Immediate Experience: Mrs. Houlton Discusses Dance

Immediate Experience: Mrs. Houlton Discusses Dance

“Dancing is the most fragile of all art forms,” Mrs. Houlton said. “It is fragile, you see, because a dancer can’t hang in a museum. We can’t be preserved. The dance is not inanimate; it can’t be placed on top of a desk and studied.”

Minnesota Dance Theatre Records
Performing Arts Archives

2-Feb-68

Friday, Feb. 2, 1968

Immediate Experience
Mrs. Houlton Discusses Dance
by Jenny Obst

When Mrs. Loyce Houlton isn't at CSC teaching modern dance, her life is her Contemporary Dance Playhouse. Saturdays she can be found in her studio doing what she likes best — teaching modern dance.

In discussing dance as an art form, Mrs. Houlton speaks as one from the inside looking in.

"Dancing is the most fragile of all art forms," Mrs Houlton said. "It is fragile, you see, because a dancer can't hang in a museum. We can't be preserved. The dance is not inanimate; it can't be placed on top of a desk and studied."

Mrs. Houlton went on to discuss dance as a medium. "Dance is the least used medium, I suppose, because it is the least appreciated or understood."

As a medium it is not understood because visually the dance must be seen and accepted so quickly. Most people reject a medium the first time it is thrown at them. They need a little time to get used to it before they accept it.

"But dance is such an immediate experience," she said. "Dance can't give you that time to get used to it." Mrs. Houlton studied dance in New York and moved to St. Paul in 1958 with her husband, who is a St. Paul physician. In 1962 she formed the Playhouse, the same year she started at CSC.

Speaking about the arts at St. Catherine's, Mrs. Houlton sees "a definite fragmentation of the various art forms here. Music majors stick to their department, art majors stick to theirs and there is very little 'inter-discipline'." She sees this as true actually on all campuses to a certain extent.

"It is too bad really because in a sense we all deal with the same current dilemmas, we all share the same roots." She added perhaps with the building of the fine arts building on this campus this situation may be changed. Despite the fragmentation she does see the dance form as becoming more popular with modern audiences.

"Previously only one percent of the public paid any attention to dance, except in its religious forms," she said. "Now it is becoming more popular. However, in the acceptance of the medium, people are typically one step behind the medium itself. It's the 18th century form of dance — the ballet — that is now becoming popular."

According to Mrs. Houlton, one reason for the difficulty of people accepting the medium of the dance is "most people are not able to understand the enormous amount of dedication it takes."

As she said in her presentation of the modern dance at the Student-Faculty Institute, "A true artist must have extreme honesty, integrity, and most of all, a capacity for hard, hard work."

Hard work is what the arts take, along with intelligent application. "There is no such thing as the arts without the intellect. In fact, the two can't exist without each other," she insists.

(Caption under photo)
Mrs. Loyce Houlton