Research Catalog

Lecture on avant-garde dance

Title: Lecture on avant-garde dance [sound recording].
Author: Nikolais, Alwin
Publication: 1968.

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Status	Vol/Date	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request Appointment Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections to submit a request in person.	discs 1-2	Audio	Use in library	*MGZTL 4-25 discs 1-2	Performing Arts Research Collections - Dance

Details

Additional Authors

Description

2 sound discs (ca. 97 min.): digital; 4 3/4 in.

Summary

Disc 1 (ca. 45 min.). Alwin Nikolais speaks to a live audience about avant-garde dance in the context of appreciation of the arts; dance criticism and the avant-garde; Isadora Duncan and Mary Wigman as avant-garde artists; modern dance during the period between 1937 and World War II, including its critical reception and its characteristics as compared to ballet; the concern of early modern dance choreographers with female eroticism and later modern dance choreographers with time and space and corporeality [trails off and ends abruptly].
Disc 2 (ca. 52 min.). [Begins abruptly.] Alwin Nikolais continues to speak about the avant-garde of this generation as focused on the mystical and the sensuous as opposed to the material; the development of his own choreographic, visual and theatrical ideas, including through his work at the Henry Street Playhouse [at the Henry Street Settlement in New York City] and with reference to his work Prism; [shows film he created with Ed Emshwiller based on Nikolais's dance Totem]; the philosophy underlying his work. The lecture is followed (after some informal conversation) by a question and answer session in which Nikolais speaks about topics including his work for television, arts education, and his working methods when choreographing.

Subjects

Note

Lecture given by Alwin Nikolais recorded September 4, 1968 in New York City.
Sound quality is excellent for the lecture itself (disc 1 and ca. 4 min. into track 5 of disc 2). The remainder of the recording, which consists primarily of the question and answer session, is marred at the beginning and the end by ambient noise.

Funding (note)

Preservation was funded in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, 2008-2009 and the National Endowment for the Arts, 2008-2009.

System Details (note)

Transferred from 1 sound reel (ca. 97 min.; 3 3/4 in. per sec. ; 7 in..; polyester; half track; originally recorded on Sept. 4, 1968) to wav file and compact disc formats in March and April 2009.

Call Number

*MGZTL 4-25

OCLC

81893277

Author

Nikolais, Alwin, speaker.

Title

Lecture on avant-garde dance [sound recording].

Imprint

1968.

Funding

Preservation was funded in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, 2008-2009 and the National Endowment for the Arts, 2008-2009.

System Details

Transferred from 1 sound reel (ca. 97 min.; 3 3/4 in. per sec. ; 7 in..; polyester; half track; originally recorded on Sept. 4, 1968) to wav file and compact disc formats in March and April 2009.

Local Note

For the film referred to in the summary of disc 2 see: *MGZHB 6-977

Dubbing master: *MGZTD 4-25 nos. 1-2

Archive original: *MGZTO 7-25 Restored and rehoused following water damage in 2015.

Former call number: *MGZT 7-25.

Local Subject

Henry Street Playhouse (New York, N.Y.)

Avant-garde dance

Added Author

National Endowment for the Arts, 2008-2009.

New York State Council on the Arts, 2008-2009.

Oral history archive.

Research Call Number

*MGZTL 4-25

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