New Dance Group was established in 1932 by a group of artists and choreographers dedicated to social change through dance and movement. The founders– Nadia Chilkovsky, Fanya Geltman, Miriam Blecher, Edith Lambert, Edna Ocko, Rebecca Rosenberg, Pauline Schrifman and Grace Wylie– were students at Hanya Holm's dance studio in New York City, and soon their philosophy attracted a wide student base of ordinary workers and dancers. For just a dime, students received an hour-long dance class, an hour of improvisation based on a social theme, and an hour of discussion on social issues. Those members wishing to choreograph followed two rules: dance about something important to you, and create work so that the audience could understand the dance's thrust. As one of many groups performing under the umbrella of the leftist Workers Dance League, the New Dance Group quickly established itself as a leader in the field, presenting dances that not only spoke forcefully about social ills but also adhered to high artistic standards.
New Dance Group soon expanded to include dancers, choreographers, and teachers from different techniques. Sophie Maslow, Anna Sokolow, Jean Erdman, and Jane Dudley came from Martha Graham's company; Bill Bales and Joe Gifford hailed from the Humphrey-Weidman group; and Eve Gentry and Mary Anthony, like the original founders, first worked with Hanya Holm. Modern techniques were not the only staple at the New Dance Group's studio. Erdman taught Hawaiian dance, Hadassah taught Indian and Jewish/Israeli dance forms, and Pearl Primus and Beryl McBurnie offered classes in Caribbean and African dance forms.[1] Ballet was eventually added to the roster as well, with some classes taught by BroadwaydancerWayne Lamb. Paul Draper taught tap, and Al Brooks taught the Holm technique. The diversity in dance was indicative of a greater philosophy: at a time when American society was laced with discrimination, New Dance Group welcomed people of all races and religions.
Just as the founders of the New Dance Group were dedicated to working collectively, the members who strengthened the organization into the 1940s and 1950s frequently collaborated with one another. Jane Dudley, Sophie Maslow, and Bill Bales teamed together in the Dudley-Maslow-Bales Trio, which toured very successfully in the 1940s. New Dance Group festivals featured varied programs with choreography by many of the abovementioned artists as well as newcomers Donald McKayle, Talley Beatty, and Daniel Nagrin.
From its inception during the Great Depression through the early 1960s, New Dance Group was a major hub of activity in the vibrant New York City dance scene; indeed, the studio's array of offerings made it a popular destination for aspiring dancers, while the roster of choreographers offered scores of dancers with performance opportunities. Although the organization gradually faded from prominence and was rarely given its due in the annals of dance scholarship, the rich history of New Dance Group has been uncovered and celebrated in recent years. The American Dance Guild presented a retrospective New Dance Group Gala concert in 1993, assembling works by Mary Anthony, Ronne Aul, Talley Beatty, Valerie Bettis, Irving Burton, Jane Dudley, Jean Erdman, Eve Gentry, Joseph Gifford, Hadassah, Sophie Maslow, Donald McKayle, Daniel Nagrin, Pearl Primus, Anna Sokolow, Joyce Trisler, and Charles Weidman. On July 28, 2000, the Library of Congress, along with the Dance Heritage Coalition, identified New Dance Group as one of "America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: The First 100". From 2005–2007, the National Museum of Dance featured the New Dance Group in the exhibit "Dancing Rebels: The New Dance Group," which focused on the organization's activities and membership from 1932 until 1960. While some members of New Dance Group were inducted into the museum's Hall of Fame individually, the group itself was given this honor in 2006. Many of the choreographers who presented work with New Dance Group are featured in the American Dance Legacy Institute's "Dancing Rebels" anthology, and some of their masterpieces are preserved in the Institute's documentaries.
Although there is currently a studio and company in New York City called New Dance Group, the dancers and choreographers who built the original institution and contributed to its heyday through the 1960s are not affiliated with this new entity. The later New Dance Group fosters the arts through multiple disciplines and focuses on four program areas: Arts and Education, Presentation and Production, Media Communications, Fund-Raising Program. Information below pertains to this more recently founded entity and not to the original New Dance Group.
New Dance Group 2006–2009
On September 18, 2006, the New Dance Group officially opened the doors to a new state-of-the art 21,000-square-foot (2,000m2) studio located at 305 West 38th Street just west of 8th Avenue. Nearly double the size of its prior location (where it had resided for 55 years), New Dance Group's renovated upgrade, led by architect Howard Spivak, included two floors of studios complete with sprung wood or Marley flooring, pianos, floor to ceiling mirrors, a recording studio and vocal room, sound systems, large dressing rooms, teacher lounge, stretch area, private entrance, art exhibit gallery, merchandise boutique, and two performance spaces complete with raked seating for over 100 people. This space was used for all NDG programming but was also available for rentals.
New Dance Group offered classes for the novice to the professional in dance, fitness and theatre arts seven days a week. Classes for teens and adults included modern, hip-hop, ballet, tap, jazz, Latin, ethnic, yoga, pilates, voice, and acting. Performance programs included The Exchange, an emerging artists series, and the Teacher Performance Series.
In 2007, New Dance Group became part of the biggest collaboration in the history of American Theatre. Over 600 theaters joined a grassroots premiere of plays in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Colorado, Greater Texas, Los Angeles, Minnesota, New York City, The Northeast, San Francisco, Seattle, The Southeast, Washington, D.C., the Western U.S. and Universities The 365 National Festival was produced by Suzan-Lori Parks and Bonnie Metzgar. The company toured many productions through 2007 and 2008, including pieces by Anabella Lenzu and Rick Schussel.
Jean Erdman was an American dancer and choreographer of modern dance as well as an avant-garde theater director.
Louis Horst was a composer, and pianist. He helped to define the principles of modern dance choreographic technique, most notably the matching of choreography to pre-existing musical structure and the use of contemporary music for dance scores.
Anna Sokolow was an American dancer and choreographer. Sokolow's work is known for its social justice focus and theatricality. Throughout her career, Sokolow supported of the development of modern dance around the world, including in Mexico and Israel.
Helen Tamiris was an American choreographer, modern dancer, and teacher.
Hanya Holm is known as one of the "Big Four" founders of American modern dance. She was a dancer, choreographer, and above all, a dance educator.
The American Dance Festival (ADF) under the direction of Executive Director Jodee Nimerichter hosts its main summer dance courses including Summer Dance Intensive, Pre-Professional Dance Intensive, and the Dance Professional Workshops. It also hosts a six-week summer festival of modern dance performances, currently held at Duke University and the Durham Performing Arts Center in Durham, North Carolina. Several site-specific performances have also taken place outdoors at Duke Gardens and the NC Art Museum in Raleigh, NC.
Donald McKayle was an American modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, director and writer best known for creating socially conscious concert works during the 1950s and '60s that focus on expressing the human condition and, more specifically, the black experience in America. He was "among the first black men to break the racial barrier by means of modern dance." His work for the concert stage, especially Games (1951) and Rainbow Round My Shoulder (1959), has been the recipient of widespread acclaim and critical attention. In addition, McKayle was the first black man to both direct and choreograph major Broadway musicals, including the Tony Award-winners Raisin (1973) and Sophisticated Ladies (1981), and he worked extensively in television and film. As a young man he appeared with some of the twentieth century's most important choreographers, including Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow, and Merce Cunningham, and in some of Broadway's landmark productions, including House of Flowers (1958) and West Side Story (1957), where he served for a time as the production's dance captain. A Tony Award and Emmy Award nominee, McKayle held an endowed chair for the last decades of his life in the Dance Department at UC Irvine, where he was the Claire Trevor Professor of Dance. He previously served on the faculties of Connecticut College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Bennington College.
Sophie Maslow was an American choreographer, modern dancer and teacher, and founding member of New Dance Group. She was a first cousin of the American sculptor Leonard Baskin.
Samuel Henrick Scripps was a patron of the arts, and played a significant role in gaining support and recognition for theatre and dance companies throughout America in the second half of the twentieth century.
Jane Dudley was an American modern dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Inspired by her mentor, choreographer Martha Graham, Dudley helped bring her movement inspired by social ills to the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College in the 1950s.
Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which includes dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered to have been developed as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical ballet, and also a way to express social concerns like socioeconomic and cultural factors.
Daniel Nagrin was an American modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, and author. He was born in New York City.
Haruki Fujimoto was a Japanese-born theatre performer, dancer, choreographer, and teacher.
Mary Anthony was an American choreographer, modern dancer, and dance teacher. Both her work as a dancer and choreographer were highly influenced by Martha Graham and Hanya Holm.
Charles Moore was an African-American dancer, choreographer, teacher and founder of The Charles Moore Dance Theatre in Brooklyn, New York.
Miriam Pandor was a German dancer, director, choreographer, teacher and writer. She is well-known for her works which address racism, antisemitism and social injustice.
Rosalia Merino Santos was a Filipino dancer, choreographer and educator. She has been called one of the pioneers in the development of modern dance in the Philippines.
Nancy Louise Spanier is an American dancer, choreographer, artistic director, filmmaker and educator. Her body of choreographic works includes pieces commissioned internationally by museums, universities, dance companies and foundations. She is the founder of the Nancy Spanier Dance Theatre of Colorado, a repertory company known for its highly theatrical and imagistic performances that explore themes through the integration of sculpture, props, and film. Spanning her career, she has incorporated a variety of performance genres and has collaborated, among others, with award-winning playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie, and Anaïs Nin, who documented Spanier's performance in her last diary. Spanier is a professor emerita at the University of Colorado, Boulder where she taught dance from 1969 to 2003.
The Workers Dance League (WDL) was founded in 1932 in New York City during the Great Depression. Created by young modern dancers, WDL used dance as a form of social protest to address class struggle and worker's rights. It recruited workers as participants and audiences and brought dance to union halls, political rallies, and public demonstrations to raise awareness.
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