Alwin Nikolais was a unique artist. As the father of mixed
media, his skill and artistry abounded in all the theater art
forms. Primarily he was a choreographer, but he called his
works “dance theater.” In the early 1950s, he programmed his
pieces as “The Theater of Light-Sound-Color-Motion.”

Born in Southington, Connecticut in 1910, Nikolais’s early
years and early career were in acting, music and puppetry. It
was not until the late 1930s that he began his work as dancerchoreographer in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was
commissioned by the Avery Memorial Theater, a part of the
Wadsworth Atheneum, to create an evening length work to
the also commissioned music of Ernst Krenek.

Previously his work and study as a pianist-organist found him
accompanying silent films. This sort of accompanying
required from the musician not only a playing skill but also a
versatility in improvisation, matching movement to sound,
and evoking mood to situation.

Nik was drawn initially to dance by his involvement with the
percussion scores used by the illustrious early 20th-century German dancer Mary Wigman. In trying to learn more about percussion, he was lured into dance class and thus his career began. His development of music and dance occurred simultaneously.

His introduction to the twelve-tone technique opened his mind
to the expanding areas of atonal music, and his dealing with
music as sound per se. In 1948, after being appointed director
of the Henry Street Playhouse in New York, Nikolais formed
the Playhouse Dance Company, later known as the Nikolais
Dance Theater, and began his aesthetic orientation toward
dance as a study of motion. By the 1950s, he had ceased
creating literal dances and began his explorations and
eventual milieu as an abstractionist.

Sound became an important part of his abstract theater.
For his first dances, which involved his new thinking of dance
as both a visual and kinetic art, he used live percussion scores
in which he directed his dancers to play instruments of all
nature. There was a combination of children’s toy instruments
as well as harsh and resonant automobile brake drums, and
other pitched auto parts which he also used to accompany
classes.

Once he installed his own tape recording machines, he
quickly used the limited range these instruments provided in a
new way, slowing and increasing speed and reversing sound.
He also made the sounds adhere to the choreographic
structure (not the other way around), thereby giving the dance
its independence from the musical phrasing. But the real need
remained: the search for new sound. Nik made a sound
library, recording noises and percussion and vocal sounds,
which the French aptly called musique concrète. Needless to
say, he became a master at splicing bits and pieces.
From 1956 to 1962 Nikolais composed eleven major scores
for his theater pieces using such techniques. These included
Kaleidoscope (1956), Allegory (1959), and Totem (1960). In
1963, James Seawright, who at the time was assisting Nik in
his productions and also working at the Columbia-Princeton
Center for Electronic Music, recorded a sound bank for the
production Imago (1963). With this material, Nikolais created
his first synthesizer score. Imago won the Paris Grand Prix in
1968 and launched the Nikolais Dance Theater towards its
national and primarily international acclaim.

During the same period, Seawright came to Nik and told him
of a young man who had invented and constructed a
simplified synthesizer and insisted that Nik visit the electronic
fair currently being held in New York. Nik did so and met
Robert Moog. He was completely taken by the new machine
and after making some suggestions to Moog, (which Moog
made), Nik bought the inventor’s first machine, through aid of
a Guggenheim Fellowship. All of the Nikolais’s scores from
1963 to 1975 found their sources primarily from that
synthesizer.

"The Luscious Tent" (1968), "Haunting Echo" (1969), the wild
and hysterical "Scenario" (1971), and the lighting masterpiece
"Crossfade" (1974) all were derived from the Moog. Moog
himself was astonished by what his machine could produce
for Nik. This machine was later acquired by the Museum of
Musical Instruments at the University of Michigan at Ann
Arbor as the first Moog synthesizer.

The Synclavier was Nik’s next source of sound and since the
mid-1970s has remained the major instrument in the Nikolais
soundroom. "Guignol" (1977), "Arporisms" (1977), "Gallery"
(1978), "Pond" (1982), "Crucible" (1985), "Blank on Blank" (1987),
all were created using the Synclavier.

Alwin Nikolais has been honored and awarded throughout the
world. He has received the French Legion of Honor, the
Kennedy Center Honors, National Medal of the Arts, two
Guggenheim Fellowships, as well as Mellon, Ford, and
Rockefeller grants. He has been a recipient of NEA grants
since 1966, been awarded five honorary doctorates, all for his
remarkable achievements in Dance Theater. His genius has
influenced several generations of artists.

— Murray Louis