These notes compiled by Gerard Charles, BalletMet Columbus, February 1998

Tensile Involvement was first performed at the Henry Street Playhouse in New York City, January 26, 1953 as part of Masks, Props and Mobiles. Mr. Nikolais’ first major work, it launched a new career for him and gave America’s modern dance a totally new look.

Originally choreographed for three people, the performers were Dorothy Vslocky, Bruce King and Murray Louis. Today it is performed by eight dancers. Tensile Involvement has been performed all over the world and has become a signature work of Alwin Nikolais. In 1992 BalletMet became the first American ballet company to add the work to its repertoire. Tensile Involvement remains as electrifying today as it was over forty years ago.

At the outset critical reaction was mixed to this startlingly original work. Some had a hard time accepting it as a dance. Affectionately known as "The Web," the work requires intense ensemble precision in order to achieve its stunning visual imagery and kinetic energy. With the availability of tape recorders, that were new at the time of the work’s creation, editing sound became a possibility. Mr. Nikolais recognized the recorders’ potential almost immediately, utilizing them to enhance the percussion base of the score for Tensile Involvement.

Other events of 1953, the year of the premiere of Tensile Involvement:

• Marshall Tito elected president of Yugoslavia
• Eisenhower inaugurated as U.S. president
• Died: Stalin, Eugene O’Neill, Dylan Thomas, Sergei Prokofiev, Jim Thorpe
• Queen Elizabeth II crowned
• The Rosenbergs first sentenced
• Korean armistice signed at Panmunjom
• USSR explodes hydrogen bomb
• Hilary and Tenzing become first to climb Mt. Everest
• Lung cancer reported attributable to smoking cigarettes
• New York wins 5th consecutive World Series
• The Crucible, Arthur Miller
• The Seven Year Itch, George Axelrod
• Camino Real, Tennessee Williams
• Films: Roman Holiday, From Here to Eternity, Julius Caesar (Mankiewicz) and Wonderful Town
• Popular songs; How Much is That Doggy in the Window, Stranger in Paradise, I Love Paris, and Baubles, Bangles and Beads

Alwin Nikolais (1912-1993), choreographer, composer, scenic and costume designer, blended his many talents into a single aesthetic force. In a career that spanned five decades, he left his imprint on every theatrical medium, from Broadway to television. Whenever something new was created, his hand was evident. His lighting wonders, his sound scores, his choreography, and his costumes have influenced the contemporary stage and a generation of choreographers. Mr. Nikolais is the creator of the internationally acclaimed Nikolais Dance Theater and the genius responsible for dozens of visual masterpieces.

Nikolais was born November 25, 1912, in Southington, Connecticut. He was from a family of Russian and German origins. "I have a bombastic, fantasy side and a precise, orderly, intellectual side," he said. Mr. Nikolais was first exposed to theater at the age of nine. During his mother’s weekly shopping trips to New Haven, he and his brother were left at matinee performances at the Hyperion Theater where they saw a variety of shows from vaudeville to burlesque. It was when his mother discovered this change of offerings at the theater that the visits ended.

Nikolais studied piano at an early age and as a young artist gained skills in scenic design, acting, puppetry and music composition. His first job was as an accompanist to silent films, but three years later - with the advent of the talkies - Mr. Nikolais took jobs accompanying at a ballet and drama school. It was there that one of the teachers he played for invited him to attend a concert by the illustrious German dancer, Mary Wigman. After this performance he was inspired to study dance, beginning at age 23. "I thought: ‘I understand this. This is what I want to do’," Mr. Nikolais said.

He received his early dance training at Bennington College from the great figures of the modern dance world: Hanya Holm, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Louis Horst and others. From the beginning he was also very interested in all aspects of the productions, including the technical elements.

Mr. Nikolais’ first choreographic experiences were part of the Federal Theater Project drama series in Hartford. He choreographed Sabine Women for a cast of untrained dancers for whom he devised movements, including some tap dance, that he had learned from a book. In 1940, in collaboration with Truda Kaschmann, his first modern dance teacher, Mr. Nikolais received a commission to create Eight Column Line, his first ballet. The work was presented at one of the events of the Hartford social season that counted Salvador Dali and Leonide Massine as honorary patrons. The designer of the sets and costumes was Chick Austin, a local arts patron. Austin had also commissioned Gertude Stein and Virgil Thompson to create Four Saints in Three Acts, the music for Lew Christensen’s Filling Station and had staged the first show of Picasso’s works in the United States.

After teaching two years at his own studio and touring the U.S. with dancers from Hanya Holm’s company, Mr. Nikolais served active duty in the Army’s Criminal Investigation Department during World War II. Mr. Nikolais relocated to New York City following the war and resumed studying with Miss Holm. Eventually he became Miss Holm’s assistant, teaching at her New York School and at Colorado College during the summers.

In 1948 Mr. Nikolais was appointed co-director of the Henry Street Playhouse, where he formed the Playhouse Dance Company, later known as the Nikolais Dance Theater. It was at Henry Street that Mr. Nikolais began to develop his own world of abstract dance theaters, portraying man as part of a total environment. His unique choreographic works placed him in a realm previously untouched by other choreographers. Mr. Nikolais redefined dance as "the art of motion which, left on its own merits, becomes the message as well as the medium." It was also at Henry Street Playhouse that Mr. Nikolais was joined by Murray Louis, who was to become a driving force in the young Playhouse company, Mr. Nikolais’ leading dancer and a longtime collaborator.

While developing his choreography, Mr. Nikolais’ lifelong interest in music led him to create his own scores. He reinterpreted music as the art of sound, not as enslavement to scales, rules of harmony or meter, and experimented with everything from automobile parts to oriental instruments. Eventually he manipulated the various sounds by use of tape recorders. A Guggenheim Fellowship allowed him to purchase his first electric synthesizer from Robert Moog.

In 1956 The Nikolais Dance Theater was invited to its first of many appearances at the American Dance Festival. With this, his total dance theater had begun to take shape. The company established itself in the forefront of American contemporary dance.

Mr. Nikolais’ work attracted the attention of television directors, and in 1959 his company made its first television appearance on the Steve Allen Variety Show. During the next year he presented a series of seven pieces, some of which were choreographed for television taking into account the possibilities and limitations of this new medium.

With his company’s extraordinarily successful 1968 Paris season at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Mr. Nikolais’ impact on dance grew internationally. Following the Paris triumph, the company began performing at the world’s greatest theaters.

In 1978 the French National Ministry of Culture invited him to form the Centre Nationale de la Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France. In December 1980 he created his 99th choreographic work, Schema, for the Paris Opera. At the same time, his choreography for an opera by Gian Carlo Menotti was being staged at the Vienna Staatsoper. A French critic’s appraisal of Mr. Nikolais as "the most original exponent of American contemporary dance" was echoed throughout Europe and on subsequent tours to South America and the Far East. Mr. Nikolais was renowned as a master teacher, and his pedagogy is taught in schools and universities throughout the world.

Mr. Nikolais has been lauded for his accomplishments and contributions many times over. In 1987 he was awarded our nation’s highest cultural honors, The National Medal of Arts, bestowed by President Reagan, and the Kennedy Center Honors, conferred during a three day round of official Washington events which culminated in a CBS telecast featuring the Nikolais Dance Theater. During the company’s ten week, spring/summer tour he received the City of Paris’ highest honor, the Grande Medaille de Vermeille de la Ville de Paris, as well as medals from the Mayors of Seville, Spain, and Athens, Greece, and a specified citation from New York City’s Mayor, which he shared with Murray Louis. Often affectionately referred to as the American Patriarch of French Modern Dance, Mr. Nikolais is a knight of France’s Legion of Honor and a commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.

His accolades from the world of arts and letters include the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award; The Capezio Award; Circulo Criticos Award, Chile; Emmy Citation Award; Dance Magazine Award; the Tiffany Award; and the American Dance Guild Award.

Mr. Nikolais has been awarded five honorary doctorate degrees, has been twice designated a Guggenheim Fellow, and was the recipient of a three year creativity grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Mr. Nikolais and his work have been featured in numerous films and television programs in the U.S. and abroad. In 1987 "Nik and Murray," a documentary film by Christian Blackwood, aired on the PBS series, "American Masters."

The opportunity to be director of the Henry Street Playhouse gave Alwin Nikolais a chance to teach, form a company and experiment with his choreography for over twenty years. "I look back with a sort of wonderment at the things I did - intuitively - in innocence - mixed, of course, with some indulgences and an occasional escapism," he wrote.

One of the first things Mr. Nikolais did was to reject the Freudian symbolism and egocentricity that he felt was dominating the dance of the 1940’s and 50’s. His rebellion against the conventional ideas of dance inspired him to explore the potential of abstract expressionism and multi-media. He sought what he called "pre-psychical energy, an instinctual energy which precedes what we know as the psyche." He created new environments for the dance with the dancers being a separate, but equal, piece of a larger design. Lighting, costumes, music, masks and props - all of which he created himself - played an equal part.

Mr. Nikolais was a man of the theater and used a number of theatrical devices from vaudeville, burlesque and night club that would serve his art. Flashpots, strobe lights, a weather balloon with projected images on it and blacklight became tools that enabled him to make motional statements, portraying moving elements without revealing the mechanism of motion. Each time, their use seems irreplaceable.

When attending Nikolais performances audiences are seeing not just dancing, for Mr. Nikolais has described his work as "an experience in movement, shape, sound and color."

Dancers are often covered in strange and wonderful materials that obscure their faces and contours of their bodies. "It is true that at first I seemed to hide human shapes under other shapes, but what I was looking for was a new balance of sexuality rather than de-sexing."

The Rise and Fall of Modern Dance by Don McDonagh. Outerbridge & Dienstfrey, 1970.