Claire Mallardi Named Recipient of 2001-2002 Luise Vosgerchian Teaching Award
Harvard and Radcliffe Dance Pioneer Cited for Vision and Inspiration
Claire Mallardi, Lecturer on Dramatic Arts and Artistic Director Emerita, Radcliffe College, is the recipient of the 2001-02 Luise Vosgerchian Teaching Award, which carries an honorarium of $10,000 and is administered by the Office for the Arts at Harvard. The award was established by Professor and Mrs. Ray A. Goldberg and the Max Goldberg Foundation in order to perpetuate the values and teaching skills represented by the late Professor Vosgerchian, who taught at Harvard for 31 years, serving for four of those years as Music Department chair. At her retirement, Vosgerchian was the Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music.
"As a teacher, Claire Mallardi travels where others fear to tread:
past technique to the aesthetics of dance, the concepts that metamorphose
steps into images, movement into message," journalist and former
Dance Program student Thea Singer wrote in the 1991 winter edition of
Radcliffe News. "By so doing she gave us a whole new way of seeing:
cracking open the window to illusion, she dared us to stretch wide not
only our muscles but also our mind’s eye." A native of the Bronx,
New York, Mallardi completed her major training under modern dance icons
Hanya Holm, Martha Graham, José Limon, and Merce Cunningham, and
was a cast member in Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate during the show’s
first post-Broadway tour. Her mentor, Erika Thimey, was central to her
development. As a choreographer, she has premiered works at Harvard and
Radcliffe, Jacob’s Pillow, The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard, and
with the Dance Circle Company in Boston and the Dance Theater Company
in Washington, D.C., among others, and received a Massachusetts Council
on the Arts and Humanities grant.
When Claire Mallardi arrived at Radcliffe in 1965 to take charge of the
dance program, she did so under the auspices of Radcliffe’s Sports,
Dance, and Recreation Program. In 1973, the Office for the Arts was created
as a joint initiative of Radcliffe and Harvard, and the Dance Program
was moved under its umbrella. Through Mallardi’s efforts the Dance
Program had become more comprehensive, with an increased roster of instructors
and classes of varying levels in ballet, modern, and jazz. Over time Mallardi
introduced classes in flamenco, composition, fundamentals, jazz, tap,
West African, and other offerings. In 1994, she was appointed Artistic
Director and Distinguished Artist in Dance.
Claire Mallardi had a long and fruitful association with Professor Vosgerchian.
Together they developed and taught the Literature and Arts B-56 core course
"Structure and Form in Music and Movement," which was offered
intermittently between 1981 and 1989. According to Judith Parker, writing
in the May-June 1991 issue of Harvard Magazine, "In this class, Mallardi
and Vosgerchian’s dynamic approach to the sonata form stretched students
in ways previously inconceivable to them." Mallardi also created
the course "Movement for Actors" (Dramatic Arts 15) and has
taught it since 1986. The course focuses on character development, movement
vocabulary, methods of improvisation, voice, stage perspective, commedia
del ‘arte, and an overall mastery of skills.
After 37 years of association with the Dance Program, Mallardi continues
to educate and inspire Harvard students and many members of the Greater
Boston dance community. She has devoted herself tirelessly to her students,
and has maintained significant mentoring relationships with many Harvard
graduates who have pursued careers in dance and the dramatic arts. Professional
dancer Christopher Caines ’85 has said, "If it weren’t
for Claire, I wouldn’t be dancing." In a 1998 letter to then
president of Radcliffe College Linda Wilson, Sha-Sha Ang ’97 described
Mallardi as "perhaps the greatest gem at Harvard and Radcliffe; certainly
the most vibrant that I encountered." She added, "Under Claire’s
tutelage and guidance, I choreographed my first piece during my sophomore
year which gave me a glimpse into the way art can be a haven, a means
of expression, an outlet, and an escape for the psyche, the soul, and
in the case of dance, the body. Art forces you to take risks…as Claire
says, ‘Artists have the right to fail.’"
Previous recipients of the Luise Vosgerchian Teaching Award include Joan
Panetti, professor of music at the Yale University School of Music; Curt
Cacioppo, professor of music in the Music Department of Haverford College;
Phyllis Curtin, opera singer and Dean Emerita of Boston University’s
School for the Arts; Lowell E. Lindgren, professor of music at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; and Elma Lewis, arts educator, activist, leader,
and founder of Boston’s Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts.
