1968 – Maida Withers with Elizabeth Burtner in 1968 established the annual 3-week Summer Dance Workshop offering at George Washington University in Washington, DC that featured classes and creation of new stage and site works by Maida Withers and out-of-town innovative artists. After the first year, 1968, Maida took over the workshops from Elizabeth Burtner and a totally different genre of artists were selected.
Workshops began in Washington, DC in 1968 during the difficult years of the Viet Nam era but also during the time of the revolution of dance to post-modern dance in America. These workshops lasted for fifteen years during an important period of development of dance. Students at the end of the three weeks performed site and stage works. In addition to Maida Withers, artists included Yvonne Rainer, Al Huang, Rudy Perez, Annabelle Gamson, Don Redlich, Sara Rudner, Marta Renzi, and many others who played a significant role in the transformation of dance through the transformation of changes in views of the body, the audience, where dance could happen, ideas and values regarding art. Works were created for various sites in Washington, DC.
These summer workshops introduced many emerging post-modern dance artists and the ideas explored by the USA pioneers of “post modern” dance, planting notions of new dance and new performance. Maida Withers created a work each summer and the guest artist, usually created a work with students – sometimes site works……a concert was, generally, presented on stage or on site.
In the photo, below, Maida Withers performs the traditional work, Variations From Day to Day, reconstructed by Normal Walker during the first three-week Summer Dance workshop, May 1968.
As artists, we had a great influence on opening the ideas of the 1960s dance to Washington audiences.
Example: Yvonne Rainer, 2nd GW Summer Dance Workshop
Yvonne Rainer created a work with the summer workshop students a somewhat political work that was presented on the grassy area outside the fence and behind the White House. This interesting work was, of course, visible to people waiting in line to visit inside the White House. Students had carried a sign from GW to the site for a public (“guerilla”) performance. A long white paper sign asked the question, “Why Are We in Vietnam?” This sign was hung on the wall, in Building K, where it created controversy, during the workshop. Maida argued with the Chair of the TRDA program, Dr, Breen, that it was simply a question and isn’t that what a university supports? The banner continued to be posted throughout the summer dance workshop. I am not sure if that work was titled, Maneuvers (1970)?
With Yvonne Rainer, students were participants in the second of 15 summer workshops featuring new experimental dance workshops created and presented by Withers and offered at George Washington University. (See maidadance information on Summer Dance Workshops).
George Washington University Press Release – Families Are Forever press release folder: Marta Renzi and Dancers from New York City will perform on Thursday, June 19, 1982 at 8:00 pm, Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre. This is the first appearance of Marta Renzi and Dancers in Washington, DC. The concert was the premiere performance of Maida Withers and the Dance Construction Company, Families Are Forever.
Marta Renzi, guest artist-in-residence- for the Summer Dance Workshop, will present Cadenza Cartoon, Artichoke for Two, an intricately crafted duet, What Do You Do, Dear?, and an excerpt from For the Love of the Working with her company from New York City. Ms. Renzi’s choreography is distinctively exuberant and athletic and is concerned with pure movement structures — what the choreographer calls “the eccentricity of an individual vision/language that is mutually agreed upon by those involved.” Marta will be doing the performance in Washington, DC with five members of her company from NYC. MARTA RENZI, since graduating from Hampshire College and arriving in New York in 1975, has performed with the companies of Douglas Dunn, Kei Takei and Twyla Tharp…all artists in the post-modern tradition. Her experience includes teaching, performing, and choreographing, as well as video and theater. She is a recipient of NEA Choreographic Fellowships in 1980 and 1981. She was resident artist at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center Choreographer’s Conference. Deborah Jowitt enthused: “In their performing — restrained, yet superbly full — there isn’t a trace of phoniness, nor is there in the choreography. Emotional content is something the brightest of the new choreographers have been understandably reticent about dealing with several generations of corn hanging over their heads. Someone should give this woman a purple heart.”