A Millennium Conference for the Ages.

Dancing in the Millennium

For those of you who have given up on reaching peace in our time, or even negotiated settlements--take heart! Not since the hopeful '60s has an event successfully accommodated so many diverse interests--associations, critics, educators, guilds, institutes, organizations, societies, scholars, studios, therapists and special interest groups--and it happened in dance.

From July 19 through 23, in the year 2000, in Washington, D.C., about 750 members of the greater dance community walked and watched, ate and argued, agreed and agreed to disagree, listened, laughed and danced together. Scholarly dance anthropologists sat with modern presenters of commercial performances; historical preservationists tangled with high-tech digitizers; kinesiologists explained increased turnout and dancers turned out for floor barre; independent dance school teachers partnered with public K-12 teachers to find common advantages, and university programmers listened to what was needed to better equip dance teachers to teach dancing; and experts talked about censorship, Judson Dance Theater, Navajo healing, etcetera, etcetera.

In the fantasizing and planning stages for more than three years, Dancing in the Millennium boiled down to a joint conference of: Congress on Research in Dance (CORD); Dance Critics Association (DCA); National Dance Association (NDA); and Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS), with the participation of fifteen other partner associations. Susan Eike Spalding, from CORD and Berea College in Kentucky, and Dawn Lille Horwitz, from SDHS and the Juilliard School and New York University, were co-chairs of the entire conference steering committee.

The dreamers thought it wasn't enough to just have all these dance organizations meet at the same time, same place. They envisioned a networking and cross-pollination of ordinarily partitioned disciplines and interests. In short, they wanted dialogue. (That two-headed noun implies one to talk and one to listen.) So a program committee issued a broad call for proposals for papers, panels, lecture-demonstrations, workshops, roundtables and any other ingenious, workable format for communicating dance-related information. They also solicited the formation of informal working groups to encourage discussion across fields of dance studies. Carol G. Marsh, of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Diane DeFries of George Washington University were co-chairs of the programming committee, and with their five other colleagues selected 180 proposals from the more than 500 submitted. Each presentation was structured to allow time for discussion and exchange of ideas.

Following Wednesday morning's Arts Advocacy Workshop on Capitol Hill, Robert L. Lynch delivered the keynote address on Thursday afternoon. The CEO of Americans for the Arts, an organization dedicated to increasing private and public support for the arts and culture, Lynch described the need for sticking together to effect meaningful advocacy. He emphasized the eight points of community introduced by former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare John Gardner, founder of Common Cause, and the logical depletion of power if the community is divided.

Reinforcing the social aspect of community, receptions were held each night at the Washington Marriott Center. Opening night's gathering featured a guest performance of Troika Ranch Artistic Directors Dawn Stoppiello and Mark Coniglio, complete with intriguing laser spots that varied the music and Stoppiello's dancing image on a projection screen. (Stoppiello's image appears in the Millennium logo.) Another technology demonstration/reception featured Dance partners, interactive dance work between young dancers in Washington, D.C., and in Minnesota. And following the conference banquet was "A Celebration of Community through Dance" with guest instructor and caller Brad Foster of Country Dance and Song Society and music by Marty Taylor and Friends.

Annual meetings and award ceremonies were held during noon break times by CORD, SDHS, DCA, NDA and Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Society.

Conference events took place primarily at the Washington Marriott, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and George Washington University.

In honor of the conference, the Millennium Stage in the Kennedy Center's Main Hall programmed a week of dance by Washington, D.C., companies and performers with daily themes: narrative dance; political dance; solos, duets, trios and quartets; "Generations and Traditions" (teachers and their students); ballet; percussive dance; social dance, including a demonstration by ballroom champions Sharon and David Savoy [see Dance Magazine, March 2000, page 64]. In the Terrace Theater, Derek Gordon explained the extensive programs of the Kennedy Center Arts Education Department, including the Suzanne Farrell series and master classes by American Ballet Theatre, Dance Theater of Harlem and others. In the Roof Terrace Gallery was a stunning exhibition of sixty Max Waldman dance photographs that showed the tender days of Farrell and Martins, a sunny Baryshnikov and Makarova, an intense Judith Jamison. Former DCA co-chair George Jackson arranged the showing of rare film footage such as Paris Opera Ballet's Sylvia, La Scala's Excelsior, Vienna Opera Ballet's Puppenfee (Fairy Doll), several modern independents, and a surprising audience favorite, Blue Danube Waltz (on ice), exquisitely choreographed by John Curry and danced by Curry and the men from The Next Ice Age.

After five days of nonstop participation, most members of the four primary organizations were still in residence, along with hundreds of members of the other participating groups: American Dance Guild; American Dance Therapy Association; Country Dance and Song Society; Dance and the Child International/USA chapter; Dance Films Association; Dance Heritage Coalition; Dance Librarians Committee/American Library Association; Dance Notation Bureau; Dance USA; International Association of Blacks in Dance; International Association for Dance Medicine and Science; Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies; National Dance Education Association, and Preserve, Inc. Sunday morning conference-goers stopped to evaluate the present and glance at tomorrow.

From his fifty years as a dancer, choreographer, teacher and writer, Murray Louis reflected on "Surviving the Future" with panelists Douglas Sonntag, dance administrator for the National Endowment for the Arts; Susie Farr, director of the University of Maryland's Center for the Arts, and consultants Suzanne Callahan and Janice Deputy. Then there was the rush back to home and everyday life, but not without significant enrichment and excess pounds of colleagues' business cards.

Dance writer Martha Ullman West eloquently summarized the mission of the conference: "Many would argue that dance is as old as history, so innately human and irresistible, it is universally recognized as a metaphor for life.... Dancing in the Millennium invites us to think about dance, its meaning, how it feels and why, and how it has evolved within the self and society. The conference also seeks to increase communication among dance professionals of all kinds, and to make a case for increased support for dance as an art form and as a vital educational tool."

Mission accomplished.