The American Dance Machine
Lee Theodore: Founder and Executive Director

The American Dance Machine was an organization created
"to build a living archive of American dance."

The sounds issuing from Studio A at New York's elegant Harkness House are wild. A combo of bongos and electric guitar is going loud and crazy. The music is a sixties frug, and the two young musicians at their instruments keep the beat steady, the rhythm even, and the drive of the tune staccato and soaring. Just what is happening in Studio A, where classical ballet classes are usually in progress...?

..."Five, six,seven, eight...shake one shoulder, now the other...head to the left, head to the right...pivot and move back...now straighten the torso, but keep the pelvis going..." Some quick claps of her hands stops the class and the music. And Lee Theodore, who is conducting the proceedings, calls for a new rhythm from the combo in the corner...

On other days, these same students learn the specific techniques and mechanics that will result in a twenties Charleston or tango, a thirties one-step, a forties lindy, a fifties jitterbug or samba. Indeed, these classes offer a survey of popular dance styles set within a context of the American musical theatre. And the whole range of these activities is only a part of the elaborate dance curriculum instituted by Lee Theodore, who only two short years ago invented something called the American Dance Machine.

Far from being just another jazz-oriented company, the American Dance Machine is dance-historic, far reaching, and visionary. Its goals, as set forth by Theodore, are aimed at reconstructing and preserving the best of American theatre dance - the brilliant show stopping numbers of Broadway musicals choreographed by the likes of Jack Cole, Agnes DeMille, Jerome Robbins, Michael Kidd, Bob Fosse, among others, all of whom have devised dances that, throughout the years, have fallen into obscurity once a musical has closed, flopped, or folded out of town...

www.TheatreDance.com