Photo courtesy Jan Van Dike
When Contemporary Dance Theater founder Jefferson James first moved to Cincinnati with her husband in 1964, there was no real dance scene in the city. “There was sort of a society of ballet studios that developed into Cincinnati Ballet. There was one modern dance teacher at the University of Cincinnati,” says James. “But there weren’t any studios teaching modern that I knew of.”
James trained as a dancer at Julliard and studied under some of the founders of modern dance—Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and José Limón, so she got plenty of work teaching classes at CCM and the JCC. But she wasn’t doing what she really wanted. “My goal at that point was to dance. We just wanted to dance.”
In the spring of 1970, James and fellow dancer Holly Schwein created Dance ’70, the city’s first ever modern dance group. Two years later, Schwein left, and James changed the name to Contemporary Dance Theater. With very few dancers and little money, the company couldn’t afford a physical theater space, so performances often took place in more unorthodox locations.
“There was a program that went around the city called the show wagon, that in the summertime, went and gave free performances in parks, so we danced on a little bus with a built-out little stage,” says James. “We danced on the Serpentine Wall. We danced on the steps of the courthouse. We danced at the zoo. We were kind of everywhere. There was no way we could get audiences.”
So James turned to her modern dance network. She began to book visiting artists and companies, bringing national talent to the city, which helped CDT start to gain an audience. She even created a summer dance festival featuring choreographers from all over the country. In 1985, CDT became one of the first partners in the National Performance Network, a network of artists and organizations funding art that advances cultural justice.
James always knew that modern dance would find a space here. “Each choreographer offers a different aesthetic, a different point of view. Something that they want to say or present. It was a reaction to a very elitist approach to life. The younger generation wanted to do something that talked about the human condition, what was going on in the world,” she says. “We danced barefoot. We danced much more equally. Maybe it was an attempt for a classless society.”
Many of her own dancers and associates went on to form companies of their own, including Jeanne Mam-Luft and Shawn Womack. In 2021, Contemporary Dance Theater merged with Mam-Luft’s company, MamLuft&Co., to form Mutual Dance Theatre, and James stepped down after more than 50 years of building the dance scene in the city. “I worked with some really wonderful people. Everybody in the arts thinks that the people in their field are the best, but I really worked with some amazing people here in the city.”
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