Bella Lewitzky Named to National Medal of Arts List

Los Angeles choreographer Bella Lewitzky, 80, has won a 1996 National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal arts agency announced Thursday. The awards--this year to 12 artists, arts patrons and arts organizations--will be presented Jan. 9 at Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C.

Honorees are selected by President Clinton. Other 1996 recipients are playwright Edward Albee, opera conductor Sarah Caldwell, photographer Harry Callahan, theater director Zelda Fichandler, composer-musician Eduardo “Lalo” Guerrero, bandleader Lionel Hampton, arts patron Vera List, actor-filmmaker Robert Redford, author-illustrator Maurice Sendak, composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim (who has accepted the 1996 honor but turned down the same award in 1992 citing a climate of “censorship and repression” at the NEA) and the Boys Choir of Harlem.

Lewitzky, reached Thursday morning at her home studio in the hills near Universal City where she was in the middle of teaching a dance class, joked that she was not sure exactly what the award is for, but added that the award carries particular poignancy since this is the last season for her 30-year-old modern dance troupe, the Lewitzky Dance Company.

“I’m very honored, I have never received a national honor [of this sort], and it is a good time in this phase of my life, a splendid closure to my company’s career,” said Lewitzky, who turns 81 this month. “These things come together and make it very special for me.”

The company’s final season is centered on a new piece entitled “Four Women in Time,” inspired by artist Judy Chicago’s feminist collaborative sculpture “The Dinner Party.” “Four Women” received its Los Angeles premiere last September at Occidental College, and the company is touring with it throughout California and seven other states. The season will culminate in a gala farewell concert in May at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State Los Angeles.

The Lewitzky Dance Foundation also recently received a $23,500 grant for fiscal 1997 from the NEA in its new Heritage and Preservation category “to record my works before they vanish entirely from the horizon,” Lewitzky said. The money will support transcription of spoken words by Lewitzky as well as the videotaping of her choreography and her teaching methods.

The grant represents the first NEA funding for Lewitzky since last year’s restructuring of the agency following a 40% budget cut by Congress. In the previous fiscal year, the company received a grant of $75,000. Lewitzky said that the $23,500 grant will not come close to covering the costs of the heritage and preservation project, and said that receiving both the grant and the National Medal award in this time of financial hardship for the government arts agency represents a bittersweet success.

“We are delighted to have received money, but my heart breaks every time I think of that exquisite actress, [NEA Chairman] Jane Alexander, trying to push this reactionary part of the government to support the arts,” Lewitzky continued. “She’s like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. She’s being buffeted by all of these people who could care less about the arts. I wish I could take each one of them, individually, and explain what the arts do in our history, in anybody’s history.

“The government has eked out enough to keep the endowment from having disappeared altogether, but just barely. And I’m sorry, but I do not think the arts community has done much either--they need a wake-up call, and I think they are getting it now.”

Lewitzky has a history of outspokenness when it comes to the NEA. In 1990, the choreographer turned down a $72,000 grant and filed suit against the agency for requiring grant recipients to pledge not to create “obscene” work. The requirement was subsequently declared unconstitutional by a U.S. district judge.