Rod Rodgers, 64; Black Dance Pioneer

Choreographer Rod Rodgers, an important transitional figure in the history of African American concert dance, has died. He was 64.

Rogers died Sunday in a Manhattan hospital of complications from a stroke.

Honored in January by the International Assn. of Blacks in Dance, Rogers belonged to a generation of artists equally at home creating black-identified work and pieces that explored the themes and styles (including abstraction) popular with his nonblack colleagues.

“It is simply a question of what is more important,” he told the Negro Digest in 1968, “my total living experiences or those experiences which I consider particularly relevant to my blackness.”

Rodgers was born in Cleveland and grew up in Detroit, learning tap and jazz dance at an early age. Later, he performed in clubs and resorts while studying with teachers who had trained with such black dance pioneers as Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus.

In 1962, he moved to New York City, where he studied with such modern dance luminaries as Erick Hawkins and Charles Weidman before forming a racially mixed company in 1966.

From the first, Rodgers’ choreography bridged the gap between the black traditions that Dunham and Primus had introduced into concert dance and the very different modern dance world that Hawkins and Weidman inhabited.

In his “Rhythm Ritual,” for instance, dancers manipulated long wooden poles not only for percussive accompaniment, but, as a Times review noted in 1974, “as arm extensions capable of great expressive fluidity.” Traditional African dances also had used poles, but Rodgers managed to free the concept from any folkloric links, emphasizing the kind of movement flow associated with modern dance technique.

While continuing his pure-movement experiments, he also choreographed a series of works using his modern dance expertise to honor such African American icons as writer Langston Hughes (“Langston Lives,” 1981), civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (“The Legacy,” 1984) and educator George Washington Carver (“Against Great Odds,” 1986).

Besides his work for his company, he choreographed television specials, operas and off-Broadway productions, and some of his pieces have gone into the repertoires of such major regional ensembles as Philadanco and the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Company.

Throughout his career he sought to discourage black artists from what he called “oversimplified traditional images,” and told dance historian Lynne Fauley Emery in 1970 that he had “tried not to be a professional black man.”

In a 1992 Times interview, he explained that “when we talk about celebrating the creative struggle of black Americans, we extend that to include not just struggles for freedom and social change, but also struggles to create innovative works.”

On Friday, Rodgers was remembered as “a dance warrior” by Lula Washington, artistic director of the locally based Lula Washington Dance Theatre. “He always went about doing his work and doing his choreography and keeping his company going, but he was also an advocate for how black artists were represented in dance,” she said.

“His voice will be truly missed. He was like a mentor to Erwin [her husband] and myself and he always took time to give us input and direction.”

His survivors include his companion, Kim Grier; two brothers; two sisters; four sons; and a grandson.