In 1939, in collaboration with Truda Kaschmann, his first modern dance teacher,[1] Nikolais received a commission to create Eight Column Line, his first ballet.

It was at Henry Street that Nikolais began to develop his own world of abstract dance theatre, portraying man as part of a total environment.

[6] Following the Audio Engineering Society convention, in October 1964, Nikolais saw and immediately placed an order for the first Moog analog synthesizer system.

In 1978, the French National Ministry of Culture invited him to form the Centre Nationale de la Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France.

Nikolais employed lights, slides, electronic music, and stage props to create environments through which dancers moved and, more importantly, into which they blended (Dance Magazine, 1968).

He would commonly use props with aesthetic as well as functional purposes; for instance, a traveler moving across the stage would hide a crossing and simultaneously create a volume of motion.

His 1953 production Masks, Props, and Mobiles is credited with creating and popularizing modern multimedia theater (Mazo, Joseph).

Some critics refused to categorize Nikolais’ work as dance, for example when he transformed the bodies of dancers by covering them in plastic bags that would stretch and change shapes in “Noumenon,” a section from Masks, Props, and Mobiles.

He expanded the use of music in dance from being mainly a way of marking time or adding emotional value to a way to create new sounds to add to his new theatrical environments.

He preferred it for practical reasons, viewing the muscular and tactile functions of bare feet as essential to the total body.

[8] In the 1950s Nikolais used blackface, whiteface, and colored makeup both to create and prevent sensory blocking, manipulating perceptions of race in dances such as Prism and Imago.

At the Henry Street Playhouse (now Abrons Arts Center), a seven speaker system was used to play the score from throughout the room, giving it dimensions of time and space.

Combining cast, lighting and music with modern dance techniques gained him a world-wide reputation for theatrical arts.

Often referred to as the American Patriarch of French modern dance, Nikolais is a knight of France's Legion of Honor and a commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.

Nikolais’ first production, after the creation of the Henry Street Settlement Playhouse (now Abrons Arts Center), was called Kaleidoscope (1953),[12] and premiered at the American Dance Festival.