Dancepeople
Terez Nelson, the woman who brought Martha Graham's style of dance to Dublin, is now 48, and she's been dancing since she was ten years old. She started to perform in classical ballet when she was 16 and began studyying with Graham in New York in the late 1940s. She moved to Ireland. in 1968 and now funs one of Dublin's three contemporary dance companies, as well as giving classes in the technique.
It's a technique that revolutionised ballet fifty years ago. In the aftermath, the old repertoire remained, but alonggside it was a new one of over 600 pieces and a whole new vocabulary of moveement. Dancers began to go barefoot, and dance itself became a much more natural process, though not necessarily an easier one. If dancing was difficult, taught Graham, it was to be seen as diffficult. She saw it as an expression of feeling from the gut rather than as a programme imposed from the outside, as in classical ballet. She was very innfluenced by eastern philosophies, esspecially Yoga.
Graham's work spread to Britain with the opening of the London School of Contemporary Dance in the 60s. And while there's no one centre in Dublin, teaching sessions, from introductory to advanced levels, operate in conjunction with the three companies. The enthussiams it evokes, and the speed with which the technique is expanding, exxcites Nelson.
"If we can fill up the standing room in the Abbey Theatre, you can't tell me Dublin people aren't interested in moddern dance," she said of her company's performance to a commissioned work by James Wilson in March of this year. Wilson is now writing them a piece to be performed later this year ... in a church. The Terez Nelson Dance Company perrformed two weeks at the Project Arts Centre in 1976, and again last year when they choreographed a poem by Brendan Kinelly , dancing to the sound of the poet's voice. Accompaniment is extremely varied in contemporary dance, and can range from taped modern classiical composers like Bartok or Webern, to electronic sounds, to Eric Clapton or Ray Charles, to live jazz or percussion.
The company also appeared for a week at the Peacock last year, as well as in two RTE shows, Folio and Tangents. While the company is always changing, there are usually about eight members at one time and Terez is always on the lookout for fresh talent, especially male. "The trouble with most male dancers is that as soon as they're any good at all they get jobs abroad with bigger commpanies," she said.
Nelson herself hasn't performed for two years, as a result of the arthritis which has bothered her since she came to this country. But she still dances every day, choreographing, rehearsing and teaching, which she said is most tiring of all. She calls herself a purist, sticking firmly to the Graham techniiques in which she was trained. Not all dancers follow such a strict line.
Anne Courtney still learns from, and dances for, Terez Nelson, but goes beyond the techniques of Martha Graham. She recently founded Danceemakers, a small company that she deescribes as "eclectic" She introduces in her choreography elements of classical and jazz ballet, the Graham technique, and a development from Graham, the Humphrey Weidman technique. This method uses ideas of gravity and suspen- sion and is based on the relationship of the dancer to the environment, rather than on any internal human relationn'ships.
Dancemakers produced a proggramme of modern dance and jazz ballet at the Project in July. They worked with a live jazz group, The John Donegan Sextet, and Courtney descriibed this as a "wonderful experience." She said she hopes to do another proogramme at the Project in the autumn, and then to work more widely around Ireland, perhaps at the Cork and Wexxford festivals.
Courtney originally trained in classsical ballet with Joan Denise Moriarty, now Artistic Director of the Irish Theatre Ballet. Later, she moved to Canada where she studied Martha Graham and Humphrey Weidman techhniques, and then a variety of methods with the Alvin Ailey Ballet Company in New York. She has been back in Dublin for less than a year and now teaches six evenings a week in her rented studio in Baggot Street, as well as one night a week in Bray. She admits that while her work is performance orientated, she runs beginners classes and feels that for I .•.• some students dance functions princiipally as therapy. "There's no way you can feel worried or anxious after a dance class, you have to concentrate so hard. You'll soon forget anything that's bothering you."
Another of Nelson's students who's made her name separately is Joan Davis, who for the past year has run an introductory dance class with her friend Karen Callaghan. Response has been good and they hope to start another group this September. Unlike Nelson and Courtney, both early starters, Davis was relatively late into the world of conntemporary dance. She'd always danced, "folk dancing, tap dancing, that sort of thing," but her serious studies in Graham technique only began four years ago. She is now 32. According to Nelson, her first teacher, when Davis did take up Graham, she took it up with treemendous intensity, travelling to London each fortnight for sessions at the School of Contemporary Dance. Davis added that while technique is vital, and in this respect, the earlier you start the better, contemporary dance is more accessible than classical ballet.
"Martha Graham is much more about whether you have something creative to say. It's a natural means of expression through bodily movement, though obbviously, the better your technique, the easier it is to say what you want,"·Davis said. She added that a dancer's size is not crucial and that while she herself has the slight build of a ballet dancer, many contemporary dancers are relaatively stocky.
Davis and Callaghan work with the Dublin Contemporary Dance Studio, a small workshop group, formed early last year. The group consists of five dancers and one administrator and like the other two Dublin companies, they have perrformed at the Project Arts Centre. Many of those involved have other committments such as a family or job, but they hope to eventually establish a full-time school and company.
Like Terez and Courtney, the Dublin Contemporary Dance Studio are always on the lookout for new talent .•