Mary Overlie

After twenty years of working on the manuscript for the Six Viewpoints, Overlie completed and self-published Standing in Space: Six Viewpoints Theory and Practice in 2016. She resided in Bozeman, Montana, taught workshops in America and Europe and was organizing an advanced Six Viewpoints School.

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.

Overlie founded the Six Viewpoints Studio at Tisch School for the Arts in 2006 and continued teaching at The Experimental Theater Wing until 2015 when she retired and moved to Bozeman, Montana.

Overlie was awarded the 1999 Bessie Achievement Award, for her lifetime contribution to dance, "For a pallet-and-knife architecture of the choreographic canvas, a Sustained Achievement in luminous formalism concerning the body's place in time and space, a stillness drawn by the eye around the moving form, as elegantly represented in Small Dance / Locations of Love".

In January 1998, a national conference on the Viewpoints was held in New York, sponsored by New York University, Pace University and Stage Directors and Choreographer Foundation.

Overlie continued to perform in New York in an improvisation ensemble alongside Wendell Beavers and Paul Langland. They performed their work at Danspace, St. Mark's Church, New York Judson Church, Columbia University, Simone Forti Studio, Francis Alenikoff Studio, and Eden's Expressway among others from 1987 to 2001. Some of their works include: No Angels, No Apes (1993), Wallpaper (1999) and Rooms and Buildings (2001).

She was a resident choreographer at ETW Paris, where she developed Skies over America (1986) and at the European Dance Development Center in Arnhem, Holland, where she developed Country (1992) and Dances for Prepared Bodies (1996). She toured performing her solo-pieces Small Dance (1989), History (1997), and Location of Love (1998), and worked as a freelance teacher in France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Austria, and the Netherlands.

She was the director of the Experimental Theater Wing Paris program from 1985-1987 and by invitation oversaw the creation of the Pro Series Internationale Tanz Wochen Wien in Vienna, Austria (1989) where she met and organized workshops taught by Susanne Linke, Karine Saporta, Ismael Ivo, and Merce Cunningham among others. The Pro Series, now called ImPulsTanz Festival, invites world-renowned choreographers to teach workshops and choreograph experimental works in progress on students of the Internationale Tanz Wochen Wien.

Other notable stage collaborations included those with Anne Bogart, founder of the SITI Company, on the productions Artouist (1984) and South Pacific (1986). Via these collaborations, she introduced Bogart to the Six Viewpoints, which Bogart later adapted to design the training and directorial work of the SITI Company.

From 1984 through 1998, Overlie was working in Europe as an educator, choreographer and performer.

Sylvère Lotringer interviewed Overlie for Semiotext(e) edition Notes on the Schizo-Culture Issue (1979) alongside Jack Smith, Philip Glass, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Robert Wilson, John Cage and other leading philosophers and artists "that had already devoted their thought to the perpetual collapsing of borders." This interview posited Overlie as notable exponent of post-modernism.

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.

The Mary Overlie Dance Company (founded 1978), included original members Paul Langland, Wendell Beavers, and Nina Martin. The company performed Overlie's choreographies, some notable works include: Painter's Dream (1978), Hero (1979) partially scored by Laurie Anderson, History (1983) and Wallpaper (1983), all performed at The Kitchen. Adam and Eve (1983) presented at Dance Theater Workshop, and The Figure (1979) performed at the Museum of Modern Art.

In 1978, Overlie co-founded "The School for Movement Research & Construction", now Movement Research, a non-profit organization that offers dance classes, workshops, residencies and performance opportunities for artists in New York City. Its focus is on improvisation, post-modern dance, and experimentation.About Us [1]

In 1977, Overlie choreographed and performed Window Pieces, Glassed Imaginations and Glassed Imaginations II at the Holly Solomon Gallery, 112 Greene Street, Manhattan. The pieces were performed in the storefront windows of the gallery to audiences on the sidewalk of New York's SoHo neighborhood. Ron Argelander invited her to join him as the first teacher of the Experimental Theater Wing of Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

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.

Seminal to Overlie's career is an enduring association with Mabou Mines Theater Company. She contributed choreography and staging for director Lee Breuer's Saint and the Football Players (1974), David Warrilow's The Lost Ones (1979), written for him by Samuel Beckett and presented at The Public Theater, and Red Beads (2000) presented at Mass MoCA. Her work with Mabou Mines also included collaborations with director JoAnne Akalaitis on the theatrical productions Cascando (1977), Dressed Like an Egg (1978), and Dead End Kids (1983) at The Public Theater.

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 1975-1979, Overlie danced with the Judy Padow Dance Company before she started her own company and work as a soloist.

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.

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

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.

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).