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From:
Ken Caneva
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Sunday, August 23, 2015
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My appreciation of Jan's work is as a member of the audience--a long-time and faithful member of the audience for dance in Greensboro. What really impressed me from early on was the harmony, the unity, the palpable shared spirit that Jan managed to infuse into her dancers. After hearing the testimonials of her students at Saturday's memorial I understood better how she was able to do that. I hadn't realized that "Waltz" was the first dance on her resumé. Wow! I wanted to see more of the film of her dancing it. Its performance by Virginia some years ago remains one of my peak dance experiences as audience member. It's been a delight and a privilege to enjoy so many of her creations over the years. I'm among the many in Greensboro who will miss her.
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From:
Stephanie Silvia
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Saturday, August 22, 2015
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On Jan Van Dyke and an old review of, The Life and Times …
From Stephanie Silvia
Jan blew me away when she came to show her work and speak to my Comp II class at San Francisco State sometime in the early-eighties. My modern teacher, Susie Whipp, was in Jan’s company and arranged for them to do studio performance of Spike, choreographed to Laurie Anderson, O Superman. When Jan spoke about measures and numbers and counting I was astounded. I thought one had to be a mathematical whiz to become a choreographer. As I found out, as I began my years of relentlessly choreographing, there were many ways to make a dance, but studying with Jan, being in her class and performing her dynamic and rhythmic repertory, taught us we could all become mathematical whizzes, if we worked hard enough.
Years later, when I wrote to Susie for a recommendation for graduate school at UNC-G, she told me that Jan was here. Whoa. I was going to have my teacher’s teacher. This was exciting. I had never had class with Jan, but a duet that Susie performed in quietly transformed dance, choreographing, womanhood, humanity, everything for me. Lament was the first time I experienced women lifting each other, partnering, not in the flashy, traditional pas de duex way, but in a strong, emotional, caring way. I saw two women, I saw strength, support, sisterhood— I felt hope— a vision of what the world could be like, if we took the time.
The circle went around. It was time to return to New York. To leave school. To say good bye to Jan. She agreed to set Lament ¬on my company. I got to dance Susie’s part with Laura McDuffee. It was a great gift Jan gave to me. A great gift from Laura, too. We danced it in Greensboro. We danced in New York. At Cunnngham. At St. Mark’s. A big deal, for sure.
I started dancing late. I was no dancing whiz. Jan made it simple. Not a lot of praise. No negative criticism. Just come to class and work harder than thought possible and you will get it. It’s not magic. You will develop your own point of view. You will grow into yourself. You will grow into your dancer-self.
On social media I read that Jan revived, The Life and Times of… with Kelly and another male dancer. After seeing Jan and John perform it in New York, I was moved to write a review and sent it to Deborah Jowitt at the Village Voice and Anna Kisselgoff at the New York Times, who did not print it or jot down an encouraging note to keep on writing. Years and years later, I started writing the first dance column for the local arts and politics weekly here, where I live on the coast of Northern California.
Of course, I knew Jan and John, quite intimately back then. My impression of the dance, could not be separate from that knowing:
Morningside Dance Festival, 1992
On a rainy Tuesday evening at the Theater of the Riverside Church, a bright spot amongst a rather muddled program was the duet, “The Life and Times of …,” choreographed by Jan Van Dyke of John Gamble/Jan Van Dyke Dance Company. It was a rare opportunity to see Van Dyke perform, even rarer to see she and Gamble duet. They share a working history that spans over 25 years, including the creation of the Dance Project in Washington, DC, in the late sixties, and once, marriage. Presently they are both on the dance faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
The duet is evocative of the years that have passed between these two seminal dance artists and tells more of a narrative than most of Van Dyke’s work, which is also usually performed by younger group of dancers. The placement of the dancers in the opening, separate—flatly facing the audience— has a two- dimensionality to it that speaks of presentation; “This is me, this is he, this is who we are. Look.” The flirtation begins, the uncontainable inebriation of youth and love, the relationship develops onto dissention, separation, autonomy, survival, reconciliation ... On the surface it is a duet we have seen before, making it a testament of sorts. The rhythmic formality of Van Dyke’s design, the sensuous clarity of her movement vocabulary, along with her use of percussively strong Celtic sounding music of Martin Swan and Talitha Mackenzie, make the work her own statement.
Most impressive was Van Dyke herself. Beautifully long and graceful, I saw a woman somehow holding onto the purity of heart and belief that defines the unselfconscious physicality of youthful dance and fluidity throughout the turbulence, sacrifices and purposefulness of growing into a mature adult. Even in the pain of battle, she does not lose her elegance, that struggle for purity, the conviction of staying true to one’s self. Gamble’s character is more level, vulnerable to reaction, rather than openly confronting
his role in causing change to occur. His movement is less intense, with less commitment to the tides of emotion, while subtly acknowledging their pull. There is a ballroom scene where the couple slowly waltz in a tight embrace. Tender in its longing, this archetype suits Gamble who, in this dance, appears to be a man searching for more than this life or culture or relationship offers, finding a moment of peace, a sense of belonging in a gesture as common as dancing cheek to cheek.
The closing is as the beginning: separate, and now, almost barren. A wearied emptiness threatens to override the incessant call to the beat, the swaying to the rhythms of living. But “The Life and Times …’ does not stop moving. It is not only the dance of two who have survived, but have gained support through this surviving, two who will continue to move, two who will go on dancing.
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