Five-year retrospective - Dance

Behind the scenes at TOC, most of our time is spent on planning and research, but now and then there are more affecting goings-on that remain hidden. Given the opportunity to look back on almost five years I spent as TOC’s first Dance editor, two bits of writing stand out for the charged backstage action that accompanied them.

In August 2007, Mark Morris Dance Group brought Morris’s relatively new Mozart Dances to the Harris Theater. I wrote that “Mozart Dances…was received [at its premiere] with mixed emotions by audiences”and wondered whether Morris’ humanist modern dance might seem “clunky” compared to the immaculate perfection of its accompaniment (TOC 130, Aug 23–29, 2007).

My opinion was based on a combination of critics’ responses and my knowledge of other works by Morris. When the issue went to print, it raised the eyebrows of William Murray, then press agent for MMDG and a 30-year veteran of performing-arts PR who’s represented everyone from Fred “Mister” Rogers to Ingmar Bergman. He called me to say that, in fact, Mozart Dances was enthusiastically received at its unveiling and reminded me of Morris’s rock-solid reputation as one of the great dance artists of our era.

I recently got in touch with Murray to revisit our exchange. He says the choreographer is perhaps the most outspoken client he’s worked with, no surprise to anyone who’s seen Morris in action. At the Chicago premiere of Mozart Dances, current TOC Dance editor Zachary Whittenburg recalls witnessing Morris’s aggressive self-promotion. “A friend who had danced for Morris introduced the two of us during an intermission and he promptly asked me, ‘Isn’t this show the most brilliant, the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?’” In not so many words, Murray agrees. “Mark Morris is very good at defending himself,” he says, “but has referred to me as his ‘propagandist.’”

At the opposite end of the TOC Dance beat are stories of young artists just beginning to emerge. Last summer, a choreography competition that originated in New York came to town after a Boeing grant funded its expansion into Chicago, Philadelphia and Seattle. In my preview of The A.W.A.R.D. Show! (TOC 225, Jun 18–24, 2009), I wrote of founder Neta Pulvermacher’s intention to use the event for rich interaction via moderated and informal discussions. (The acronym stands for Artists With Audiences Responding to Dance.) From my vantage point on everyone’s mailing list, I had observed that the series’ $10,000 prize had put e-mail marketing on overdrive, and asked Pulvermacher how she felt about aggressive campaigning. “This is supposed to be an experiment in democracy,” she said. “That’s the part I don’t love about it. It shows the desperation in our field.”

I caught up with Pulvermacher to inquire further, and it turns out she’d experienced plenty of criticism from dance communities nationally; by December, she was compelled to write a blog post on the subject. It’s a pointed defense of her attempt to combat the hypocrisy and elitism she sees in the field of modern dance. Not mincing words, she wrote, “When was the last time you tried to create a new structure that would/could potentially bring new audiences, new resources and [a new way] of viewing to dance?”

“I wrote that straight from the gut,” she says. Nevertheless, Pulvermacher is pleased that the Joyce Foundation is continuing to promote The A.W.A.R.D. Show! nationally, although she does wonder about giving member cities a break now and then. “Things such as this should be rotated,” she says.

Read the post online at ontheboards.org/blog/2009/12/14/the-award-show.