Alwin Nikolais: The process of choreographic creation

Alwin Nikolais is a choreographer, composer and stage designer. With his New York Company, he has created a form of total theatre made up of sounds, lights, colours, forms and movements. A television programme could have been made by simply recording this theatrical magic as a theatre audience sees and hears it. But the producer and the director wanted to do more than this. Without electronic special effects, the director put his camera not in the position of the audience but right at the heart of the performance; using a detailed shooting script and rigorous editing, he has created a work of television art. The wealth of choreography inventiveness is all there, but with TV director’s creativity added to it. This is a type of performance which has been created out of the conjunction of two different art forms. Since this is a documentary, it includes also a certain amount of information. The choreographer talks about his art without leaving the world of dance in which He works and lives. It is not an interview; he makes remarks which throw light on the performance and become part of it. What is the significance of the program for input? Starting with “new images” created by a man working experiment in the theatre, a TV producer and a TV director have taken these new theatrical images and, using traditional techniques, have succeeded in creating “new TV images”.