Modern Dance Company Survival Rates Since the 70s

[sandik]

I'm wondering about the Humphrey rep as well.  Shakers is taught in universities pretty regularly, and the other notated works get reconstructed in an academic context, but I'm not sure that Charles Woodford has been actively promoting the rep to a professional cohort.  I moused around a bit, and found two different organizations that seem to be a position to safeguard the work, but possibly not to move it forward.

Doris Humphrey Foundation at Goucher College (Woodford has donated his papers to the library there)

Doris Humphrey Society in Oak Park

And that's what I know today.

[miliosr]

Rereading Acocella's essay again, here is the part with which I'm in complete agreement:

"When the Paul Taylor company, on its big tour, stops in New York this fall, it will perform dances not just by Taylor but also by Pam Tanowitz, Kyle Abraham, and Margie Gillis. All these pieces were commissioned by Taylor before he died, but what do any of them really have to do with him?'

Having gone to see the Limon company semi-regularly since 2004, I have often wondered what the newly commissioned 'contemporary' works have to do with the Limon repertory, which is a very specific thing. Slapping the 'humanist' tag on the new works doesn't obviate the fact that Expressionistic old school modern dance (as represented by Limon) doesn't have much to do with anti-Expressionistic contemporary dance.

[sandik]

20 hours ago, miliosr said:

Slapping the 'humanist' tag on the new works doesn't obviate the fact that Expressionistic old school modern dance (as represented by Limon) doesn't have much to do with anti-Expressionistic contemporary dance.

Interestingly, we seem to be heading back into a period where dances are about something other than themselves -- the early question posed by Doris Humphrey and her cohorts ("What shall we dance about") is coming back into fashion.