Della Davidson | |
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 Photo from the 1980s | |
| Born | Mary Adele Davidson 1951/1952 Texas |
| Died | March 13, 2012 (aged 60)[1] Santa Fe, New Mexico |
| Known for | Modern Dance |
| Spouse | Mark Reiff |
Mary Adele "Della" Davidson (1951/1952 – March 13, 2012[2]) was an American modern dancer, choreographer, and dance professor at theUniversity of California, Davis Department of Theatre and Dance.[3]
Mary Adele Davidson was born in Texas, but grew up in Michigan. While she had trained in ballet since elementary school, she discovered modern dance in college, attendingMichigan State, theUniversity of Utah, and theUniversity of Arizona.[3] She joined the faculty of the University of California, Davis in 2001. While there, she co-createdThe Weight of Memory with Ellen Bromberg, a choreographer/dance filmmaker, andCollapse (suddenly falling down), with theKeckCAVES institute. At the time of her death, she was working with Bromberg on a piece titledand the snow fell softly on all the living and the dead.[3]
She was Artistic Director of Della Davidson Dance Theater since 1986 and Sideshow Physical Theater at UC Davis since 2001.[2][4] She created more than forty works in her lifetime, many of them multidisciplinary, combining dance and film.[2]
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 as10 P.M. Dream orFierce/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.[3]
In 1997, Davidson adapted for dance three stories from the bookThe Stories of Eva Luna byIsabel Allende:Wicked Girl,Tosca, andRevenge. The dance was titledNight Stories: The Eva Luna Project First Cycle and was first performed at the Theater Artaud in San Francisco, California.[5][6]
The Della Davidson Prize is an annual award of $1,220 to support "innovative dance and dance/theater artists."[4]
Davidson was married to Mark Reiff. She died on March 13, 2012, inSanta Fe, New Mexico.[2][3]
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