Alwin Nikolais
Electronic Dance Music, 1966-1989
Often credited as the father of multi-media theatre, Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) took complete creative control over his productions - including cutting-edge approaches to lighting and costume that transformed human bodies into shifting sculptural shapes, while also composing wildly innovative electronic music as accompaniment.
After initially experimenting with musique concrète and tape manipulation (as demonstrated on the 1959 LP Choreosonic Music of the New Dance Theatre of Alwin Nikolais) Nik…
Choreosonic music of the new dance theatre of Alwin Nikolais
"Choreosonics" was what Alwin Nikolais called his musical accompaniments to his choreography -- a unique theater exposition that modern dance scholar Isa Partsch-Bergsohn
describes as "a whole new theater of motion, light and sound." In 1953,
Nikolais began drawing audiences to his dance concerts at the Henry
Street Playhouse in New York City, in which dancers became sources for
sculptural shapes; by moving through changing atmospheres of light and
sound, their relationships to the stage el…