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Dan Wagoner, who danced with Martha Graham<\/a>, was an early member of the Paul Taylor<\/a> Dance Company and led his own well-regarded troupe for 25 years, died on Friday at a nursing home in Oakland, Md. He was 91.<\/p>\n His death was confirmed by his sister Hannah Sincell.<\/p>\n Mr. Wagoner was a child of small-town Appalachia for whom the idea of going to New York City, he once said, was like \u201cgoing to the moon.\u201d But New York was where, starting in the late 1950s, he built a successful career as a dancer and choreographer, working with several central figures of American modern dance.<\/p>\n He performed in the Martha Graham Dance Company from 1957 to 1962 (and again briefly in 1968). From 1960 to 1968, he danced in the troupe formed by Taylor, a fellow company member. And from 1969 to 1994, he led his own group, Dan Wagoner and Dancers.<\/p>\n According to Taylor in his autobiography, \u201cPrivate Domain,\u201d Mr. Wagoner took on the persona \u201cof being a bumpkin in the Big City for all it\u2019s worth.\u201d Taylor described Mr. Wagoner\u2019s dancing style as \u201cstalwart,\u201d moving \u201cwith weight from a thick core,\u201d and praised his facility with \u201ctongue-twister coordinations.\u201d Critics likened Mr. Wagoner to a sweet-spirited cherub or a crinkly eyed teddy bear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHe is a master of quirky invention, of the odd shape, the unexpected movement,\u201d the critic Anna Kisselgoff wrote in a 1984 New York Times review of his company, remarking on the \u201cfantastic amount of energy\u201d in his work and \u201cthe good plain fun.\u201d Many critics noted the influence of Graham, Taylor and Merce Cunningham, in whose company Mr. Wagoner also briefly danced. \u201cBut the way he combines, for instance, fragments of Martha Graham\u2019s technique with Paul Taylor\u2019s characteristic postures, topped by a nonsequential approach to linking the steps that derives from Merce Cunningham \u2014 all this contributes to a form of originality,\u201d Ms. Kisselgoff wrote.<\/p>\n Thematically, much of Mr. Wagoner\u2019s early work drew on his Appalachian upbringing: His first piece was called \u201cDan\u2019s Run Penny Supper,\u201d while another, \u201cSummer Rambo,\u201d was named after an apple. \u201cA Dance for Grace and Elwood\u201d was dedicated to his parents, and \u201c\u2019Round This World, Baby Mine\u201d was set to country music. Several dances, like \u201cChanging Your Mind,\u201d \u201cOtjibwa Ango\u201d and \u201cPemaquid,\u201d drew on Native American culture and stories. \u201cGeorge\u2019s House,\u201d a video dance he made for Boston public television in 1975, was set in and around an 18th-century cabin. Another piece was accompanied by a recitation of his family recipe for pancakes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The lighting designer Jennifer Tipton, a longtime friend of Mr. Wagoner\u2019s who worked on many of his productions, once told Dance Magazine that \u201cwhat is so extraordinary about Dan is the complexity of his form and the simplicity of his story.\u201d<\/p>\n Robert Daniel Wagoner was born on July 13, 1932, in the rural village of Springfield, W.Va., which then had a population of about 150. He was the youngest of 10 children born to Elwood Wagoner, a sawmiller and farmer, and Grace (Runyon) Wagoner, who ran the household. The family churned its own butter and made cheese, slaughtered its own hogs to make sausages and turned the leftover lard into soap.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As a child, Mr. Wagoner sometimes danced at ice cream socials held at the schoolhouse while one of his sisters accompanied him on piano. \u201cThere was a little stage with a curtain that opened, which thrilled me,\u201d he told The Times in 1981<\/a>. \u201cI was very popular.\u201d<\/p>\n Heeding his family\u2019s wishes, he enrolled in the pharmacy program at West Virginia University in Morgantown. But his interest in dance remained. After watching a performance by the college\u2019s dance society, Orchesis, he joined the group and began taking dance classes.<\/p>\n He graduated in 1954 and joined the army as a second lieutenant in the medical corps, spending two years stationed at Fort Meade in Maryland and at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. In the capital, he began studying dance with Ethel Butler<\/a>, who had been a member of Graham\u2019s company. She told him he needed to go to New York.<\/p>\n In 1956, he won a scholarship to attend the American Dance Festival in Connecticut. While there, Mr. Wagoner worked with the modern-dance innovators Doris Humphrey and Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n<\/a>, as well as Graham herself, who at first found fault with some of his technique but told him, \u201cYou\u2019ll do.\u201d Moving to New York, he worked part time as a pharmacist while taking classes at the Graham studio. Before long, she invited him to join her company.<\/p>\n While in the Graham troupe, Mr. Wagoner originated roles in \u201cClytemnestra,\u201d \u201cAcrobats of God\u201d and \u201cEpisodes,\u201d among other works. With the Taylor company, he was in the original cast of \u201cScudorama,\u201d \u201cOrbs\u201d and \u201cAureole,\u201d a now-classic work that retains a portrait of his character in its happy hopping.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Much of Mr. Wagoner\u2019s choreography was inspired by or used the words of his companion the poet George Montgomery<\/a>. They lived together in a New York City loft filled with Mr. Wagoner\u2019s collection of American folk art and antiques.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n From 1989 to 1991, he served as artistic director of the London Contemporary Dance Theater. By the time he returned to New York, financial support for dance, especially in the form of government grants, had started to shrink, and he became focused on taking care of Mr. Montgomery; he died of Huntington\u2019s disease in 1997. In 1992, Mr. Wagoner closed his studio. In 1994, he disbanded his company.<\/p>\n Mr. Wagoner became a sought-after teacher \u2014 first at the University of California, Los Angeles; next at Connecticut College from 1995 to 2005; and then at Florida State University from 2005 to 2015. \u201cI do believe that if we could all align our pelvises, wars would stop and everything would take its right place,\u201d he told Dance Magazine in 2007<\/a>. \u201cThe more dancers we have, the more healing can take place.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to Ms. Sincell, Mr. Wagoner is survived by his brother Roy Wagoner and another sister, Martha McLaughlin.<\/p>\n \u201cDancing is very, very difficult,\u201d Mr. Wagoner told The Times in 1981. \u201cWhen I am teaching or working with other dancers I try to encourage them to participate in the feeling of going to good places.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n