ERICK HAWKINS (1909 – 1994)

Born in Trinidad, Colorado, April 23, 1909 he experienced the spiritual border where the Plains Indians met the Pueblo Indians an exciting polarization between Dionysian and Apollonian cultures that ensued his entire life’s work. He entered Harvard at 15, in 1924, earning a degree in Greek civilization. He began studying dance with German expressionist Harald Kreutzberg and then George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet in 1934. He danced in Balanchine’s Serenade and was the first American to teach at the school.

In 1936 Hawkins choreographed his first work Showpiece for Lincoln Kirsten’s Ballet Caravan, now the New York City Ballet. Ballet Caravan debuted at Bennington College in 1936 with the modern dance company of Martha Graham. Hawkins became the first male dancer to join Graham’s troupe in 1938. (photo below) For Graham he created unique male roles in many of her dances including American Document (1938), Every Soul Is a Circus (1939), Letter to the World (1940), El Penitente (1940), Deaths and Entrances (1943), Appalachian Spring (1944), Cave of the Heart (1946), Dark Meadow (1946), and Night Journey (1947) generating a new passionate image of masculinity in modern American dance

Hawkins began his own school and company in 1951 creating a stunning, quintessentially American repertoire. As an unprecedented collaborator with contemporary artists, sculptors, and designers, Hawkins has worked with Isamu Noguchi, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Bourgeois, Stanley Boxer, Ralph Lee, Robert Motherwell, and most notably sculptor Ralph Dorazio. Hawkins commissioned many distinguished American composers such as Virgil Thompson, Alan Hovhaness, Lou Harrison, David Diamond, Wallingford Riegger, Ross Lee Finney, Dorrance Stalvey, Micho Mamiya, and Ge Gan-ru. His most significant collaboration began in 1953 with composer Lucia Dlugoszewski.  

He received the President’s Medal for the Arts at the White House on October 14, 1994 from President Clinton. Hawkins has been honored with a Mellon Foundation Award (1975), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1978), The Dance Magazine Award (1979), Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Western Michigan University (1983), The Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement (1988), The Master Teacher/ Mentors Grant from Jane Alexander and Sali Ann Kriegsman of the National Endowment for the Arts (1994), and the National Initiative to Preserve American Dance.  Princeton Books published Erick Hawkins’ collection of essays, The Body is a Clear Place, with a foreword by Alan Kriegsman in 1992. South Carolina Educational Television produced Erick Hawkins’ America in 1988 and in 1993 Kentucky Educational Television produced Killer of Enemies both specials for PBS.

LUCIA DLUGOSZEWSKI (1931-2000)
Founding Composer

Lucia was renowned for her philosophic insights into music. She became the composer-in-residence of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company in 1953. Both Hawkins and Dlugoszewski embarked on a course of discovery and innovation revolutionizing the relation of music and choreography.  In their 42 years together, Hawkins and Dlugoszewski explored fundamental changes in dance and music stressing equal power and independence of both, creating an important third factor: their juxtaposition - poetic junctures moment by moment, this movement and this sound. She composed over 20 music scores for Hawkins including the masterpieces Here and Now with Watchers, 8 Clear Places, and Black Lake. Leighton Kerner wrote in the Voice “Here we get the choreographer-composer collaboration in excelsis. The Blake Lake score superimposes on the dance’s eight sections Dlugoszewski’s main structure of 21 climaxes, each closing off a flow-and-ebb complex of varying length, weight, and amount of contrast.”

In 1958, at the Five Spot Café, the New York School of Painters and Poets including David Smith, Herman Cherry, Willem de Kooning, Ad Reinhardt, John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara, sponsored her first solo New York concert for the timbre piano (invented by Dlugoszewski). In the 60’s Virgil Thompson described her work as “Far out music of great delicacy, originality, and beauty of sound and of unusually high level in its intellectual and poetic aspects.” Thompson, for his American Music Since 1910, chose Dlugoszewski to be commissioned by the American Composer’s Orchestra for her Radical Quidditas Dew Tear Duende. Robert Motherwell also contributed to this commission.

In 1972, she collaborated with philosopher FSC Northrop on a work of aesthetics, Is Music Sound.  She was the first woman to win the Koussevitzky International Recording Award in 1979 for Fire Fragile Flight, a 1973 orchestral work of “arresting originality, poetic vibrancy, compositional energy and visceral impact.” For her 1975 trumpet concerto, Abyss and Caress, commissioned by Pierre Boulez and the New York Philharmonic, she was singled out as “one of the most original composers before the public today.” Baryshnikov commissioned her Disparate Stairway Radical Other string quartet for Erick Hawkins’ Journey of a Poet set on the White Oak Dance Project in 1995. White Oak also performed Early Floating in 2002. Kerner says “The music of the 1961 dance Early Floating is a timbre piano solo, with the composer applying fingers, muting materials, little bow devices and picks to the variously doctored strings, not to mention proficient technique to the keys. In this music, atonality flies free, with, for instance a plucked glissando matching a dancer’s arching grace for grace.”

The Lincoln Center Chamber Society commissioned her work Duende Wilderness Radical Elegant Tilt in 2000. Her dance scores have received strong responses in pure music circles, described as “all brilliant sunshine and clean–aired radiance. Hers is wondrously transparent music in which she throws convention to the winds.” She was artistic director of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company from 1996-2000 and choreographed Radical Ardent, Taking Time to be Vulnerable, Fountain in the Middle of the Room, and Motherwell Amour. Her awards include a 1977 Guggenheim Fellowship, several NEA grants and American Arts and Letters awards. VoxBox released  Dlugoszewski’s Fire Fragile Flight and New World Records released Duende Quidditas on CD in 1996. CRI released her last CD in 2000. Before her death on April 11, 2000 she had begun preparation on a retrospective of her poetry 1957-2000.

KATHERINE DUKE – Artistic Director

Katherine Duke began studying with Erick Hawkins in 1983. She made her professional debut with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company in 1986 at Lincoln Center. Ms. Duke’s mercurial grace, purity of presence, and focused phrasing, as noted by Anna Kisselgoff of the New York Times, brought her critical acclaim. She was a teacher at the Erick Hawkins School and taught composition for Lucia Dlugoszewski. Ms. Duke was a  principle dancer with the Hawkins Company until 1991. Jamake Highwater has written “There is little doubt that Katherine Duke represents the idealization of Hawkins’s four decades of creating dance.” In 1995, Ms. Duke returned to the Hawkins Company as a guest artist and teacher. She assisted Dlugoszewski in setting Hawkins’ Journey of a Poet for Mikhail Baryshnikov. She served as rehearsal director to the Hawkins Company in 1999 and assistant to the choreographer in 2000. Ms. Duke was appointed artistic director in 2001.

Ms. Duke is committed to Hawkins tradition of performing only to live music. She produced a spectacular concert of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company at Florence Gould Hall in New York honoring long time collaborator Ralph Dorazio in 2003. The Company performed in Broadway Cares’ “remember  project”  2001-2004. She created a lecture demonstration titled “The Alive Dimension” aimed at kids following Harvard’s Graduate School format. The Company also performed at Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe Theatre and University Settlement’s Theater in Beacon, New York.  In 2005 she produced a New York season at Lincoln Center showcasing nine of Hawkins’ classic pieces and premiering “Fountain in the Middle Of the Room” and “Elusive Pierce”. The Company also premiered “Sheen of Water Dreamed” at Wooster Arts Space in New York and performed at the Manhattan School of Music in 2005/06 with their music director, David Taylor.

Her passion is realized through intensives, workshops, and commissions of new work for students and companies around the world. In 2006, the Company was invited to create “Mountain with Shadow”, a new work and original musical score performed by students of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The fall of 2006 brought the Company to Amsterdam to teach and set a new piece on the modern dance students of “de Theaterschool”  in Holland. The summer intensive of 2007 was held in Santa Barbara, California where Ms. Duke created a student work with an original music score. This intensive culminated with a performance joining Motion Dance Theatre where she accompanied the student work as well as performed the solo “Fountain in the Middle of the Room” at Santa Barbara’s Center Stage Theater.

DAVID TAYLOR – Music Director

David Taylor received B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Julliard School of Music. He has played with Leopold Stowkowski's American Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez. He was a member of the Thad Jones Mel Lewis jazz band, recorded with Duke Ellington, The Rolling Stones, and Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

Mr. Taylor has recorded four solo albums (Koch, New World, and DMP) and has presented numerous recitals throughout the world.

He has been involved in dozens of commissioning projects for the Bass Trombone in solo and chamber idioms; collaborating with composers including Alan Hovhaness, Charles Wuorinen, George Perle, Frederic Rzewski, Lucia Dlugoszewski, Eric Ewazen, David Liebman, and Daniel Schnyder. He has appeared and recorded chamber music with Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, and Wynton Marsalis, Barbara Streisand, Miles Davis, Quincey Jones, Frank Sinatra, and Aretha Franklin. 

Mr. Taylor has won the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Most Valuable Player Award for five consecutive years, the most it could be awarded and has been awarded the NARAS Most Valuable Player Virtuoso Award, an honor accorded no other bass trombonist. He has been a member of the Gil Evans Band, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band, George Russell's Band, the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, and the Chuck Israel Band to name a few. Mr. Taylor became the musical director for the Erick Hawkins Dance Company in 2003.

David Taylor currently performs with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The Charles Mingus Big Band, Eos Orchestra, The NY Chamber Symphony, The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, The Michelle Camillo Band, Areopagitica (a brass trio in residence at Mannes College), The Bob Mintzer Band, the Daniel Schnyder, David Taylor, and the Kenny Drew Jr Trio. He appears frequently with The Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Orpheus, and the St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra, and he is on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and Mannes

KRISTINA BERGER

Kristina's introduction to the Hawkins Technique was with Katherine Duke in New York City in 1997. She was invited into Erick Hawkins Dance in 2001, when Ms. Duke became Artistic Director. Since then she has become principal dancer. She has performed as a soloist with The Lester Horton Dance Theatre, under the direction of Donald Martin. Ms. Berger has worked internationally as assistant to Milton Myers and as a teacher of the technique at institutions such as Jacob’s Pillow, Juilliard, The Ailey School, Steps on Broadway, Ballet Arts at City Center, Boston Summer Dance Festival, Toronto Dance Theatre, and ImpulsTanz in Vienna. She now teaches Horton Technique at Marymount Manhattan College, and as guest artist at New York City’s La Guardia High School of Performing Arts. Kristina has danced with Joyce Trisler Danscompany, The Washington Opera Ballet, and BALAM (Balinese American) Dance Theatre. She now performs in Bali with the island’s foremost gamelan orchestra, Semara Ratih. Kristina has toured nationally with Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus, Cirque Le Masque, and The Kennedy Center production of "The Nightingale" Ballet. Kristina is a founding member of Paris-based Company S.W.A.T.T., whose primary goal is to create collaborations with artists all over the world.  Recent adventures include England, France, Taiwan, and Bali, which have all led to new projects in film, dance, and music with various artists.

JACQULEYNE JAY BOE

Jacquleyne received her BFA from the University of Oklahoma, where she had the pleasure of dancing works by Alvin Ailey, Robert Battle, Mark Dendy, Jean Erdman, Austin Hartel, Christopher Huggins, Derek Minter, and Pilobolus Dance Theater. She has toured Nationally and Internationally with Contemporary Dance Oklahoma, taking her to destinations such as Shanghi, China and Guatemala City, Guatemala. Ms. Boe is also a founding member of the Hartel Dance Group in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma directed by Austin Hartel. Her introduction to the Hawkins technique was with Katherine Duke at the American Dance Festival Summer 2008. Her debut with Erick Hawkins Dance was at Jacob’s Pillow Summer 2009.

WENDELL COOPER

Wendell is a dance artist and energy-bodywork practitioner. Based in Brooklyn, NY Wendell is a co-director of Kinesthesia, a research/performance company currently whose urban dance style draws from African and Native American traditional dance, break dance, house, and contemporary dance. Mr. Cooper studied dance and religion at George Washington University and performs with Nicholas Leighter Dance and the Maida Withers Construction Company. Mr. Cooper made his debut with Erick Hawkins Dance in January of 2009.

JEFF LYON 

Jeff received ballet lessons and a motorcycle at age six. He graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy in 1997, and from the Dance Conservatory at S.U.N.Y. Purchase in 2002. He began studying the Erick Hawkins technique with Katherine Duke and debuted with the Erick Hawkins Dance in 2003. Mr. Lyon also performs with Noemie Lafrance, Gina Gibney Dance, Syren Modern Dance, Nelly Van Bommel, and AMDaT. He is also the inventor of Magnets The Game [.com].

LUKE MURPHY

Luke originally hails from Cork City in Ireland and recently graduated from Point Park University with a BFA in Dance and English. At Point Park he was fortunate enough to perform works by Martha Graham, Robert Battle, Bill T Jones, Heidi Latsky, Edgar Zendejas, Lauri Stallings and Agnes DeMille. Luke attended the American Dance Festival in 2007 and 2008 where he performed works by Erick Hawkins, Rudy Perez and Gloria McClean. He is delighted to be here in New York and working with the Erick Hawkins Dance. Currently he is also working as an apprentice for the Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. He would like to thank Katherine for the opportunity and Doug Bentz, Judith Leifer-Bentz, Jason McDole and Gerri Houlihan for teaching him how to dance.