Streaming audio file 1, May 2, 2017 (approximately one hour and 37 minutes). Aileen Passloff speaks with Arthur Avilés about their long friendship; (briefly) growing up in Jackson Heights (N.Y.); her family, in New York and in Georgia, in particular her maternal grandmother; her parents; reasons she greatly preferred New York to Georgia; more on her childhood in Jackson Heights and her grandmother; her seeking out books and music as a child; her time at college [Bennington College] including an anecdote about her first music class; more on her father and her upbringing including her relationship with her sister and her love of books; studying at SAB [School of American Ballet] including her audition; her teachers including Muriel Stuart and Anatole Oboukhoff; working for Edward Caton; more on her time at SAB and her teachers there; Fara Lynn Krasnopolsky; her first dance performances; more on her time at SAB, in particular the opportunity to see great artists, for example Alexandra Danilova; Jimmy [James ] Waring and how much he taught her; an anecdote about Waring, Jell-O and the Automat (restaurant); her first professional engagements as a dancer.
Streaming audio file 2, May 3, 2017 (approximately one hour and 37 minutes). Aileen Passloff speaks with Arthur Avilés about her childhood love of reading and making up stories; more on classes with Fara Lynn Krasnopolsky; her feeling of connection to the ground and the centrality of earth to dance; more on James Waring; an early work of hers in which David Vaughan performed; James Waring's background; his work The wanderers, first performed at the 92nd Street Y; the artistic community around Waring at that time; her time at Bennington College including an anecdote about Katherine Litz; some of her teachers including Paul Boepple; joining Sophie Maslow's dance company [Sophie Maslow Dance Company] and touring; her brief time studying at Martha Graham's studio [Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance]; her affiliation with James Waring, David Vaughan, and Dance Associates; her company at that time (Aileen Passloff and Dance Company); Remy Charlip including some of their collaborations; María Irene Fornés; the dance world at that (pre-Judson Dance Theater) time; the difficulty in labeling the kind of dance she and her circle were creating then; some of the small theaters in which she worked including the Cubiculo and the Living Theatre; meeting her husband, Robert Farren, through her work in the film Killer's kiss; being cast in the role of Topsy in the musical The King and I; the hostility of the other dancers towards her; Waring's work Salute, the ballet solo he created for her at Judson Dance Theater, including an anecdote about Vera Nemchinova; more on her work with Edward Caton, including his choreographing a production of the play The dybbuk; the Judson Memorial Church, in particular its openness to all; her reminiscences of dancers she met through Judson Dance Theater including Lucinda Childs and Yvonne Rainer; some of the works she created in this period including Bench dance (for Childs and Rainer) and Aunt Mary; Merce Cunningham.
Streaming audio file 3, May 13, 2017 (approximately one hour and 30 minutes). Aileen Passloff speaks with Arthur Avilés about the connection she feels with Avilés; works by Jimmy [James] Waring in which she performed including The wanderers, In the mist, Salute, and Octandre; Waring as a dictatorial (as opposed to a collaborative) choreographer vis-a-vis his dancers; Passloff's similar characterization of herself as a choreographer; the challenge of reviving Waring's work; her creative process; her thoughts on the dancers she sees performing today; Bennington College as the start of her creative awakening; her work At home including an anecdote about Walter Terry's review; the nature of her association with Judson Dance Theater including works she created or collaborated on, and people she worked with, there; Toby [Armour]; the hard-scrabble life and immense creativity of the Judson Dance Theater community; her studio and some of the works that originated there; the popularity of Waring's classes; Bard College including how she came to teach there.
Streaming audio file 4, May 13, 2017 (approximately one minute and 19 seconds). Aileen Passloff tells Arthur Avilés an anecdote about herself and a student at Bard College including what she learned from this experience.
Streaming audio file 5, May 30, 2017 (approximately one hour and 38 minutes). Aileen Passloff speaks with Arthur Avilés about working with [Maria] Irene Fornés, in particular on Evelyn Brown [(A diary)]; other collaborations, including Gertrude Stein's play What happened? and Ruth Krauss's play A beautiful day; her husband's support of her work; dancing for Richard Foreman; her teaching, including for Stella Adler at the Masters Institute; other plays in which she participated, including Full moon in March, The dybbuk, and The annunciation; touring in the United States and Canada with Emily Frankel, Mark Ryder, and the Dance Drama Company; her time at Bard College; her study of flamenco, in Madrid; eventually being awarded a Fullbright grant to continue her studies there; studying with Mariquita Flores, in New York; her dance Boa constrictor; teaching what she herself is learning as a natural process for her; her workshops, at Bard College; designing and building a new dance studio at Bard; reminiscences about her early days as a choreographer, in particular the wide range of people who came to her classes; her thoughts on Martha Graham; Jimmy [James] Waring as the primary artistic influence on her; the need for a choreographer to have privacy.