Dunas's Denby
Book: Edwin Denby – His Life, His Dance Essays, His Poetry
Author: William Dunas
Publication: 2008 in Woodside, NY, USA
This home-made book is a proposal for producing a professionally printed book. The proposal consists of many un-numbered pages of text contained in a black 3-ring folder. The text is photocopied only on the frontside of each sheet of firm white paper. On the cover is the basic bibliographic information and a 1964 drawing by Red Grooms of Denby in profile - he is typing. Dunas calls the book a “publishing fellowship proposal manuscript”. It is unlikely that the proposed book will ever become actual, yet the proposal serves as an autobiography of Dunas and a biography of Denby. The Dunas portion is amusing, somewhat confusing and ultimately sad. The Denby part is substantial. Who was Dunas and who was Denby?
William Dunas (1947 - 2009) was an avant garde dancer belonging to America’s Judson Church generation. Edwin Denby (1903 -1983) was America’s foremost dance critic of the 20th Century. It is unusual that a dancer should write about a writer, but both individuals were talented multitalents. Denby was the author of poetry, libretti and fiction in addition to his dance criticism. The son of American diplomats, he had been born in China, educated at Harvard and in Vienna, and had been a dancer in Germany in his younger days. Denby remained a mime. Dunas did various tasks, in theatrics and performance preferably.
Dunas’s title for the autobiographical portion of his proposal is “playing with my friends in dance belt and tights”, referring to himself as a “midnight cowboy”. He grew up in and around New York City. His introduction to dance and to drawing was via television, and he first experienced emotion while watching a dying swan. His father’s record collection of music and poetry was a definite influence. Dunas joined the Brooklyn Museum’s drawing classes while still in grammar school and had to fight his way past gangs when going to and from his Catholic high school in Brooklyn’s Fort Green section. Then, out of town at Tappan Zee High School, Dunas involved himself in theater (singing, dancing, acting, playing rock-and-roll, doing lighting and box office). His drama coach funneled him into the New York City scene. Among the people he met were Jerome Robbins and Denby. He enrolled at C.W. Post College in 1964 and took class there in “their” version of Humphrey-Weidman modern dance technique. Next is Brooklyn College and lighting design classes with Eldon Elder. Dunas’s medical record indicated danger, and due to that he avoided the Vietnam War draft in 1966 but not his friends’ battles with the Unamerican Activities Committee. He thinks that he has little time to live and decides on a dance career: it will be short and intense and perhaps also show that dancing can cure cancer.
From 1968 to 1983, Dunas choreographed 40 works. The first was “Gap”. It and many that followed were intense solos. Some were of long duration, up to three hours without intermission. Dunas transformed himself physically from solo to solo. He would gain weight and lose it again, or grow his hair long and next shave his head. He portrayed the Biblical “Job” (1970) as an old hag. These solos made his reputation, but the series stopped. Dunas does not explain why. Some have speculated that the cause was a car accident. Dunas was driving and his passengers, family members, were killed. Dunas resumed choreographing, but not just for himself. Also he took intensive ballet class with Mia Slavenska and began a relationship with dancer musician Meredith Monk. The dances he made were spaced-out combinations of ballet steps.
Denby had chosen Dunas for his and Rudy Burckhardt’s 1971silent comedy film “Inside Dope”. After the death of Denby, Dunas edited Ballet Review’s “Edwin Denby Remembered” issue in the spring of 1984. Dunas’ proposal in this book is, foremost, to publish an illustrated edition of Denby’s 1949 “Looking at the Dance”. I’m not sure how many copies of the proposal book Dunas made or distributed. My copy will go to the Library of Congress.
