Word: mallardi
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Dance is hardly a new phenomenon at the University. Radcliffe has offered courses in dance since the 1940s. Claire Mallardi, a former pupil of Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, has headed the program since 1965, supervising the production of one performance each year...
...visual simile. "Cresence" has a direct line of development which draws the bodies of the dancers, like the four phases of a waxing moon, more tightly together against an invisible night sky. "Dancers should make us feel strongly what's missing rather than just what's there," according to Mallardi. Visually, then, a horizontal line always implies a vertical; a contradiction, a release; a leap, a fall. Conceptually, the underlying idea for the dance emerges with an atmosphere that is greater than the dancers, and that they can only hint...
...appropriately simple stage bares the essential primitivism of "Winter Places." Mallardi wants her students to understand what goes into a theatrical setting by realizing that "lights, color, and costume" all play a role. "And if they choose not to use them, then that is a decision too." But can artistic choice really explain all the technical simplicities of the company's production? Mallardi herself says that the uneven cello and piano accompaniment to "Cresence" might have been re-recorded, but the group didn't have the money...
This year the non-credit dance program operated on a $5000 University gift. As of now there is no money for next year in sight. In such a situation, Mallardi says, it is hard to ask students to give their time. Dancer Lise Newcomer's statement that "in order to perform you have to give something up" becomes more practical than inspiring...
...Mallardi works with her dancers as Michelangelo did on his unfinished statues of "Slaves," chiseling to release the sculptures trapped inside. But there are other forces at work. Unless the University gives this talented company recognition for its work, the forms of dance at Harvard will remain hidden in the stone...