01 · Overview
Michael A. Carson is an Italian-American choreographer, dancer, filmmaker, and playwright. In 1988, he co-founded Ausdruckstanz Dance Theatre in Philadelphia with Brigitta Herrmann, a student of the great German modern dance pioneer Mary Wigman, and served as the company’s co-artistic director through 1994. There he choreographed thirteen works for the concert stage, performed in the United States and Europe. From 1995 to 2002 he toured nationally with an evening of solo “movement essays,” Integrity Brings With It An Empty Plate. Since 2003 he has focused on writing evening-length works for the theater — including Front Of House and the absurdist play Twenty Grand, a Table, and Two Chairs, now revived as a play festival in Italy — as well as the feature film screenplay 'Messiah Seven,' registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2009 (Registration TXu 1-629-768).
“Another Mary Wigman influence came via Hedy Tower. Hedy came from Dresden and was a Wigman student in the 1930s. She left Germany in the mid-1930s because she was Jewish. A later colleague of mine, Michael A. Carson, had taken lessons with her for several years in an amateur dance course. He found out about me and my Wigman background through her. He came to my studio, took part in my workshops and we worked for several years together.”
[Ed. note: Herrmann's original text reads “Heddy Tower”; it is corrected here to “Hedy Tower.”]
Hedy Kaufmann Tower (1913–2012), the Jenkintown teacher through whom Carson reached Herrmann and the Wigman lineage, was herself a link in that chain: born in Bayreuth, Germany, she danced and choreographed in Berlin before fleeing to America as a Jewish refugee in 1940. She taught at the New School for Social Research in New York, then opened studios in Oak Lane and Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, teaching modern and creative dance — continuing to teach until the age of 99. Tower studied with Mary Wigman's sister, Elisabeth Wiegmann, in Dresden. Carson studied with Tower for five years, from 1982 to 1987.
Michael A. Carson
In his own words
"I first met Hedy Tower in 1982 at a Cheltenham High School cafeteria where she was teaching introductory dance classes for adults at night. I had signed up for a Jazzercise class (which was very popular at the time), and walking into the cafeteria I said to Hedy, 'Is this Jazzercise?' She replied, 'No, it's modern dance and we're about to do an improvisation with a chair — Jazzercise is tomorrow night. Stay.' I stayed and did the improvisation as Hedy beat a drum and cymbals. At the end of the class Hedy said, 'Come back next week, forget Jazzercise.' I came back the following week, eventually transitioning to her studio for training over the next five years. I forgot about Jazzercise. During those years I had the pleasure of accompanying her to her hometown of Bayreuth, Germany. It was Hedy who led me to Brigitta Herrmann — I learned of her and her Wigman background through Hedy, came to her studio, and later we went on to found Ausdruckstanz Dance Theatre together."