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From Hollywood to Downtown: Claire Danes explores her dance roots.

Article Excerpt
At Performance Space 122, Claire Danes twists her body into tangled shapes and struggles on the floor. She uses her arms to belly crawl, her legs following lifeless behind her. Her snake-like spine undulates as she hangs over her legs and forces them to move beneath her.

"Make no mistake. She is a dancer," wrote Deborah Jowitt in The Village Voice about Danes' performance in Christina Olson: American Model. In an hour-long solo choreographed for her by Tamar Rogoff, Danes dances the devastating story of a woman slowly becoming crippled by polio. The piece is inspired by the famous Andrew Wyeth painting, Christina's World. At the end, Danes bursts into an uninhibited and skillful improvisation, releasing the torment of her character's disease.

Of course, Danes is an actress first. She has appeared in over 20 movies including Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet and Steve Martin's Shopgirl, and she played the lead character in the '90s cult classic television series, My So-Called Life.

Danes, 26, grew up in New York City's Soho district. She began taking dance lessons with Ellen Robbins at Dance Theater Workshop when she was 6 and continued until age 14, when she went to Hollywood.

During her time with Robbins, Danes learned a balance of dance technique, improvisation, and choreography. "She was a risk taker and improvised full blast," says Robbins. "She was also a terrific choreographer."

Robbins remembers Danes creating solos with varied dramatic subject matter. She danced a shipwreck, a moth to a flame,...

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