Garth Fagan: No Evidence of Failure

Choreography by: Garth Fagan
Music by: Monty Alexander
Lighting Design by: Lutin Tanner
Costumes by: Garth Fagan

A
Natalie Rogers

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Vitolio Jeune and Natalie Rogers

Special thanks to Natalie Rogers and Bill Ferguson. King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown and No Woman No Cry appear on Monty Alexander's Harlem-Kingston Express Live!

Used by permission of Motema. No Evidence of Failure was made possible with generous support of Sherm Levey & Deborah Ronnen, Drs. Edward & Susan Messing, and Sidney & Barbara Sobel

GARTH FAGAN (choreographer) Critics have called Garth Fagan “a true original,” “a genuine leader,” and “one of the great reformers of modern dance.” Fagan is the founder and artistic director of the award-winning and internationally acclaimed Garth Fagan Dance, now celebrating our milestone 50th anniversary! A Tony and Olivier Award winner for his path-breaking choreography for Walt Disney’s The Lion King (1997), Fagan’s distinguished work in the theatre also includes the Duke Ellington street opera, Queenie Pie, at the Kennedy Center (1986) and the opening production of New York Shakespeare Festival's Shakespeare Marathon: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1988). The Company’s distinctive movement quality comes from years of training in Fagan Technique, the teaching method Fagan developed hand-in hand with his own dance vocabulary. which draws on many sources: a sense of weight in modern dance, torso-centered movement and energy of Afro Caribbean, the speed and precision of ballet, and the rule breaking experimentation of the postmoderns. “Originality has always been Mr. Fagan’s strong suit, not least in his transformation of recognizable idioms into a dance language that looks not only fresh but even idiosyncratic,” writes Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times. In 2014, Lewis Segal of the Los Angeles Times wrote “it was American master Garth Fagan who best fused technical virtuosity with conceptual depth. The soul-deep conviction and spectacular flair of his 1983 (Prelude)“Discipline Is Freedom"…may have been the indispensable dance experience of the year.”
In the world of concert dance, Fagan choreographs primarily for Garth Fagan Dance. Mudan 175/39, was named by The New York Times as the third of the top six dance-watching moments of 2009. Fagan has also produced commissions for a number of leading companies, including Footprints Dressed in Red, for the Dance Theatre of Harlem; Scene Seen for the debut of the Jamison Project; Jukebox for Alvin for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; Never No Lament for the Jose Limon Company; and Ellington Elation, for the New York City Ballet in honor of Duke Ellington’s centenary and New York City Ballet’s 50th anniversary.

Garth Fagan was selected as an “Irreplaceable Dance Treasure” by The Dance Heritage Coalition, An irreplaceable dance treasure has made a significant impact on dance as an art form, demonstrated artistic excellence, enriched the nations cultural heritage, demonstrated the potential to enhance the lives of future generations and shown itself worthy of national and international recognition. He is a Chancellor’s Award-winning Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of the State University of New York, and taught for over three decades at the State University of New York at Brockport. In the fall of 2003, Fagan received the George Eastman Medal from the University of Rochester for “outstanding achievement and dedicated service.” He holds honorary doctorates from the Juilliard School, the University of Rochester, Nazareth College of Rochester, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges. In 2001 he was the recipient of the Golden Plate Award and was inducted into the American Academy of Achievement. In 1996 he was named a Fulbright 50th Anniversary Distinguished Fellow. Fagan received the 2001 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a prestigious three year choreography fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In recognition of his contribution to modern dance, Fagan has received the Dance Magazine Award for “significant contributions to dance during a distinguished career” and a Bessie Award for Sustained Achievement. Other awards include the Monarch Award from the National Council for Culture and Art, the Lillian Fairchild Award, and the Arts Achievement Award from his alma mater, Wayne State University.

Martha Myers: Martha in Her Own Words: A Danced Tribute

Concept: Ara Fitzgerald, Gloria McLean

With: Laurie Cameron, Mary Barnett, Clare Byrne, Ara Fitzgerald, Jeffrey Kazin,
Nicholas Leichter, Gloria McLean, Lynn Needle, Libby Nye, Job Potter, Robin Rice, Catherine Tharin, Lance Westergard, Peter Woodin, Marya Ursin, and others.

Video Edit: Kay Hines

Lighting Design: Walter Rutledge

With Special thanks to Jodee Nimerichter, Dean Jeffrey of ADF, Blake Allison,
Peter Cunningham for material for the video, and the Martha Hill Dance Fund for use of photos by Steven Speilotis from the MDHF 2014 Gala honoring Martha.

American Dance Festival Dean Emeritus Martha Myers has been a teacher, dancer, choreographer, film producer, newscaster, television personality, and writer. She served as the Director of Women's News for WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio. She received her MS from Smith College where she continued as Assistant Professor for 10+ years during the 50's within the Physical Education Department. In the early 60s, her vision to match two growing time arts, modern dance and television, resulted in a series of nine programs called A Time To Dance, a precursor to Dance in America, for which she was writer, narrator, and co-producer with Jac Venza of WGBH/Boston. The programs in ballet, modern and ethnic dance were organized around such topics as Invention in Dance, Dance: A Reflection of Our Times, and Great Performances in Dance. These interviews with choreographers and dancers such as Anthony Tudor, Jose Limon, Herb Ross, Geoffrey Holder, John Butler, Nora Kaye, Maria Tallchief, Alwin Nikolais, Daniel Nagrin, Ximenez-Vargas Ballet Espanol and others were used extensively for dance courses in colleges and universities.

Ms. Myers joined the dance faculty at Connecticut College in 1967, founded its dance department in 1971, and led the department until 1992 establishing both BA and MFA degrees, and was named Henry B. Plant Professor Emeritus. One of her first important moves at Connecticut (which was then a women's college) was to gather men from Wesleyan University to join the CC female students in her ground-breaking initiative The Experimental Movement Lab, which focused on improvisation and the idea of "play" through movement. Many artists, educators and grateful non-dancers have emerged from her classes and labs. In 1969, she was named Dean of the American Dance Festival School, where she pioneered the study of dance medicine and somatics, brought in teachers and artists in all dance forms, and mentored literally thousands of dancers. Along with innovating courses in body practice and creative work at ADF, she wrote articles on dance medicine that were published in Dance Observer and Dance Magazine. Her goal is to combine practice with theory in ways that integrate kinesthetic wisdom with aesthetic interests. She retired from ADF in 2000.

In 2002, she received the Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beineke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching. She continued to teach ChoreoLab in New York, encouraging exploration, invention, and "thinking outside the box.” Martha acknowledges deeply her family: her life-long partner and late husband Gerald Myers, Professor of Philosophy at Brown University, Smith College, Connecticut College, and Queens College in NY, who was for many years a partner in her work, and son Curt, now a lawyer, who was so often in tow for performances along the college circuit. Ms. Myers received an undergraduate degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and an M.S. from Smith College. Honorary degrees were bestowed on her by Smith College and Manhattanville College, and she was awarded the Martha Hill Dance Foundation 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award. Now in her 90's, Martha continues to write poetry and her memoirs, and to inspire friends and colleagues with her enduring optimism:
"Change is the work. Without opening, there is no change."

Thunderbird American Indian/Louis Mofsie:
Ya-Oh-Way (Premiere)

YA-OH-WAY (Premiere)
(A Hopi word which means good or fine.)

Choreography: Louis Mofsie

Music: Live composed and performed by Louis Mofsie

1. Robin Dance from the Iroquois
2. Striking the Stick/Smoke Dance from the Iroquois
3. Stomp Dance from Oklahoma
4. Jingle/Grass Dance from the Great Plains People
5. Hoop Dance from the Taos Pueblo

Performers: Alan Brown, Michael Taylor, Carlos Ponce, Ciaran Tufford, Dale Legones, Marie Ponce, Kitty Mullen, Matoaka Eagle, Julian Gabourel

Lighting Design: Walter Rutledge

Louis Mofsie is the Director of the Thunderbird American Dancers and is a member of the Hopi and Winnebago tribes. He received his Master of Arts at Hofstra University and taught art for 35 years at the Meadowbrook School in East Meadow, New York. In addition to serving as the Artist-in-Residence at South Hampton College from 1972 to 1974, he has also led many Native American organizations, including the American Indian Counseling Center and the Indian League of the Americas. He has been the curator of exhibits at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the County Historical Museum in Bonneville, NY. He was the guest artist at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis with the American Indian Art, Form and Tradition exhibit, as well as showing his own work at the Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Woodards Museum in Gallup, New Mexico and the Gallup Ceremonials, also in Gallup, New Mexico. Mofsie has fulfilled the role of Illustrator, in the books: The Hopi Way, Coyote Tales, and Teepee Tales; and of Choreographer in the productions of Operation Sidewinder with the Lincoln Center Repertory Company, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with the Mercer Arts Center, Three Masked Dances with La Mama Etc., and The Only Good Indian with the Theater for the New City. He has made several recordings, including Songs and Dances of the American Indian, Authentic USA 1, and Traditional Native American Songs and Music by Mofsie, and has lectured and made appearances at the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Columbia University, Wesleyan University, and New York University, among other notable venues.

Thunderbird American Indian Dancers is the oldest resident Native American dance company in New York, founded in 1963 by a group of men and women who descended from Mohawk, Hopi, Winnebago, and San Blas tribes. With a mission to keep alive the traditional songs, and dances they learned from their parents, the troupe has toured the U.S.A., expanding and sharing traditional repertoire. This program will introduce audiences to forms of indigenous American dance, including Fancy Dance and Hoop Dance, as well as a variety of other distinct regional tribal dances.