
NS: And there’s also a consistency… or a reason for this madness that’s going on --
JW: Exactly.
NS: -- during the day. What seemingly seems like chaos is really very structured --
JW: Exactly. Exactly.
NS: and really sort of laser-like. I want -- I want us to discover -- x, y, or z.
JW: Right. And Sussex was really interesting. Because he took -- I can’t think of his name right now. He was a musician that had been in Arizona. He took a musician there, and me. So there were three of us. And what the subject was -- there were several choreographers that came. About maybe ten, I’m not sure. And then dancers that were to be in their works. So I would teach the class in the morning. I’d teach a warm-up. And then he would come in to finish the class. And do improvisation. And then set a problem for the choreographers to solve and the musicians who were attached to them to solve. So they were doing music and dance at the same time. And my role was to go around in the afternoon and see how they were doing. And if they were even talking the same language. Were they on track on the problem. And then we’d come together, if not that night, the next night, and see the work.
NS: So it’s really a -- a petri dish. It’s a laboratory --
JW: It was laboratory. A real laboratory.
NS: Yeah. Can you talk about some of the explorations? When you talk about, in Mary’s classes, one day it’s -- it’s -- Thursdays are always turns. But, you know, and Tuesday is -- is the -- the torso.
JW: Right.
NS: And then how does that express itself later in --
JW: Some of the other problems.
NS: -- in something like old age.
JW: Yeah. Right.
NS: With Nik, can you point to some --
JW: I’m trying to think of those problems, yes. I do know one. They were just exactly like the problems he’d give in a course. You’d start with the basics. And then you’d [00:50:00] go from there to sometimes animalism and to illusion and so -- it was exactly the same.
NS: Yeah.
JW: And y-- you have -- you have all that stuff, don’t you?
NS: Eh-- eh-- some of it. But, uh, people are not that specific, you know?
JW: -- I need t-- I need to go back and get my books. I really do.
NS: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: This is making me very interested. But I do remember that one of the subjects he gave was this – a mixture, he’d do a mixture of either – this was small – animalism. And it was small -- you could choose. They could choose large or small, fast or slow, large or small, fast or slow. Something else.
NS: Heavy, light?
JW: Heavy, light. Heavy, light -- yes. So it’s all of those things. Heavy, light. And then -- then you choose your subject. But you chose three. And I remember one of them had choreographed only a solo on Marc Lawton. Well, Nik and I were pretty sure that Marc improvised the solo. Because it was so good. But he did it up against the wall. And he became this -- this creature, wall creature, that would go up and down and come i-- it -- it was fascinating. It was a beautiful, beautiful solo. And so that one was solved gorgeously. Right away, right away. And some of the others were a little more -- a little bit more… they just didn’t get involved enough to discover the qualities that they were using.
NS: Mm-hmm. What do you suppose it is that distinguishes someone like Marc’s animal or animism from someone that you -- that didn’t quite get it?
JW: Oh (sighs), I guess it’s a totality. I guess it’s a-- and an -- and an understanding, too. And Marc had worked quite a bit by the end with Carolyn [Carolyn Carlson, 1935- ] and every time Nik would come, he’d work and I think he’d taken classes here. I’m not sure. Again, it’s that -- it’s that total involvement and transcendence of the self into the quality of speed. Or the quality of slow. I can’t think what the other one was in that. I -- I kept it. I remembered it for a long time and now I don’t remember it. I’ll go back. I’ll go back and look.
NS: Yeah. Yeah. When you’re talking about those, the class structure and -- and, you know, on the focus for the --
JW: Right, right, right. The sessions… [a technical malfunction abruptly ended the interview]
END OF AUDIO FILE
Addendum in a follow up email from Joan dated February 17, 2016:
After I left you I wanted to tell you a few more things about Mary. As I said, the school had a lovely formality about it. If I wanted an accompanist to work with me (Ulrich Kessler) as I worked on solos, I had to arrange for it through the office and I paid him $5.00 per session…about 20 marks. Of course I paid a little to reserve the studio when I worked. I created 5 solos there, and he wrote the music for all of them…I also made three groups [sic] works during the year which were shown along with two of my US colleagues’ work at the end of the year. When I wanted Mary to come to give critiques for my work, I also made arrangements with Nora (at the Desk) and that cost about the same. Mary would come at a time of her choosing, always dressed in black, or black and white, and would come and sit in her grand chair at the end of the studio and I would proceed to show her my work. Frightening to say the least. But it was wonderful…she would ask what I was working on and proceed to watch…then make comments…with “You are using your feet the same way in this solo that you did in the previous one…don’t you want to think about that”? Or, “Why have you not chosen specific hand gestures for this work…your arms do not stop at your wrists you know.”
Or, “lovely selection of tempo, verticality and softness of the toes”…this was for a dance called “Figure of the Moon.” She was always very supportive and encouraging, but she made you look into how you began, what was the first gesture (sound familiar?) and the motional quality of the gestures, the phrasing. It was an unexpected bonus of the year. I never had even imagined that she would be available to critique our work.
[1] The interviewer is Natasha Simon and for clarification Woodbury pronounces her first name as Joanne.
[2] In an association that lasted over two decades photographer Tom Caravaglia [1928-2014] not only documented Nikolais’s work but also worked with him in creating scenic effects.
[3] Holm began teaching an eight-week summer course at Colorado College in 1941, returning to the state every summer to teach for 43 years.
[4] del Saz is the artistic director of the Nikolais/Louis Foundation for Dance. He also teaches and coaches the repertory.
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