Hometown Hero Cristyne Lawson, Dancer and Dean

Cristyne Lawson

“All I’ve ever wanted to do is dance,” said Cristyne Lawson, the recently retired Dean of the Dance Department at CalArts and a person who has danced with every icon of the American modern dance movement of the 20th century.

Cristyne Lawson’s great grandmother, Ary Shaw McReynolds, moved, with her daughter, Mary McReynolds Stout, and her son-in-law, Rev. Stout, to Santa Monica in 1908.  Rev. Stout had been asked to join Rev. Phillips at the CME Church on Fourth Street and Mrs. Stout would teach English at Prairie View College.

Ary Shaw McReynolds is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery on Pico Boulevard.  The family believed her to be of both African American and Native American heritage.  Also buried at Woodlawn are Lawson’s mother, father, sister, and uncle.

Her mother, Bernice Stout Lawson, grew up in Santa Monica and studied piano with the well-known teacher, Miss Lilias G. Hart. She went on to study music at the University of Southern California and to be a performing artist.

Lawson’s father, Hilliard Lawson, was the first black City Council member in Santa Monica.  He came to California after being thrown out of Vicksburg, Mississippi when his father died.  His mother went to work, as a cook, for the socially prominent Pasadena Jowitt family.  This was Cristyne Lawson’s first introduction to Deborah Jowitt, who became her friend, went on to be the Dance Critic for the Village Voice, and to write glowing reviews of Lawson dancing with Alvin Ailey.

Unlike her father’s racially hateful experiences in Mississippi, Lawson felt “at home in Santa Monica.” She reflected on her childhood saying,  “I have been really lucky. I wasn’t ostracized, as a child in Santa Monica for being black, as children were in so many places in America.  People put more into color than what’s there.

“I felt there was no place that I would rather be.  My friends and relatives all lived within easy walking distance.  I had a bicycle and could go everywhere in the city.  There were no parking lots and no parking meters. Can you imagine how wonderful it was to have the beach coming right up to the grass?

“In the Santa Monica black community, everyone used to go to CME Church, on Fourth Street in Ocean Park, for their social life,” said Lawson.  “Originally called the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, as the country changed its ideas about race, it became known as the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

“I am who I am because my grandmother listened to everything I said and was interested in everything I did.  If I went to a movie, I could come home and act out every part and she would give me unending attention.

“My grandmother took me to Lincoln (Reed) Park for the dance program.  The woman who taught dance at the park was a Ruth St. Denis trained teacher.  I knew then that I wanted to be a dancer.”

Lawson went to Santa Monica High School (Samohi) and then on to Los Angeles High School where they had a dance program, headed by the Wigman dancer, Martha Krogman. In high school she performed with the school’s Orchesis Club and she performed in the movie “Carmen Jones,” starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte.

Accepted to Juilliard, she was a member of the first Juilliard Dance Company. “Coming from Santa Monica, I found New York unreal.  I had to adjust,” remembered Lawson. “I lived at the Dunbar Apartments in Harlem.  Juilliard was still at 125th Street at that time.”

Lawson took a break from Juilliard to go on a worldwide, six-month tour with the Graham Company.  She also worked on Broadway, where she and Alvin Ailey were lead dancers in  “Jamaica,” starring Lena Horne and Ricardo Montalban.  When home for the summer from her studies at Juilliard, she performed in the movie “Porgy and Bess.”

After graduation from Juilliard, she toured Europe with the Modern Jazz Quartet.  It was in Europe that she met her husband, Graham Smith, an Australian architect and a dancer.  They were married 19 years, and had two children.  

It was a telegram asking her to come and help start a new school in Buffalo, New York that brought her back to the states. “At the school, I was choreographing for my own company,  ‘Company of Man.’ We were dancers and film-makers and we made multi-media films.  I also choreographed a dance called ‘The Story of Christ in Vietnam.’ It was the most incredible moment.  We could not have lasted.  It was so completely consuming.”

She went on to become the dean of The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts.   “The school decided artists were the best people to run schools. They felt you had to have done it in order to teach it,” said Lawson.

“The problem with a school like CalArts, is you can have famous people come, but teaching can’t be about ‘you.’  One has to be able to bridge the gap between being an artist and doing one’s own work and at the same time give to the students.

“I’m really happy to be back in Santa Monica.  I’ve been all over the world, but I love Santa Monica. It has changed, but it hasn’t changed beyond recognition.  Ocean Park still has the same feel.”

What Say You? Big Changes Coming to Downtown

Big changes are coming to Santa Monica’s Downtown District. The Exposition Light Rail (Expo) is on schedule to open 2015.   The City has just completed a deal to secure the property between Fourth and Fifth Streets on Arizona, taking over the current sites of both Bank of America and Chase Bank.  The Civic Center Parks are on a fast track and are now in the public planning process.  Plans are being made for freeway capping adjacent to the Civic Center Parks. The California incline is scheduled for infrastructure improvement.  The Santa Monica Pier Bridge is scheduled for infrastructure improvement.  Santa Monica Place reopened August 2010 and is still evolving.  A new AMC Cineplex is planned for Fourth Street.  The City is about to start work on the Downtown Specific Plan, the document that will set the guidelines for the future of the downtown.

Expo is expected to bring thousands of people into Santa Monica’s downtown to shop, to eat, to play.  It is both hoped and expected that people who currently drive to Santa Monica will decide it is more convenient and more fun to take Expo and leave their cars at home.

 “Moving people in, through and around downtown, accommodating pedestrians, and encouraging bike riders are key concerns for downtown,” according to Kathleen Rawson, CEO of the Bayside District Corporation.  “Responding to issues of homelessness and taking care of homeless people used to be the highest ranked issue in the downtown community.  Now it’s parking and traffic.”

Downtown Santa Monica is a local, regional and international destination.  More than 60,000 people will come just to skate at the Ice Rink and thousands more will come to watch the skaters and to admire the decorative art.  Portraits of Hope, an internationally acclaimed non-profit that helps children deal with trauma through participation in public art, decorated the Ice Rink.

Events in the downtown are the responsibility of the Bayside District, as is the Ambassadors program.  Ambassadors, wearing logo shirts, greet visitors, answer questions about where to eat, give directions, escort employees to cars on late work nights, connect lost objects and owners, remove graffiti, and keep a record of all their interactions – over 170,000 in the past year. 

Santa Monica’s Police Chief Tim Jackman said, “Much credit goes to the Ambassadors for the decrease in the downtown homeless population.  Santa Monica’s homeless population is down about 23% citywide and over 27% in the downtown area.  The Ambassadors have done a good job of connecting homeless people to City Services.”

Councilman Bobby Shriver, a nationally recognized thinker and problem solver in the movement to ‘End Homelessness’ agrees, saying, “When it comes to addressing homelessness, Santa Monica is the regional leader.”

Bayside District is the public-private company responsible for planning and managing the downtown.  They are funded by a downtown property assessment, a portion of the business license fees, and revenues from special events, such as filming.  Bayside’s total annual budget is now approximately $5 million.

“Bayside gets $200,000 from the City for services through the Public Landscape Division for Promenade maintenance,” said Assistant City Manager Elaine Polachek, when asked about City support for Bayside. “Although the Ambassadors, may report problems more quickly than in other parts of the City, when it comes to ‘fixing potholes’ they go into the regular queue with the rest of the City.  The City benefits directly from business license fees, parking revenues and sales tax dollars.  We also benefit because the Promenade is a draw for tourists and the City relies on tourism for revenue.”

Given the importance of downtown and the scale of the planned new projects, City Staff is preparing for a Council study session to present an overview of all projects, recommendations on how to co-ordinate and manage the proposed projects, and recommendations for a process for public participation.  The study session will be held late January or early February 2011 at City Council.

The number and scale of the proposed projects brings us back to how are going to move people in, through and around downtown.  But it’s not people that create the slow moving traffic and the lack of parking spaces, it’s the cars they drive. Doing Expo right will get people from the Los Angeles region out of their cars and into Santa Monica by light rail.  Bayside District, working with the City, will need to create a welcoming environment, with fun and easy options for getting around town to change how everyone, visitors and locals, get through and around downtown.  

“It will take time to create an infrastructure for bicycles and time to change a general mind set,” Chief Jackman noted.  “But, during the City Manager’s talks with neighborhood groups, biking was a top issue and so our direction to create the infrastructure for bicyclists is clear.” 

The goal is to make the downtown work in a way that is good for the downtown, for our neighborhood business districts, and for the whole city.   The success of our goals will be measured by; the number of visitors, the ease of getting around town, financial benefits and even-handedness, and the use of planning and architecture to define the character of Santa Monica.   

With thanks to the Bayside District for starting Santa Monica’s ‘Buy Local’ program, let us remember the ‘Buy Local’ slogan, “Santa Monica First” and guide the changes to come without changing our core values.

What Say You?