Research Catalog

Title

Interview with Aileen Passloff. May 2, 3, 13, and 30, 2017.

Author

Passloff, Aileen

Publication

2017.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Aviles, Arthur

Description

[5] streaming files (approximately approximately 6 hours and 41 minutes) : digital +

Summary

• Streaming audio file 1, May 2, 2017 (approximately one hour and 37 minutes). Aileen Passloff speaks with Arthur Avilés about their long friendship; (briefly) growing up in Jackson Heights (N.Y.); her family, in New York and in Georgia, in particular her maternal grandmother; her parents; reasons she greatly preferred New York to Georgia; more on her childhood in Jackson Heights and her grandmother; her seeking out books and music as a child; her time at college [Bennington College] including an anecdote about her first music class; more on her father and her upbringing including her relationship with her sister and her love of books; studying at SAB [School of American Ballet] including her audition; her teachers including Muriel Stuart and Anatole Oboukhoff; working for Edward Caton; more on her time at SAB and her teachers there; Fara Lynn Krasnopolsky; her first dance performances; more on her time at SAB, in particular the opportunity to see great artists, for example Alexandra Danilova; Jimmy [James ] Waring and how much he taught her; an anecdote about Waring, Jell-O and the Automat (restaurant); her first professional engagements as a dancer.
• Streaming audio file 2, May 3, 2017 (approximately one hour and 37 minutes). Aileen Passloff speaks with Arthur Avilés about her childhood love of reading and making up stories; more on classes with Fara Lynn Krasnopolsky; her feeling of connection to the ground and the centrality of earth to dance; more on James Waring; an early work of hers in which David Vaughan performed; James Waring's background; his work The wanderers, first performed at the 92nd Street Y; the artistic community around Waring at that time; her time at Bennington College including an anecdote about Katherine Litz; some of her teachers including Paul Boepple; joining Sophie Maslow's dance company [Sophie Maslow Dance Company] and touring; her brief time studying at Martha Graham's studio [Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance]; her affiliation with James Waring, David Vaughan, and Dance Associates; her company at that time (Aileen Passloff and Dance Company); Remy Charlip including some of their collaborations; María Irene Fornés; the dance world at that (pre-Judson Dance Theater) time; the difficulty in labeling the kind of dance she and her circle were creating then; some of the small theaters in which she worked including the Cubiculo and the Living Theatre; meeting her husband, Robert Farren, through her work in the film Killer's kiss; being cast in the role of Topsy in the musical The King and I; the hostility of the other dancers towards her; Waring's work Salute, the ballet solo he created for her at Judson Dance Theater, including an anecdote about Vera Nemchinova; more on her work with Edward Caton, including his choreographing a production of the play The dybbuk; the Judson Memorial Church, in particular its openness to all; her reminiscences of dancers she met through Judson Dance Theater including Lucinda Childs and Yvonne Rainer; some of the works she created in this period including Bench dance (for Childs and Rainer) and Aunt Mary; Merce Cunningham.
• Streaming audio file 3, May 13, 2017 (approximately one hour and 30 minutes). Aileen Passloff speaks with Arthur Avilés about the connection she feels with Avilés; works by Jimmy [James] Waring in which she performed including The wanderers, In the mist, Salute, and Octandre; Waring as a dictatorial (as opposed to a collaborative) choreographer vis-a-vis his dancers; Passloff's similar characterization of herself as a choreographer; the challenge of reviving Waring's work; her creative process; her thoughts on the dancers she sees performing today; Bennington College as the start of her creative awakening; her work At home including an anecdote about Walter Terry's review; the nature of her association with Judson Dance Theater including works she created or collaborated on, and people she worked with, there; Toby [Armour]; the hard-scrabble life and immense creativity of the Judson Dance Theater community; her studio and some of the works that originated there; the popularity of Waring's classes; Bard College including how she came to teach there.
• Streaming audio file 4, May 13, 2017 (approximately one minute and 19 seconds). Aileen Passloff tells Arthur Avilés an anecdote about herself and a student at Bard College including what she learned from this experience.
• Streaming audio file 5, May 30, 2017 (approximately one hour and 38 minutes). Aileen Passloff speaks with Arthur Avilés about working with [Maria] Irene Fornés, in particular on Evelyn Brown [(A diary)]; other collaborations, including Gertrude Stein's play What happened? and Ruth Krauss's play A beautiful day; her husband's support of her work; dancing for Richard Foreman; her teaching, including for Stella Adler at the Masters Institute; other plays in which she participated, including Full moon in March, The dybbuk, and The annunciation; touring in the United States and Canada with Emily Frankel, Mark Ryder, and the Dance Drama Company; her time at Bard College; her study of flamenco, in Madrid; eventually being awarded a Fullbright grant to continue her studies there; studying with Mariquita Flores, in New York; her dance Boa constrictor; teaching what she herself is learning as a natural process for her; her workshops, at Bard College; designing and building a new dance studio at Bard; reminiscences about her early days as a choreographer, in particular the wide range of people who came to her classes; her thoughts on Martha Graham; Jimmy [James] Waring as the primary artistic influence on her; the need for a choreographer to have privacy.

Alternative Title

• Dance oral history project
• Dance audio archive

Subject

• Caton, Edward, 1900-1981
• Stuart, Muriel, 1889-1967
• Krasnopolsky, Fara Lynn
• Waring, James, 1922-1975
• Charlip, Remy
• Passloff, Aileen > Interviews
• Fornés, María Irene
• Flores, Mariquita
• Judson Dance Theater
• Judson Memorial Church (New York, N.Y.)
• Bard College
• Bennington College
• Dance teachers

Genre/Form

• Sound recordings.
• Oral histories.

Note

• Interview with Aileen Passloff conducted by Arthur Avilés, on May 2, 3, 13, and 30, 2017, at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division Oral History Project.
• For transcript see *MGZMT 3-3363.
• As of March 2023, the audio recording of this interview can be made available at the Library for the Performing Arts by advanced request to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, dance@nypl.org. The audio files for this interview are undergoing processing and eventually will be available for streaming.
• Sound quality is very good.
• Title supplied by cataloger.

Access (note)

• Photography of the transcript permitted for research purposes only.

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 3-3363

OCLC

1062373553

Author

Passloff, Aileen, interviewee.

Title

Interview with Aileen Passloff. May 2, 3, 13, and 30, 2017.

Imprint

2017.

Type of Content

spoken word

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

audio

Type of Carrier

online resource

volume

Digital File Characteristics

audio file

Restricted Access

Photography of the transcript permitted for research purposes only.

Event

Recorded for the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts May 2, 3, 13, and 30, 2017 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

Aviles, Arthur, interviewer.

Research Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3363