Research Catalog

Interview with Kitty Lunn

Title: Interview with Kitty Lunn, 2021/ Conducted remotely by Deborah Damast on June 15, 17, and 22, 2021; Producer: Dance Oral History Project
Author: Lunn, Kitty
Publication: 2021

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections Dance to submit a request in person.	Moving image	Supervised use	*MGZMT 3-3508	Performing Arts Research Collections Dance

Details

Additional Authors

Damast, Deborah

Description

3 streaming video files (approximately 4 hrs., 52 min.) : sound, color. +

Summary

Streaming file 1 (approximately one hour and 34 minutes), June 15, 2021. Kitty Lunn speaks with Deborah Damast about her earliest memories of dance, her parents, who taught ballroom dance, and her determination to become a ballerina after seeing the film The red shoes; beginning at age 8 her ballet classes with Lelia Haller; at age 15 receiving a scholarship to the Washington Ballet; her realization that dance is communication as she watched Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn rehearse Romeo and Juliet; some of the foundational precepts ballet training instilled in her; anecdotes about Erik Bruhn teaching her how to do pirouettes and Maya Plisetskaya teaching her how to use her arms in Swan lake; reminiscences of Igor Youskevitch from her time at the New Orleans Civic Ballet; her first encounter with modern dance and Martha Graham, at the Washington Ballet including her memories of Graham; (briefly) Edward Caton, who was her teacher at the Washington Ballet; her dissatisfaction with her body at that time including an anecdote about Agnes de Mille's advice to her; why she dances; her goal of instilling spirituality and self-awareness in her students as well as teaching them how to dance with their breath; her belief in sending the breath where the tension is; some aspects of her teaching methods; her company (Infinity Dance Theater) in which every dancer is both a principal dancer and a corps member; more on her childhood dance experiences, in particular the joy and serenity she felt when dancing; more on her family, in particular its dysfunctional aspects and how this affected her behavior as a child; her maternal grandmother, who was the stabilizing force in her life; her mother including her mental collapse and hospitalization; ballet class as a refuge from family problems including the support Haller provided outside of class; turning pantomime she learned in class into sign language and later using sign language to communicate with an autistic student at the Crotched Mountain School; how dance education benefits students generally and disabled students specifically; the problems she has seen with special education dance programs in the New York public schools, in particular at P.S. 199 where she taught as part of the NDI [National Dance Institute] in-school program; examples of misguided approaches and attitudes towards disabled people and how she has tried to combat them; reasons she believes students with disabilities should also be taught by teachers with disabilities, in particular the importance of providing role models for them; Andrew [MacMillan], Lunn's (late) husband; the approach she would like to see non-disabled dance teachers take with disabled dance students; more on her experience with the Washington Ballet in her early career including her grandmother's role in getting her there; her lifelong pursuit of learning and her faith as part of the essence of who she is.
Streaming file 2 (approximately one hour and 42 minutes), June 17, 2021. Kitty Lunn speaks with Deborah Damast about her time with the Washington Ballet including the rigorous training of the corps; (briefly) Edward Caton and his emphasis on counting; with the encouragement of Caton and Pola Nirenska, moving to New York at age 18 to pursue acting; (briefly) also studying modern dance (Graham technique) at the Neighborhood Playhouse and acting in musical comedies; marrying an actor she met at the Neighborhood Playhouse and their bohemian lifestyle; studying with Luigi; working at whatever jobs she could find to support her classes and dancing, from soap operas to hand modeling; her son's death almost immediately after his birth; the medical and emotional aftermath including the end of her marriage; during the next five years taking dance classes and acting; how her acting in a live industrial show in Chicago led to her meeting and getting to know her (future) second husband, Andrew MacMillan; the accident that caused her disabling injury; the nature of her injury and the many surgeries she endured over the next few years; Andrew's devoted care throughout; more on her injury; after being discharged from the hospital dealing with her loss of identity as a dancer and withdrawal from the medicines she had been given in the hospital; an anecdote about meeting Mother Teresa in 1987 about three weeks before her accident; beginning to take class again, at Steps [on Broadway]; analyzing and adapting standard barre exercises to her body; founding Infinity Dance Theater with Spider-Duncan Christopher (as manager), Christopher Nelson, and Robert Koval; Andrew's progressive modifying of her wheelchair as the group experimented and explored different kinds of movement and partnering; her use of a power chair for daily life after she fractured her neck using a manual wheelchair; the company's being invited to perform at the 1996 Cultural Paralympics in Atlanta (Georgia); the rude remarks and questions she has endured due to her disability including an anecdote about the clerk's comment at her (civil) wedding ceremony; Steps' allowing her to take class only because (under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990) it was required to do so; the fact that many do not consider her a dancer; Andrew's continual adapting of the company's wheelchairs to the needs of the individual dancers and the choreography; how the wheelchair and the principle of parity among dancers have driven the choreography; reasons she chose the infinity symbol for the company; her decision to teach dance to disabled students; beginning to use lifts in the choreography for Infinity Dance Theater; her work The last night of the world (set to the song "The last night of the world" from the musical Miss Saigon), performed at the New Amsterdam Theatre at a benefit for the Christopher [and Dana] Reeve foundation; her thoughts on meeting Christopher Reeve again, whom she had known before his accident; her approach to choreography from an aesthetic (rather than a medical or therapeutic) viewpoint; distinguishing not being able to walk from immobility; using her spasms to stand and incorporating this into the choreography; the time and effort it takes to master certain movements, for example standing and pivoting in a work created for her by Carla Vannucchi about Frieda Kahlo; working with Andrew to figure out new techniques while ensuring the dancers' safety; what she wants people to understand about the relationship of her inner dancer, her wheelchair, and her desire to keep dancing.
Streaming file 3 (approximately one hour and 36 minutes), June 22, 2021. Kitty Lunn speaks with Deborah Damast about how, through a process of trial and error, her (late) husband Andrew MacMillian created dance chairs for her and other disabled dancers; features of the dance chairs including the absence of brakes; his customizing of chairs for individual dancers and their becoming known as "Andrew chairs"; her and Andrew's reliance on Andrew's voice acting work to subsidize the chairs (sold for the cost of the parts) and her free classes; her classes' function as a recruiting pool for Infinity Dance Theater and her attempts to maintain a diverse group; the many ways in which Andrew helped with the company including as set and costume-maker and technical director; the concert performed as a tribute to Andrew, which included the singing of the hymn "Be still my soul"; Dreambody, a collaborative work created by Roxanna [Young] based on the Chakra system, with music by Glen Velez; its premiere in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) and many subsequent performances throughout the world including a particularly memorable one in Italy; her work Ghosts in the machine set to William Catanzaro's adaptation of Maurice Ravel's Bolero [Ghosts in the machine had its premiere at Riverside Church on July 4, 2019 in a collaborative program with Alison Cook Beatty and her company Alison Cook Beatty Dance]; other works performed that evening including Touched by fire, which Cook Beatty had adapted from a solo to a duet for her and Lunn; Cook Beatty's Mahaway: spring eternal, in which dancers from both companies performed; Lunn's work Pieta; the challenging aspects of training and rehearsing the dancers in Infinity Dance Theater; how she sets boundaries between her roles as company director and as a dancer in the company; the warm-up exercises (on audio tape with recorded music played by Adam Parnell) that she and the company regularly use; how she prepares for a performance; her belief that disabled performers have far less margin for failure than non-disabled performers; her use (as transposed for disabled dancers) of Horton technique and Graham technique as well as Qigong and ballet technique in her classes; her own need to take class everyday; more on how she teaches technique including the Graham contraction; more on the importance of constant practice and commitment; her lifelong pursuit of learning and pleasure in using what she learns.

Alternative Title

Dance Oral History Project.
Dance Audio Archive.

Subject

Genre/Form

Video recordings.
Oral histories.

Note

Interview with Kitty Lunn (in New York City) conducted remotely by Deborah Damast (in New York City) for the Dance Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
For transcript see *MGZMT 3-3508
As of March 2023, the video 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 video files for this interview are undergoing processing and eventually will be available for streaming.
Title supplied by cataloger.

Access (note)

Transcripts may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.

Funding (note)

The creation and cataloging of this recording was made possible in part by the Howard Gilman Foundation, 2021.

Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3508

OCLC

1357119652

Author

Lunn, Kitty, Interviewee.

Title

Interview with Kitty Lunn, 2021/ Conducted remotely by Deborah Damast on June 15, 17, and 22, 2021; Producer: Dance Oral History Project

Imprint

2021

Playing Time

045200

Type of Content

spoken word

two-dimensional moving image

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

video

computer

Type of Carrier

online resource

volume

Digital File Characteristics

video file

Restricted Access

Transcripts may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.

Event

Recorded for for the Dance Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 2021, June 15, 17, and 22 New York (N.Y.)

Funding

The creation and cataloging of this recording was made possible in part by the Howard Gilman Foundation, 2021.

Connect to:

Added Author

Damast, Deborah, Interviewer.

Research Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3508

*MGZDOH 3508

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