Step by step

Inside the American Dance Legacy Institute

by Johnette Rodriguez

In 1994, Julie Strandberg, founding director of dance and artist-in-residence at Brown University, and her sister Carolyn Adams, a former principal dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company who is now on the faculty at the Juilliard School, formed the American Dance Legacy Institute, based at Brown. Through the Institute, they hope to create more access to American dance and its history; to preserve American dances, both current and historic; and to develop a curriculum that will use dance education as an entree into cross-cultural studies of American history and society.

This Saturday (March 3), they will sponsor their second Winter Mini-Fest, called "Roots and Branches," with workshops for dancers, teachers, and anyone interested in dance. On Saturday evening, several contemporary and historic dance pieces, including Charles Weidman's Lynchtown (1936), will be presented by Brown's resident company, The Dance Extension; by soloist Sita Frederick; by a high-school group from Hadley, Massachusetts; and by the Arabella Project, a group of older dancers (43-58) based in Rhode Island.

"We want to provide a kinesthetic understanding of dance works to people of varying abilities," Strandberg emphasized, in a conversation last week. "People who study music have access to the works of the master like Bach and Chopin. People who study theater can read Shakespeare. But people who study dance are limited in what they can find about the masters of their form."

"American dance is important and endangered," Adams added, on the phone from her home in New York. "There's a whole generation that wouldn't have known what Carnegie Hall was if the preservationists hadn't stopped the bulldozers. We want to make sure the legacy of dance is known and valued so that it will be saved."

To that end, Adams and Strandberg have developed Dancing Through the Curriculum, a guide to dance videotapes designed by and for teachers to enhance the school curriculum, and they have worked on The Repertory Études Project, both efforts independent of but affiliated with the American Dance Legacy Institute. In a workshop to be presented by the duo at this weekend's Mini-Fest (Saturday, March 3 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.), their collaborative efforts to develop a curriculum (with the Southeast Center for Dance Education in Columbia, South Carolina) will find expression. With lesson plans based on the New Dance Group, an integrated dance organization active from the 1930s to the 1960s, they will illustrate their firm belief that "a lot of American culture is embedded in American dance works," as Strandberg notes.

"American dance is one of the great ways to chronicle American history," Adams states. "Those women who started in the New Dance Group were Marxists, and they saw dance as a weapon for social change. They had this very organic, interracial, interdisciplinary approach. This was an institution where you could study flamenco, ballet, modern, African dance, Israeli dance, all at one place. They were also completely into the political and social commentary in their dances."

In that mode, Strandberg and Adams will teach excerpts from Anna Sokolow's 1955 Rooms and from Donald McKayle's 1959 Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder; the latter was the choreographer's reaction to chain gangs in the American South and begins with a foot-stomping, hammer-swinging song. Strandberg hastens to reassure workshop participants that the five minutes of Sokolow's piece they will tackle is done on chairs and that McKayle's work, taken in small portions, is also completely accessible to non-dancers.

"I think we're doing something that's very revolutionary for teachers," Strandberg points out. "I don't think they've necessarily thought that they could use dance in their schools in the way that we've developed it."

"We're finding points of entry from their subject areas," Adams elaborates, "and we're finding that teachers feel more comfortable with that."

The second major thread of the Strandberg/Adams sisters' work has been the Repertory Études Project. They have approached choreographers, asked them to identify a signature work, and then commissioned a small study from them, most no longer than five minutes, that can be done by a small group or one individual.

"This is like one of Chopin's études or the detail of a painting," Adams explains. "This is really a piece that can be learned and taught and performed that gives young dancers a chance to grapple with great works they might not otherwise have access to."

Strandberg and Adams make a video of the étude, notate it in choreographic language, record lighting and costume details, and make a CD of the music -- then they make the whole package available for no royalty fees. They have learned, in working with various choreographers, that the focus and intent of the choreographer are the most important to convey. Like the crux of a good family story or the kernel of a joke, choreographers are trying to convey the essence of their style, while the dancers become "maniacs for detail," in Adams's words.

"As a dancer transferring another's work to another dancer," she reflects, "we don't want to turn it into a game of telephone where you don't recognize it after the tenth communication. But the choreographers are not as concerned with the exact steps as they are with other things, such as McKayle wanting people to understand the gesture and rhythm in his work. They understand that it will be different for different dancers. As dancers, we become the preservationists, and the choreographers remain the innovators."

Once a teacher or dance student has access to these études, they can learn them and, if they have the opportunity, ask the choreographer to coach them on their performance. Strandberg and Adams currently have seven études in various stages of development. In addition to the McKayle and Sokolow pieces, they are working on a trio with Danny Grossman; on Jose Limon's repertory with the company's artistic director Carla Maxwell; on a jazz étude; on an étude with octogenarian Daniel Nagrin, capturing an older choreographer's work before it disappears; and on an étude with someone from the current generation of choreographers, David Parsons.

Parsons, who was seen with his company last fall at Rhode Island College (to jaw-dropping awe and admiration by this writer), has put together The Parsons Étude for the Repertory Études. It will be coached this Saturday from 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 pm. by Ruth Andrien, the former principal dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company and a faculty member of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, for dancers who have already learned it. And on Saturday, March 10 at 11 a.m., children (ages 8 and older) will work with Parsons and Brown's Dance Extension and perform his étude at the end of their session.

With initial backing from Brown's former president Vartan Gregorian and with continued support from the university, along with a consortium grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to work with the Southeast Center for Dance Education, the American Dance Legacy Institute has already made a name for itself as one of the nation's most important archivists of dance history and as an astute and innovative leader in multicultural and arts education.

For further information on the four workshops for teachers and education students, six workshops for dancers and three workshops for children, youth and families, plus the Winter Mini-Fest Dance Concert on March 3 at 8 p.m., call 863-7596. All workshops are free and open to the public; the concert is $10 ($5 for students and seniors).