Art Bauman (1940 - January 27, 1993)

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Art Bauman (c. 1940 - 27 January 1993, Manhattan) was a dancer and choreographer who helped to found the Dance Theater Workshop. He died on 27 January 1993, at Tisch Hospital in Manhattan. He was 53 and lived in Manhattan.

He died of AIDS, said William Singer, his companion.

Mr. Bauman created many of his early dances for Dance Theater Workshop, an informal loft theater when he founded it in 1965 with Jeff Duncan and Jack Moore, both of whom have since died. The organization, which he helped to direct until 1975, later became one of the city's major dance institutions.

Mr. Bauman began choreographing in 1962 and became known for painstakingly planned mixed-media collagist dances that were often designed to be performed in specific theater spaces. In addition to the workshop, Mr. Bauman created pieces for Clark Center for the Performing Arts, the Columbia Arts Festival, Dance Uptown and the Cubiculo. His work was also presented at The Place in London and the New York Dance Festival in Central Park.His best-known dance was "Dialog," a solo in which the choreographer, live and on film, portrayed a businessman racing against time and corporate pressures. Writing in The New York Times, Anna Kisselgoff described the 1965 work as enduring and "a very polished piece."

Mr. Bauman was born in Philadelphia. He was trained in dance at George Washington University in Washington, the Juilliard School, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School and Martha Graham's studio. He also studied acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio and film at New York University. Mr. Bauman performed in the companies of Lucas Hoving, Paul Sanasardo and Charles Weidman and danced with many of the choreographers who presented pieces at Dance Theater Workshop.

He gradually gave up performing to concentrate on choreography. Throughout his career he also held administrative jobs in dance. He taught choreography at the workshop, Barnard College, New York University School of the Arts, the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College, the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival and other institutions in the United States and Europe. He also worked as a stage manager at York City theaters including the Kaufmann Concert Hall, the Juilliard Opera Theater and the Lincoln Center Institute. Mr. Bauman retired from dance in 1979.


Art Bauman's Dialog (1967). Photo: Edward Effron, courtesy Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/01/arts/art-bauman-53-choreographer-began-dance-theater-workshop.html

Further Readings:

O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance by Holly Hughes and David Roman
Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Grove Press; 1st edition (May 13, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0802135706
ISBN-13: 978-0802135704
Amazon: O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance

O Solo Homo is a diverse, definitive, and hugely entertaining collection representing the cutting edge of queer solo performance. The pieces in O Solo Homo touch nerves that run deep — from sex, politics, community, and health to the struggles and joys of family, friends, and lovers. Peggy Shaw, of Split Britches, revisits how she learned to be butch. The late Ron Vawter, of the Wooster Group, juxtaposes the lives of two very different men who died of AIDS: diva filmmaker Jack Smith and Nixon crony Roy Cohn. Tim Miller, one of the NEA Four, surveys the landscape of gay desire before and after the advent of AIDS. And Carmelita Tropicana, the “National Songbird of Cuba,” makes an unforgettable, hilarious return to Havana.

More LGBT History at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Gay Classics