Rita Blitt: Remembering Judith Jamison Dancing ‘Wade in the Water’

Rita Blitt sketched the concept for this sculpture in 1993 while aboard a cruise ship enduring 17-foot waves during a storm off the coast of Iceland. “Everyone aboard the ship was sick, except for me. I was standing and holding onto a little dresser with my left hand. With my right hand, I collaborated with nature and let my hand move back and forth, up and down on the typing paper that I happened to have had from the cruise ship office.” Blitt created over one hundred drawings that evening, leading to many original sculptures, such as “Silent Energy” and “Joyous Moment”, now featured in the Mulvane Museum collection. “Remembering Judith Jamison Dancing ‘Wade in the Water’” is named after Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater principal dancer, and later Artistic Director, Judith Jamison. The sculpture’s lines and movement remind Blitt of Jamison performing “Wade in the Water”, a movement in Ailey’s masterwork Revelations, at the Folly Theater shortly after its reopening in 1981.