James Waring was a dancer, choreographer, costume designer

Costume Designer

A costume designer or costume mistress/master is a person whose responsibility is to design costumes for a film or stage production. He or she is considered an important part of the "production team", working alongside the director, scenic and lighting designers as well as the sound designer. The...

 and theatrical director based in New York City in the 1940s through the 1970s. He was a prolific choreographer as well as a dedicated teacher who selflessly helped his students and proteges to advance their careers, while maintaining a critical attitude towards his own work. He has been called "one of the most influential figures in the New York avant-garde in the late fifties and early sixties", "one of dance's great eccentrics", "a focal point for dance experimentation before the existence of the Judson Dance Theater

Judson Dance Theater

Judson Dance Theater was an informal group of dancers who performed at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, Manhattan New York City between 1962 and 1964. It grew out of a dance composition class taught by Robert Dunn, a musician who had studied with John Cage...

", and "the quintessential Greenwich Village choreographer in the late 1950s and 1960s". Waring's collage style of building dance works influenced the development of the avant-garde Happening

Happening

A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...

s which were staged in the late 1950s.

Life and career

Waring's training began in 1939 in San Francisco, where he was exposed to numerous kinds of dancing, including ballet

Ballet

Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...

 at the San Francisco Ballet School, the Graham technique

Martha Graham

Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...

, and the interpretive dance of Raoul Pausé. Later he studied with Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham

Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...

, Anna Halprin

Anna Halprin

Anna Halprin helped pioneer the experimental art form known as postmodern dance and referred to herself as the breaker of modern dance. Halprin, along with her contemporaries such as Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, John Cage, and Robert Morris, collaborated and built a community based...

, Louis Horst

Louis Horst

Louis Horst was a choreographer, composer, and pianist...

, Anthony Tudor and Anatole Vilzak.

In 1946 Waring presented the first of the over 135 original works he would create over the course of his career, "Luther Burbank in Santa Rosa", at the Halprin-Lathrop Studio Theatrer. Other works he showed during this period were based on or influenced by Japanese Noh

Noh

, or - derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent" - is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. Traditionally, a Noh "performance day" lasts all day and...

 drama, the work of Edgar Allen Poe and primitive art, as well as the ballets of George Balanchine

George Balanchine

George Balanchine , born Giorgi Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a Georgian father and a Russian mother, was one of the 20th century's most famous choreographers, a developer of ballet in the United States, co-founder and balletmaster of New York City Ballet...

 and the dancing of Alexandra Danilova

Alexandra Danilova

Aleksandra Dionisyevna Danilova was a Russian-born prima ballerina who became an American citizen....

, taking from these sources what interested him and mixing them together.

Five years later, in 1951, Waring was among a group of choreographers in New York who created Dance Associates, a co-operative. In 1954, he began presenting works with his own company in annual concerts, continuing to do so until 1969. He also choreographed for other companies and performers, including Manhattan Festival Ballet – which he was instrumental in founding, the Netherlands Dance Theater and Violette Verdy

Violette Verdy

Violette Verdy is a French ballerina who has worked as a director of dance companies and in other related capacities since her retirement from performing in the late 1970s. Verdy began dance training as a small child and performed with Les Ballets des Champs-Elysées beginning in 1945...

. Notable among Waring's works were Dances before the Wall, Variations on a Landscape and Sinfonia semplice. He disbanded his company in 1975, shortly before his death, but in 1974 his male dancers formed Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is an American all-male drag ballet corps which parodies the conventions and clichés of romantic and classical ballet. The company was co-founded by Peter Anastos, Natch Taylor and Antony Bassae in New York City in 1974, producing small, late-night shows, in...

, a travesty dance ensemble in which the men perform as ballerina

Ballerina

A ballerina is a title used to describe a principal female professional ballet dancer in a large company; the male equivalent to this title is danseur or ballerino...

s.

Numerous dancers who went on to prominence danced in Waring's company, including Toby Armour, Richard Colton, Edwin Denby, Tanaquil LeClerq

Tanaquil LeClerq

Tanaquil Le Clercq was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, but her dancing career was ended when she was stricken with polio and paralyzed from the waist down....

, Aileen Passloff, Arlene Rothlein , Alec Rubin, Martin Sarach, Ruth Sobotka

Ruth Sobotka

Ruth A. Sobotka was an Austrian-born dancer, costume designer, art director, painter, and actress.The daughter of prominent Austrian architect and interior designer, Walter Sobotka and Viennese actress, Gisela Schönau, Ruth Sobotka immigrated to the United States from Vienna with her parents in...

, Paul Taylor and David Vaughn. Later dancers who would go on to found the Judson Dance Theater

Judson Dance Theater

Judson Dance Theater was an informal group of dancers who performed at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, Manhattan New York City between 1962 and 1964. It grew out of a dance composition class taught by Robert Dunn, a musician who had studied with John Cage...

 and create postmodern dance

Postmodern dance

Postmodern dance is a 20th century concert dance form. A reaction to the compositional and presentation constraints of modern dance, postmodern dance hailed the use of everyday movement as valid performance art and advocated novel methods of dance composition....

 studied with Waring or danced in his company, including Lucinda Childs

Lucinda Childs

Lucinda Childs is an American postmodern dancer/choreographer. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into an intricate choreographic masterpiece...

, David Gordon, Deborah Hay

Deborah Hay

-Life and work:Deborah Hay was born in 1941 in Brooklyn. Her mother was her first dance teacher and directed her training until she was a teenager. Hay moved at age 19 to Downtown, Manhattan in the 1960s, where she continued her training with Merce Cunningham and Mia Slavenska...

, Fred Herko, Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Rainer is an American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is frequently challenging and experimental. Her work is classified as minimalist art.- Early life :...

 and Valda Setterfield

Valda Setterfield

Valda Setterfield is a dancer and actress noted for his work as a soloist with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and her performances with and in the work of her husband, postmodern choreographer and director David Gordon. She has been described as Gordon's "muse"...

. In 1959 and 1960, Waring organized performances at the Living Theatre – in whose building he held his composition class – in which his students presented their works; these were a precursor to the Judson Church performances.

Waring was one of the founders in 1961 of the New York Poets Theatre

New York Poets Theatre

The New York Poets Theatre was an influential theatre company active in New York, New York in the 1960s. It was founded in October 1961 by James Waring, LeRoi Jones, Alan Marlowe, Fred Herko and Diane Di Prima. It staged only one-act plays by poets....

, and he also directed plays at the Living Theatre and the Judson Poets Theatre. He worked with Frank O'Hara

Frank O'Hara

Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...

, Diane Di Prima

Diane di Prima

Diane Di Prima is an American poet.-Early life:Di Prima was born in Brooklyn. She attended Hunter College High School and Swarthmore College before dropping out to be a poet in Manhattan...

, and Kenneth Koch

Kenneth Koch

Kenneth Koch was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77...

, among other poets.

One of the three theatres at Theatre for the New City is named after Waring.

Collaborators

Waring, who designed the costumes for his dance works, collaborated with visual artists such as George Brecht

George Brecht

George Brecht , born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer as well as a professional chemist who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Mobil Oil...

, Red Grooms

Red Grooms

Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...

, Al Hansen

Al Hansen

Alfred Earl "Al" Hansen was an American artist considered as one of the most important Fluxus figures. He was a Norwegian American....

, Robert Indiana

Robert Indiana

Robert Indiana is an American artist associated with the Pop Art movement.-Life and work:Robert Indiana was born Robert Clark in New Castle, Indiana. His family relocated to Indianapolis, where he graduated from Arsenal Technical High School...

, Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.-Life:Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed...

, Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...

, Larry Poons

Larry Poons

Lawrence Poons , better known as Larry Poons, is an abstract painter who was born in Tokyo, Japan. He studied from 1955 to 1957 at the New England Conservatory of Music, with the intent of becoming a professional musician...

, Robert Watts

Robert Watts

Robert Watts is a British film producer who is best known for his involvement with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film series. His half brother is Jeremy Bulloch, who played Boba Fett in the original Star Wars trilogy.-Chichester University Visit:...

 and Robert Whitman

Robert Whitman

Robert Whitman is an American artist best known for his seminal theater pieces of the early 1960s combining visual and sound images, actors, film, slides, and evocative props in environments of his own making...

. In addition, Julian Beck

Julian Beck

Julian Beck was an American actor, director, poet, and painter.-Early life:Beck was born in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan in New York City, the son of Mabel Lucille , a teacher, and Irving Beck, a businessman. He briefly attended Yale University, but dropped out to pursue writing and...

 of the Living Theatre designed sets for some of Waring's work.

Musically, Waring sometimes wrote his own music, but more often he worked with composers and musicians such as Philip Corner

Philip Corner

Philip Corner is an American composer, action musician, trombone/alphornist, sometime vocalist, pianist-improvisor, theorist-educator, graphic score designer, and visual artist, collage&assembleur, calligrapher.-Biography:After The High School of Music & Art in New York City, Philip Corner...

, Terry Jennings

Terry Jennings

Terry Jennings was an American minimalist composer and performer.Terry Jennings was born in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California, in 1940. Coming from a background in jazz, he played piano, clarinet, and saxophones...

, Malcolm Goldstein

Malcolm Goldstein

Malcolm Goldstein is a composer, violinist and improviser who has been active in the presentation of new music and dance since the early 1960s. He received an M.A. in music composition from Columbia University in 1960, having studied with Otto Luening...

, Richard Maxfield

Richard Maxfield

Richard Maxfield was a composer of instrumental, electro-acoustic, and electronic music.Born in Seattle, he most likely taught the first University-level course in electronic music in America at the New School for Social Research...

 and Marga Richter

Marga Richter

-Biography:Marga Richter was born in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, the daughter of soprano Inez Chandler-Richter . She studied piano at the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis with Irene Hellner and with Helena Morsztyn in New York...

, among others.

Style and process

In Terpsichore in Sneakers, Sally Banes

Sally Banes

Sally Banes is a notable dance historian, writer, and critic.Sally Banes is recognized as an expert on the current dance scene and the new trends that are continually appearing in the art...

 describes Waring's work:

[Waring's] dances sometimes looked like [Merce] Cunningham

Merce Cunningham

Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...

's – with their decentralized use of space, collage formats, disconnected structures but balletic carriage – but his method was based on intuiton rather than chance. Waring abandoned narrative and dramatic structure in the mid-1950s, creating atmospheres (often nostalgic) referring lovingly and archly to variety dancing and ballet, and mixing musical as well as dancing styles (including ordinary and idiosyncratic gestures). Waring was a gentle humorist, sometimes parodying other dance genres, often close to camp

Camp (style)

Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...

.

Choreographer David Gordon, who first danced professionally in Waring's company, describes Waring's process:

Jimmy [Waring] was an education for me, as he was for most people who came in contact with him. ... [He] taught me about art and developed my taste ... Jimmy's approach was ... whimsical. His way of working led you – or led me at any rate – to accept any idea as valid simply because I'd thought of it. I thought of it and I kept it, and what came next was what I thought of next. I don't believe Jimmy meant to absolve me of all responsibility for my work, but I got the impression that wild intuitive guessing was all I had to do to make art. I never threw anything away. I remember distinctly Jimmy's saying, "If you don't like it now, you can get to like it. If you can't get to like it, who says you have to like it?" The point of it was to demystify art and free the artist from the limitations of his own taste. There was a great sense of liberation that stemmed from John Cage

John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

's championing of this philosophy, and Jimmy, among others, was establishing alternatives to the kind of teaching that had dominated modern-dance composition up until then.

In her Work 1961–73, Yvonne Rainer wrote about Waring:

Jimmy had an amazing gift which – because I was put off by the mixture of camp and balleticism in his work – I didn't appreciate until much later. His company was always full of misfits – they were too short or too fat or too uncoordinated or too mannered or too inexperienced by any other standards. He had this gift of choosing people who 'couldn't do too much' in conventional terms but who – under his subtle directorial manipulations – revealed spectacular stage personalities. He could pull the silk purse out of the sow's ear. At its worst, dancing with Jimmy could feel like a sow imitating a swan, but I got a lot out of it. He used what I had and demanded more than I thought I had, and his instincts were usually right. In some ways he fathomed my potential more accurately than I could at the time. Although I have often disagreed with him on matters of taste and style, I can't dispute that he is something of a genius.