For Base Line, choreographer Robert Battle incorporated a large metal construction by Clifton Taylor into the set. (Photo by Nan Melville)

Dance and the visual arts have always been intimately intertwined, so when Benjamin Harkarvy asked me to write an article about dance and art for the 50th anniversary of the Dance Division at Juilliard, I was thrilled. My initial impulse was to write a historical piece examining the direct influence of one medium on the other—but on second thought, I have decided to keep historical discussions, per se, brief.

The remarkable marriage between dance and the arts known as the Ballets Russes (which lasted only from about 1909 to 1929) is too renowned to need extensive discussion. It was the brainchild of impresario Serge Diaghilev, who enlisted legendary painters like Picasso, Matisse, Laurencin, Derain, Gris, Bakst, and Rouault to join forces with choreographers Fokine, Nijinsky, Nijinska, Massine, and Balanchine, to name a few. Composers who joined the collaborations included Stravinsky, Ravel, Prokofiev, Satie, and Falla. Dance would never be the same.

Dance faculty member Jacqulyn Buglisi in Frida, presented in February by the Buglisi/Foreman Dance Company. (Photo by Jack Mitchell)

Another somewhat less well known dance company, the Ballets Suédois—founded by art collector Rolf de Maré (1888-1964)—actually rivaled the Ballets Russes. In the course of its brief existence from 1920 to 1925, it presented nearly 3,000 performances in Europe and the United States. At least 32 visual artists, 45 dancers, and 23 musicians collaborated in its 23 productions. The company's very raison d'être was, through the hub of dance, to combine drama, painting, poetry, and music, with film, pantomime, and theater; it became a sort of extension of de Maré's art collection. Indeed, it is through the visual arts (drawings, paintings, sculpture, set and costume designs) that this company is remembered today. Jean Börlin, the company's choreographer, ballet master, and principal dancer, once stated: "I envy the painters. Their works are immortal. They carry their life within themselves, independent of their creators. The life of a dance is relatively brief. As brief as that of the dancer." Again, magical names are associated with this ballet company. Among their famous productions were Jeux, with music by Debussy and décor by Pierre Bonnard; Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin; Entr'acte, with music by Satie, with Dada artists Picabia, Man Ray, and others; and La Création du Monde, with music by Darius Milhaud and décor and costumes by Fernand Leger.

Collaborations between dancers and visual artists have always existed, but pre-eminent among them in more recent times have been Martha Graham, whose work with the sculptor Isamu Noguchi is well known; Merce Cunningham with John Cage, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg; and Paul Taylor, with Rauschenberg and Alex Katz.

Many dance companies have looked to the visual arts as a source of inspiration. For example, in 1984 Martha Clarke based her Garden of Earthly Delights on the eponymous ultra-fantasy-filled and prophetic 16th-century Hieronymous Bosch painting.

This past February, Buglisi/Foreman Dance performed two pieces inspired by painters and their work: Frida (1998) and the world premiere of Requiem, inspired by the painting of Artemisia Gentileschi. Intriguingly, both artists are women whose careers were overshadowed in their lifetimes by those of their male counterparts, but whose reputations in recent years have risen above the men. Their lives and work have been honored in theater, film, and museums. Right now, works of both Frida and Artemisia are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was the troubled, tragic, and talented wife of Diego Rivera; Artemisia (1593-1652) the daughter of Orazio Gentileschi. Frida begins with a vision of three different Fridas, two in white dresses and one in a man's suit. Three diverse aspects of the artist's personality are brought out as slides are projected in the background; sometimes they are projected directly onto the costumes, as if Frida herself were moving across the stage. The proud movements, sometimes jagged and sometimes pained, are never literal.

Judith and Her Maidservant by Artemisia Gentileschi,  c. 1625-27. (The Detroit Institute of Arts. Gift of Mr. Leslie H. Green)

Requiem is still more abstract—not based directly on Artemisia herself, but incorporating huge Baroque movements which break the "frame," reaching out and beyond, emphasized by Baroque lighting and costumes. It begins with five dancers seen from the back, seated on stools. They rise up as if from coffins, eventually attaining larger-than-life proportions through the effect of the long dresses draped around the stools on which they stand. (The Fauré music, while not Baroque, complements the effect.) The lighting is intended to recall September 11, and the light Buglisi saw at dawn and dusk at ground zero. The work is no less than an elegy for the dead thoughout the ages, a movement into the beyond that the choregrapher and her collaborators seek to convey. Among Juilliard's own faculty and alumni in this amazing company are Jacqulyn Buglisi, Terese Capucilli, Christine Dakin, Helen Hansen, and Stephen Pier.

Robert Battle, a Juilliard alumnus, choreographed Base Line to music by Victor Goines for the Juilliard Dance Ensemble's performance in February. Here he incorporated into the set a large metal construction by Clifton Taylor (also the lighting designer). The sculptural nature of this set-reminiscent of the Richard Lippold suspended in the lobby of Avery Fisher Hall-was used to imprison and threaten dancers, who managed to escape. Battle, characteristically reticent to define his work, admitted when pressed that this was a reference to 9-11 and the collapse of the World Trade Center.

It may be only in the West that distinctions separate the arts—and even here, these are fast disappearing. In some cultures, separate words for subdivisions of the arts do not exist. Asian and African dance has always been intermingled with visual arts; often they are considered one and the same. Recently the Osiri form of classical Indian dance, threatened with extinction, was recovered by means of temple carvings. Cambodian dancer Sina Roy visits Angkor Wat to study the stone bas reliefs depicting dance movements still part of today's repertoire.

The influences work both ways, of course. Innumerable visual artists have turned to dance for their inspiration. Foremost among these in the West are Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Matisse. Lesser known are painters like Robert Henri, who made a sensual painting in 1919 of the pioneer dancer Ruth St. Denis, in her Peacock Dance.

		Throughout this school year, The Juilliard Journal is running a series of articles in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Dance Division. Recent articles are available online. Juilliard Dances! Video clips from past Dance Division performances, including excerpts from Parsons Etude (David Parsons, choreographer); Intimate Voices (Igal Perry); and Rapture (Lila York), can be seen on the Juilliard Web site.

I have always found that the dancers in my liberal arts classes at Juilliard are sensitive and observant students of art history; they feel it, and they "get it." Perhaps this is because, as Ben Harkarvy says, dance is a language without words. Like a visual artist, a choreographer must look deep inside. Action comes before thought. Often I have watched painters painting and choreographers choreographing; it is the same process. What makes something right and another thing wrong? Well, first you make something—then you step back from it, and fiddle with it until you make it right. The artist is forced to make certain movements without necessarily understanding why. Juilliard dance faculty member Liz Keen uses paintings as inspirations in teaching choreography. She often assigns abstract paintings to dancers, who then create compositions in the space and spirit of the painting, rather than literally interpreting it. She credits Louis Horst and his book Modern Forms for inspiring this method. Stephen Pier (another dance faculty member) often makes painterly and sculptural analogies in class and rehearsal. He particularly likes Rodin—his inherent sense of weight and sometimes unfinished quality. In fact, to Pier, the unfinished is of major importance, encouraging the audience to use its imagination to complete the dance. Negative spaces are essential to both art forms.

There is no question that dancers are the link between music and art. They understand Degas in a way art historians never have; they feel the stresses and strains. They respond to Cezanne and Picasso in a similar manner. For me, teaching dancers is a humbling experience, for they seem to observe in minutes what takes art historians a lifetime. Like Börlin, Harkarvy says that dancers envy painters for their fixed quality and for their colors. In truth, painters have often coveted the movement and abstraction possible in music and in dance.

Greta Berman is an art historian on the liberal arts faculty who writes regularly about the visual arts for The Juilliard Journal.