Horton Technique: Lester

Horton
10.20.2023

Lester Horton was a dancer and choreographer who was born in Indianapolis,
Indiana, on January 23, 1906, and passed away in Los Angeles, California, on
November 2, 1953. He is recognized for having founded the nation's first racially
integrated dance company and for leading the modern dance movement in Los
Angeles. During the course of his brief career, he created a dance training method
that teachers have been using into the 21st century.

Horton's first fascination with movement came from Native American dance (he had
been enthralled with Native American culture since he was a young child) and from
seeing performances by the Denishawn Dancers and modern dancers Ruth St. Denis
and Ted Shawn. In an Indianapolis studio, he started studying ballet as a teenager.
After receiving instruction from Denishawn School of Dance alumnus Forrest
Thornburg in 1925, he briefly studied with Russian American ballet dancer and
choreographer Adolph Bolm in Chicago, as well as at the schools of Serge
Oukrainsky and Andreas Pavley. Horton took part in his first stage production in
1926–1927, a pageant he organized in Indianapolis with amateur playwright Clara
Nixon Bates, whose play was based on the poem The Song of Hiawatha by Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow. Horton approached the production in a way that he would
use for the rest of his career: he got involved with the staging, costumes, and
choreography as well. In the end, the part of Hiawatha proved to be his major break.
Horton journeyed to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to study dances and chants from Native
American artists in preparation for his performance. Horton made the decision to
stay in Los Angeles and pursue his dance studies after the production moved there.

He trained with Japanese dancer and choreographer Michio Itō in Los Angeles,
where he learned how to incorporate props into his choreography and present
dance as dramatic theater. Horton started working as a teacher at Norma Gould's
neighborhood dance studio in the early 1930s. He had a creative and dynamic
teaching style that frequently required his students to improvise and move in odd,
exaggerated, and decidedly non-balletic ways. Horton concentrated on
choreography as well as teaching when his career took off. Kootenai War Dance
(1931) and Voodoo Ceremonial (1932) are two of his early pieces. The newly formed
Lester Horton Dance Group performed both pieces in 1932 at the Los Angeles
Philharmonic auditorium during the Olympic Festival of the Dance, which was held
during that year's Olympic games. The latter piece, an erotic display of pagan rituals,
took audiences by surprise.

At Gould's studio in 1934, Horton taught a class to a young Bella Lewitzky. For the
next fifteen years, Lewitzky worked closely with Horton as a creative collaborator
and as the principal dancer in his company. Horton created protest pieces like
Dictator (1935) and Prelude to Militancy (1937; co-choreographed with Lewitzky) in
response to the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe during the mid-1930s. One of
Horton's greatest achievements as a choreographer was his choreography of Le
Sacre du printemps, Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, which was presented in
1937 at the Hollywood Bowl amphitheater with Lewitzky in the title role of the
Chosen One. For the first time, an American choreographer had tackled the
Stravinsky score, and many in the audience were taken aback by the barefoot
dancers' angular and stiff movements.

Horton started choreographing for Hollywood productions in 1942. His fascination

with fusing cultural allusions led him to frequently work on movies with exotic
settings, including Phantom of the Opera (1944), White Savage (1943), Moonlight in
Havana (1942), and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1945). Over the next 11 years, he
choreographed 19 more movies.
 Horton established the Dance Theater, a dance academy and performance space, in
Los Angeles alongside Lewitzky, her husband Newell Reynolds, and dancer William
Bowne. The dancers presented Horton's Totem Incantation, based on a Native
American coming-of-age rite; The Beloved (1948), based on a newspaper article
about a man who suspected his wife of infidelity and beat her to death with a Bible;
and a revised version of his earlier interpretation of Oscar Wilde's one-act play
Salomé on opening night. The Beloved, which was co-choreographed with Lewitzky,
is widely regarded as a classic example of modern dance and one of Horton’s
masterpieces.

Lewitzky and Reynolds left the theater and Horton's company in 1950, two years
after the Dance Theater was founded; Bowne had left even earlier. Rebuilding the
business gave Horton the opportunity to introduce James Truitte and Carmen de
Lavallade as new employees. Early 1950s notable pieces include Liberian Suite
(1952), Prado de Pena (1952), Another Touch of Klee (1951), and Dedication to José
Clemente Orozco (1953; from his Dedications in Our Time series). Finally, in March
1953, Horton's dance company debuted in New York City. After receiving
overwhelmingly positive reviews, invitations to perform again across the nation
were extended.

Alvin Ailey, who had been studying at the Dance Theater since 1949, took over as
director of the company after Horton passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack
in November 1953. After moving to New York City, Ailey became one of the most
successful choreographers of modern dance in the country and frequently
mentioned Horton as one of his main influences. Frank Eng, Horton's business
partner, oversaw the Dance Theater's operations until 1960.

Blumberg, Naomi. "Lester Horton". Encyclopedia Britannica, 19 Jan. 2023,

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lester-Horton. Accessed on October 21, 2023.