Members of the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company in “Tensile Involvement,” part of a Alwin Nikolais program at the Joyce Theater. LEASING THE REPERTORY Nikolais/Louis is a name that is synonymous witht he finest in modern dance, influencing every facet of the art. Mr. Louis, a dancer and choreographer in his own right, died last week, leaving Mr. del Saz as the sole director of the Nikolais/Louis Foundation, which owns the rights to the work. “You really explore the body as a vehicle to create certain qualities,” he said. ALWIN NIKOLAIS 2010: A CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. Melissa McDonald, Caine Keenan, and Juan Carlos Claudio of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company perform "Tensile Involvement" by Alwin Nikolais. One of his pupils was the young Philippe Decouflé, who would later win fame as director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. Tensile Involvement appeared in Robert Altman's feature film about The Joffrey titled "The Company. "Tensile Involvement," his most famous work, in which sixteen-foot-long elastic bands transform the stage into a cat's cradle, will be shown both at the Abrons Arts Center and at the Joyce Theater, where the program also features later dances including "Liturgies," "Crucible," and the Tower section from "Vaudeville of the Elements." ( Log Out / I know from my studies of him for my own blog that he wanted to do everything in his power to delineate himself from the Big Four’s modern ideals of human and naked form in a proscenium setting. Also 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Wednesday, and May 9, and at 8 p.m., Thursday through May 6 with matinees at 2 p.m., May 8-9, at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St. How Much: Tickets at the Abrons Arts Center are $15 general admission and $10 for students and seniors. The upcoming performances, part of a Nikolais centennial celebration continuing into next year, marks a homecoming for “Nik,” as he was known to friends and colleagues.
The Joyce program shows one of the earliest and most famous of those multimedia works, “Tensile Involvement” (1955), in which the dancers have elastic strings attached to their hands and feet so that their movements seem to angle into infinite space. Nikolais started dance late, at 23, after seeing a performance by the German Expressionist choreographer Mary Wigman.
After serving in the Army in World War II, Nikolais became Holm’s assistant, and her emphasis on spatial awareness and analysis had a profound effect on his work when he moved to New York, where he became dance director of the Henry Street Settlement Playhouse on the Lower East Side.
“I do feel I have a responsibility to keep the work as close as possible to the original,” Mr. del Saz said in a telephone interview from Angers, France, where he was teaching at the school that Nikolais once ran. We’re here when you need us most. Subscribe to NJ.com ». © 2020 Advance Local Media LLC. Nik and Murray In 1985 Christian Blackwood embarked on a documentary project about his landlords and neighbors at 115 Bank Street in Manhattan, Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis. Nikolais (1910-1993) was among the boldest 20th-century visionaries, transforming the human body with props and masks and creating abstract environments for dance with hand-painted slide projections and sound-scores he composed himself.