Alwin nikolais biography of michael douglas

Nikolais, the youngest of six siblings, began to study piano at an early age. In he launched his career in theater as an accompanist at the Westport Movie House, but talking pictures soon forced him to look elsewhere for work, so he began to accompany dance classes in nearby Hartford, Connecticut. In he attended what he later termed a "life-changing" dance performance by the German choreographer Mary Wigman , who inspired him to study dance.

From to he served as the director of the Hartford Parks Marionette Theatre. His work with the puppets provided him with the foundation for what he would later call his theory of decentralization: that "art is motion, not emotion. Though in a location somewhat removed from the center of the dance community, this suited Nikolais's tastes.

This group later became the Nikolais Dance Theatre. Nikolais met Murray Louis at Colorado College in , and the two began a lifetime partnership, which included choreographing works together. Louis was also a dancer in the Nikolais Dance Theatre, even after he formed his own company in In his choreography, Nikolais moved away from what he considered the self-absorption, and the tendency for dances to be allegorical, that had prevailed in the s.

He championed the idea of abstract gestures, unique and defensible in and of themselves, and neither interpretive nor derived from ballet or jazz. He emphasized the difference between movement and motion, defining motion as intentional movement, or the act of moving with purpose. Therefore, any action could constitute dance.

Alwin Nikolais was the sole creator of each media source he used.

Nikolais also maintained that dance need not be accompanied by, and would not even be enhanced by, emotion. This he learned from working with puppets while at the Hartford Parks Marionette Theatre. It was an aspect of his work that did not always sit well with the early critics, who often deemed his creations "inhuman. Nikolais continuously explored the concepts of space and time in his work.