Stuart Hodes

Stuart Hodes (November 27, 1924 – March 15, 2023) was an American dancer, choreographer, dance educator, dance administrator, and author born in New York City. Originally named Stuart Hodes Gescheidt, he grew up in Flushing, Miami Beach, and Sheepshead Bay. His older sister was writer Malvine Cole, and his younger brother was photographer Alfred Gescheidt. He attended PS 98, Brooklyn Technical High School, and Brooklyn College before entering the Army in 1943 and serving in the Army Air Corps. Trained as a B-17 pilot, he flew seven bombing missions before VE Day, then flew troops from Naples to Marrakesh while attached to the Military Air Transport Command. Following reassignment to the Army of Occupation, he flew reporters for an unofficial Army newspaper, The Foggia Occupator. Discharged as a second lieutenant in June 1945, he subsequently joined the Air Force Reserve for four additional years. His first civilian position was as publicity director for the Bennington Drama Festival in Vermont, after which he returned to Brooklyn College before leaving to pursue a dancing career.

Hodes began taking modern dance classes at the Martha Graham School without initially intending to pursue dance professionally. In December 1946 he was invited to join Graham's troupe for a U.S. tour, followed by three weeks at the Ziegfeld Theater. He committed fully to dance in the fall of 1947, supplementing his training with daily ballet classes at the School of American Ballet. He remained with the Martha Graham Dance Company from 1947 through 1958, performing roles that included Adolescent Love in Diversion of Angels, Creature of Fear in Errand into the Maze, Husbandman in Appalachian Spring, Seer in Night Journey, Dark Beloved in Deaths and Entrances, Brother Fire in Canticle for Innocent Comedians, Mad Tom in Lear, Highwayman in Punch and the Judy, and one of three male roles in Voyage. Because Graham dancers were not compensated for rehearsals, Hodes supplemented his income by performing on Broadway, in television, and in nightclubs throughout this period.

His Broadway career spanned from 1950 to 1963. He appeared in the original casts of Sophie, Milk and Honey, Do Re Mi, Paint Your Wagon, Peer Gynt, First Impressions, The Barrier, To Broadway with Love, the 1956 edition of Ziegfeld Follies, and the City Center revival of Annie Get Your Gun. He joined productions of Kismet, By the Beautiful Sea, Once Upon a Mattress, The King and I, and The Most Happy Fella as a replacement. On television, his credits included dancing the Wild Horse in Annie Get Your Gun, appearing as Esther Williams's counter in The Esther Williams AquaSpectacle, and performing on the Buick Circus Show, The Milton Berle Show, and specials such as Satins and Spurs, Stingiest Man in Town, Cinderella, and The American Cowboy. He also danced with younger choreographers including DJ McDonald, Claire Porter, Stephan Koplowitz, and Gus Solomons Jr. In 1985, he performed in Kathy Acker's The Birth of the Poet, directed by Richard Foreman at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. From 1992 through 1996, he and his wife Elizabeth Hodes created and toured one- and two-person musical shows nationwide, among them Dancing on Air with Fred Astaire, La Musique de Piaf, Kurt Weill—Berlin to Broadway, Our Marlene, The Sound of Wings, A Woman's World, and Two Americans in Paris. Elizabeth performed The Sound of Wings, which Hodes wrote based on the life of Amelia Earhart. In 2000 and 2001, the couple performed the two-person musical The O'Tooles Tonight!, written by Gayle Stahlhuth and presented at the East Lynne Theater in Cape May, New Jersey.

Hodes made his choreographic debut at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA in 1951 with works including FLAK, a solo drawing on his World War II bombing experience, Surrounding, Unknown, and No Heaven in Earth, with an original score by Eugene Lester. In 1952 he opened Dancer's Studio, a space used by other choreographers including Merce Cunningham and Robert Joffrey. His choreography was performed by the San Francisco Ballet, Boston Ballet, Dallas Ballet, Harkness Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, and the Cologne Opera Ballet, among other companies. Individual works include After the Teacups (1963), Abyss (1965), Prima Sera (1968), A Shape of Light (1974), Domaine (1974), Beggar's Dance (1975), Boedromion (1974) for the George Faison Universal Dance Experience, Dance Lessons (1977), Brush (1982), and White Knight, Black Night (1984), a duet with his daughter Catherine. The duet I Thought You Were Dead, co-choreographed and performed with Alice Teirstein, was named one of Ballet Review's ten best dances of 1996.

After departing the Graham company in 1958, Hodes continued teaching at the Graham School as well as at the NYC High School of Performing Arts, the New School, New York University, and Manhattan Community College, and as a guest instructor at institutions in Toronto, London, Copenhagen, Zurich, China, and Russia. In 1966 he joined Harkness House for Ballet Arts, where he created young-audience dance programs performed at Hunter College and New York City public schools. He founded his own young-audience troupe, The Ballet Team, in 1968, which toured nationally. In 1969 he became Dance Associate for the New York State Council on the Arts at the start of its Aid to Cultural Organizations grant-making project. He joined New York University's School of the Arts as head of Dance in 1972, during which time he also served as a dance panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1983 he was a member of the First American Dance Study Team to China, returning in 1992 to teach the Guangzhou modern dance troupe. In 1985 he became director of The Kitchen, an avant-garde arts presenter that was carrying significant debt; he arranged the sale of its commercial co-op loft in SoHo and secured its current multistory building in Chelsea. He became Associate Professor and Dance Coordinator at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in 1987 and Executive Director of the Dance Notation Bureau in 1989. He also served as president of the National Association of Schools of Dance. His former students include Joan Finklestein, head of the Harkness Foundation for Dance; Stephanie Skura, American choreographer and teacher; Aydin Teker, a major choreographer from Istanbul; and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, whose work FASE was first shown in a studio at NYU School of the Arts.

In 2000, Francis Mason, president of the Martha Graham Center board of directors, asked Hodes to become Head of School. The following year, Ronald Protas, Graham's heir, formed the Martha Graham Trust and sued the Martha Graham Center for rights to her dances, technique, and name. Hodes testified in five of the six resulting trials. Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ultimately ruled that 54 of the disputed dances belonged to the Center, ten were in the public domain, and one, Seraphic Dialogue, was owned by Protas, with all trademark claims against the Graham Company and Center dismissed.