Professor Della Davidson, Department of Theatre and Dance

Della Davidson was a vital creative force for the Department of Theatre and Dance for over ten years and was a central figure in the Bay Area dance world since the early 1980s.She has been described as one of the West Coast’s most fluent writers for the body, a dance maker of works that ruminate with poignancy and beauty on topics ranging from a woman’s anger to disease, death and the fragility of human existence.Her work echoed with references to the United States tradition in modern dance, and yet her dancers perform with a passionate abandonment of commitment and rage. Over her successful career, she created more than 40 works and received many awards including the Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography and the 1990 North American Award for Choreography.

Lynette Hunter, professorin the Department of Theatre and Dance, expressed her deep sorrow for Davidson’s passing. “Della Davidson leaves an extraordinary presence of light, inspiration and creative integrity.” Hunter said. “Without her, the programs in Theatre and Dance and in Performance Studies would simply not carry the imaginative energy that they do, and with her memory they will continue to do so. She touched us, helped us make dreams and ideas into movement, and that legacy will stay with us forever, gifting the future.”

Born in Texas and raised in Michigan, she moved to New York City to start her career in dance in 1972. Ballet-trained since elementary school, she discovered that being over six foot on pointe made classical partnering impossible, but at Michigan State she discovered modern dance, and at the University of Utah she apprenticed as a choreographer. After earning an M.A. in 1983 at the University of Arizona, Tucson, she began co-directing the San Francisco Moving Company with Ellen Bromberg. Dance scholar Janice Ross identified the style of Della Davidson’s work as an invitation to interplay between narrative content and physical form, between physicality and theatre. Davidson once told Ross that she felt “at home” ina mixture of theatre and education with choreography that emphasizes that “we all have our own artistry.”

Davidson arrived at UC Davis to become a professor of dance in 2001 just as the Department of Theatre and Dance became a merged department. At UC Davis she wore many hats, not the least of which was to help articulate what an interdisciplinary M.F.A. in theatre and dance might become. She was the artistic director of the department’s Sideshow Physical Theatre, which she also established. Each piece of choreography usually took years to complete, as she worked interactively with the dancers and other collaborators to develop the work. A survivor of Hodgkin’s disease that she conquered at the age of 28, her gift was to make work darkly-toned yet human, with beautiful movement that faced tragedy with hope. Driven by an urge to get away from the “roles” she and other women had been brought up to inhabit, she often created dance that evoked the raw energy of forceful women, their strength, physicality and sensuality. Heavily ironic, pieces such as 10 P.M. Dream or Fierce/Pink/House displayed gender stereotypes only to expose them as insidious traps, and she was firmly committed to feminism as a challenge to oppression and small-mindedness.

John Iacovelli, a professor in the theatre and dance department, offered fond memories of Davidson. “What I remember most of Della was her warm smile and her passion for her students,” he said. “She was an expert mentor and has inspired and guided a whole new generation of choreographers and dancers, many of whom now have their own companies. To watch one of her dance pieces was like watching a dream, full of emotion and power.”

A recipient of the UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellowship here at UC Davis, much of her new work was involved in multidisciplinary choreography. Workingagain with Ellen Bromberg, the choreographer/dance filmmaker, she co-created The Weight of Memory and, with the Keck CAVES institute in the Department of Geology, Collapse (suddenly falling down). Della Davidson was working with Bromberg on a new piece for this spring, “and the snow fell softly on all the living and the dead,” which will premiere in May 2012.

Bromberg was deeply saddened by the news of Davidson’s passing. “Della was a profound and compassionate artist and person who brought out that depth in the lives she touched,” she said. “She lived in a world of possibilities, listening to her muses who always hovered close by. She believed in beauty, in the excavation of personal truths, and in the possibility of transformation. We shared so much as dear friends and collaborators throughout our lives and I miss her deeply. Her passing is a great loss for us all.”

Jessie Ann Owens, dean of the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, said of Davidson, “Della was a big and generous presence on our campus—someone who touched all of us lucky enough to work with her and learn from her. I will miss her wise counsel and her absolute dedication to her art. She was truly an inspiration.”

Davidson’s bywords were “creativity” and “collaboration,” and one of her greatest gifts was to recognize potential in others and bring out their strengths, whether they were her students, her dancers, her collaborators, her colleagues or her friends.

A Sacramento resident, Davidson passed away on March 13 at the age of 60, after a long battle with cancer. She is survived by her husband, Mark Rieff.