Mary Overlie (January 15, 1946 – June 5, 2020) was an American choreographer, dancer, theater artist, professor, author, and the originator of the Six Viewpoints technique for theater and dance. The Six Viewpoints technique is both a philosophical articulation of postmodern performance and a teaching system addressing directing, choreographing, dancing, acting, improvisation, and performance analysis. The Six Viewpoints has been taught in the core curriculum of the Experimental Theater Wing within Tisch School of the Arts at New York University since its inception (1978).
Overlie was the co-founder of several long lasting art institutions such as Danspace Project, the Studies Project, Movement Research, and the Experimental Theater Wing at New York University.
Her choreography, both solo and for Mary Overlie Dance Company (1978-1986), has toured extensively through Europe and has been performed in New York at the Holly Solomon Gallery, The Kitchen Center for Music, Video and Dance, St. Mark's Danspace, Dance Theater Workshop, The Museum of Modern Art and numerous lofts in New York.
Overlie received two Bessie Achievement Awards, the first for creating the Studies Project, shared with Wendell Beavers, and the latter for her life-time contribution to dance.
She collaborated with Lee Breuer, JoAnne Akalaitis, David Warrilow, Ruth Maleczech, Anne Bogart, Yvonne Rainer, and Barbara Dilley.
Life and career
1950-1960s
Mary Overlie was born in Eastern Montana. She moved to Bozeman at the age of six, where she came under the influence of Gennie DeWeese (d. 2007), and Robert DeWeese (d.1990). As modernist painters, Gennie and Robert DeWeese were notable and influential members of the development of the Montana contemporary arts community, which included potters Rudy Autio and Peter Voulkos, sculptors James Reineking and Deborah Butterfield, and writer Robert Pirsig of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
For Overlie, Montana's raw and minimal landscape combined with her relationship to Robert and Gennie DeWeese inspired her inquiry into the materials of performance. The question "what are dance and theater made of?", would over the years develop into the Six Viewpoints, Overlie's technical language to discuss the artistic form of performance parallel to the specific language used to describe painting.
Overlie began her dance training in ballet and improvisation with teacher Harvey Jung (former member of New York Opera Ballet Company) in Robert DeWeese's studio on Main Street in Bozeman. Throughout her teens, Overlie studied theater, dance, and visual art and immersed herself in the Montana arts community until in 1962 she moved to Berkeley, California by way of freight train.
In the Bay Area of California and at Connecticut College, Overlie studied Martha Graham technique with David Wood, Merce Cunningham technique with Margaret Jenkins, and José Limón technique with Anne Swearingen and Betty Jones. Additionally, Overlie studied Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, becoming a Transcendental Meditation teacher in 1968. The teachings of Transcendental Meditation would later influence the philosophical foundations of the Six Viewpoints, specifically as a process of refinement for conscious awareness
During her years in San Francisco, Overlie danced with the Anne Swearingen Dance Company, the Teresa Dickensen Dance Company, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the Jan Lapiner Dance Company. She later performed in works choreographed by Yvonne Rainer and Barbara Dilley, founders of the Grand Union.
1970-1980s
In 1969, Dilley invited Overlie to make a performance for the Whitney Museum in New York City as a part of her improvisational dance company, Natural History of the American Dancer. Overlie arrived in SoHo in January 1970 while assisting Yvonne Rainer in her research and workshop tour in preparation for Rainer's film Lulu.
Overlie continued as a member of the Natural History of the American Dancer with Carmen Beauchat, Cynthia Hedstrom, Judy Padow, Rachel Lew and Suzanne Harris from 1970 to 1975. The company performed at The Whitney Museum, 112 Greene St. Gallery, Ornette Coleman's Artist's House, Paula Cooper Gallery, Bennington College, Oberlin College and other venues. In 1972, Overlie began experimenting with the early explorations of Steve Paxton, founder of Contact Improvisation. From 1975 to 1979, Overlie danced with the Judy Padow Dance Company before she started her own company and work as a soloist.
In 1974, Overlie cofounded Danspace Project, a dance-presenting organization, at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery with New York School poet Larry Fagin [9] and choreographer Barbara Dilley.