Expanding the Boundaries.

One day last winter, I stood talking with two friends out on the New York State Theater's snow-encrusted balcony at intermission. We were soon joined by a tall, insistent stranger who said he wanted to bum a cigarette. The smoker among us objected--the price, he said. But the stranger persisted, was given a cigarette and a light, and for a short while appeared to have every intention of lingering on.

I admire assertiveness. And I admire cool too, but this little scene between the acts at the ballet got me wondering about the appropriateness of certain kinds of human behavior in public places. Why is it socially acceptable to bum a cigarette but not a glass of wine? Suppose I had been eating a sandwich? Could a man I had never met before feel comfortable coming up to me at the ballet and asking for a bite? What about peppermints? A Kleenex? Loose small change? Where, in our pantheon of definitions, does simple bumming turn into much hungrier panhandling? Where are the boundaries and who sets them? Are hunger, or passion, reasons to cross our borders?

Limits are not so easy to identify when we are talking about artists. Going back some 30,000 years, or perhaps even longer, artists have held a special--if not, in fact, a designated sacred place in human society.

Artists have society's permission to take risks, to hear and see and record things that push beyond ordinarily acceptable boundaries. We may believe that art sometimes steps beyond an edge--not entirely unlike a stranger who might ask to sip my glass of wine during an intermission. But that edge, those borders, are forever flexible, and we can never be too sure where they begin and where they end--although many people might disagree with me on this point. I find myself engaged by artists who push beyond our expectations, who view things from another angle. I like that kind of intellectual and sensory disruption, and I know that even in the most repressive social circumstances there are people driven by a deep human need to explore and express and progress, who have the gift to show us our visions and theirs.

By extension, I got to thinking about these qualities as they define this year's recipients of the Dance Magazine Awards. (See these artists, page 50.)

Terese Capucilli has given much of her life as a dancer and teacher and repetiteur to an idea and an ideal, Martha Graham. In the process, she has become entwined with the future of the Graham modern dance legacy (see Presstime News, page 32), and her particular stamina and determination and vision will, somehow, help to save one of our unique national treasures, the choreography and technique and ballets of Martha.

Michael Kaiser set out courageously to save arts institutions; in his recent position, which he left to become the president of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, he stepped into a whirlpool of social and administrative chaos at Covent Garden and did what nobody thought was possible. He saved it.

Susan Stroman had a dream from the time she was a kid: She wanted to become a choreographer, and after years of apprenticeship and challenging, difficult work, after some serious and even tragic setbacks, she emerged as triumphant as anybody can in the circumstances of this life. The show she co-conceived and directed and choreographed for Lincoln Center, Contact, was awarded a Tony when it moved to a Broadway theater.

Damian Woetzel is one of New York City Ballet's dominant dancing personalities and a stunning technician for whom Eliot Feld created the central role in Organon--a sort of Renaissance man, with references to Leonardo, ritual journeys and mythic cycles of death and rebirth. His artistry is constantly being stretched to the edge.

These artists are unusual in that their gifts and contributions are being recognized. One continuing problem I have with awards is that there are never enough of them; people thrive on appreciation. But most will work their whole lives without recognition. You have only to watch and listen to a brilliant performance of a Bach partita for solo violin played by an adventurous young musician who performs in the rash and roar of a subway platform and is barely acknowledged. There is, in the world of awards, too little justice. I am reminded of Sally Field, at long last, presented with an Academy Award exclaiming with genuine surprise, "You like me, you really like me!" Yes, and we recognize that unique artistry in you.

We all want to hear that, don't we? You can, I suppose, get too much recognition, as was the case with Lincoln Kirstein. When I discussed his receiving a Dance Magazine Award in 1989, he wrote, "I am not accepting any more awards, but I thank you for the thought." Oh, well. Choreographer Jiri Kylian received three of the six newly founded Nijinsky Awards in Monaco last December (see Presstime News and Kickoff, March, pages 16 and 33). "I've never been so embarrassed in my entire life," he said as he went up onstage again to accept the third. The audience laughed uncomfortably. The awards were unquestionably deserved, but we also knew what Kylian meant: There's so little in the way of recognition in dance that, perhaps in fairness, it should be spread around.

Boundaries. Limits. Where are they? Don't we all set our own? But stop me the next time you see me in the lobby of the New York State Theater. Ask for a cigarette, or a piece of my between-the-acts cookie, or a handkerchief and see what happens. That's pushing it, but neither of us knows the outcome for sure--or when our boundaries may expand--and that's what keeps us going.

Richard Philp, Executive Editor