Erick Hawkins Dance Company

Founded in 1951 the Erick Hawkins Dance Company has been touring the world since the 1960’s.

Hawkins choreography currently is based on a collaboration of music, art, and dance. His dances are performed to live music often composed especially for each dance along with commissioned sets by artists and sculptors. The artistic director is Katherine Duke who began studying with her in 1983. Before coming into this position she was a principle dancer for many years under Hawkins' Company. They currently perform on the Rhinebeck Stage in New York. They also have intensives that anyone can audition to be a part of.

Personal Opinion on Erick Hawkins

I respect Erick Hawkins as a choreographer and the dance company that he left behind. However, I do not think I would be able to say that I enjoy his pieces completely. I love the piece Radical Ardent which I got to watch online in full and other pieces done by the Erick Hawkins' Dance Company. I thought it was very simple and structural and easy on the body like Erick Hawkins loved but also very innovative and interesting. I do not particularly enjoy any of his original works. I think the legacy he left behind was important because he tried his hardest to contrast ballet and Graham but still used a lot of his influences without knowing them.

Historical Context

 Erick Hawkins was really concerned with how the body was used in opposition to how his was used in the Martha Graham Dance Company and in the ballet form. He used influences from his ballet career with Balanchine, his time with Graham's company and the Indian dancer Shanta Rao. He said, "Ballet was too much like a diagram." This is why he took so much to Rao who was fierce and reckless seeming in her movement which he did not find in ballet. He believed that ballet had unsensuous attitudes towards the body and did not like that the culture of ballet leaned towards that. Hawkins' attitudes towards the body were anything but with his simple costumes and showing of the legs he was all about showing how the human body was very sensuous.

Classic Kite Trails

Classic Kite Trails shows this simple and sensuous movement. He said “Beautiful dancing,” is always about the “physical and psychological delight of men and women together.” This quote is definitely exploring this. He used the soft, fluid, serene and effortless look although his dancers were very athletic. Taking a released and sustained approach to the basics of Graham technique, he created a technique known for its “directed, free flow of movement initiating from the center,” according to Renata Celichowska, author of The Erick Hawkins Modern Dance Technique. Putting these qualities together is Hawkins’ great contribution to dance training.” 

Hawkins was interested in the classics and “pure movement poetry” as far as theme. Powerful, theatrical, modernized and many times ritualistic, his works reflect the iconography of the American West, Greek Classics and Asian Cultures. Classic Kite Tails, 1972, plays on the floating and darting elements of flying kites. Plains Daybreak, 1979, was where the dancers were masked and abstracted the Great Plains of America. Both of these links are found on this page. Hawkins' really paid attention to the production values including live music and original, artist-made sets and costumes which led to many relationships with famous 20th-century artists.

Scholarly Journal

Scholarly Journal on America

This is a journal on America by Tom Clark and not just a journal alone. In order to read the journal sign into your personal JSTOR account. 

Radical Ardent Choreography

Radical Ardent Excerpt

This is a very gender questioning piece done by the Erick Hawkins Dance Company. Very different from the original choreography it definitely questions Erick Hawkins' way of choreographing. He was very focused on the male body being used in only a masculine way that did not hurt the body. We see in this excerpt from Radical Ardent that both female and male are in similar leotards. They both have very similar body types and from far it would be hard to tell which was male and which was female. Although the male does the majority of the lifts in this piece there are parts where the women lifts the male. I think this piece is very different from what Erick Hawkins was all about in his choreography. This following link is a review that was done by the New York Times.

Radical Ardent Review 

Plains Daybreak Choreography by Erick Hawkins

Plains Daybreak by Erick Hawkins

Plains Daybreak is a piece by Erick Hawkins created in 1979. It is a very interesting visual dance with very abstract costumes. This piece correlates with many of Grahams intents for her pieces because of the American background that is in them. Although Erick Hawkins movement is much more subtle and easy on the body in comparison.  The following link is a review by Jennifer Dunning on this particular piece.

 Critical Review of Plains Daybreak by Jennifer Dunning

Life Overview

Erick Hawkins was born in Trinidad, Colorado on April 23, 1909. He graduated from Harvard University in 1930 with a major in Greek Civilization. He studied dance from Yvonne Georgi in Austria before joining the School of American Ballet with George Balanchine.

Show Piece was his first work performed by Ballet Caravan in 1937.

The following year he joined the Martha Graham Dance Company where he became the first male addition to the company. After becoming an official member he became a lead role in the majority of Martha's works, most popularly Appalachian Springs in 1944. Graham and Hawkins became lovers and then were married in 1948. However, shortly after in 1951 he left her company and a few years later in 1954 they signed the divorce papers.  

After leaving Graham's company he used different techniques in his movement.  He creating his own company called The Erick Hawkins Dance Company and toured with Hawkins Theatre Orchestra. He firmly believed in playing to live music and was known for his contemporary works.  He moved towards an aesthetic vision detached from realistic psychology, plot, social or political agenda, or simple musical analogue. He used influences of Japanese, Native American, Greek classics and Zen all in his choreographic works. He ended his career with a National Medal of Arts awarded to him by president  Bill Clinton on October 14, 1994. He died a month later.