ABSTRACT
With quiet but absolute dedication, Garth Fagan throughout the 1970s was nurturing one of the most exciting sensibilities in contemporary dance. The career of Jamaican-born Fagan had followed a circuitous route: touring with Ivy Baxter’s Jamaican National Dance Company while still in his teens; attending college in the United States, where he studied with the likes of José Limón, Martha Graham, and Alvin Ailey; and involvement with a handful of Detroit companies as dancer, choreographer, or artistic director. Soon after joining the faculty of the State University of New York, he began teaching dance in nearby Rochester, to young adults more familiar with baseball pitches and inner-city streets than the stage. At about the same time, Arthur Mitchell was embarking on a similar adventure, shaping untrained urbanites into his Dance Theater of Harlem. But Mitchell’s goal had been to create classical ballet dancers who would excel particularly in the œuvre and style of choreographer George Balanchine. Fagan, on the other hand, had something else entirely in mind. His fledgling dancers were trained in a style all his own, a stunning synthesis of modern, jazz, and Afro-Caribbean influences with just a tincture of balletic élan.
