How Dance Theatre Workshop Launched Some of Today’s Most Renowned Choreographers?

Modern dancers always need at least one thing to practice their art: space. But in 1960s New York, rehearsal space was hard to come by.  Thus came Dance Theater Workshop, an artist -led space and programming organization that launched the careers of some of today's most celebrated choreographers. Yesterday, an exhibition exploring Dance Theater Workshop opened at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Maud Yaïche visited the exhibition and has this report.

Bebe Miller performing in her work Tune, 1978. Photo by Nathaniel Tileston.Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

An Exhibition That Explores the Reasons Behind DTW's Success

The Dance Theater Workshop exhibition was built, appropriately enough, in a dance studio. On display are notes on choreography, videos of performances, and interviews, like this one from Whoopi Goldberg, one of many performers who started at the Workshop–also known at DTW. "Well, I don't think that the career I've had and am having would have happened without being exposed here at DTW", Whoopi Goldberg.

"It generated some of the most important artists of the last 50 years in dance". Linda Murray is the curator of the DTW exhibition. She says the collective launched so many important careers in part because it was a safe space–a place where it was ok to fail.

"Experimentation was encouraged, and failure because of experimentation was not seen as a bad thing. Because they weren't commercially driven. And so they didn't really have to answer to anybody. So if the critics didn't like it, or the audience didn't like it, they would just say, we'll try again." Linda Murray

Lenore Latimer, Margaret Cicierska, Kathy Posin, John Wilson and Jeff Duncan in Parsley All Over the World by Jack Moore, 1967. Photo by Edward Effron. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

This free spirit is explained in a video interview in the exhibition with Deborah Jowitt, a dance critic and choreographer. 'We thought of ourselves as kind of a, not exactly a cooperative, but was a very sort of 60s organization. And the people that we're part of it. We're a tight little nucleus with strays that came in and went" Deborah Jowitt.

An Environment That Fostered Bold, Innovative Performances

That sense of freedom led to innovative performances—like Blondell Cummings’ piece entitled Chicken Soup. Cummings, a major figure in postmodern dance and a Black woman in the field, performed this piece at the Dance Theatre Workshop and it’s featured in the exhibition.

Blondell Cummings’ piece entitled Chicken Soup at the exhibition

And so it's a work that takes domestic tasks like scrubbing the floor, and it turns it into a performative, repetitive act, and does make a statement about domesticity, Linda Murray

Although it started in a very humble space, almost right from the beginning until it closed in 2011, DTW was a key part of the dance scene, a place where critics went to see what was coming next in the art form. Linda Murray recalls Donald Byrd and Bill T. Jones both performed there on the same program. "Two of the most important Black choreographers of the last 50 years showed up on the same day, and both made it into the choreographer showcase.", Linda Murray.

In the video at the exhibition, Whoopi Goldberg remarks that DTW and other spaces that encourage experimentation, are vital for the creative life of the city.

The importance of supporting people with vision and places with vision is that if they all disappear, what are we left with?, Whoopi Goldberg  

DTW still continues today as New York Live Arts, which programs a variety of dance performances, in their space on 19th St in Manhattan. The Dance Theater Workshop exhibition runs through September 13 at the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

Maud Yaïche, Columbia Radio News.