Oral History: Cynthia Hedstrom
By Tere O’Connor, Choreographer
As The Kitchen approaches its 50th anniversary in 2021, we have been conducting a series of oral histories with artists and other practitioners who have both shown at The Kitchen and served on staff in various capacities. One area that has been central to our research thus far is the history of The Kitchen’s dance program in the 1980s and 1990s. For the third of the oral histories focused on this timeframe and discipline, choreographer Tere O’Connor spoke to Cynthia Hedstrom, The Kitchen’s Dance Curator from 1986–1990, about her tenure.
What follows is an edited selection of highlights from the conversation between Hedstrom and O’Connor, touching on moments across Hedstrom’s career, from her early years as a dancer through to her time at The Kitchen and into her work with the Wooster Group—an experimental theater company with which Hedstrom still acts as Producer today. In her role as Dance Curator at The Kitchen, Hedstrom commissioned productions by artists such as Blondell Cummings, DANCENOISE, Eiko and Koma, Fred Holland, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Pooh Kaye, Steve Paxton, Dana Reitz, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Urban Bush Women. Additionally during this time, Hedstrom programmed O’Connor’s piece Four Sisters Dances.
Hedstrom’s Early Career as a Dancer
Cynthia Hedstrom [CH]: I went to college at Sarah Lawrence, where I studied dance under Bessie Schoenberg. And one summer during college I attended a program that the Merce Cunningham Company did at the University of Colorado in Boulder—a workshop for students. I studied under all of the most amazing dancers in the company then. Merce and John Cage were there, and I studied with both of them. That changed me forever.
I left college my last year and went to India to study dance and music for about six months. I ended up staying in Asia for another six months until my visa ran out. When I came back to the States, to New York City, I looked up Barbara Dilley, who I had studied with at the Cunningham Company workshop in Colorado. She sort of became a mentor and teacher. One of her great interests was improvisation. It was a very open exploratory time [in the early 1970s], and she introduced me to Yvonne Rainer who had a loft in Soho, on Greene Street I think. Yvonne would do these open-ended evenings once in a while— you know, anyone could come and be there, and she would set up some kind of structure that you could just enter into and improvise. I was introduced to a lot of the people who were part of [the dance collective] Grand Union, including Trisha Brown and Steve Paxton, and I began following their work, which was amazing. That was another transformative moment: a lot of the artists who came out of the Judson Dance Theater were improvising and working in a completely exploratory, life-changing kind of way.
I was also studying dance technique at the Cunningham studio at the time.
Tere O’Connor [TOC]: Were those two populations at odds with each other?
CH: They weren’t at odds, but they were two strands. A lot of the dancers who were part of Judson had studied with Cunningham and had that training in their bodies and in the way they approached movement conceptually and abstractly. So they weren’t interacting—the Cunningham Company work and that more experimental, Grand Union kind of work—but certainly there were influences going back and forth.
I found a place in the downtown dance world, mostly through Barbara, who started a group called The Natural History of the American Dancer. It was an improvisational group that included Barbara, me, and five other women [Carmen Beauchat, Judy Padow, Mary Overlie, Rachel Lew, and Suzanne Harris]. We would get together, and we would set up structures or present ideas around which we would improvise. Sometimes it was completely free-form.
One of the places that was like a home for me in the downtown New York world at this time was The Kitchen, which was then at the corner of Wooster and Broome Streets.The programming supported radical explorations in music, dance, performance, video. None of the artists were trying to maintain the status quo. Everyone was questioning basic form and content, and having a really wonderful time. People would gather to see what people were thinking and doing.
TOC: I’m sure there was a lot of influence happening there for those of us who spent time at The Kitchen.
CH: A lot of influence. One of the striking things about that period of time was that the visual arts, music, and dance performance blended a lot more than they do today. That started around the Judson Dance Theater time with influences across those fields, and it continued. That was a rich and wonderful moment.
Becoming Dance Curator at The Kitchen
CH: When The Kitchen was moving from Wooster Street to 19th Street in 1985, Bobbi Tsumagari was the new director. I knew I wanted to be the dance curator there. I had been running the Danspace program at St. Mark’s Church, and The Kitchen to me was like home—it was a place where all these different art forms were happening in the same location, as I was saying before. And the artists involved were brilliant people. I was so attracted and drawn to being part of that. I had been a regular audience member and also performed in a couple of things when The Kitchen was in Soho.
Bobbi wanted the choreographer and dancer Dana Reitz to be the dance curator. She was courting Dana, and then finally Dana said, “I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it.” And so I was lucky. I was standing there saying, “I can do it. I want to do it.” And that’s how I became the dance curator.
At that point I was still doing some performing, but not a lot. I felt like my gifts, in terms of my skills, were stronger in being a programmer or producer rather than actually being a performer.
TOC: Did you know that going into Danspace?
CH: I kind of knew. I was self-taught as a programmer/producer. I had become friends with people at Performing Arts Services, which was a wonderful service organization for artists, and I learned a lot from Mimi Johnson and others there.
TOC: I mean, these organizations that were doing this kind of work were being formed then, actually. So there wasn’t a lot to learn, probably. It was totally specific to that.
CH: Right. The arts administration programs on the university level were just beginning in maybe the ’80s.
So I did the work out of love and interest and passion. And, to me, being able to produce and program events was the most glorious thing I could imagine. I did almost no performing, and I didn’t do much traditional creative work like choreography.
TOC: At The Kitchen, administratively, was it like a hippie, happy fest?
CH: No, it was not a hippie love fest. It was serious, rigorous work.
The other thing I should say is that the administration of The Kitchen was incredibly supportive of the curators, and that came from Bobbi and various people who worked with her and under her. And so that freed us curators up to do a lot of creative things.
Approach to Curatorial Work
TOC: I knew you as someone who would come to rehearsals, but also I would see you in the audiences, and I didn’t see you as being in the audience only to curate things. Even when you were going somewhere and not curating something, did that eye kind of come in, or could you sit back and just think, “I’m looking at this stuff”?
CH: No, I was always looking at work to try to understand what its place was in the universe of art that was being made at that time.
TOC: Do you remember if there were specific goals that you aimed to achieve through your dance programming? And how did you go about pursuing those goals?
CH: When I started, I was the first dance curator programming in the 19th Street space. I felt very free to set my own agenda, my own goals, and to decide what was important. And The Kitchen was there to support the creation of new work in that area.
A primary goal was to support artists who I thought were making work that was moving the art form forward, or maybe not even forward, but moving it in a direction that we might not have seen or thought about before. And then to try to get people excited about seeing that work. And luckily at The Kitchen, there was a team of people who helped do that—marketing and outreach support.
I think those were my two priorities: make sure that the artists who are making us look at the world in a different way can be supported and get the people who will respond to that in the audience. I wanted to get everyone in the audience, but you don’t get everyone.
Memorable Shows at The Kitchen
TOC: Are there any particular events that stand out as really memorable or influential during your tenure?
CH: Well, of course, Steve Paxton’s Goldberg Variations, which he premiered at The Kitchen. And on that program, he also recreated PA RT, which is music by Robert Ashley, and Lisa Nelson performed.
And the work that Ishmael Houston-Jones and Fred Holland did was very important to me. They were artists who were really exploring, in different ways, movement and history and identity and narrative. Fred was involved in narrative in unusual ways. And Ish [Ishmael] was much more abstract. But they were doing very interesting work.
DANCENOISE was also a group that I cherished.
TOC: And there is activism in there.
CH: Activism on a very deep and profound level, but not sort of holding up a sign – and often, as in the case of DANCENOISE, playing with irony.
TOC: Yes. I think that was seminal for people who wanted to look at things that way.
CH: And, of course, I admired your work, which cut through so many expectations of what dance should be.
Confronting the Political and Cultural Issues of the 1980s and 1990s
CH: For me, the NEA Four brought to the forefront how important it was to find ways to support independent artists. To support work that challenged the status quo, that was purely investigative, that was made by people who were questioning what it means to live, what it means to have a physical body, what it means to be in a space, what it means to create alternatives, and what it means to relate. What are our relations with other people?
That instance didn’t make it difficult. It made it more important. The difficulties were problems to be solved. The issues that we were living with—like AIDS or other kinds of repressions—I never found them difficult. I just found they created stronger fortitude.
TOC: You were really imperturbable. You were really a kind of a nurturing spirit, but from a strong place. I made a piece at The Kitchen when you were there that was one of the worst that I’ve ever made. But I learned more than I’ve ever learned there on that piece. I knew you already, but the vibe at the space was “do what you want. We’re not exerting any control over you.” And that is the amazing thing. You brought that in those years, and I appreciate that so much.
CH: Yes, it’s so important to have spaces where the artist is in control of whatever happens and over what they want to do, within reason. That doesn’t happen very often anymore.
Differences Between 1980s/1990s and Today
CH: I remember that when we opened The Kitchen on 19th Street, it was a big deal to get people to come over there to 10th Avenue. I remember people would complain bitterly about having to go to The Kitchen. And then, the whole art scene moved into that area. You know, suddenly it wasn’t a big deal to walk from the eighth avenue subway over.
TOC: Do you remember what the audience situation was like when you worked at The Kitchen? And would you say that audience is around now, or has that culture changed?
CH: We had a good audience, and it was often full. People were sharp and supportive and critical.
I think the audience has changed, but I think there’s still a lot of interest in new dance today. Maybe it was a closer community then. We all knew each other.
One other thing I could say about that time is there was still the uptown/downtown divide. Once in a while, Jerome Robbins or someone would come downtown to check out what was happening. And once in a while I would go uptown because I love the ballet and opera. But they were two separate worlds. And now, we’re all in the same…
TOC: All coming together.
CH: There isn’t that divide, and I think that’s very positive.
TOC: It’s changing. I think it’s not fully complete, but it is changing.
Hedstrom’s Relationship to the Wooster Group
TOC: How do you get yourself over to The Wooster Group? What was the evolution from The Kitchen to there?
CH: When I was at Danspace, I programmed The Wooster Group to come and do an evening of dances in 1982. They were my favorite movers at that time. They did Hula (1981) and a new piece called For the Good Times (1982). It was at a time when they were on the outs because of Route 1 & 9 (1981) [1]. And Liz [Elizabeth LeCompte, Director of the Wooster Group] was grateful to me for coming to them and saying, “I love the work you do, come to do something.” So we stayed close. And I was also close friends with Ron Vawter who was a member of the Group. I met him through his partner Greg Mehrten, who worked with Mabou Mines, and I was close with people at Mabou Mines. Eventually Ron came to me and said, you need to come meet with Liz—we need someone to help us administratively.
So I met with them, and I started working part time with The Wooster Group while I also was working at The Kitchen. I was always piecing together stuff to make enough money.
TOC: That’s amazing. And look what it turned into: the deep relationship with you and the company to this day.
CH: Yes, things change, yet my love of the artists with whom I’ve been lucky to work doesn’t change.
Cynthia Hedstrom is the Producer with the experimental theater company The Wooster Group. She was the Producer and then Programming Director with the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven, CT from its founding in 1996 to 2004. Prior to the Festival, Hedstrom worked with The Wooster Group (1986–1996); was the Dance Curator at the Kitchen Center (1986–1990); and the Director of the Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church (1980–1983). She performed as a dancer in the 1970s with the Natural History of the American Dancer and the Lucinda Childs Dance Company, among others. She has been a panelist for a number of funding organizations including the NEA, NYSCA, DCLA, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Tere O’Connor is the Artistic Director of Tere O’Connor Dance and a Center for Advanced Studies Professor at the University of Illinois. He has created over forty works for his company and many commissions, including for the Lyon Opera Ballet and Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project. He received a 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, among numerous other grants and awards and has won three BESSIES. In 2014, He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. An articulate and provocative educator, he has taught at festivals and universities around the globe. He’s currently researching his new dance Rivulets to premiere at Danspace in December 2021 in NYC.
Images: 1) Poster for One, Two … organized by Jean Dupuy at The Kitchen, March 16–17, 1979. 2) Postcard for dance programming featuring Pooh Kaye, Mary Overlie, and Sarah Skaggs at The Kitchen, December 1987. To learn more about the performance Kaye presented, Tangled Graphics (1987), click here. 3) Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson in Steve Paxton, Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach Played by Glenn Gould Improvised by Steve Paxton, 1987. Image from performance program: to see the full program, click here. 4) Cynthia Hedstrom, Scott Macauley, and Barbara (Bobbi) L. Tsumagari, at The Kitchen. Image featured in “Under New Chief, the Kitchen Has Regained Some of Its Zip” by John Rockwell, published in The New York Times, September 17, 1987.
Footnotes:
[1] To learn more about the Wooster Group’s Route 1 & 9, which was criticized by select writers and funders when it premiered in 1981 and was later revived at The Kitchen in 1987, click here.