Alwin Nikolais; Modern Dance Pioneer

Alwin Nikolais, the pioneer of multimedia dance who was often called a Renaissance man, a one-man band and even a P.T. Barnum for his solo choreographing, costuming and composing of strikingly innovative shows over half a century, has died. He was 82.

Nikolais, described by Los Angeles Times music and dance critic Martin Bernheimer as a genius, died Saturday in New York of cancer.

The former puppeteer who played piano for silent movies in his native Southington, Conn., sprang his first multimedia show, “Masks, Props and Mobiles,” on an unsuspecting New York audience in 1953.

Nikolais not only created the movements of his dancers and composed the electronic music to which they moved, but also designed the lighting, scenery and costumes. He experimented with slide projectors and film, and magically made dancers change in appearance as they moved. As he demonstrated in “Structures,” he could even make packing cases skitter across the floor with no evidence of human assistance.

Nikolais concentrated on motion rather than emotion, and was sometimes criticized for dehumanizing dancers whom he dressed in unisex costumes.

“I’ve tried in my own work to see what human beings look like when they’re not in heat,” he told The Times in 1970. “I don’t want to abolish sex in dance, but to put it into proper balance with other aspects of humanity.”

He enjoyed staying several steps ahead of his audience and always created the unexpected, as illustrated in “Blank on Blank,” which he presented at UCLA’s Royce Hall in 1988.

The title, he explained, was a pun on the French word blanc, meaning “white.”

The work, he said, was about “nebbishes: people who can’t make commitments, people without vitality, nonentities.”

“If you remove light, color and sound--which is what I’ve done here--you have nothing,” he told The Times. “To those who harangue me for my extravagant use of light, color and sound, I give what they clamor for. White on white. Nothing with nothing.”

In 1987, Nikolais was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors and a National Medal of Arts.

He also earned the Dance Magazine Award in 1967, the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris in 1969, the Capezio Award in 1982, the Scripps American Dance Festival Award in 1985, and two Guggenheim fellowships. Nikolais was artistic director of the Centre Nationale de Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France, from 1979 to 1981. He earned France’s Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1982 and Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1985.

“I suppose my biggest contribution,” he once told The Times, “would be to have helped create an awareness of dance as a visual as well as a kinetic phenomenon.”

An exacting taskmaster for the dance company he formed in the late 1940s, Nikolais loved teaching dance, and would often volunteer to teach courses when touring his shows, as he did at UCLA when his company performed at Royce Hall. In teaching, he strictly adhered to dance, avoiding the extravagant use of mixed media that was the hallmark of his shows.

“I’m skilled as a teacher of dance,” he told The Times in 1970, during a voluntary teaching stint at UCLA. “My productions are my field of creativity. I’ve always hoped that if you teach someone the aesthetics of one art, that it will be applicable to all the arts. I do know that when I take the lid off the pot in New York, my students come up with all kinds of mixed media things.”

Nikolais studied piano and organ as a youth in Connecticut, and became intrigued with dance when he saw a performance by German Expressionist dancer Mary Wigman in 1933. He began studying dance and by 1936 was choreographing. He took time out from dancing and teaching to serve in the Signal Corps during World War II.

In 1948, Nikolais became dance director of the Henry Street Settlement Playhouse, a neighborhood arts center on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where he produced his mixed media shows until his company outgrew the theater in 1970.

His major works have included “Kaleidoscope” in 1956, “Totem” in 1959, “Imago” in 1963, “Scenario” in 1971, “Gallery” in 1978, “Pond” in 1982 and “Crucible” in 1985.

A compact disc of Nikolais’ music is scheduled for release this month by CRI Records.

He made his last public appearance in January in Manhattan at a tribute planned for him by choreographer and former dancer Murray Louis, who had been Nikolais’ companion for more than 40 years.

Nikolais is also survived by two sisters, Gertrude and Janette, both of Plantsville, Conn.

* BEGUILING MASTER: Alwin Nikolais was one of modern dance’s most beguiling revolutionaries. F3