Tandy beal biography

By Scott MacClelland

Since physics tells us that energy cannot be destroyed, but only converted into another form, we must be grateful that so much of it found its way into Tandy Beal, Felton’s gift to the world of dance. 

Why Felton, you ask? A good question for a dancer/choreographer who honed her craft in New York. In fact, moving from the Big Apple to Santa Cruz was done in fits and starts. Beal’s artistic partner and husband, composer Jon Scoville, initiated the relocation. “I didn’t want to do it,” says Beal. But Scoville had a scholarship job at Yale where his teacher was Harry Berger, and when Berger came to the nascent UC Santa Cruz as a professor of literature, Scoville followed him.

Meanwhile, Beal, whose parentswere both professional actors and living in Connecticut, found hergirlish enthusiasm for dance reignited in junior high when she happened to see an Alwin Nikolais performance. “I knew I would dance with him,” she declares, “and I did!” The American-born Nikolais, influenced early on by the German modern dance pioneer Mary Wigman, was a pupil of Hanya Holm at the dance school at Bennington College whose other leading lights included Doris Humphrey, Dennis Weidman and Martha Graham. When Beal met Nikolais, he was already known for his witty ide