oral histories:
~
encounters
with
Alwin Nikolais

Conversations with many who worked with, learned from, and were inspired by Alwin Nikolais and his philosophy.

Oral histories conducted by Natasha Simon
Transcriptions edited by Natasha Simon and Jessica Nicoll

These oral histories reflect each interviewee’s unique engagement with dance. They also reflect the profound, lasting, and (again) unique effect Alwin Nikolais had on each person. Nik has been called a multimedia giant, a genius, a magician, an alchemist. These conversations amplify another crucial aspect of Nikolais’s work: his unwavering faith in the power of improvisation. That commitment to improvisation as a springboard for creativity inspired the interviewees to search for and develop their own creative voices. Informed by my own experience, I asked individuals to recall their first encounters with Nik. The ensuing dialogues reveal that well beyond these early memories, Nik’s influence continues to shape each person’s present.

Jessica and I worked together to edit the transcripts, wrestling with the problem of transforming spoken language into written words while honoring the sound and meaning of each particular narrator. That process resulted in specific choices to include the occasional (pause), um, dash, underline, and chuckle. We found it especially difficult to capture the silences – those moments that give the interviewee (and reader) a chance to think, imagine, and re-collect.

Each interview is an experience unto itself and true to Nik’s philosophy: an improvisation.

--Natasha Simon

Natasha holds a graduate degree in history, with a concentration in archival management and historical editing. She performed with the Phyllis Lamhut Dance Company from 1971 until 1995 and has been a member of the Nikolais Legacy Group since its inception in 2012.

Jessica is a dance-theater artist who studied with Phyllis Lamhut and is a teacher, writer, and editor.

“Bringing the Inside Outside”

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“…as you develop as an artist, you begin to see that it’s only things that are outside the box that make sense…because the rest of it is too confining.”

Coral Martindale Aubert

"places you had never gone before"

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“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.”

Joan Woodbury

“Dancer as Worker”

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“I think from Nik’s point of view – what was so universally generous – was his concept, his idea that there was this creativity within everyone.”

Lynn Levine Rico

“the excitement of not knowing what you’re doing”

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"And so, when he said, 'Let’s walk across the floor,' for the first time, I had never walked across the floor -- ever. So, that was a trip."

Phyllis Lamhut

“The Confidence to be Impulsive”

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“My sense of enjoyment was seeing things happen from nothing. See that moment of spark -- you know, sparkling inventiveness that everybody was recognizing at the time.”

Al Wunder

“to be able to do motion and to really have space”

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“You do something and then you look at it again, and then you see it differently the next day, or a few days later and it evolves. And then sometimes it doesn’t.”

Jeanette Stoner

COMING SOON
Ruth Grauert, Gerald Otte, Helen Kent Nicoll, Carolyn Carlson, Peggy Barclay Chambers, and more.

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"If you come with open mind, there are many things in this world that can reach you."

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“He conceived of Choroscript in the trenches of France, if you can imagine that, but he had to have something to take his mind off the horror.”

Ruth Grauert

“Because dance only lives through living people as it travels and matures”

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“I think once I tried to explain what I thought a piece of Nik’s was about to Nik. And that was the first and last time. (laughs).”
“The real core of Nikolais, is that each person is a creative being.”

Gerald Otte

“… he was a motional painter, and he was painting in three dimensions.”

“I loved the Henry Street Playhouse theater…to see that place transformed into this moving, swirling, colorful map of the universe.”

Helen Kent Nicoll

“The Invisible Made Visible”

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“The beauty of creating is you take time. You make mistakes. You change. You go through a self process of -- kind of like rejuvenation.”

Carolyn Carlson

“the whims of history”

“I think Nik really always had a pretty good idea of what he was looking for. I never got the feeling that he was uncertain. I always thought he knew exactly what was in his mind."

Peggy Barclay Chambers

“A willingness to…accelerate understanding”

"You’re part of an ecology of light, sound, theatrical space, the color of what you are in, the quality of the costume. Rather than hold form, you had to relax within form."

Marcia Wardell Kelly

“Whatever this vision was going to turn into”