Dance professor Duane Cyrus brings the powerful “Steps in the Street” to Greensboro.
Text-only version of “Steps in the Street” video.
UNCG Magazine
Presents
“Following in Martha Graham’s Steps”
[Duane Cyrus, UNCG Assistant Professor of Dance speaking] “Steps in the Street” was a project that I received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to reconstruct one of Martha Graham’s historic works. A work called “Steps in the Street,” that she made in 1936. That project lasted a whole year from fall ‘09 to spring 2010. And I worked with students in the dance department to teach them Graham’s technique, to bring in professional artists to help teach the dance. We also did outreach. Late January, early February we brought in Elizabeth Auclair (of the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance).
Elizabeth was a principal dancer with Martha Graham, and she’s staged “Steps in the Street” several times, so she’s had first-hand knowledge as a performer; she’s danced the work. She was complete; she gave them visual imagery; she was very clear and demanding of the dancers about the work.
You are about to see a time-lapse version of “Steps in the Street.” It takes the full seven-minute dance and reduces it down to about a minute. So there are loads of frames missing but you get to see the course of the dance, which starts out in silence. You see the dancers coming on with this movement, and one arm is here (holds one hand by his ear) and one is across the pelvis, and they sort of walk on backwards.
[The following sequence shows a time-lapse performance at Eastern Guilford High School on April 10, 2010. The music is “New Dance, Op. 18b” by Wallingford Riegger.]
The outreach was extremely important to this whole project. Outreach brings what we’re doing here at the university – one, out into the community, so that in itself is extremely important. But also, equally important, was the fact that we brought this work to young people. And it had a historical relevance. So these students got to see early modern dance from the 1930s, in context, on our performers. We taught them about where the dance came from. So 1936 – they learned about women’s suffrage, they learned about the Great Depression, they learned about concepts like socialism and fascism through “Steps in the Street.” The importance of the outreach was that they were also able to become involved in it. They didn’t just see and watch. We taught them some of the steps of the dance after they had a chance to see it. That was extremely important, and I know that maybe one day some of those young people will become dance majors at UNCG.
