Research Catalog

Title

Interview with Donna Uchizono. May 20 and June 3 2016.

Author

Uchizono, Donna

Publication

2016.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Gonzalez, Levi

Description

[2] streaming files (approximately 3 hours and 39 minutes) : digital +

Summary

• Streaming audio file 1, May 20, 2016 (approximately one hour and 42 minutes). Donna Uchizono speaks with Levi Gonzalez about her parents including how they met, in Tokyo; her childhood in Southern California; her father's reasons for leaving the ministry and becoming a teacher of philosophy and religion; his lack of materialism and how this influenced her; her mother including how her discipline and rigor influenced Uchizono; her father's family; learning about her father's family's experiences during World War II including their being imprisoned in internment camps; her very limited exposure to the arts through her family; her discovery of dance in high school, including performing Polynesian dance with Donna Wahini and her Aloha Dancers; meeting Jeff Slayton and Viola Farber while a student at Orange Coast College; dancing with the Jeff Slayton Company in New York; studying at California State University, Long Beach where Slayton taught; Slayton as a teacher; (briefly) touring in California while dancing with Lynn Dally & Dancers [of Los Angeles]; how being a surfer influenced her as a dancer and choreographer; meeting Nikki Castro while dancing with Slayton; Castro's encouraging her to pursue being a choreographer; her first roommate in New York, Becky [Rebecca] Hilton, including an anecdote about their auditioning for the Stephen Petronio Dance Company; her first concert in New York, a shared evening at St. Mark's Church with Castro and Hilton as her dancers; more about Castro, in particular Uchizono's admiration of her as a dancer; the connections she made through Castro, and the St. Mark's concert, to influential people in the dance community, including Bebe Miller, Richard Elovich, Ralph Lemon, and Deborah Jowitt; the creative ferment at the time including choreographers and musicians active in the East Village arts scene; (briefly) being approached by Cynthia Hedstrom to found the Artists Advisory Board for Danspace Project; more about the artistic culture and dance venues in the East Village in the 1980s and early 1990s; visual artists she admired including Joseph Beuys, [James] Turrell, and David Hammons; early influences on her work including the experience of collaborating with her peers; Tricia Brown's influence on her; other influences including the sense of urgency the AIDS crisis created; how performance venues at that time supported choreographers; her first musical collaborator, the experimental cellist, Tom Cora; more about working with Cora including their improvisational methods, and her first piece with him, Accommodations; reflections on the evolution of her work and interests; her recent solos as part of Eiko [Otake]'s Platform at Danspace Project; the [Andrew H.] Mellon Foundation's support of various choreographers in the 1990s; the shift of the Foundation and other funding institutions away from choreography; her project to write a book about certain aspects of her artistic generation including funding sources and artistic principles.
• Streaming file audio 2, June 3, 2016 (approximately one hour and 57 minutes). Donna Uchizono speaks with Levi Gonzalez about how she supported herself while pursuing a career as a choreographer in New York in the 1980s; her first work, with Becky [Rebecca] Hilton and Nikki Castro; the responses of critics including Deborah Jowitt, Robert [Greskovic], and Jennifer Dunning, to her early work; the relationship of writing [about dance] and dance including how it has radically changed since her youth, as evidenced by her experience as a panel member evaluating an artist's work; her experience touring and teaching in Europe; cities and theaters where she performed on her early tours of the United States; her experiences touring in Japan and in Argentina; David Hammons' advice to her regarding how her status as an Asian female affects perceptions of her work; her parents' influence on her aesthetics and work ethic, including her mother's ikebana arrangements and both her parents' capacity for physical endurance; more about Hammons including their relationship; her interest in the practice and philosophy of Buddhism; how Buddhist concepts have inspired her work starting with Approaching green; the meaning of the title Approaching green; life changes and her work quietly goes a giant jane, the last piece she made with Nikki Castro; other life events including the deaths of Tom Cora and her father; her hiatus from dance; the departures of Castro, Becky Hilton, Jodi Melnick, and Mia Lawrence; briefly, the relationship between her works The Wayne brothers and The Wayne sisters; finding the cast for her new work Drinking ivy, including her casting of Levi Gonzalez in the original duet; the composer James Lo and works he composed for Uchizono including State of heads; the pairing of her works Low and State of heads in one program; performing Low on tour; the reasons she decided to stop dancing in her own works; reasons she danced in her works in longing two and Fire underground; the relationship of her work longing two to the long process of adopting her daughter Tara Hissi Uchizono, from Nepal; the psychological and financial toll of the adoption process; her work Fire underground as directly about the ordeal of the international adoption process; the physical virtuosity required for her work, in particular, the spinning done by Rebecca Serrell Cyr; collaborators including Gonzalez; (briefly), other collaborators including the composer Guy Yarden, Hristoula Harakas, David Shively, Joe Levasseur, Wendy Winters, and Rebecca Serrell [Cyr]; (briefly), her teaching; the realistic financial expectations of choreographers today; other changes in the economic landscape of dance she has observed over the years; dance as her calling; (briefly) her most recent works, including her work at Danspace Project and Sticky majesty.

Alternative Title

• Dance oral history project
• Dance audio archive

Subject

• Uchizono, Donna > Interviews
• Slayton, Jeff
• Castro, Nikki
• Hilton, Rebecca
• Cora, Tom
• Hammons, David, 1943-
• Lo, James
• Gonzalez, Levi
• Danspace Project (New York, N.Y.)
• State of heads (Choreographic work : Uchizono)
• Thin air (Choreographic work : Uchizono)
• Approaching green (Choreographic work : Uchizono)
• Low (Choreographic work : Uchizono)
• Japanese Americans > Forced removal and internment, 1942-1945
• Japanese American families
• Choreographers > New York (State) > New York
• Dance > Economic aspects

Genre/Form

• Sound recordings.
• Oral histories.

Note

• Interview with Donna Uchizono conducted by Levi Gonzalez, on May 20 and June 3, 2016, in New York City for The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Jerome Robbins Dance Division Oral History Project.
• For transcript see *MGZMT 3-3331.
• As of June, 2018 only the transcript of the audio recording of this interview is available. The audio files for this interview are undergoing processing and will be available for streaming in NYPL's Digital Collections in the near future.
• Sound quality is excellent.
• Title supplied by cataloger.

Access (note)

• Transcripts may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.
• Access only on site at the research libraries of The New York Public Library.

Funding (note)

• The creation and cataloging of this recording was made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The support of the National Endowment for the Arts is also gratefully acknowledged.

Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3331

OCLC

1041188080

Author

Uchizono, Donna, interviewee.

Title

Interview with Donna Uchizono. May 20 and June 3 2016.

Imprint

2016.

Type of Content

spoken word

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

audio

Type of Carrier

online resource

volume

Digital File Characteristics

audio file

Restricted Access

Transcripts may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.

Access only on site at the research libraries of The New York Public Library.

Event

Recorded for the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts May 20 and June 3, 2016 New York (N.Y.)

Funding

The creation and cataloging of this recording was made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The support of the National Endowment for the Arts is also gratefully acknowledged.

Connect to:

Added Author

Gonzalez, Levi, interviewer.

Research Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3331