Isamu Noguchi

Going through the UH library's dance section, I found this striking image in Designing For the Dancer by Roy Strong et al.

Tallchief and Magallanes in Orpheus. Design by Isamu Noguchi.

Photo by George Platt Lynes.

Beautiful image. Doesn't show Noguchi's sculpture though, and I'll have to look for a video of the dance to see what these props are.

Noguchi had a long-standing collaboration with Martha Graham, and also made sets for several other dance stars including George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham. This information got me interested so I did a little research. Next to read - Spaces of the Mind: Isamu Noguchi's Dance Designs by Robert Tracy. For now, a quote.

There is joy in seeing sculpture come to life on the stage in its own world of timeless time. Then the air becomes charged with meaning and emotion, and form plays its integral part in the re-enactment of a ritual. Theater is a ceremonial; the performance is a rite. Sculpture in daily life should or could be like this. In the meantime, the theater gives me its poetic, exalted equivalent.

- Isamu Noguchi (quote found here)