I thank my lucky stars that I landed here,” says Stephanie Clemens, who turned 70 this year and is marking 40 years since she first “rolled up the rug in my apartment” and started teaching dance in Oak Park.
So maybe she’s in a retrospective mood. Maybe that’s why her Momenta dance troupe’s fall program, which runs the next two weekends, includes so many historical works.
One of those dances, “La Ventana,” goes all the way back to 1856. The works of a number of modern dance pioneers will be performed, choreographers such as Auguste Bournonville (creator of “La Ventana”), Mikhail Fokine, Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, and, of course, Oak Park’s own Doris Humphrey.
Never heard of them? Neither have a lot of the college classmates that Clemens’ graduates encounter as they study dance at the university level. But her former students all know the names, and it gives them a competitive edge, Clemens says.
“We focus much more on history than most ballet schools and dance companies,” she adds. Her students also become familiar with the major codified techniques, like Labanotation and Beneschnotation, which allow these early dances to be passed down across generations.
In addition, Clemens has myriad contacts with master dancers/teachers who have direct connections to some of the giants of modern dance. Valery Dolgallo, for instance, was once a student at the Vaganova Institute, home of the Kirov Ballet in Russia. He’s been working with the younger dancers on works by Fokine and Anna Pavlova. The fall concert will include “The Dying Swan,” “La Nuit,” “The Dragonfly,” and an excerpt from “Petrouchka.”
In addition, they’ll be performing “Water Study” by Doris Humphrey (1928), and “Lynchtown,” by her partner Charles Weidman (1936). Martha Graham’s 1947 “Night Journey,” based on the Oedipus myth, completes their journey through dance history.
“I’m not sure there’s another company that could present a concert with this many historical works,” Clemens notes.
But Momenta is more than a group of graceful historical re-enactors. Clemens’ bi-annual dance concerts always reflect an extremely wide range of styles and eras, right up to the present. This concert, for instance, ends with a hip-hop finale.
“It relates to the Occupy Wall Street protests,” she observes.
A sub-specialty of Momenta will also be represented: choreography for dancers with disabilities. Clemens’ Academy of Movement and Music now offers dance workshops for children with disabilities, and more professionals are creating choreography for the disabled. Momenta features two adult members, Kris Lenzo and Ginger Lane, whose dance performances often transcend their wheelchairs.
Clemens points out that twin brothers are studying in their program, one of whom is severely disabled.
It’s not all serious, though. Momenta is doing one piece, for instance, about 1950s housewives this go-round. “We like to have fun,” Clemens says.
But they definitely work hard — technique class 5-6 times a week, rehearsals four nights a week. They rehearse on Saturdays and some Sundays. They were even at it on Columbus Day.
“It’s a serious commitment,” Clemens says, recalling one little girl who was asked how she felt about the regimen.
“You learn what it takes to be good at something,” she replied.
“It’s a good life lesson,” says Clemens, who has learned it herself over the past four decades. Once upon a time, she remembers, someone called her “a magnificent dilettante,” but “there’s a credibility you get from doing your job for a long time.”
She’s been doing it long enough so that one-time students now enroll their own children.
“This school has so many generations,” she observes. “Memories are constantly getting jogged.”
The intergenerational thing applies even to their photo archives. Clemens has a great pictorial record of her 40-year dance entrepreneurship, thanks to photographer Anne Bradley, whose daughter Lisa grew up dancing at the Academy and with Momenta. Now Lisa has taken over the photographer’s role and her son is taking lessons — from Clemens’ son, J.P. Tenuta, one of the mainstays of Momenta, who will be dancing in “La Ventana,” set by Randall Newsom, former head of the dance department at Northern Illinois University, where Tenuta studied. That’s how interconnected this world is.
“That’s Oak Park,” Clemens explains.
Her dance enterprise now numbers 60 staff members, roughly 8 of whom work full-time, teaching and working in the office. The rest are part-time instructors, many of them program alums.
“I’ve known many since they started dancing here at the age of 2,” Clemens says. The older dancers in the program do a lot of demonstrating for the younger ones, so by the time they’re adults, they’ve had plenty of teaching experience.
These days, Clemens does more administrative work than instruction, but she still teaches the 11-year-olds three days a week.
“It’s a good age,” she notes. “They’re motivated. No hormones.”
She does plenty of “kibitzing,” but over the years she has delegated more and more responsibility to the younger generations, partly because she has succession in mind. She wants this institution to continue after she retires.
Not that she’s planning retirement. A large part of her activity involves helping the high school seniors “package” their applications to the better university-level dance programs, such as the Julliard and the University of Arizona. That’s where the historical perspective comes in handy.
“They have the experience of dance history,” she notes, “not just reading about it.”
But historical perspective isn’t enough either. Clemens, with the assistance of her partner, Mike Dutka, also have to keep up with the latest technology and choreography.
“We keep going in so many directions,” Clemens says, “and try to put it all on stage at once.”
She couldn’t have foreseen all this when she and her husband moved to Oak Park from California in 1969. Neither could she have foreseen how much work it would demand.
It helps that she landed in the right location.
“This is not a transient community,” Clemens says. “People come back. They value arts and education. There are no dabblers and dilettantes.”