Carolyn Adams
Modern Dance Faculty

Carolyn Adams earned a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and spent her junior year at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she earned a certificate. A member of the Paul Taylor Dance Company from 1965-1982, Adams created signature roles in more than 25 of the choreographer's works before being invited to join the Juilliard faculty in 1982.

Carolyn Adams with the lifetime achievement award she received from Sarah Lawrence College in June 2005.

Who was the teacher or mentor who most inspired you when you were growing up?

There was no one person. I was most inspired by the members of my family, especially my parents. I don't remember being concerned about having a career or needing a role model for dance. My parents' generation survived the issues of slavery, the Holocaust, the Depression, and two world wars. My parents displayed, for me and my sister, a sense of hope and resilience in the face of all of this. It was a powerful, mostly unspoken message of faith in life and faith in humanity.



When did you first know you wanted to be a dancer/choreographer?

I seem to remember declaring myself a dancer at around the age of 5. I certainly remember dancing with my sister in the living room as my mother played Strauss waltzes and Chopin études. When we weren't dancing to her music, we were listening to and absorbing the passion and energy of Rachmaninoff or the poignancy of Negro spirituals. Little did I know that this daily activity called dance and music could actually be attached to something called a career.



What dance performance have you attended that changed the way you think about dance?

The one that stands out most is a performance of Giselle by Anna Laerkesen in Copenhagen in 1968. No description of dramatic nuance or movement analysis could capture this etheric performance, which nearly defied the physical and bypassed the cerebral.



What's the most embarrassing moment you've had as a performer?

During an outdoor performance in Yugoslavia in 1968 with Paul Taylor, in the last section of Aureole—which is filled with rapid, streaking-like diagonal crosses—I became spatially disoriented and exited from a trio to the wrong side of the stage. There was no backstage crossover, and I was on the wrong side of the stage for my next entrance. I had three choices. I quickly ruled out fleeing the country. The re-maining options were to either omit my next entrance or add an on-stage cross. Less is more, I ultimately decided.



If you could have your students visit any place in the world, where would it be, and why?

I would like them to visit a non-English speaking country. They would be responsible for researching that country and finding a job or developing a project that didn't involve being a guest artist or performer. At the end of their sojourns, we'd all meet in Paris, where I'd take them to dinner at my favorite restaurant, Le Procope.



What are your non-dance related interests or hobbies? What would people be surprised to know about you?

I'm interested in preserving historic houses, and developing projects aimed at mainstreaming persons with disabilities. My husband, Rob Kahn, and I have two children, Sandra and Vitali, whom we adopted just five years ago from an orphanage in Azerbaijan at ages 9 and 13.


If your students could only remember one thing from your teaching, what would you want it to be?

I want my students to remember me as someone who constantly asked them to take over the learning process and become their own teachers, and to take each morsel of information and turn it into a personal thesis.



What is your favorite thing about New York City?

My favorite thing about New York is that one can be impulsive. There's always something interesting going on, for those of us who don't have the luxury of long-term planning for leisure activities.



If you weren't in the career you are in, what would you be doing?

If I could add another component to my already multifaceted professional life, I would establish a foundation to fund research and projects aimed at discovering new perspectives from which to view American history and contemporary social phenomena.



What book are you reading right now? Or what CD are you listening to?

I am currently listening to Thomas Friedman's book, The World Is Flat. The social, political, and economic implications of a level global playing field are enormous, as are those that emerge from the cultural perspective. About 12 years ago, while at a conference, I met a Native American man who presented me with a copy of his desktop-published book on pow-wows. The book was accompanied by a note that read, "I no longer had to wait until some publisher decided to value my people's heritage.