Florida State University's Research in Review

Portrait
by Elaine Smith

Nancy Smith Fichter

This spring, Florida State loses an icon. Nancy Smith Fichter, whose name and FSU dance have been virtually synonymous for 33 years, is retiring from a department that has never known--or needed--any other leader.

It was a freshman Nancy Smith from Jacksonville who in 1948 first encountered an FSU dance class--as part of her phys ed requirement. The program she leaves bears the mark of a pioneering visionary, with status that for years has won the attention and respect of the very best in the business.

Surely it’s a business Fichter has come to know like few others. From the day she saw Martha Graham’s touring company as a freshman in Tallahassee--an event she calls "life-changing; a true recognition experience"--until today, Fichter’s life has been entirely consumed by a vision that was hers to turn into reality, always with help and influence from some of the most renowned luminaries in the field.

Even before leaving FSU in 1954 with a masters degree in English, Fichter had made her way to New York to begin her professional training. She enrolled in the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance and eventually was asked to join the company’s advanced class taught by Graham and the company’s principal dancers. It was her New York experience that brought her face to face with many of the greats of modern dance, but none more compelling than Graham herself.

Thoroughly indoctrinated in the Graham-based technique, Fichter eventually went to Texas where she earned a doctorate in dance and related arts from Texas Woman’s University in Denton. In 1964 she returned to Tallahassee, lured by the opportunity of building a dance department at the very place where all her dreams began.

Today, serious, academic dance programs exist all over the country, but 30 years ago there were only a few, primarily those at the UCLA, Ohio State, Texas Woman’s University, at Bennington in Vermont, and, thanks to Fichter, Florida State. Most began as FSU’s did, within P.E. departments, and all were obliged to fight their way out of the category and into "artistic respectability."

Fichter the artist/visionary, had few models and no preconceived notions when she set out to create her ideal department, a "conservatory within the university." She saw no conflict between an intellectual understanding of art and top-quality technical training. Both, she believes, are "part of the humanistic endeavor."

Her ambitions for the fledgling department were three-fold, she recalled recently. First, she wanted the program to be "studio-centered." At its heart would be "the making and doing of dance," as she put it. Secondly, Fichter wanted her graduates fully qualified to compete for the top jobs available in this highly competitive profession. To this end, FSU dance students are required to be "multi-lingual" movers. They are thoroughly trained in three major schools of dance technique--ballet, Graham-based training, and a specialty of the student’s choosing.

Throughout her teaching career, Fichter emphasized the Graham-based approach not only because she loved it but because it is "a highly evolved modern dance technique, a language of movement with its own vocabulary, grammar, and syntax."

Ballet, of course, has a history stretching back hundreds of years. ("No modern dancer today avoids ballet the way they did in the fifties when there was a real schism between the modern dancers and those classically trained," she says.) For the other dance genres, Fichter has developed an extremely diverse faculty whose differences she has nurtured. "Building a department," she says, "is like casting a dance." One seeks strong committed people "to build a program, not a little monument to yourself."

Personal monuments don’t suit Fichter’s style. Words such as "fluid," "evolving," and "motion" fill her vocabulary and describe her art. She is none too fond of "the rigid little categories" of institutional life, a condition in academia she dubs, "curricula sclerosis." Nor is the standard language of turf or exclusion hers--she’s much more interested in the ways different disciplines speak to and enhance each other ("The other arts teach you other ways of being.") Her creative influences include the other arts (especially music--"what a campus to be on!"), and a deep appreciation of the natural world.

Her third ambition for her department was that it preserve dance’s ephemeral history by becoming a repository of dance repertoire--preserving the Classics by reconstructing them. It’s a mark of Fichter’s stature that the FSU company has been granted permission to recreate so many masterworks. What’s more, FSU has a full-time dance historian on staff. "Knowledge of the past erases false generational boundaries," says the 66-year-old dancer with a smile.

This February, alumni from all over the country are returning to campus for a concert that will feature Fichter’s choreography and celebrate her career. The celebrants have much to honor: Fichter leaves a body of her own work that includes more than 90 original compositions; a core of students who’ve performed and taught at the highest levels the discipline offers; and a group of dance faculty second to none in the country. For the occasion, Fichter is reviving four pieces and creating a new one. Some of her former students will perform works which they originally premiered.

So, yet another generation turns. It should be a memorable concert, and typically Fichter-esque: energetic, humorous and technically brilliant, touching on the past, then leaping effortlessly to something new and enduring.