1980s overview:

As the decade of the 1980s began, I continued to present evening-length programs in NYC. The Riverside Dance Festival produced my work two more seasons. In the summers of 1980 and 1981, I was a choreographer-in-residence at The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard, where I created BEAST (1980), a significant work for me. The CETA Artists Project was discontinued in 1980 when President Reagan came into office, and my life as a dance artist became precarious.

In 1982-3, I received a fellowship to obtain an MA in Dance Education at Columbia University, gaining an essential credential for university teaching. During that time I created three dances produced at the Horace Mann Theater. Upon graduation, I embarked upon teaching posts in universities—a year as a visiting assistant professor at SUNY Brockport (1983-4), a semester as a guest artist at University of Rochester (fall 1984), and in January 1985, I joined the dance faculty at University of Michigan, initially as a guest artist and shortly thereafter in a tenure-track line. In all these settings and beyond, I continued to produce new dances.

After a decade of creating dances for small, intimate loft spaces in New York City, it was a major shift to begin to design dances with large casts for University of Michigan’s 1300-seat Power Center proscenium stage. Additionally, through University Productions (the producing arm of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance) the Power Center productions were supported by a professional team of set and costume designers and a marketing team .

In addition to producing single works on shared concerts, I presented full evenings and half evenings of works as well as solo lecture demonstrations during this decade at :

• The Riverside Dance Festival, NYC, Jan. 29, 31 and Feb. 1, 1981

• SUNY Brockport, Brockport, NY, May 1984

• University of Rochester with Catlin Cobb, Rochester, NY, Nov/Dec 1984

• University of Michigan with Susan Creitz, Studio A, Ann Arbor, April 1985

• Merce Cunningham Studio, NYC, April 1987

• Solo lecture demonstrations at the National Dance Council of Ireland’s National Choreography Course, Dance Centre, Digges Lane, Dublin, Ireland,August 1988; and throughout Michigan,1989.

Significant dances during this decade included several inspired by visual artists, including:

• Shard, later retitled Enfield in Winter, inspired in part by the sculptures of Louise Nevelson

• a series of three dances inspired by Vermeer paintings: Dance for Ten with Woman at Window; Vermeer Variations; and Woman with a Pearl Drop Earring.

• People in the Sun, inspired by Hopper paintings, and one of my favorites of my dance works.

Having integrated projected slides into BEAST at the outset of the decade, I began to interweave video and dance toward the end of the decade in Pastorale (1989) and The Path Between (1989-90).

Spoken text played a central role in Chanticleer and Night and Day, Henry and Gay.

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