TBT: Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis on What Makes a Compelling Dancer
In the February 1971 issue of Dance Magazine, Tobi Tobias profiled Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis (“wizards” and “two of the most able and original people in dance today,” Tobias declared) shortly after the choreographers had moved their respective companies from their longtime residences at Henry Street Playhouse to a new home in midtown Manhattan.
“What I look for in a dancer,” Nikolais said, “is a body that responds to the dictates of the mind without undue censorship or coercion. I look for a person so compelled to move that it’s in his substance. I look for bravery—the willingness not always to be caught in the comfort of an arabesque. I look for people who are free, physically and emotionally, at the time of dancing. I want people who are creatively alive.”
His protégé and partner Louis, who met Nikolais in 1949 in a class led by Hanya Holm and was a leading dancer with what became Nikolais Dance Theater from its formation in 1951, clearly fit that bill. Louis concurrently performed with and choreographed for his own eponymous company, founded in 1953, and was a reputable teacher in his own right—but, he noted, “I believe that the seering [sic] moment of being on stage and having to do it, does more for the muscles, to say nothing of the psyche, than hundreds of classes. How do you make a dancer? By dancing.”
