3 days ago
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- New York Times
Charles Reinhart, a Force in Mainstreaming Modern Dance, Dies at 94
Charles Reinhart, who as the longtime director of the American Dance Festival popularized modern and avant-garde dance in the United States and worldwide, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 94.
The cause was complications of a stroke, his daughter, Ariane Malia Reinhart, said.
'Modern dance was pretty unknown in the 1950s,' he recalled in an interview with Dance Teacher magazine in 2011. 'Even my own family had no idea who Paul Taylor was,' referring to the American choreographer whose dance company was founded in 1954 and whose pioneering work remains in repertory globally.
Mr. Reinhart, who considered modern dance an 'indigenous American art form,' would become a pivotal force in bringing it into the mainstream. But early on, even he knew little about the Paul Taylor Dance Company — until he sat in on a rehearsal — after being asked by the founder himself to serve as the company's first manager.
'When they danced 'Aureole,'' he said of seeing Mr. Taylor's most-celebrated work, with its lyrical movement set to music by Handel, 'it was so beautiful and different. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.'
The revelation persuaded Mr. Reinhart to accept the manager's role, which he held for six years.
Under the banner of Charles Reinhart Management, he went on manage other influential artists, including Meredith Monk, Lucas Hoving and Donald McKayle, and produce some of the earliest modern dance festivals in New York City.
But it was as the director of American Dance Festival that Mr. Reinhart had an outlet commensurate with his ambitions. As he told Jack Anderson of The New York Times in 1978, the festival 'is as holy a Mecca as one can find in the dance world.'
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