Biographical Note: Erick Hawkins
Frederick (later "Erick") Hawkins was born to Eugene G. and Myrtle M. Hawkins on April 23, 1909, in Trinidad, Colorado. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Greek Civilization in 1932. While a student, he became acquainted with modern dance and went to Europe to study with choreographer-performer Harald Kreutzberg. In 1934, Hawkins enrolled as one of the first students at the School of American Ballet, which George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein founded that same year. Between 1934 and 1938, Hawkins danced with Balanchine's American Ballet and Kirstein's Ballet Caravan. In 1937, the Ballet Caravan performed Hawkins's first choreographed work, Show Piece, which he developed with music by Robert McBride and set by Keith Morrow Martin.
In 1936, Hawkins studied at the renowned Bennington School of Dance summer program in Bennington, Vermont, where he first met Martha Graham. In 1938, he danced in her work American Document and officially joined her dance company as the first male dancer the following year. Hawkins's outreach to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge secured funding from the Coolidge Foundation for the collaboration of Aaron Copland and Graham on the masterwork Appalachian Spring. For the premiere of the dance in 1944 at the Library of Congress Coolidge Auditorium, Hawkins danced the male lead. Graham and Hawkins married in 1948, but Hawkins separated from both Graham and the Martha Graham Dance Company in the early 1950s; they were divorced in 1959.
After leaving Graham's company, Hawkins developed his own vision of a dance technique grounded in kinesiology and studied Labanotation, ultimately creating his own system of dance notation. His New York City dance studio became a center for transmitting his dance technique to several generations of modern dancers, and the significance of his lectures, workshops, and performances brought him and his company to college campuses and arts centers across the United States. His dances often display a variety of influences, including Native American ceremonies, Zen Buddhism and Japanese poetry, nature, and Greek mythology. His early dances especially evince his grapplings with philosophical concepts and the physical world.
In 1951, Hawkins founded the Erick Hawkins Dance Company to perform his choreography. In seeking nonprofit status, the company initially operated under the name Foundation for Modern Dance. In 1968 the name was changed to the Erick Hawkins Dance Foundation, Inc., under which the Hawkins company and dance studio operated. From the beginning, he was adamant that they perform solely to live music, and he began a life-long personal and professional collaboration with emerging experimental composer Lucia Dlugoszewski. They premiered their first collaborative work titled openings of the (eye) on January 15, 1952. Their first major success was Here and Now, with Watchers, which the Erick Hawkins Dance Company premiered at Hunter College in 1957. Early Floating (1961), Cantilever (1963), Tightrope (1968), Black Lake (1969), Angels of the Inmost Heaven (1971), Avanti (1980), and Each Time You Carry Me This Way (1993) are among their many other works. Hawkins and Dlugoszewski married secretly in 1962 and remained together until his death.
Eventually Hawkins formed the Hawkins Theatre Orchestra, which offered greater opportunities for the kinds of music commissions he sought. The ensemble, which consisted of seven or more instrumentalists, often toured with the company. Among the composers who provided scores for his dances were Henry Cowell, Alan Hovhaness, Charles Mills, Tōru Takemitsu, Virgil Thompson, and Wallingford Riegger. Hawkins also engaged visual artists such as Isamu Noguchi, Helen Frankenthaler, and Arch Lauterer, as well as designer Ralph Lee and sculptor Ralph Dorazio. Hawkins's dance Plains Daybreak, which premiered in 1972, was the culmination of many years of research and became one of his best-known collaborative works. Alan Hovhaness composed the music and Ralph Lee was responsible for creating the masks and designing the set. Hawkins also collaborated with major symphony orchestras to perform some of his larger works. Many Thanks, set to Lucia Dlugoszewski's music, premiered in 1994 and was the final work that Hawkins choreographed. On October 14, 1994, President Bill Clinton awarded Hawkins the National Medal of the Arts. He died in New York City on November 23, 1994.