Lida Smith is an accomplished modern dancer and choreographer, but at age 86, the retired dance teacher’s moves are limited by age.
“I can’t dance like I used to, especially not after a knee and hip replacement,” she said. “I used to be able to leap like there was no tomorrow.”
Nonetheless, the Stanwood woman’s work lives on, finding permanence in some videos that feature Kaitlyn Bostrom of Granite Falls performing Smith’s choreography.
Bostrom is headed in the fall to Cornish College of the Arts, where she will study modern dance.
Smith was one of the people who supported Bostrom’s application to the prestigious Seattle school.
“I have Lida’s beautiful letter of recommendation framed on my bedroom wall,” said Kaitlyn, 18, a student at The Dance School in Everett, Granite Falls High School and Everett Community College.
“To have had the opportunity to be coached by Lida Smith, to have learned from her about the beginnings of modern dance, has been amazing,” Bostrom said. “Her style is so cool.”
Two years ago, Lida’s son Edmund Smith, an Arlington-based photographer and filmmaker, decided he wanted to record some of his mother’s choreography.
His mother chose Bostrom to take the lead in videos of her dances “The Wind and The Waves,” with music by Claude Debussy, and “Flight,” set to music by Philip Glass.
Bostrom’s mother, The Dance School’s administrative director Melissa Bostrom, calls Lida Smith “very artistic and very sharp.”
Smith took her first dance class at age 5 near her home in Glenridge, New Jersey. She moved with her family to Ohio and studied ballet during high school in the Dayton area.
She told her folks she wanted to move to New York City to be a dancer. The compromise was that she would attend Barnard, the women’s college attached to Columbia University, and study also at American School of Ballet in Manhattan. When Smith discovered how much she loved modern dance, she eventually transferred to Bard College (Annadale, New York), where she completed her undergraduate work.
Smith earned her master’s degree at Sarah Lawrence College (just north of New York City) and started dancing with the Charles Weidman dance group in Manhattan, which then led to her longtime professional association with the May O’Donnell dance companies.
Weidman and O’Donnell, along with their teachers and associates Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis, were pioneers of the American art form known as modern dance.
“May had a huge influence on my life,” Smith said. “I just loved taking her classes and performing her choreography, especially the aerial work.”
While dancing with Weidman and O’Donnell, Smith lived in Greenwich Village in a small apartment with two other dancers. Long Manhattan’s bohemian neighborhood, the Village was the home of the Bottomless Cup, where one could always find a group of beatniks hanging out.
“The 1950s were amazing, but I wasn’t a beatnik. It was just that for 10 cents, you could sit at the Bottomless cup all day,” Smith said. “I wore sandals and drank coffee, but I was not a beat. I was much too serious about dance. I had temp office jobs and was the one who brought the food home.”
Smith was still dancing with O’Donnell when she was hired to teach at Hunter College on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Her time there (“I learned to teach as I taught”) led to her full-time work as an assistant professor of dance at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She married Charles Smith, a professor at a nearby college, and soon after their son, Edmund, was born.
In West Chester, Smith became well known for her choreography and her productions using O’Donnell’s choreography. She remains a national expert on O’Donnell’s seminal work “Suspension” — a 13-minute piece Smith first danced in 1955 in New York City.
“‘Suspension’ is a lyric dance that creates a serene mood,” Smith said. “You almost feel as if you’re floating.”
After her retirement and husband’s death in 1995, Smith followed her son (who she calls “my joy”) to the Northwest.
She has shared her choreography with numerous dance groups, most recently with The Dance School, where her granddaughter, Katy Rose Smith, 7, takes ballet.
Melissa Bostrom, the school’s director, said her dancers loved working with Lida Smith on the reproductions of her dances.
“It was an honor for Kaitlyn,” Bostrom said. “I really enjoyed seeing the joy in both of their eyes.”
Smith is proud of her life during the age of classical modern dance. Classical, she said, because modern dance today has advanced.
“For me, modern dance was so different from ballet,” she said. “I was fascinated by the artistic expression dancers were allowed.
“I loved it. Yes, I did.”
To view videos of Smith’s choreography, go to:
youtu.be/TAhy3TUWlIY (“The Wind and The Waves”)
youtu.be/iv7osog4Mls (Behind the Scenes)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZjaIdhdZ9s (“The Flight”)
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