In Conversation: An Icon of Modern Dance

Madeleine M. Nichols is a business owner, attorney emerita from New York State, and Curator Emerita of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, where she produced over 600 films and videos and lectured internationally on copyright and intellectual property issues. She is the recipient of a New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) and Dance USA’s “Ernie” Award.  She was a member of the Board of Directors and of the Editorial Board of the Society of Dance History Scholars, a member of the National Leadership Group for the UCLA Dance/Media Project, and adjunct professor at the NYU Department of Dance and Dance Education.  Ms. Nichols co-founded the Dance Heritage Coalition, an association of major national institutions dedicated to the development and exchange of information and materials related to the history, documentation, and preservation of dance.

Donna H. Krasnow is professor emerita in the department of dance at York University in Toronto, Canada where she has a distinguished career as a dancer, teacher, choreographer, researcher, and author. She founded the dance school Dance Source and its resident company Möbius in San Francisco.

Daniel E. Lewis was a teacher and assistant director of the Dance Division at the Juilliard School for twenty years; dean of dance at New World School of the Arts; a soloist with master modern dancer José Limón (1962-1974) and artistic director of the Limón Company (1972-1974) and staging Limón’s choreography on major companies around the world. Daniel Lewis: A Life in Choreography and the Art of Dance (McFarland) explores the legacy of a hugely influential choreographer and teacher of modern dance. It showcases the many roles Lewis played in the dance world by organizing his story around various aspects of his work as dancer, choreographer, educator and arts administrator. Lewis’ biography gives insight into how the artistic and journalistic perspectives on modern dance were influenced by what was occurring in the broader dance and arts communities. Jennifer Dunning, author and dance writer for the New York Times, called it “a unique blend of autobiography, a relatively unexamined recent dance history, and what goes into performing, choreographing and dance administration.”