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The Movers and Shakers of Westbeth – Dance Artists Who Have Called the Building Home

On October 25, 2011, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission landmarked Westbeth Artists Housing, located on the block bounded by West, Bethune (hence the name “Westbeth”), Washington, and Bank Streets — a designation proposed and fought for by Village Preservation, and one of more than 1,250 buildings for which Village Preservation has secured landmark designation.

Westbeth was the first adaptive reuse project of its kind. The large-scale industrial building was transformed for residential use through a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the J.M. Kaplan Fund. This visionary project aimed to provide subsidized housing for artists to live and work. When the redesigned building opened in May of 1970, it achieved just that. Over the years, Westbeth has been home to individual artists and cultural institutions across a variety of disciplines, including music, theater, visual arts, and writing. This unique artist haven has had a particularly significant relationship with the field of dance. Today, we will take a closer look at some of the choreographers and dance programs that have been shaped by Westbeth throughout time.

Merce Cunningham

One of the 20th century’s most prominent choreographers, Merce Cunningham, found a creative home at Westbeth.

Cunningham in his Westbeth Studio

Cunningham was an avant garde, interdisciplinary artist whose work challenged many conventions in modern dance. His contributions as a dance-maker, collaborator, innovator, film producer and teacher are felt throught the dance discipline today. Collaboration was key to Cunningham’s practice. During his 70 year career, he worked closely with artists across disciplines, including visual artists Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, and musical artists such as Brian Eno and Cunningham’s creative and life partner John Cage. Cunningham and Cage spent many years living in the Village at 107 Bank Street, just around the corner from Westbeth.

One of Cunningham’s most notable choreographic innovations was the notion that movement could exist separately from characterization, representation, or music. Cunningham and Cage, who worked closely together throughout their careers, often relied on “chance procedures” in creating dances and dance scores; choosing certain variables (number of dancers, where they would be onstage, etc), and then leaving the final result up to the roll of a dice or flipping of a coin. 

Cunningham also choreographed without music until very close to performance time. Usually agreeing only upon an overall duration, Cunningham and Cage composed their works separately and then allowed the music and dance to occupy the same time and space in performance. Cunningham’s movement and Cage’s music were parallel forces operating on separate planes, so each gesture stood on its own.

Merce Cunningham (left), and John Cage (right)

Westbeth became the third and final home for the Cunningham Dance Company. Prior to moving to the space, the company worked out of a small studio on the top floor of 69 West 14th Street, and then moved to a larger but decrepit space at 498 Third Avenue. In 2007, Village Preservation had the honor to conduct an oral history interview with Cunningham, alongside Jean Craig and David Vaughn, archivist for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In the interview, for which the full transcript can be found here, they discuss Westbeth at length. 

Cunningham describes the difficulty of finding good, affordable space for dancing in the city. Reading about a new development of artist housing and workspace in The Observer, Vaughn called an attached number to ask if there might be space for the Cunningham Company at Westbeth. When he and Cunningham first went to look at the space, it was still under renovation, but Cunningham immediately saw the possibility. But as Vaughn said in the oral history:

We had been paying I think about a hundred dollars a month at Sixth Avenue, and then it went up to something like four hundred or four hundred and fifty on Third Avenue, and then this was … Ten times that, or something like that, which of course was impossible for us. So we said, ‘Thanks very much. Good-bye,’ more or less at that time.

Thankfully, extra support was offered to the company through a grant from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, and in 1971 the company became among Westbeth’s first tenants. The building’s penthouse studios provided a permanent home for the company, as it was only following Cunningham’s death and the dissolution of the company that the partnership ended. 

Merce Cunningham and Carolyn Brown in the Westbeth studios

The physical space of Westbeth provided Cunningham with creative and spiritual inspiration. When he began experimenting with creating choreography for video, Cunningham created a site-specific movement/video piece called “Westbeth”. Additionally, the effect of the awe-inspiring space and views available in the Westbeth studios did not go unnoticed by Cunningham. As he says in VP’s oral history:

“And I finally woke up to the fact about the views. It took awhile, but I suddenly realized you could see out here and see a great deal of Manhattan, and up here see the river and every once in a while a big boat will pass. I kept thinking what it must have been like a hundred and fifty years ago with the river dotted with sailboats.”

Martha Graham

Martha Graham (left), Merce Cunningham (right)

Cunningham began his professional career as a soloist for the Martha Graham Dance Company. Martha Graham widely regarded as one of the founders of American modern dance, created a unique and iconic movement aesthetic, often identified by rhythmic sequences of contraction and release, sharp, choppy, disjointed movements, groups of dancers operating as a unit, and a thematic preoccupation with emotional struggle. 

She also codified a method of teaching that continues to be the basis of modern dance training today. Graham acted as a mentor and inspiration to many of dance’s biggest names, from Cunningham to Paul Taylor to Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Martha Graham in Cave of the Heart (1944)

One of Graham’s many notable artistic collaborations was with the famed sculptor Isamu Noguchi. His stark yet dramatic style complimented Graham’s movement quality well. Over their years of collaboration, Noguchi built many sets for Graham’s dance pieces, including Cave of the Heart (1946), Appalachian Spring (1944), and Hérodiade (1944).

Martha Graham dancers in the Westbeth studio

In 2008, the Martha Graham dance company began using the Merce Cunningham studio at Westbeth, and has been based in the space ever since. With the presence of the Graham company at Westbeth, the legacy of modern and post-modern dance remains alive and well in the building.

Dudley Williams

Dudley Williams, a member of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company for many decades, once called Westbeth home. 

Dudley Williams

Similarly to Cunningham, Williams began his career with the Martha Graham dance company before a last-minute request to fill in as a replacement for an Alvin Ailey performer in 1963 led him to join the Ailey Company full-time. 

He continued performing with Alvin Ailey until 2005 and kept on as a teacher with the Ailey school following his retirement. He would also often teach for the Martha Graham School in his later years.

Following his professional retirement, Williams continued to dance with with a group he formed called Paradigm, a trio of older dancers including Carmen de Lavallade and Gus Solomons Jr.  In 2004, when Mr. Williams was preparing to retire after four decades in dance, an interviewer asked about the unique longevity that characterized his remarkable career. He simply replied, “Good Lord. I love it. I absolutely love it. I think God gave me a talent, and if I don’t use it, shame on me. That’s the way I look at it. I love dancing. I love performing, and I can still do it. Why not? Why not?”

WestFest

For the past 11 years, Westbeth has been home to the well-regarded dance festivalWESTFEST. Cofounded by Westbeth residents Carol Nolte and George Cominskie, the annual curated performance series presents emerging and established movement artists at the cutting edge of the dance field. 

The festival is presented in two parts: WestFest Top Floor, showcasing works in a traditional proscenium performance space, and WestFest All Over, which presents site-specific works all around Westbeth’s campus. 

A site-specific work performed at Westfest

WestFest All Over provides ample space and resources for choreographers to explore movement in unconventional spaces. The unique and varied architectural features that the building provides, including the courtyard lined with half-moon balconies, spiral staircases, industrial spaces, and a roof with panoramic views are all ripe with opportunities for innovation.

As said in one New York Times review: “…the cumulative effect of encountering performance in Westbeth’s idiosyncratic nooks and crannies was marvelous. Bodies animate architecture as much as they are animated by it, and Westbeth’s artistic ghosts provide fertile ground for chance encounters.”

A site-specific work performed at Westfest

Since its inception, Westbeth has provided invaluable resources to the dance field. From Graham to Cunningham to Williams, as well as the many choreographers of today’s Westfest, the space has touched the careers of so many movement artists and will continue to shape the next generation of artists for many years to come.

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