I have been a member of the Burckhardt family since 1979, through my relationship with Jacob Burckhardt, filmmaker and photographer. Edwin Denby was also a member of this family. By way of association, I can say that Edwin Denby is family to me. 

When Rudy Burckhardt was twenty-one years old, Edwin Denby was the person who brought Rudy to New York and introduced him to the arts scene. Rudy was a photographer and Edwin was a writer. Edwin and Rudy met in Switzerland. Edwin’s passport had expired, so he was looking for somebody to take his new passport photograph, in Basel, Switzerland. They soon became very close friends there and then Edwin convinced Rudy to move to New York. 

The first time I met Edwin was at his loft, 145 West 21^st Street, top floor. I think it was autumn of 1978. At that point, I didn’t know who he was. He was a very impressive elderly gentleman with white hair. He had a charismatic look that one could not forget. He lived at that loft until he died in 1983. 1978 was also the year that I had started presenting my work in the downtown New York dance scene. I had no dance background and my presentations were more like happenings. At this point, I knew nothing about American dance history, but my encounter with him was electrifying. 

I grew to understand that he was a very important figure as a dance critic, even though he was already retired at that point. He was very fond of George Balanchine’s work, but he followed many other new choreographers. Later on, I found out that he wrote the first article that recognized Merce Cunningham’s importance.

Edwin came to see all of my works. Each time, he would leave a message for me on the phone.   

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division has some photographs of Edwin. A  few of those photographs show Edwin Denby performing with Claire Eckstein. Claire was a choreographer in Germany, until the Nazis took over. I had first seen her photograph in Edwin’s apartment and was told by Jacob that she influenced Edwin immensely. I am not sure if this is the same photograph as the one in the Dance Division, but they are very similar.  

 

Claire Eckstein was a choreographer of stage dancing and operettas, and Edwin, as seen in the photographs, was a performer. I am not familiar with Claire Eckstein’s work. But the photograph that I saw in Edwin’s home had a title, and I remember it being something similar to “ What You Can Do in an Island in 24 hours” —the title was very ordinary, and abstract, which I found unusual for an operetta. Edwin was a dance critic who saw dance as a collection of codes strung together rather than a narrative. In addition to Edwin being a performer with Claire Eckstein, I can imagine how Claire’s approach to dance may have influenced how Edwin viewed dance later on.  

 

In 1986, I went to Munich to present my work. Edwin had passed, but Jacob and I went to visit Claire Eckstein while we were in Munich. He still had her telephone number and address from his visit in 1972. We called and luckily Claire Eckstein answered and she agreed to come watch my performance. After the performance she told me that “it was very interesting but was too long.” The way in which she delivered that critique to me reminded me of Edwin and his way of giving me feedback.

I went to Claire Eckstein’s home to eat dinner. She was a choreographer and dancer in Germany until the rise of the Nazi Party. Her husband , Wilhelm Reinking ,was a set designer. But they both stopped as the pressure of war escalated, and she never made anything after the war. After dinner, I knelt by her and asked, “I want to know, what was. . . ?”  She was reluctant to tell me anything about her past work. I think it was because she didn’t want to bring back her memories of Nazi Germany. She brought out a brown folder to show me with about ten newspaper clippings that were falling apart. 

Four or five years before Edwin died, we spent a lot of time in Searsmont, Maine. He talked to me about many of things. For example, he described to me the first time he saw Cunningham. Or the time when Paul Taylor opened a curtain, the dancers stood there motionless, and how the curtain closed. I didn’t read this in a book; Edwin would just tell me. He wouldn’t tell me what he thought about it. He would just describe it. He would talk about evidence, not his impression.

Edwin thought George Balanchine was a genius. I went with him a few times to the New York City Ballet. George Balanchine died the same year Edwin died. When George Balanchine died, Edwin said to me, "The choreographer has died, so the next year or two, the dance will become much richer. You should go to see it." He told me that I should look at choreography like a music score. I started seeing it that way, and so when I went to see George Balanchine’s ballets, I found that the works were amazing. 

After Edwin came back from Maine in 1982, we would watch Merce Cunningham, and I really learned how to watch Cunningham’s work. After thirty minutes, I felt something very strong, I don’t remember which dance it was, but after fifty minutes, the dance ended. Karole Armitage, Joseph Lennon, Ellen Cornfield and Chris Komar were in it.  When the dance ended, I heard, Edwin shout, “bravo” with a very young voice. I felt the same. The fact that he shouted was a huge affirmation of my sensibilities. 

At the Dance Division, you can read Edwin Denby's collected works in books, listen to audio recordings of people who refer to him in their own oral histories, and even see the film (call number *MGZHB 6-2559) made by Rudy Burckhardt circa 1983, Dancers, Buildings and People in the Street, a cinedance inspired by Edwin Denby’s book.

Thread #1

I’d like to find the exact Cunningham work that I saw with Edwin Denby and I would like to research Karole Armitage (who currently shares a dancer with me) as well as Chris Komar, who died in 1996. At the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, I can do this. For Chris Komar there are over two hundred items, including videos and a nearly six-hour oral history recording with him interviewed by Susan Kraft in 1993-94, titled Interview with Chris Komar (call number *MGZTC 3-1823).

Looking from home at the catalog, I can see that there are over 583 Merce Cunningham videos already digitized and on the library’s digital collections. I was also surprised to see that the Dance Division has over 166 items under Karole Armitage’s name in a keyword search, including photographs, reviews, and many videos. Some of the videos go back to the 1970s, with her performing in Merce Cunningham’s company. 

In my generation, we went to the library, searched through index cards, and pulled out numbers and names and got books and articles. Now, online, at home, I can do the same search in a more complex way to get more and more types of materials, including all these videos and audiotapes. The library still has the books and articles, and you still have to fill out a form to see them, but sometimes, with the new digitized materials, you can simply click and watch. When the library has been able to clear the rights to show an item on the Web, you can watch the videos or see the photographs from your own home computer.  Some digitized materials and analog tapes can be only accessed in the library.

I like looking at materials in the library. The atmosphere of the library is like the theater in some ways. It requires a commitment and concentration that allows you to go deeply into the dance world. With YouTube or DVDs you can see the works, but I prefer the movie theater. It is connected with the fact that the dance on the screen was performed in three dimensions. So I like watching video in the library, but I would suggest that the library should have bigger screens, maybe even screen films in 3D. (I understand that David Vaughan screens video from the Dance Division’s archive the last Wednesday of the month on the third floor. I have not yet attended, but now that I have been working on this Fellows Project, I see that this is something I would like to attend in order to see these videos on a big screen.)

I only learned about the issues with copyright and putting dance video on the Web when the Dance Division videotaped my works. I thought, like with YouTube, just put it up. But the library staff informed me that in order to do this under copyright law, they had to have all the rightsholders, including musicians, dancers, unions, and others, all in agreement that the video could be available online.

Going to the library to see the videos is a very special thing. The act of being in a space dedicated to study facilitates the study, an important consideration for the future for library facilities.

Thread #2

When I started having a relation with Paris Opera GRCOP (Groupe de Recherche Choregraphique de l'Opera de Paris), through Dancing in the Streets in New York, I was one of the selected choreographers for the bicentennial of the Statue of Liberty exchange program U.S.-France. Among the other choreographers selected were David Gordon, William Forsythe, Karole Armitage, Ulysses Dove, Andy DeGroat, and Lucinda Childs. I remember interacting with Susan Marshall who was also chosen. She found out that I was related to Edwin Denby and Rudy Burckhardt. She told me that she would love to have her work seen by Edwin if he was alive, and also that she considered herself greatly influenced by him. I would like to research a little bit more about Susan Marshall’s work. I looked at the Dance Division catalog and found 109 items. Of these, over fifty are videotapes for Susan Marshall.

Thread #3

In 1980, I was introduced to a Kabuki actor, Matazo Nakamura. He was supposed to do a choreography in Kabuki style in  the musical Into the Woods. I was asked to be an interpreter by the Broadway producer. Matazo Nakamura was an unknown actor. At that point, well known Kabuki actors never gave workshops. Workshops were a very Western idea. In the 1970s, there was some talk in the Kabuki world that they needed to teach this in the Western world. And so, this not well-known actor, Matazo Nakamura, did workshops in Germany, and was then sent to the United States. I thought I should introduce Matazo Nakamura to Edwin Denby. 

After the war, Kabuki was briefly prohibited in Japan. In the United States there was somebody who said that Kabuki needed to be protected and brought Kabuki to be performed in the States. Edwin saw Kabuki performances whenever they came to New York City.

While meeting with Matazo Nakamura, Edwin described to us in detail how the Kabuki actors came through a small sliding door, and suddenly, there was an actor in white sliding onto the stage, and then raising his right hand and creating a spiderweb with tossed out strings. Matazo was excited to hear how Edwin described this, as Edwin’s description was very accurate, even though he had seen it so long ago and the performance style was so unfamiliar to him.

Finally I stumped the Dance Division; the only thing they have on Matazo Nakamura are two editions of his book Kabuki, Backstage, Onstage : An Actor's Life, by Matazo Nakamura, translated by Mark Oshima (call number *MGS (Japanese) 90-2595) and one indexed review of it. However, the Dance Division does have much on Kabuki. A keyword search for materials on Kabuki shows nearly four hundred items, including books, videos, and photographs.

Matazo Nakamura and Edwin Denby got along very well and connected to each other through the love and understanding of the abstraction of the movement of the Kabuki actors. I was the translator for them and Matazo was impressed with Edwin’s memories.

Thread #4

What does the Dance Division have of my work? After all this, I thought I had an idea of what the Dance Division had of my work, as I had worked with the library a number of times to record my works. A keyword search of my name in quotes brings up one hundred items.

Among those items, I found the videotapes that I knew were there, because the Dance Division had recorded them.  One was Unfinished Symphony, performed at Danspace Project (call number *MGZIA 4-3034). Another was a series called the Living Room Project that took place over several years from 1997 to 1999, recorded by Charlie Steiner (call numbers for  five tapes:  *MGZIA 4-3936 ,  *MGZIA 4-3935   *MGZIA 4-3933 *MGZIA 4-3934  *MGZIA 4-3997).

The Dance Division also created an oral history with me in June of 1998 that is three and a half hours long. Elizabeth Zimmer interviewed me at the New York Public Library (call number *MGZTC 3-2171 [cassette]; for transcript, see *MGZMT 3-2171).

I found that in the Kaja Gam Records, (S)*MGZMD 204, there are folders on her work with my company. There are also videotapes from the Tina Croll, James Cunningham’s Horse’s Mouth series that I participated in.

Some of the recordings that I did not know were at the library are:

• Homecoming [videorecording] : celebrating twenty years of dance at P.S. 122 / a film by Charles Dennis (call number *MGZIDVD 5-2407)
• Crash orchestra  Japan Society, 1995 (call number *MGZIA 4-2756 )  
• Jo Ha Kyu Danspace Project St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, New York, on February 20, 1993 (call number *MGZIA 4-2161)  
• Following through continuity & context in performance / Movement Research Inc. presents The Studies Project: A Panel Discussion Moderated by Marc Robinson (call number *MGZIA 4-8061) 
• Dress up!: P.S. 122's Tenth anniversary benefit, presented by Performance Space 122, 1990 (call number *MGZIC 9-4636)
• Dive in/3  Danspace Project's third annual festival of improvisation. Curator: Ishmael Houston-Jones.  October 22, 1989 (call number *MGZIC 9-2579)
• Thick as Thebes , Choreography, set, and costumes: Pooh Kaye; Performed by Pooh Kaye, Yoshiko Chuma Claire Bernard, and Nina Lundborg. Videotaped in dress rehearsal (?) by Eric Bogosian at The Kitchen, New York, on November 26, 1978 (call number *MGZIC 9-4143)

There are also recordings of my choreography by other companies, such as Reverse Psychology in Gear presented by the Daghdha Dance Company; choreography by Yoshiko Chuma (call number *MGZIA 4-5943).

Though there was not enough time for me to look at all this material located at the Dance Division, this project allowed me to glimpse the vast number of materials that are available to the public on nearly any dance subject in the Dance Division.

This project made me think differently about my own work. My apartment is a general mess of documents, videos, papers, sketches, program notes, and photographs. I didn’t think I really cared about documentation and the art of organizing and saving my works in any serious way. I used to say that after twenty years, no one will know me. Trisha Brown, Bill T. Jones, some number of contemporary dancers will remain in the public memory, but I might fade out.

Now, partly because of the passage of time and partly through this project looking at Edwin Denby’s archive and history, I have changed my mind about this. I used to be a person who said that I didn’t really care, but now I say, documentation, documentation, documentation. Now, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, time and space in video are so edited and collapsed together into small bits on the Internet that the library’s act of preserving, cataloging, and making this material in full available to the public, at no cost, is enormously important to recent dance history.

Besides that, this period of American dance history is itself enormously important to the world. For people like Sasha Waltz, Pina Bausch, Rosemary Butcher, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and others, American dance allowed them the freedom to create in a new way.

Sasha Waltz studied at the Amsterdam School of New Dance Development, where I was also a frequent guest artist with Simone Forti and Steve Paxton in 1980s. I was happy to spend many months there. In Europe there was a great support for the arts and Libraries. This drives me to say at the end of this article that, though I know the city does give the New York Public Library some funding, I would be in support of more funding for the arts from the city, state, and federal governments. I believe that the libraries, as repositories of the arts, also need additional support, especially the New York Public Library and the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at Lincoln Center. The importance of the responsibility taken on by the Dance Division to be the archive of the history of dance was made clear to me in this project. Looking at my own notes about Edwin Denby and the documentation at the library combined to help me understand the importance of all of the elements that make our memories more accurate. If you don’t have the information, the cultural heritage will be lost for the next generation.

Items in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division

1. Edwin Denby,  #1 and 2, call number: *MGZEA.
2. ​Edwin Denby,  #1 and 2, call number: *MGZEA.
3. ​Edwin Denby,  #6, call number: *MGZEA.
4. ​Edwin Denby,  #7, call number: *MGZEA.
5. ​Edwin Denby,  #18, call number: *MGZEA.
6. ​Edwin Denby,  #5, call number: *MGZEA.
7. Karole Armitage, #18, call number: *MGZEA.
8. Yoshiko Chuma, #3, call number: *MGZEA.

Yoshiko Chuma (artistic director and choreographer of the School of Hard Knocks, USA, and of Daghdha Dance Company, Ireland) was born in Osaka, Japan ,and has lived in the United States since 1978. Chuma has created more than forty-five full-length company works, commissions, and site-specific events for venues across the world, constantly challenging the notion of performing for both audience and participant. Her work has been presented in New York in venues ranging from the Joyce Theater to the legendary annual Halloween Parade, and abroad in such locations as the former National Theater of Sarajevo, the perimeter of the Hong Kong harbor and at an ancient ruin in Macedonia. Yoshiko Chuma is the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including those from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Japan Foundation, Meet the Composer Choreographer/Composer Commission and Philip Morris New Works. She received a New York Dance & Performance Award ("Bessie") in 1984 and has led workshops and master classes throughout Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, Russia and the United States.