FUTURE DANCE FROM THE PAST

INVENTION IN DANCE (1959)

You'll need half an hour to watch this show featuring the work of the brilliant dancer, choreographer, composer, musician (he owned one of the first Moog synths) and teacher Alwin Nikolais, but it will more than repay that paltry investment. See it here.

Nikolais glows with a missionary zeal about the possibilities of dance in all its forms, and we see some incredible examples of his visionary style, all of which still seem fresh and experimental, even some 65 years after the event - the sort of result you can only achieve with an excess of skill, an innate understanding of your art and a vivid, unconventional imagination.

Early US TV is often lambasted as being crass, but it had ample room for art and culture, which often intersected with mainstream entertainment in interesting ways - Nikolas' experimental dance piece Web was featured on The Steve Allen Show, for example, and, in 1961, there was a ten part series called Self-Encounter: An Introduction To Existentialism that I watched on YouTube recently, wishing I had a French cigarette to stick in my open mouth.