For Randy James, the movement is the message
Archived article from Mar 1, 2002
By Douglas Frank
The dancers file out in front of the audience and take their places. Slowly, as the music comes up, they begin to perform a modern dance piece titled "Acheron."
The members of the audience, however, have a somewhat different perspective from most observers. They are students with multiple disabilities at the Piscataway Regional Day School. Some are among the most difficult to reach through traditional forms of communication.
But today, a student raises his arms mimicking the dancers. Another cries out in glee. Still others squirm in their seats to the music. No one rushes to restrain them. They will sit for almost 40 minutes, longer than they do all year. This is a special time for these children; it's their favorite assembly.
The dancers are a group of 10 junior and senior women of the Mason Gross School's B.F.A. dance program, hand-picked by Randy James, assistant professor of dance, and his guest artist, Jeanine Durning, who have each choreographed a work for the troupe.
They are part of University Danceworks, directed by James, which offers Rutgers dance majors experience in the real world of performing outside academe and also serves as a powerful outreach from Rutgers to the community
"There is something about the music and the movement in front of them that commands our students' attention like nothing else," observes Howard L. Helfman, principal of the Piscataway school, which is operated by the Middlesex County Educational Services Commission.
"The visual performance the dancers bring has another level of meaning for our students. The movement, which is stimulating, and the music -- their whole nonverbal approach that they contribute to the arts -- have a dramatic impact on the kids here."
After rehearsing a series of dances in the first semester, the members of Danceworks spend each Thursday in the spring as Rutgers cultural ambassadors to various schools and other institutions in the state.
The week before dancing at Piscataway Regional Day School, they danced at the Mountainview Youth Correctional Facility at Annenberg. The young women report that the inmates, after the expected hooting at the pretty girls, displayed a surprising interest in dance, evidenced in their attention to the performance and their thoughtful questions afterward.
This spring's schedule includes performances at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Hackensack and schools in New Brunswick, North Plainfield, East Orange and Long Branch, as well as at a senior center in Monroe.
The repertoire includes Randy James' "Acheron," set to American Indian music by Douglas Spotted Eagle. In this piece, five of the dancers deal with separation from the community. Originally choreographed for Randy James Dance Works in 1993, the title refers to the river in Hades, but further interpretation is up to the beholder, James says. The music includes flute, horse sounds, drums, rain and thunder. "I was looking for music that was very ritualistic and primitive," he says.
Another piece, "Half Urge," set to the music of current groups Cul de Sac and Radiohead, has dancers "trying to face the instabilities of the world around us while exhibiting a persistent drive to stay connected," according to choreographer Durning. "I worked with the idea of the various structures and relationships that we create in our lives that sometimes fall apart. I had a dream, the summer before 9/11, of being in an abandoned city with buildings coming down around me. Call it a premonition or whatever."
Durning, a 12-year professional who danced with James in Dan Wagoner's troupe in the mid-1980s, now teaches and choreographs as well as dances with David Dorfman Dance in New York. James notes that he selects a guest artist each year who has both credentials and contacts in the dance world in order to broaden the experience of his students.
James, who teaches modern dance technique, improvisation, choreography and performance study at the Mason Gross School, began his own training at Rutgers before there was a Mason Gross School. He started as an education major at Rutgers College, then became a dance and theater major. After several years of professional jazz and theatrical dancing, he turned to modern dance and was principal dancer with Dan Wagoner & Dancers for eight years.
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