DANCE : Modern Dance Wizard Brings High-Tech Act

An unruly shock of snow white hair makes Alwin Nikolais look more like a medieval alchemist than a modern-day dance maker. But the man known the world over as the wizard of modern dance is strictly high-tech.

“I have to be an engineer myself sometimes to create the special effects,” Nikolais said in a telephone interview from his New York studio.

The ground-breaking choreographer uses a multitude of sophisticated lighting and sound techniques, along with the typical trappings of his trade, to generate the package of “total theater” he delivers in each of his dance designs.

“One day I get inspiration from dance, another it’s something visual. Another time it might be color,” he said. “Once in a great while I’ll have a sound, but that usually comes last. The philosophy behind my work is that I wanted to put people in an environment. They didn’t call it ecology in those days, but that’s what it was.”

The choreographic voice that revolutionized the dance world--and is going strong yet, half a century later at age 77--was developed in the wake of World War II.

“I had just gotten out of the Army, where I had seen the biggest multimedia show of all time,” Nikolais said. “It was a blast of color. You don’t come back from something like that and do dances about little boys and girls.”

Not by a long shot. Nikolais designs dances that bombard the senses with brilliant visual, motional and aural patterns. His dancers have been described as colored sculptures that fit into the larger fabric of a design. In Nikolais’ pieces, the dancer is never an end in itself. This blurring of the individual has led detractors to conclude that Nikolais dehumanizes his dancers, a charge that still rattles the otherwise good-natured designer.

“I must tell you, even if it’s vulgar, that those who refer to my dances as dehumanization of the dancers are just crotch-watchers. I like decentralization and I don’t like ego exhibitionism,” Nikolais said. “I’m interested in motion, not emotion. I like my dances to invoke emotion.”

Affectionately known as “Nik,” this inventive choreographer puts on dazzling light shows and makes creative use of electronic equipment to produce myriad magical effects.

“I like to work abstractly,” he said, “and I never just work with steps. I don’t like to tell stories, and I don’t like to make conclusions. I like to provoke conclusions. I want to make things that reflect back on the onlookers. I’m working with an engineer now, and he calls me a visualist, but I’m really a kinetic artist.”

San Diego aficionados can experience Nikolais’ oeuvre for themselves when the Alwin Nikolais Dance Theatre returns for a pair of performances Tuesday and Wednesday at Spreckels Theater. The troupe will dance a five-piece program that spans more than three decades of Nikolais’ artistic development.

“Tensile Involvement,” a complex geometric work that transforms the stage into a spectacular cat’s cradle, is the oldest piece on the program. This striking ensemble work dates back to Nikolais’ Henry Street Playhouse days in the early 1950s.

“There will be something old and something new,” said Nikolais. “You have some very new ones, like ‘Blank on Blank’ (1987) and ‘Crucible’ (1985), and you have ‘Tensile Involvement,’ our signature piece.”

After 50 years of turning out major dance works, Nikolais still loves his work, but insists it doesn’t get any easier to make art.

“No, it’s very painful. I have a compulsion, so I have to--and I love creating. But art’s hard. Once in a while you can just sail through the thing, but that’s very rare.”

Does Nikolais see any new trends developing in the dance world?

“Not really. The arts change only when there’s an enormous change in the socioeconomic climate. The atom bomb was the last thing to shake up an artist,” he said.

Nikolais has garnered just about every major honor the world of arts has to offer. Only last year, he received the prestigious Kennedy Center Honor Award, the country’s highest artistic distinction.

“I was in Hollywood last week where the Kennedy Award ceremony was duplicated a la Hollywood,” he said. “The Kennedy Award, the President’s National Medal of Arts Award and the French Legion of Honor are my proudest achievements.”

Although Nikolais has cut back on travel, he hasn’t even considered retirement. In fact, he’s formulating a new group piece for the company right now. And there are still mountains to climb for this legendary modern dance pioneer.

“I’d like to work together with painters and sculptors to create a big event,” he said. “But I haven’t found the time yet. I don’t always go with the company when they tour, but I’m coming to San Diego. I love San Diego, and I always bring good weather.”

Nikolais had some advice to San Diego dance watchers before he rushed back to the studio.

“Just relax and don’t try to be too educated,” he said. “When people look at dance, they work too hard at it.”

Audiences have been responding to Nikolais’ dance spectacles with unabashed enthusiasm for decades, and the master loves their heartfelt displays of emotion.

“In Tunisia, we heard a shout going on like a football cheer, and we didn’t know what it was about,” Nikolais said. “They told us it was the greatest compliment we could get from them. I hope San Diego has a football cheer for us, too.”