[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Announcements [x3]

[Yukihiko Yoshida <yukihiko@sfc.keio.ac.jp>]

Hello list,

I had an mistake in my mail.

> http://www.marthadancers.org      NewPage
         www.marthagrahamdancers.org  Currect.

Please keep in touch and supprt them

Best Wishes from TOKYO

Yukihiko YOSHIDA


> Their websites:
> http://www.marthagrahamcenter.com Old Page
> http://www.marthadancers.org      NewPage
> http://www.danceinsider.com/
> You can see some infomation and the processes of trouble
> http://www.danceinsider.com/
> 
> ===== the text which released one year ago =======
> Dear Friends and Colleagues
> 
> The future of Martha Graham's body of work, universal in its scope is in grave
> danger, and faces the very real prospect of extinction.  We, the dancers of the
> Martha Graham Dance Company and many of the dancers who preceded us, believe
> this tragedy is avoidable and that immediate, concerted action by the
> international artistic community is essential.  Martha's work has been our life
> - and her Company our livelihood.  We now ask for your support in our struggle
> to revive the Company and to rescue the precious legacy of Martha Graham.  For
> that to happen, we believe certain issues must be understood and candidly
> addressed.
> 
> On May 25, 2000 the Board of Trustees of the Martha Graham Center for
> Contemporary Dance voted to suspend operations of the Martha Graham Dance
> Company, the Martha Graham School and its Ensemble.  Since the death of Martha
> Graham in 1991 a gulf has grown between The Center whose function it is to
> perform and teach the Graham works and Mr. Ron Protas who recently established
> the Martha Graham Trust to administer his rights to the works of Martha Graham.
> The May 25th decision was a direct consequence of the Board's inability to
> raise funds because of the intractable, longstanding conflict over artistic
> issues and finances between the Center and Mr.  Protas.  This and the failure
> of Mr. Protas to honor an agreement to step down as artistic director of the
> Company are at the core of the tragic situation imperiling the survival of the
> entire Center.
> 
> Mr. Protas inherited Martha Graham's works and it is apparent to us that his
> exploitation of this position has alienated presenters, sponsors and members of
> the philanthropic community thus preventing the Center from receiving the
> grants and funds necessary to ensure its survival.  He also has a history of
> adversarial, contentious relationships with past and present dancers and staff
> that has produced a destructive working environment.  In addition, he has now
> announced that he has withdrawn permission for the Martha Graham Dance Company
> to perform all the ballets she created on the Company ?  while at the same time
> continuing to license those works to other companies.  These actions and his
> egregious behavior have created the untenable situation that undermines the
> Company and threatens the legacy of Martha Graham.  We believe that renewed
> negotiations between the Trust and the Center to restructure the relationship
> between them are necessary.  Such a restructuring must ensure a respectful,
> constructive, artistically driven working environment with complete autonomy
> for the Center and allow invaluable contributions of past and present artists
> of the Graham Company and School to be respected and utilized.
> 
> If other companies are to license the ballets from the Trust WITHOUT the
> Company existing to set the standard for Martha Graham's works, the aesthetic
> values she devoted her life to will be gravely and forever diminished.
> Throughout the Company's existence and its many generations of dancers, runs
> the deep commitment to the Martha Graham technique and theater necessary to the
> mastery of her work.  This continuity and commitment makes the Martha Graham
> Dance Company the repository of the vast knowledge embodied in her work. It is
> imperative that the entire dance community, including Mr. Protas, realize that
> should this Company and School close, the world would be deprived of the home
> Martha Graham created nearly 75 years ago uniquely dedicated to the creation
> and continued performance of her work.  To preserve the integrity of Martha
> Graham's work until the Martha Graham Center can be revived, we ask all other
> dance companies and institutions to refrain from licensing and performing any
> Graham work.  We ask all artists to refrain from participating in the mounting
> of any Graham work.  We ask all dancers to refrain from accepting engagements
> to perform any Graham work.
> 
> All of us know the cost of acting on this statement.  We do so because our
> Company and its legacy face extinction.  It is our hope that this tragedy wi ll
> give birth to a new and sustainable future for the Company and School uniquely
> dedicated to presenting the genius of Martha Graham.  We acknowledge that Mr.
> Protas devoted a significant part of his life to Martha Graham and ask that he
> honor his commitment to Martha's work by negotiating a new licensing agreement
> with the Center to ensure the life of the Company and School.
> 
> Prominent individuals and organizations in the arts and cultural world have
> come forward to offer their support to the Company in this emergency.  The
> American Guild of Musical Artists, representing 5,000 dance and operatic
> artists worldwide, the Martha Graham Center's professional staff and the Board
> of Trustees, support our efforts.  We now call upon the international artistic
> community to stand with us to bring about these changes to preserve some of the
> most profound dance art created in the modern world.
> 
> 
> NewYorkTimes/0707/2000
> 
> Bitter Standoff Imperils a Cherished Dance Legacy
> By DOREEN CARVAJAL
> 
>  Things looked bleak for the Martha Graham dance company six weeks ago when it
> canceled its scheduled performances for the year, suspended operations of its
> school and acknowledged that it was virtually bankrupt.
> 
>   Now they look even bleaker.
> 
>  The company board has changed the locks on the warehouse where it keeps its
> costumes and scenery out of fear that its former artistic director would take
> them. That artistic director, Ron Protas, whom Graham herself chose to carry on
> her work, operates by cell phone from a location he refuses to reveal and is
> working to prevent the company from performing any of Graham's dances.
> 
>   Many of the troupe's 17 members have been discussing whether to organize a
> boycott of the modern dances they have worked so hard to master and perform, to
> choke off Mr. Protas's ability to license them to other companies.  And Mr.
> Protas is talking of establishing a new company to supplant the one that Martha
> Graham left him in charge of.
> 
>  The undancerly wrestling match at times takes on aspects of an op駻a
> bouffe, but for many in the dance world too much is at stake for any laughter.
> Hanging in the balance, they say, is the legacy of America's great master of
> modern dance, which, without a school to teach her particular technique or a
> permanent company to display her oeuvre, could become the stuff of textbooks
> for dance history courses.
> 
>   "It is an end of an era," said Chrystelle Bond, a dance historian at Goucher
> College in Maryland. "It's a very sad commentary when people destroy the art in
> the process of trying to save it. Dance is a living tradition, and once you
> kill the school, there's a danger that the repertory could be lost in just a
> few years." The school has 500 students.
> 
>  In her autobiography, published at the end of her long life, Graham left no
> doubt about whom she would place in control of her choreography, her company
> and her extraordinary legacy, which spanned most of the 20th century.
> 
>  It would be Mr. Protas, she wrote, the untiring acolyte who for nearly 25
> years shadowed her on rehearsals and tours with a yellow legal pad and dark,
> oversize glasses, scribbling down her dance commentary and absorbing her
> technique. He was the devoted aide who nursed her back from serious illness and
> bouts of alcohol-induced isolation and depression, enabling her to create and
> produce more dances when the prospects for this seemed dim.  It was this man,
> she wrote, to whom she "entrusted the future of the compan Now, nearly 10 years
> later, the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, encompassing the Graham
> dance company, school and junior troupe, is struggling to survive the
> internecine warfare.
> 
>   Mr. Protas, who was ousted as artistic director and as a board member, still
> owns the rights to Graham's works and controls the Martha Graham Trust, which
> licenses the Graham dances. both to the center and to others.
> 
>   All of this puts Mr. Protasat the center of the storm. His scornful critics
> say that his mercurial personality makes him the most reviled man in dance.
> That is a tough label for a person with the charm to joke that he doesn't dance
> a step except for the merengue he mastered decades ago at a Fred Astaire
> school.
> 
>  "I'm not a saint, but they seem to blame everything but the Crucifixion on
> me," he observed dryly. At 59 he is zealous and sometimes prickly in seeking to
> guard Graham's image and the more than 180 dances that established her as a
> revolutionary modern dancer and choreographer. Graham, who died at 96 in 1991,
> started what is now the nation's oldest dance company in 1926 and created stark
> dances and highly dramatic ones that used her movement vocabulary, the Graham
> technique.
> 
>  Mr. Protas, a restless man with tight tousled curls and a voice that dips into
> a slow whisper to punctuate points, took over full control as artistic director
> of the company after Graham's death. That meant he made critical decisions
> about casting, selection of the season's ballets and appointment of the
> rehearsal directors who coach dancers. The company long had an international
> artistic reputation, but it also had a checkered financial history and a
> touring schedule that was declining in the last years of Graham's life.
> 
>   The son of a New York businessman and a housewife with a passion for theater,
> Mr. Protas met Graham in the late 60's when he was a freelance photographer and
> was intermittently attending law school, which he never finished.
> 
>   The relationship, he said, grew as he tended her while she was hospitalized
> in her 70's for diverticulitis. It was a dark period in her life when, she
> wrote, she stopped dancing and started brooding alone, drinking too much and
> eating too little.
> 
>  Today even Mr. Protas's fiercest critics give him credit for helping to revive
> Graham's interest in her career. But Mr. Protas said he knew that company
> members mocked the relationship by calling him and Graham the Harold and Maude
> of dance.
> 
>   "Her act of choosing me created jealousy and animosity because all the other
> dancers felt that they should have been chosen by her, and that is a big part
> of it," Mr. Protas said.
> 
>   His opponents portray the dispute in other ways. "Ron thinks that because
> Martha was treated as an icon that he would get the same treatment as her
> heir," said Judith G. Schlosser, a Graham Center board member for more than 20
> years. "It took us several years to figure out how to pass on the torch." She
> said that the board's goal was to make the company more businesslike to appeal
> to previously reluctant donors.
> 
>  Encoded in the word "businesslike" is a sharp critique, by Ms.  Schlosser and
> many others, of Mr. Protas's perceived way of doing business and dealing with
> dancers. He has alienated some potential contributors and theater presenters,
> who complain that in his zealousness to preserve the Graham legacy he became
> erratic and difficult and constantly sought to renegotiate matters that had
> already been decided.
> 
>  "I cannot work with Ron Protas again," said Ken Fischer, president of the
> University Musical Society at the University of Michigan, which organized a
> Martha Graham festival in 1994. "I have another major project that I want to do
> with a Martha Graham dance in 2001. I've got the space reserved and the support
> identified. But I don't feel I can do it if I have to work with Ron.  It's just
> too much dealing with him. He's always changing his mind."
> 
>  Mr. Protas has also faced an undercurrent of derision because he does not
> dance himself. Critics say that resentment increased because of his brusque
> treatment of dancers, who were frequently reduced to tears by his critiques.
> 
>  "How can he be coaching about movement if he has never done it?" said Camille
> Brown, who quit the company in 1994. "It's like talking about the ocean if you
> have never seen it."
> 
>  Ms. Brown quit the company soon after filing a complaint with the American
> Guild of Musical Artists, the dancers' union, in connection with a rehearsal
> incident involving Mr. Protas. She did not pursue the complaint after the
> filing.
> 
>  She said she was preparing for a role when Mr. Protas tied her hands loosely
> with rope because, he told her, the piece was about being bound and trapped.
> And, she said, he added that he would be back with duct tape.
> 
>  "It was so humiliating," Ms. Brown said. "And there was no one in the building
> who would say, 'You can't do these things.' "
> 
>   Mr. Protas said that this rehearsal method was used by Graham herself for the
> piece, "Errand Into the Maze," as a way to connect with the experience of being
> restrained, which he said he told Ms. Brown.
> 
>   Critics say as many as 30 dancers, administrators and support staff have left
> over the years because of Mr. Protas's management style. Mr. Protas maintains
> that turnover is natural in any arts organization and that it had been
> heightened by the company's financial turmoil. Those who have left include a
> former managing director, Todd Dellinger.
> 
>   He left this year and broke into choking sobs recently when he recalled a
> "sick environment" in which "a bunch of addictive, high-strung personalities
> were living in a very dysfunctional office." At the top of the heap, he said,
> was Mr. Protas.
> 
>  By all accounts, the strains between Mr. Protas and the board created warring
> camps and an atmosphere of deep suspicion, with differing accounts about who
> was responsible for the growing budgetary problems.
> 
>   Mr. Protas maintained that in the last two years he had disengaged himself
> from the administrative management of the company to concentrate on artistic
> matters. "They kept saying if you would just go away, everything will be fine,"
> he said. "And I turn over management to them, and look what happens."
> 
>   But Mr. Dellinger said that Mr. Protas had a hand in major transactions and
> decisions as small as selecting the company's postcards.
> 
>   The feuding ranges beyond the deficit that brought the suspension of
> operations in May, to issues as serious as Mr. Protas's maneuvers to replace
> the board's chairman and as small as his irritation with a consultant's
> penchant for open-toed sandals and napping on the office floor.
> 
>   ("He was a very good organizer and helped the board like never before,"
> Francis Mason, the acting chairman, said of the consultant. But, he conceded,
> "Maybe he was sleeping under the desk.")
> 
> In the end, the board feared that donations would dry up if Mr. Protas
> continued in any management role. The Harkness Foundation for Dance had already
> withdrawn its support.
> 
>  And so, last month, with the school and company shut down, another crucial
> showdown was set over what is perhaps Mr. Protas's most powerful hold on the Gr
> The board tried to negotiate a new agreement that would allow the company to
> perform the dances for 10 years with minimal involvement from Mr.  Protas in
> return for an annual fee about equal to his $100,000 salary as artistic
> director. But when his lawyer insisted that Mr. Protas keep some form of
> artistic control, the trustees countered with his removal from the board.
> 
> After that vote, four of Mr. Protas's supporters on the board resigned.  "I
> don't know why they make Ron the b黎e noire, the scapegoat. I have no
> idea," said one of them, Princess Moune Souvanna Phouma of Laos. She added that
> at every meeting she attended it appeared the board was more intent on
> destroying Mr. Protas than on confronting its own financial shortcomings.
> 
>  Some Graham dancers and teachers appealed to Mr. Protas to renegotiate despite
> the turmoil. When they got no response, they said, the dancers began to discuss
> the plan to boycott Graham's dances by other companies as long as they were
> licensed through Mr. Protas.
> 
>  New battles may be brewing. No one is quite sure what will happen to the
> Joffrey Ballet's plans to rent costumes for a scheduled performance of Graham's
> "Appalachian Spring" in October. Mr. Protas said the costumes were his to rent,
> but the Martha Graham Center pays for storage in a warehouse that it has
> outfitted with new locks. Mr. Protas does not have the keys.
> 
>  In the meantime the company does not have enough money to move into its
> planned quarters in the vast basement of a new building rising on East 63rd
> Street on the former site of the company's school, which was sold to reduce
> debt.
> 
>  The center began trying to organize classes at an alternative studio after
> plans for classes at the 92nd Street Y fell through for lack of money.
> 
>  "You can't open a school without a dollar for teachers or the accompanist,"
> said Pearl Lang, a former company dancer and noted choreographer. "It just
> makes me sick. If I work with one group, it seems as if I'm at war with the
> other."
> 
>  From his office, Mr. Protas holds out the possibility that he might open a new
> school.
> 
>  For those who have watched the warfare and sometimes been caught up in it,
> there is nothing less at stake than a language of dance.
> 
>  Janet Eilber, whom the company hopes -- money permitting -- to name as Mr.
> Protas's successor, contends that the mess has to be fixed before the Graham
> technique becomes a memory. "Martha could be consigned to a history class in 10
> years unless there are new talent and new disciples," she said. "It will happen
> incredibly fast. In fact, it's already been happening."
> 
> 
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