More Soaring Leaps for Mecca of Modern Dance

It has been more than 50 years since modern dance pioneers Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey defiantly kicked off their toe shoes and whirled in bare feet for a tiny Vermont college audience.

The revolt against the rigidity of ballet that characterized the movement’s earliest days has faded. Indeed, ballet itself has lost much of its formality over the past four decades, largely because of the late George Balanchine and his influence on choreographers.

“The war is over,” said Charles Reinhart, director of the American Dance Festival. “The ballet world is more and more turning to modern choreographers for their creative work. We need each other, there’s no doubt about that.”

The proof was in the lineup for the recent six-week festival on the forested campus of Duke University. Outside of New York--the nation’s dance capital--the annual event is considered the mecca of modern dance.

Virtually every major name associated with modern dance--from Martha Graham to Martha Clarke--has studied, taught or performed at the festival. More than 300 new works have premiered here, more than 100 of them since 1969, when Reinhart took over. And thousands of dance students--including Betty Ford, Kitty Dukakis and Madonna--have studied here.

At this year’s festival, choreographers known for their collaboration with big-name ballet companies, such as Paul Taylor and Lar Lubovitch, mixed with experimental and sometimes bizarre talent.

“When I hear, ‘That isn’t dance,’ that’s when I sit up and take a look,” Reinhart said,

Some of his “far-out” proteges, such as Twyla Tharp, have gone on to become darlings of the modern dance world. Tharp was recently named resident choreographer at American Ballet Theatre.

This year’s event devoted two weeks to revivals of black American composers’ works, including Pearl Primus’ “Strange Fruit” of 1943, an eerie portrayal of a white woman who has just witnessed a lynching; Donald McKayle’s “Games,” a dance set to the chanting of black ghetto children playing a street game; and works by Talley Beatty and Eleo Pomare.

The festival also showcased 26 choreographers from China, South Africa, Nicaragua and other parts of Asia, Africa and Europe who traded ideas and styles from their own cultures as part of the International Choreographers Workshop, co-sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency.

“We have to help to interchange (dance styles), because the world is dying,” said visiting choreographer Stella Urzua of Chile.

The world’s only festival devoted to modern dance was born in 1934 at Bennington College in Vermont. Graham, Humphrey, Hanya Holm and Charles Weidman, fed up with the New York summer heat and the constraints of classical ballet, headed for the cool New England climate to encourage each other and to start the revolution.

They danced in bare feet, gained weight and practiced movements while lying or sitting on the ground--all antithetical to the ethereal world of ballet. They also taught students in order to support themselves and at the end of the six-week session performed only for each other on the campus.

The festival moved to Connecticut College in New London in 1948. In 1959, New York City Ballet Director Balanchine choreographed “Episodes” with Graham, using Taylor as a solo dancer.

“That was the beginning of the coming-together, choreographically, of the two worlds,” Reinhart said.

Since moving to Duke University in 1978, the festival has continued its cautious partnership with classical ballet, while maintaining the endless battle for money.

Raising money to support the festival--$1.75 million for this year’s operating budget--is a year-round operation for Reinhart, his wife, Stephanie, and two staff members at ADF’s New York office.

About 45% comes from festival tuition and ticket sales, with the rest gathered from private corporations, foundations and individual dance lovers, as well as local governments, Reinhart said.

With money uncertain, the festival’s trappings are modest. An old white frame house shaded by crepe myrtle trees on Duke’s east campus serves as summer headquarters. More than 300 dancers attend classes and perform in converted classrooms and gymnasiums around the university--most of which lack air conditioning to ward off the stifling North Carolina heat.

In a sweltering gymnasium, Betty Jones, a diminutive blonde in her 60s who helped found the Jose Limon dance troupe, called out instructions to about 30 muscular men and women in leotards.

Outside on the campus lawn, more than three dozen dancers in Chuck Davis’ African American Dance class hopped frenetically and sang the words to an African folk song, while drummers played African rhythms.

In a makeshift studio off the university’s student union cafeteria, the sound of clattering dishes competed with a jazz dance recording.

Susan Hartley, a 34-year-old dancer from Chapel Hill, tried to absorb it all.

“It’s live, breathe and work dance, every hour of the day and night,” she said. “I love it.”