Gloria
McLean
INTERVIEW WITH GLORIA MCLEAN BY CHRISTINE JOWERS OF THE DANCE ENTHUSIAST FEB. 20, 2024: https://www.dance-enthusiast.com/features/day-in-the-life/view/Gloria-McLean-2024-American-Dance-Guild-Festival-2024-Joan-Miller-Ron-K-Brown-Celia-Ipiotis
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Interview with Broadway World:
https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwdance/article/BWW-Interviews-Gloria-McLean-20141126
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https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/26/arts/dance-in-review-106793.html
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“LIFEDANCE is my solution to the mind-body dichotomy. Two words become one word. Life and art are part of a continuum. I'm interested in the dancer as a human being engaged in life, and I try to express that in my work.”
“LIFEDANCE is a process that embraces technique, choreography, improvisation. And, most importantly, who you are.”
About her choreography:
“An intelligent, witty and sensuous choreographic voice … One of the most satisfying concerts of the New York season.” (Jennifer Dunning, NY Times, 4/26/93)
“One inspired sequence, the dance of separation [loss of a partner due to AIDS]… seemed a startling double image of Rudolph Nureyev, and remains the opera’s [The Manhattan Book of the Dead] most memorable sequence.” (Peter G. Davis, New York Magazine, 5/22/95)
“In her Traces, Marks Gloria Mclean leant on a white platform scribbling in charcoal while four dancers provided background movement. Then, in an ingenious projection of her doing the same thing, she danced in front – looking highly dissatisfied with the results” Hilary Ostlere, Financial Times, Published: September 17 2008
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In Lifedrawing and a Window: “The audience was suspended between deliberation and speed, curves and squares, "real" and manufactured, the recognizable and unknowable.” (Claudia Gitelman, ADG Newsletter, 2006
“Both playful and stressful, the onstage movements [in Bridges and Windows] created a chaos which blossomed into precision like a flower opening in slow motion.” (Teri Wagner, The NH Chronicle, 7/5/2000)
“[In Soma] Sequences in slow motion during which the dancers touched and leaned against one another as if savoring the pleasure of human contact.… sudden falls had the force of choreographic exclamation marks.” (Jack Anderson, NY Times, 11/9/99)
“American dancer Gloria McLean and Japanese sculptor Ken Hiratsuka demonstrated in “Invisible Transfer” how far they went in their drive to create.” (Mu Quian, China Daily, 12/21/98)
“As sentient totemic figures[in Ryoanji Dreaming Me], the dancers moved through a clear landscape … Each piece had a compelling intelligence and visual sensitivity.” (Jennifer Dunning, NY Times, 4/26/94)
“In Body of Memory, Gloria McLean created a distanced but nevertheless painfully vivid portrait of a child and the favorite Easter dress that catches fire and burns her.” (Jennifer Dunning, NY Times, 9/5/93)
“Some of the most important and exciting [work] being done in the avant-garde today.” (Steve DiLauro, Downtown Magazine, 1987)
“McLean has an honest and intelligent way of moving that does not rely solely on her obviously strong technique but on what she is trying to convey with each considered movement.” (Mary Brady, Theatre Ireland, 1989)
“She is constructing a powerful inner dance world.” (Pusan Korea Press, 1990)
“In the solo And See the Stars Again, she expressed the heart of the [Beckett] text, which helped us to appreciate the dance easily.” (Eiji Kimura, Music and Dance Press, Tokyo, 1990)
About Traces, Marks:
“In her Traces, Marks Gloria Mclean leant on a white platform scribbling in charcoal while four dancers provided background movement. Then, in an ingenious projection of her doing the same thing, she danced in front – looking highly dissatisfied with the results” Hilary Ostlere, Financial Times, Published: September 17 2008
“In her “Traces, Marks” Gloria McLean draws an outline of her body on white paper as a quartet of dancers swoop across the stage in disorderly unison.” Gia Kourlas, New York Times, September 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/arts/dance/13adg.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Gloria+McLean&st=nyt
“From several rows back, I can’t see what McLean is doing on the floor, scrabbling around on a white sheet of paper, while four others—a brusque chorus —jolt around in disunion and semi-harmony. When a video of her working on a similar paper is projected on the back wall, we discover that she’s been drawing around her body parts but in a scattershot way, changing positions, guessing at what she’s left out. The video is the best
part, although I suspect a connection that I can’t quite make between the choreographer and her colleagues.” Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice, September 17, 2008
“In "Traces, Marks," choreographer Gloria McLean outlined her supine body on a sheet of paper, creating a messy palimpsest of images that also involved a four-person ensemble and a video of herself at work. As the dance progressed… it became apparent that this dance, too, was a kind of elegy -- the record of a busy life crossed roundabout with pathways and gesticulations.” Robert Johnson, New Jersey
Star Ledger, Saturday, September 13, 2008
About her dancing:
“…Radiant Gloria McLean (the company’s unacknowledged prima) proudly shaking her short locks…” (Deborah Jowett, Village Voice, 3/9/93)
“An exquisite dancer… She fills the stage with lush transcendent movement … an artist in complete command of her instrument.” (Phyllis Goldman, Backstage, 1992)
About her teaching:
“At American Dance Festival, Gloria McLean’s class was the one I looked forward to most… (Her) concept is expressed in the word LIFEDANCE – understanding and realizing dance is the same as life, following the order of nature. The body, mind and soul melt together in the movements… Environmental sound, space and structure are connected in the work.” (Hyung Hee Kim, Choom, Korea’s Dance Magazine, 1989)
“The effect of the lessons was reflected in a different dynamism as a result of McLean’s teaching. The workshop was so much fun you felt the time was too short.” (N.T., Dance Now, Tokyo, 1990)
She says
“When the movement is right, the quality of the air changes.” Quoted in Bongo, Paris, 1993
“…The beauty of dance is it puts us in the present. It’s all about coming into awareness. I think that’s what my work is about.” Quoted in Bongo, Paris, 1993
“I think I try to let the whole person speak in the choreography… It’s always important in seeing dance to just come with fresh open eyes and ears and mind. Eyes, ears and mind.” (Wisconsin State Journal, Nov. 23, 2000)
Excerpt of Review from RAD Fest by Irene Hsiao
Dancing the Trace: A LIFEDRAWING (2015), conceived and performed by Gloria McLean, captured the essence of the solos selected by RADfest 2016 with grace and humor, as McLean traced her own silhouette onto a huge scroll of paper, drawing a thick-tipped magic marker up between her legs, manipulating it around her deliberately posed arm, tracing her head first here and then there. She finishes downstage right, standing back to evaluate the result: a wobbly, many-limbed portrait reminiscent of a Lucian Freud or Egon Schiele sketch, the backs of her thighs inadvertently marked and smudged by her efforts—a little tariff paid, a little scar, maybe, after all, only temporary. Irene Chsiao