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Kathryn
Karipides
Choreographer
A
belief that the body has its truths, which are sensed and must be
listened to, informs the choreography of Kathryn Karipides. Perhaps
it was the intensely physical dancing (think Zorba the Greek) of
the Greek community of Canton, Ohio, an hour south and east of Cleveland,
in which she participated as a young girl, or perhaps it
was her academic grounding in the body discipline of physical education,
that led Karipides to understand dance as a form of expression springing
from “anatomical truths.” Certainly, the power
and unusual grace of the dances for which she received the Cleveland
Arts Prize in 1974 was undeniable.
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She
was barely 21 when she joined the physical education faculty
of Cleveland's Flora Stone Mather College for Women, a division
of Western Reserve University, in 1956, with a degree in P.E.
from Miami University of Ohio. (At WRU, as at most schools
well into the 1960s, dance was still considered a part of
physical education.) She began her dance training “rather
late,” discovering the ancient art of movement, and her
instinctive passion for it, only in college. “Hooked”
by the art of dance, she resolved to make it her life pursuit.
While fulfilling the requirements for a master's degree from
WRU, she spent the next three summers at Connecticut College,
then the mecca of dance.
There she studied intensively with some of the greatest modern
dance artists of the time: the legendary Martha Graham,
Merce Cunningham, Lucas Hoving, José Limón,
and Louis Horst. At
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Kathryn Karipides
in Echoes
of Glass, a solo choreographed in 1974 |
Colorado
College, she learned the technique and philosophy of Hanya Holm, one
of the pioneers of modern dance; in New York, she studied with Erick
Hawkins and at the Hawkins Studio with Kelly Holt. Her studies abroad
included the Mary Wigman Studio in Berlin, the Dalcroze Institute
in Switzerland, and the Laban Art of Movement Studio in England.
Billy
Cornell (left), Eddie Glickman, and Karipides perform the “Trio”
from her
Winter Count (1974). |
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But
it was Hawkins's kinetic sensibility and aesthetic (inspired
by Isadora Duncan's rediscovery of “natural” movements)
that seems to have spoken most powerfully to the young dancer,
who was already beginning to try her hand at choreography. In
1969, Karipides and colleague Henry Kurth, a highly acclaimed
professor of scene and lighting design in WRU's theater department,
formed the Dance Theater of Kathryn Karipides and Henry Kurth,
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which
was open to any interested student as well as local professional dancers.
For the next 10 years, Karipides was its co-director, choreographer,
and principal dancer. Kurth created the costumes, sets, lighting,
masks, jewelry, or whatever other props were needed. The result was
an exciting collaboration in total theater art.
With
such memorable pieces as Stein Song, an homage to Gertrude
Stein, Salomé, and Vertiginous Moment, and
a steadily expanding season (and repertory), the project soon became
the most important modern dance company in Cleveland. Karipides's
lyrical dances were praised for the versatility of their moods-as
compared with the ponderous seriousness of much modern dance of
that time-and “a style as personal as handwriting, and as unmistakable
as Mozart or Stravinsky” (Dance Magazine Cleveland
correspondent Bill Anthony).
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Karipides and
Kelly Holt in 1994 |
When
she retired from Case Western Reserve University in 1998, as
Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor Emerita of Humanities,
after a teaching career spanning 42 years and several generations
of young dancers, Karipides was hailed by Northern Ohio Live
magazine as “the godmother and guiding spirit of dance
in Cleveland.” Through her vision, dance became a full-fledged
degree program, and the university's old Mather Gymnasium evolved
into the Mather Dance Center, a venue for cutting-edge modern
dance.
Since retirement, Karipides has continued her advocacy of dance
locally, regionally, and nationally, serving on many committees
and boards, including the Cleveland Arts Prize Dance Jury, which
she has chaired since 1995. Her many awards and honors include
CWRU's Carl F. Wittke Award for outstanding undergraduate teaching,
the OhioDance Award for significant contribution to dance in
Ohio, the Cleveland Arts Prize, Northern Ohio Live's
Award of Achievement for Dance, the YWCA Career Women of Achievement
Award for Cultural Arts, and the Dionysian Award by the Cleveland
Chapter of the Order of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive
Association (AHEPA) for a lifetime of outstanding contribution
to the arts. |
text
by
Dennis
Dooley
1986 Winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature
Fall
2002
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