The Lewitzky Legacy Continues

        “Bella Lewitzy's has been a lifetime devotion to dance, as a performer, educator, and choreographer-a constant striving to challenge the mundane, to make the most authentic individual statement about life through her art.”

---- Dance Magazine, April 1978, p. 4.

Picture from the Pennington Dance Group "Skins, Screen and Trees"

        At this point, I think I have established the fact that Lewitzky is a brilliant artist as well as a remarkable human being. But is there still a way for us to become a “Lewitzky” dancer now that Bella is gone?

Like she said at the last company performance in 1997, “the arts are under threat more than ever before… What legacy I have left here will die unless you become responsible for keeping it alive.” Lewitzky authorized three of her former company members to reconstruct/restage dances from her repertory: Nora Reynolds Daniel, Walter Kennedy, and John Pennington.

John Pennington dancing Kreutzberg's "Dances Before God."

        Upon talking with Nora during her residency at IU to rehearse Suite Satie and expressing my passion for the Lewitzky technique, she suggested that I look into a person named John Pennington in LA who teaches a lineage of the Lewitzky technique. As mentioned above, John Pennington is one of the three people authorized to restage the dances from Lewitzky’s repertory. Johan Pennington is currently the artistic director of the Pennington Dance Group, a Los Angeles base modern dance company. He spent 14 years in the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company as a performer and teacher and is also currently the co-director of the Lewitzky Dance Gallery.

"Dancers for Life" choreographed by John Pennington, performed by Li Chun Chang

        The John Pennington Dance Group is a non-profit organization that promotes dance not only through performances but also education and outreach programs. John often teaches Contemporary/Modern dance classes for $10 per class at the ARC Pasadena and work-study scholarships for his class series are also available. I actually hope to enroll in one of his class series this summer to really experience the Lewitzky/Pennington technique.

John Pennington talking about LA Contemporary Dance Comapny

My Lewitzky Experience

Bella Lewitzky (1983)

Lewitzky's Pietas, 1971, with (standing) Sean Green, Nora Daniel Reynolds,

and Iris Pell

        The first time I heard about Bella Lewitzky was when the IU Contemporary Dance Program received a grant to restage Bella Lewitzky’s masterpiece “Suite Satie” and I was casted as an understudy for the piece. Since the audition, I have been falling in love with Bella Lewitzky’s choreography and the Lewitzky technique. At first, it was simply because I felt great doing her choreography and there seem to be a natural flow connecting all the movements. Moreover, Suite Satie is a piece with a very strong sense of community among the dancers that can be linked to Lewitzky’s experience with utopian societies and her political ideologies. During the rehearsal process, I noticed and deeply appreciate Lewitzky’s use of music with the piece. While the choreography works extremely well with the music (sometimes one note to one step), she did not let the music limit or overshadow her choreography.

The music for "Suite Satie" by composer Erik Satie

Lewitzky's "Suite Satie" beginning solo

        Furthermore, I have had the chance to work with Nora Daniel, Lewitzky’s daughter and also a member of her company for five years, while she spent a week in residence at IU teaching and coaching the cast of Suite Satie. From my interaction with her, I learned so much more about the Lewitzky technique such as the strong core initiation to almost all the movements. Personally, the focus on core initiation has helped me tremendously in my other technique classes and rehearsals. Another thing I really love about this piece is Bella’s sense of humor that she was able to add to the choreography. It is very delighting to see Lewitzky trying to make the audience laugh in the somewhat serious contemporary dance setting. With the love for Bella Lewitzky, my research has allowed me to learn more about Bella as a person, a mother, a dancer, a choreographer and teacher. With a better understanding of the Lewitzky technique and its background, I hope to see more works of Bella Lewitzky restaged and maybe one day become a Lewitzky dancer myself.

        The restaging of “Suite Satie” at IU will be performed on Jan. 14^th, 15^th, and 16^th, 2011. Tickets could be purchased at the IU Auditorium Box Office.

The Lewitzky Point of View (Historical Context)

Time-line:

1916-1919 WWI

1929-late 1930’s Great Depression

1937 Works Progress Administration Project

1939-1945 WWII

Bella Lewitzky in costume for Horton's Tierray Libertad! in 1941

        In addition to Bella’s passion for dance, she had always taken a stand on social and political issues just like her father. According to Moore’s article, Lewitzky “picketed for labor issues,” protested the U.S. government’s involvement with the fascist regime of Spain, and voiced for minority and women’s rights when it was not popular to do so. She was an active member of the Arts, Sciences and Professions Council. For this group, she mobilized the dance and entertainment segment of the membership into social action projects, specifically to eliminate the racist practice of denying minority groups admittance in dance studios and in the movie industries.

Bella Lewitzky and Herman Boden in The Beloved, 1948

        In 1946 after Bella founded the Dance Theatre with Lester Horton, they created dances “critical of religious fanaticism, bigotry, the violent anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany, and the abuse of women.” The most well-known example is “The Beloved,” a duet for Bella and Herman Boden, co-choreographed by Horton and Bella in 1948 based on a newspaper article about a man in the Midwest who had beaten his wife to death with a Bible because of some suspected infidelity. Sidney Burke, a dance critic, was deeply moved by the "artistic and political maturity of the piece" and "by the incomparable Bella Lewitzky, whose tremendous technical powers... are completely sublimated into the content of the dance itself." This dance did not only spoke about Bella and Horton’s artistic power but also made a politically significant statement about domestic violence and the suppression of women at the time. The video of “The Beloved” can be viewed here.

The following is a video of Bella reconstructing the dance with Diana Macneil and John Pennington.

     

        In my research process I also came across several pieces of information that every effectively helped me to tie Bella Lewitzky’s experience in dance to what was happening around the world at the time. The following is one example:

• After World War I and preceding World War II, the Great Depression hit which was considered the most widespread and deepest depression of the 20^th century that caused unemployment in the U.S. to rise to 25%. Back in Los Angeles, the Horton dancers participated vigorously in WPA theatre and dance programs while Bella was especially active in WPA events dancing in not only Horton’s but also other choreographers’ works.  The WPA (Works Progress/Project Administration) was a government program established as a form of work relief with respect to the rising unemployment during the Great Depression. The arts program of the WPA arose from “the realization that in time of need, artists, just like laborers, were entitled to employment in their craft at public expenses.”

More historical information could also be found in the scholarly journal "Bella Lewitzky: A Legend Turned Real" by Elvi Moore

How it all started...

        Bella Lewitzky was born on January 13, 1916 at Llano del Rio, a short-lived utopian socialist community and an experiment in cooperative living. Although the Lewitzky family took up residence in LA shortly after Bella’s birth when the colony moved east, Bella still “lived it” through her family and friends since the political and social ideals continued to exert a profound influence on her father and their family. With both of Bella’s parents sharing the love for the arts, Bella decided to become a dancer at the age of seven without having even seen a dancer concert or met a dancer. 

Bella Lewitzky as a child

        Bella’s first real dance teacher was Teddy Kerr and Bella earned her way be working in the studio and running errands for Miss Kerr since she couldn’t afford the lessons. In return, she got “a little tap, a little song, and a little dance.” Plays and theatre also had a profound influence on Bella, which began at home with her father’s love of plays to Bella dancing as a chorus girl after school at the informal theatre (tent players) that came to town. In addition to toe, tap, song, and folk dances that Teddy Kerr taught at the school, there were ballet classes by visiting ballet dancers usually with the Ballets Russes. However, Bella had a “less than happy attitude towards ballet classes” and was suggested to look into a class being taught by a “crazy” man – Lester Horton. 

From then on, in late 1934, Bella Lewitzky found her own dancing master and achieved astonishing heights as a virtuoso dancer and as a dramatic actress with tremendous powers. It was eventually Bella who helped Horton work out and clarify what was called the Horton technique. She was said to have become “the physical extension of Horton’s choreographic mind.” It was also in Horton’s company that Bella met her husband Newell Reynolds. 

Bella Lewitzky in costume for Horton's 1937 Le Sacre du Printemps

        Later in 1946, Lewitzky and Horton founded the Dance Theatre of Los Angeles with Horton’s promises of having a “small company of trained dancers” and that the company members should have a salary. However, a series of events lead to Bella leaving the company in 1950 and founded her own dance company (Lewitzky Dance Company) in 1966, which achieved international status. Lewitzky created more than fifty major concert works and received numerous awards including the National Dance Association Heritage Award. On Bella’s 18^th birthday, she announced that 1996-97 would be the company’s final season. During the company’s final performance in May 1997, she said “the arts are under threat more than ever before… What legacy I have left here will die unless you become responsible for keeping it alive.”

Above information taken from article "Bella Lewitzky: A Legend Turned Real" by Elvi Moore