Stuart Hodes

Early life

Stuart Hodes Gescheidt was born in New York City on November 27, 1924, grew up in Flushing, Miami Beach, FL, and Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. His older sister was writer, Malvine Cole, and younger brother, photographer, Alfred Gescheidt. He attended PS 98, Brooklyn Technical High School, and Brooklyn College, entered the army in 1943, served in the Army Air Corps (not yet called the Air Force). Trained as a B-17 pilot, he flew seven bombing missions before VE Day, then, attached to the Military Air Transport Command, flew troops from Naples, Italy, to Marrakech, Morocco. Reassigned to the Army of Occupation, he began flying reporters for an unofficial Army newspaper, The Foggia Occupator, then joined its reportorial staff. Discharged a 2nd Lt. in June, 1945, he joined the Air Force Reserves for four more years. His first civilian job was publicity director for the Bennington (Vermont) Drama Festival, before re-entering Brooklyn College, leaving when offered a dancing job by Martha Graham.

Dance performance

Hodes had started taking modern dance classes at the Martha Graham School with no thought of dance as a career until invited to join Graham’s troupe for a U.S. tour in December, 1946, followed by 3 weeks at NYC’s Ziegfeld Theater. He committed to dance in fall, 1947, adding daily ballet classes at the School of American Ballet. He spent 1947 through 1958 with the Martha Graham Dance Company. Among his roles was Adolescent Love (Yellow) in Diversion of Angels, Creature of Fear in Errand into the Maze, Husbandman in Appalachian Spring, Seer in Night Journey, Dark Beloved in Deaths and Entrances, Brother Fire in Canticle for Innocent Comedians, Mad Tom in Lear, Highwayman in Punch and the Judy, and as one of the three male roles in (Theatre for a) Voyage.

Graham dancers were not paid for rehearsals so for income, Hodes taught and danced on Broadway, TV, and night clubs. He was in the original casts of Do Re Mi, First Impressions, Milk and Honey, Paint Your Wagon, Peer Gynt, Sophie, The Barrier, To Broadway with Love, Zeigfeld Follies (1956 edition), and the City Center revival of Annie Get Your Gun. He was a replacement in Kismet, By the Beautiful Sea, Once Upon A Mattress, The King and I and The Most Happy Fella. On TV he danced The Wild Horse in Annie Get Your Gun, swam with Esther Williams as her counter in The Esther Williams AquaSpectacle, also Buick Circus Show, The Milton Berle Show, and specials such as Satins and Spurs, Stingiest Man In Town, Cinderella, The American Cowboy and others. He danced with younger choreographers including, DJ McDonald, Claire Porter, Stephan Koplowitz, and Gus Solomons, Jr. In 1985, he performed in Kathy Acker's The Birth of the Poet, directed by Richard Foreman in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival.

From 1992 through 1996, he and his wife, Elizabeth Hodes, created and toured their one and two-person musical shows, traveling nationwide in Dancing on Air with Fred Astaire, La Musique de Piaf, Kurt Weill—Berlin to Broadway, Our Marlene (Marlene Dietrich), The Sound of Wings (Amelia Earhart), A Woman’s World, Two Americans in Paris, and others. Elizabeth performed The Sound of Wings, written by Hodes based on the life of Amelia Earhart. In 2000 and 2001, they performed a two-person musical The O’Tooles Tonight!, written by Gayle Stahlhuth, and presented at the East Lynne Theater in Cape May, NJ.

As choreographer

Hodes’ choreographic debut at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA in 1951 included FLAK, a solo based on World War II bombing missions, Surrounding, Unknown, and No Heaven In Earth, original score by Eugene Lester. He opened Dancer's Studio in 1952, a space used by other choreographers including Merce Cunningham and Robert Joffrey. He choreographed for the San Francisco Ballet, Santa Fe Opera, St. Louis Municipal Opera, Boston Ballet, Dallas Ballet and Cologne Opera Ballet. Dances include After the Teacups (1963), Abyss (1965), Prima Sera (1968), and A Shape of Light (1974). Hodes was commissioned by ChoreoConcerts, curated and produced by Laura Foreman, the New School's dance director. Domaine (1974), was a gentle teasing of F.M. Esfandiary, a transhumanist philosopher on the New School faculty. Beggar's Dance (1975), a duet with Susan McGuire to J.S. Bach and Longfellow's Hiawatha. Boedromion (1974), for the George Faison Universal Dance Experience. Other dances include Dance Lessons (1977) a trio for himself, Sara Hook and Kenneth Tosti, Brush (1982), a solo for Argentine dancer, Claudia Florian,White Knight, Black Night (1984) a duet with his daughter Catherine. I Thought You Were Dead, a duet co-choreographed and danced with Alice Teirstein, was named one of Ballet Review’s ten best dances of 1996.

Work as a dance educator, administrator

After leaving the Graham troupe in 1958, Hodes continued to teach at the Graham School, also NYC’s High School of Performing Arts, The New School, New York University, Manhattan Community College and as guest in many American colleges. He was a guest teacher in Toronto, London, Copenhagen, Zurich, also in China and Russia. In 1966, he joined Harkness House for Ballet Arts where he created young audiences dance shows performed at Hunter College and NYC Public Schools. In 1968, he founded his own young-audience troupe, The Ballet Team, which toured nationally, and in 1969, became Dance Associate for the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) at the start of its grant-making Aid to Cultural Organizations project. In 1972, he joined New York University's School of the Arts (later Tisch) as head of Dance, during which time he served as a Dance Panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In 1983, he was asked to join the First American Dance Study Team to China. In 1985, he became director of The Kitchen, an avant garde arts presenter, which was deeply in debt. He brought about sale of its commercial co-op loft in SoHo and secured its present multistory Chelsea building. In 1987, he became Associate Professor Dance Coordinator at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, and in 1989, Executive Director of the Dance Notation Bureau.

Former students include Joan Finklestein, head of the Harkness Foundation for Dance, Stephanie Skura, American choreographer and teacher, Aydin Teker, major choreographer from Istanbul, and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, whose groundbreaking FASE was first shown in a studio at NYU School of the Arts.

Graham vs. Graham

In 2000, Francis Mason, president of the Martha Graham Center Board of Directors, asked him to become Head of School. In 2001, Ronald Protas, Graham's heir, formed the Martha Graham Trust and sued the Martha Graham Center for the rights to all her dances, her dance technique, and use of her name. Hodes testified in five of the six trials. Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum for the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York ultimately ruled that 54 of the disputed dances belonged to the Center, ten were in the public domain and one, Seraphic Dialogue, was owned by Protas. All trademark claims brought against the Graham Company and Center were dismissed. Hodes’ personal account of the trials, titled, Graham Vs. Graham: The Struggle for an American Legacy, is unpublished but digital copies are in the Graham archives and New York Public Library.

Writing

Hodes began writing as a child. His first job after army discharge was writing publicity for the Bennington Drama Festival, a summer theater. Famed literary agent, Audrey Wood, read his story In the Chorus Room, said it was a chapter of a novel and that if he wrote four more chapters and an outline, she’d get him an advance. It became the novel, Dumbdancer, not completed until after he’d stopped dancing, and remains unpublished. Martha's Advanced Class, describes Graham’s technique class as experienced by someone taking it. Sybil Shearer Dances appeared in Ballet Review. Other articles appeared in Performing Arts Journal, Design for Arts in Education, and other publications. A Map of Making Dances (Ardsley House, 1998) is a choreographer’s workbook with (247) experimental movement projects.Part Real-Part Dream: Dancing with Martha Graham (Concord ePress, 2011), a memoir, gives an account of his life, career, and complex relationship with Graham. As of 2016, he was working on a novel titled: Atlas Quit, or, A Tale Told by an Idiot.

“From the Horse's Mouth”

As part of the Graham Company's 80th anniversary celebration in 2007, a special performance of From the Horse's Mouth, Magical Tales of Real Dancers, was presented at the Joyce Theater. The production highlighted stories about Martha Graham from veteran Graham dancers including Dorothy Berea, David Chase, Mary Hinkson, Pearl Lang, Peggy Lyman, Judith Janus, Donald McKayle, and others. Hodes' contribution included Martha's Rap, a whimsical recounting of her career that began:

Personal life

In 1953, Hodes married dancer and choreographer Linda Margolies. They have two daughters, Catherine and Martha Hodes. They divorced in 1964. In 1965, he wed dancer/singer/actress Elizabeth Wullen. They live in New York City.