NIKOLAIS, Alwin

Though initially trained in dance, Nikolais worked as an accompanist for silent films and with marionettes before developing a dance theater in which the movements of individuals are subordinated to larger theatrical patterns established by scenery, costumes, and lights. His major works use all kinds of props, most of which function as dramatic extensions of the dancers' limbs, and brightly colored costumes that puff out from the natural lines of the body, to generate what he called a direct kinetic...