>> A wonderful writer, and one of the rare breed of
critics who study dancing in order to
better write about it, Mr. Walter Terry.
>> Thank you.
(applause)
I don't know,
I heard something like, it was either a drum roll
for a death knell or a fanfare.
I don't know which it was. >> It's my stomach.
>> Should I tell them that? >> No, no.
>> I think I oughta say that Mr. Spence
said that it's his stomach because he ate
a fried potato skin,
and he's never had one before,
and it's killing him.
So if he leaves precipitously,
you'll know why.
We're, on this particular panel,
we're going to be reviewing and commenting
on the American Ballet Theatre,
which came into being in 1939,
gave its first performances in 1940,
and changed the course of
dance and theater history around the world.
Its title was not chosen at random
because it has always been ballet.
It has always been theater.
Now let me introduce the panel.
Well, first of all, I'm not going to begin with the ladies.
I've got to begin with the star, Igor Youskevitch.
That's why we're here.
(applause)
And on my left is Miss Lucia Chase,
without whom there would not be an American Ballet Theatre.
And on my right, her prince consort, Oliver Smith.
And on the left,
a ballerina with the American Ballet Theatre for many years,
and now she's giving Italy a taste of what
contemporary ballet's all about,
is the director, choreographer, restager,
and a dancer, Sallie Wilson.
(applause)
And here's a dancer, Leon Danelion,
who started out as a little boy of Armenian stock
in New York during the Depression,
and in order to make money,
he danced at Armenian weddings, Catholic weddings,
bar mitzvahs, Muslim Ramadan, anything like that,
and on top of it all, he was able to do entrechat dix,
which I think the only other person
until Wayne Sleep recently, was somebody named Nijinsky.
But there's Leon Danelion.
(applause)
I'd like to begin.
Of course I have my memories.
I would just say one thing,
that I began my critical career
in The Boston Herald in 1936,
and my New York career in 1939 with the
New York Herald Tribune.
As I mentioned earlier,
that was the year that Ballet Theatre,
now The American Ballet Theatre, was born.
So I have always felt very close to that company.
and maybe as I have gotten older,
a little paternal sometimes and jump on it,
but the nicest thing that was ever said about me
was by Alexandra Danilova,
the great Russian-American ballerina,
who said once, Walter ...
Valtusch, she calls me.
Valtusch criticize, but never insult.
So that's my best review.
I would like to begin, though,
and ask Miss Chase if she will just set the scene
and say what Ballet Theater began as
that was different from
any other company in the history of ballet,
other than the fact that it was American,
what its basic concept was that she wanted to share,
and did indeed in the years to come.
Lucia?
>> Well, that's quite ...
>> You can do in five minutes, I'm sure.
>> And I'm ...
Just five minutes.
It was a wonderful time back in 1939,
and actually, I was in Mordkin Ballet
for two years before Ballet Theatre, getting my experience,
A young man, a college man, came from the West Coast,
and he was very keen about ballet,
and he wanted to help ballet.
He felt that it was time that there was an American ballet.
That there was the Mordkin Ballet,
the Russian Fokine Ballet or Russian,
and many small companies,
but no, he wanted just the biggest thing he could get,
absolutely an American company.
Now, it didn't make any difference whether the dancers,
whatever nationality they were.
That had nothing to do with it.
It's just to get the best dancers.
So he asked Mordkin and Fokine.
He got a group that were interested in this,
and I was a budding ballerina.
I was in on it too to know about it,
but I didn't know what he was talking about at first.
Anyway, he did put together this company.
They're doing often now in the papers,
putting back what his dream of the company was.
It was to be an American, big, marvelous company
with the best dancers that could be found,
no matter what size or shape or,
oh, no, shape was very important.
(laughter)
I take that back.
So yes, keep slim (laughs).
But so we started, and Mordkin and Fokine,
the two great Russian masters that were here.
They hadn't defected from Russia.
They left Russia long before with
the revolution or something like that, I guess.
But anyway, I know Fokine came in 1919.
So our wonderful Russians ended with us.
They never saw Fokine or knew he was even alive,
or at least he wasn't in Russia.
So and then they don't know how wonderful it was to have.
We grew up, Sallie and I (laughs),
lots of people and Leon, with Mordkin and Fokine.
Now Mordkin was a very difficult man,
and he really didn't care much.
So he was asked to choose the quarter ballet with Fokine.
Mordkin was this way.
Dancers over there.
Fokine did the whole thing, really (laughs).
Fokine was marvelous.
He was with us for two and a half years before he died.
All after the first year and a half of the ballet theater,
but he was out on the road and in New York and everywhere.
Fokine was wonderful.
So he did beautiful things for us and said.
Said they still feed.
He even did a new ballet that year.
He hadn't done a new ballet for years,
but he got excited and he did the big ballet, Bluebeard.
John Martin, the critic in New York,
was not exactly a pal of this one,
but they were the two big critics.
John Martin didn't like Bluebeard,
and we went to Russia in 1960.
We came back and the Russians were crazy about Bluebeard.
That was their favorite of the whole repertoire, we're told.
So John Martin wrote, why didn't they leave it there?
(laughter)
You wouldn't do that, would you?
>> I would assume that I put it on.
Did he hear that?
(laughter)
>> No, I'm not surprised.
I think I did hear it. >> Yes.
>> That's not plagiarism, that's research.
>> Research, yes.
Well, anyway, so we started in 1940.
It's been going ever since 1940.
It's a marvelous company.
It's always been a very happy company.
The dancers and all and wonderful choreographers, too.
We've all been a big family,
and we have a marvelous time.
Ballet theater crowd is always a family.
>> It is.
>> But we have a wonderful, Dick Pleasant,
who founded, whose idea it was.
He got 11 choreographers together.
He got Tudor from England and yeah,
different people from all over the world,
but he had 11 choreographers and we did 15 ballets.
We worked three months, or October, November, December.
I guess four months, and opened January 11, 1940.
We haven't been quiet since then.
>> That's right.
>> So it has a wide, the most diversified repertory
of any company over here, and that's why.
The people who defect from the foreign countries.
They come to us because they get a wider view,
and that's the only reason they leave.
They don't want, it's not the country.
It's just that they get more experience
and they can meet more choreographers from the West
and have a much broader.
That also they dance more often.
Those companies are too big.
They have about 250 in the company.
We're not up to 100 yet, but mighty near it,
but it's a wonderful company and going strong.
We're gonna, just on the West Coast, Chicago,
San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Now we open at the Metropolitan New York,
the nineteenth of April, for eight weeks.
That'll be good, we hope.
>> That wraps up 42 years, doesn't it?
(laughter) >> Yes.
>> Miss Chase was talking about why
the contemporary defectors like the American Ballet Theatre
because of the diversification of the repertory,
which has always been one of its special attributes.
The first company to come to America
in a remarkable year of 1933, which is the ...
'33, '34, is the Balanchine year.
It's the year that the San Francisco Ballet was founded.
It's the year that Catherine Littlefield
founded the Littlefield Philadelphia Ballet.
The Atlanta Ballet came into being.
It was the year the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo
came to America for the first time.
Igor Youskevitch came to America,
not with the American Ballet Theatre
but with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
I told Igor a few minutes ago
I love Verhen as an artist
because he was premier danseur with both companies
and did, of course, the classical repertory
of Giselle and Swan Lake.
You may be happy to know in those days
Swan Lake was simply act two.
Nobody except a few historians knew
that there were three more acts.
We just thought she came on with a lot of feathers.
He fell in love with her
and it all ended tragically very quickly.
It doesn't anymore,
but Igor went from that company,
the Ballet Russe with the
classical works in abridged versions
and some of their contemporary things that they did,
the great symphonic ballets of Massine.
When he came to the American Ballet Theatre,
he still danced the classics,
but he also danced some other roles in new ballets
with new kinds of movement and choreography.
So I'd like to ask Igor if he would tell us
what the transition was like
for him as a dancer from the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo
to the American Ballet Theatre.
>> [Igor Youskevitch] Well, I would say,
in one word, quite easy.
(laughter)
>> Quite easy.
>> But of course there are some differences.
I always considered the Ballet Russe companies
as a kind of transitional
because most of them were always
consisted of dancers without nationalities or without home.
So it's kind of emigre-type of ballet.
I always felt that they played
a tremendous and important part, of course,
in the ballet in America, but they were kind of a
transition from the traditional Russian ballet
to American-style type homegrown ballet.
When I came to American Ballet Theatre,
I have noticed the difference.
The company was existing only for
about six years when I came in.
I came in '46.
But because of the wide repertoire that had
a lot of contemporary type of things,
it had, it did reflect classical repertoire
in the sense of style.
It certainly did reflect the traditional classical ballet,
but it was more restrained
and I would term was performed in a more American style
than we were accustomed to before.
Which I didn't mind a bit.
I just fell right into it.
(laughter)
And I ...
What else can I say?.
I believe that
the style I was accustomed to sometimes,
well, maybe ...
In certain parts did not make much sense.
I felt that in American Ballet Theatre,
the classics were kind of ...
Their faces were lit with them.
Thematic action was more orderly placed.
It gave a little different outlook
to the old, traditional ballets.
>> Bit more honesty as far as theater goes, and yeah.
Also some of you may not know that among the
many new roles that Youskevitch did
was playing Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire.
I can remember when he was cast as that, Lucia.
Everybody heard the prince of the ballet.
Eric Braun has written that he is the ideal prince,
the danseur noble, and that Eric himself said
he marveled his first
Albrecht and Giselle after Youskevitch's.
Even when he matured,
so saw no reason to change the basic concept.
So here was the prince of ballet
all of a sudden in a dirty undershirt
and instead of handling the ballerina
like a treasured, gentle, fragile flower,
he was knocking her all over the place,
and did it extremely well.
I don't know whether he was
getting back after all these years.
>> Enjoying it, too!
>> And enjoying it.
(laughter)
But also, if you've read your history,
you know that Nora Kaye,
who played opposite in it at one performance
when he was about to,
what is the Victorian expression,
have his way with her.
He lunged towards her and she was doing this
and she knocked him out cold on stage.
(laughter)
I remember talking to her afterwards about it,
and she said, I thought about hauling him to his feet,
but I wouldn't do any good,
so she said, I did the most erotic choreography
ever invented over his prone body.
You don't remember that?
>> Yeah, at the last moment, she had her own ways with her.
>> With you! (laughter)
So when he--
>> I was flat on the floor.
>> That's true (laughs).
Vulnerable, weren't you?
So when Mr. Youskevitch said there was a change in quality
when he moved from Ballet Russe
to the American Ballet Theatre, he was telling the truth.
I would like, just because the sequence is best,
to ask another one from the period, Leon Danelion,
who danced also with both companies.
Did you notice the similar change as Igor did?
>> I agree very much with what Igor said about ...
There isn't that greater change now.
I don't want to go off the subject,
but I've read Igor's article in the New York Times,
and there was a tendency
that happened about four, five years ago
that the American-trained dancers,
which all of you are,
were not trained well enough.
I was brought up with a good library down the block.
When the first defectors came,
Fokine was certainly one of them.
Mordkin, Miss Chase's teacher and my teacher, was another.
People like Legat, whose brother was
the maitre d'ballet of the Kirov, went to London.
Fokine and Mordkin came to New York.
Balmanizinsk went to California.
Legat and Madam Karsavina went to London
and Igorova Brer Bruzencza and Nijinska were in Paris.
So when this great curtain went around Russia
and the American, French, and English dancers
would train brilliantly, and I think so.
I don't mean that I was brilliant, obviously,
but we were well trained, and it was a very good school.
Ballet theater was the where of that,
and it formed a company of very well-schooled people.
Suddenly from California came
a young woman that was a great beauty
called Nana Gollner.
She had one green eye here and one green eye there.
Enormous.
And the feet bulged over, great arches,
and the extensions went sky high.
She was a Nijinska student and all might think.
Many of the American dancers were wonderful.
That's what really impressed me on the first days,
when we were all grouped together.
How strong they were.
>> Well, yes.
>> So you know.
I appreciate that article so much
because it sorts the points that (inaudible).
>> Yeah.
>> The strange changes.
>> Those of you that missed it,
in a recent Sunday New York Times
there was an article by Mr. Youskevitch,
and his analysis and appraisal
of the dancing of the classics today as distinct from
what it once was and what he felt was right.
I think it was a marvelous article,
probably because I agree with him, but it certainly was.
I'd like to ask the baby ballerina here,
Sallie, who has had a different performing experience
from either Youskevitch or Danelion,
and that is she came to Ballet Theater
when it was a well-established company.
It had already made its own legends.
Sallie had two things to do.
One, because she was a superb, and is, actress dancer,
to her fell roles that had been created by Nora Kaye
for whom the term dramatic ballerina was invented.
Sallie followed her in such remarkable works as
Tudor's Pillar of Fire, which had been created for Nora.
She followed her in other particular roles,
in Fall River Legend, Agnes de Mille's ballet
about Lizzie Borden, the murderess.
I mean, history says she didn't do the murder,
but Agnes found her guilty for ballet reasons.
Sallie had to follow in those parts
and succeeded magnificently,
but it must have been difficult for her.
In addition, however, of course, new roles
were created for her in contemporary ballets
by Alvin Ailey, by Glenn Tetley, by many more.
So I'd like to ask Sallie,
who is a comparative latecomer
to the American Ballet Theatre,
what it was like to follow in footsteps
as distinct from creating new parts.
>> Well, she also did create new parts.
>> It was not as difficult as you said.
>> It's not?
>> No, because I started in the corps.
I started at the very bottom of the corps.
I saw all those ballets (audio drowned out by static)
before I was ever in them.
I loved those ballets.
I stood in the rings (audio drowned out by background noise)
and saw them.
I knew the sound of Nora's feet on the floor.
It was so easy to learn the ballets
because I already knew the music and the sound and the beat,
which is how you learn and remember something.
>> Yes.
>> Then I did other parts in the same ballets.
So I knew the whole ballet inside and out.
It wasn't difficult, then, to learn the other parts.
>> Except that you created it
in your own way now, yeah?
>> It was ...
I didn't do any of them like Nora.
>> No.
>> Or try to copy her,
but somehow when I see the ballet,
I see Nora doing it, because that's who I saw do it.
>> Oh, I see.
>> I've never seen me do it.
(laughter)
So if (audio drowned out by laughter),
if I progress the passage or something,
I would see how other people,
somewhere in my head, see Nora as a model,
but I didn't think of copying.
>> Yeah.
>> It was just the pattern,
the notes of the music. >> Right, yes.
The shape of it, yeah.
I'll take you to the movies some night
so you can see you in Pillar of Fire.
>> Oh yeah?
>> You're marvelous.
There's a wonderful TV movie with Sallie Wilson
doing Pillar of Fire, and it really is brilliant.
So what about new roles, I mean,
which of course you're doing now.
Do you find it easier to start from scratch
from something you don't know at all?
>> Everything you do is brand new,
even if you've seen it before. >> Yeah.
>> It's something new.
If you're going to do it, it starts new.
>> Yeah.
>> Hopefully (audio drowned out by coughing).
>> It is a new one?
>> Yes.
>> Right.
>> It's a different kind of thing to work on,
to have something made for you,
because it's just right there as you're working on it.
You see it take shape as you're going,
whereas before you have an idea of what the shape is.
>> Did you feel, as the dancer with
the American Ballet Theatre, that ballet theater
had a style different from other companies?
>> Oh, absolutely, yes.
>> What was the key?
From your dance point of view?
>> Can I change the subject?
>> Yeah.
>> The wonderful thing about American dancers
is that they come from everywhere,
from all different teachers,
and yet if you put them in the same ballet
and they're wearing the same ballet,
they have an adaptability to pull together
because the style is less of a forced upon them style.
They learn dancing instead of stylized form.
That's why it's difficult for Euro-trained dancers
to do our ballets because they can't get out
of the styles that have been put on them.
>> Right.
>> And that's what I love about American dancers,
and I always loved that.
I'm going to cry.
>> That's marvelous.
>> [Igor Youskevitch ] Can I ask Sallie a question?
>> Yeah, sure.
>> [Igor Youskevitch] Didn't you play tennis
with Martha Graham in a ballet?
>> Certainly.
>> Yes, I, the boys and the girls.
Ladies, forgive me.
Ladies and gentlemen should know that.
First time I saw Sallie dance,
she was playing tennis with Martha Graham.
>> Now, that staged the two.
>> At the Metropolitan Opera House or something.
>> It was called Episodes.
>> And I thought--
>> Episodes, it was done at the city center.
>> And I thought that girl has a lovely arabesque.
>> Well, Martha, Martha picked her,
and the tennis game was a stylized battle
between Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth, not the present one,
the earlier one, and Mary, Queen of Scots.
For that, it was just what Sallie is talking about,
that you come as the dancer,
not as a product of a special school.
So it was an early experiment in
the mating of modern dance with ballet.
Paul Taylor danced with Balanchine
and Sallie danced with Martha Graham.
It was one of the best tennis matches
you ever saw in your life.
>> [Igor Youskevitch] Yeah, I like to say
you played tennis with Martha Graham.
I mean, that's sort of fun. >> That's nice, yes.
(laughter)
I want to turn now to Oliver Smith
because Mr. Smith, when he assumed the codirectorship
of the American Ballet Theatre with Lucia Chase,
had been part of the company
in this wonderful creative process
which has always brought together, as Sallie was saying,
talents from various origins of not only national
but state-wise and in terms of the arts represented.
One of the remarkable works which was done by
the American Ballet Theatre when it was Ballet Theater
was Fancy Free, which introduced
an unknown choreographer named Jerome Robbins,
a comparatively unknown composer named Leonard Bernstein,
and a very handsome, unknown young man named Oliver Smith.
Now Oliver now is, and over these many years,
has been a major figure in
the theater of drama and music as well as dance,
and I think as long time co-director with Miss Chase,
he can tell us today something about
that side of ballet theater that has to do with
the total image of theater that
the company represented and represents.
>> Well, first I'd like to say that
my great attraction to ballet theater
actually began quite a few years before
I worked with it.
I worked with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo first, actually.
It was, did two ballets for them.
One was for Massine
and the second, of course, was Rodeo, which was with Agnes.
>> With Agnes, yeah.
>> But I first saw, I was,
attended the opening night of ballet theater
at the Center Theater in 1940.
I was immediately impressed and amazed
by this whole new concept.
It was very different.
I mean, as most Americans at that time,
I'd only been exposed to the Ballet Russe
or Colonel De Basset's company and Russian ballet,
and this had a strikingly, as Sallie mentioned,
and Lucia, and Leon,
had a totally different feel about it.
It was a whole, a very fresh approach, I felt,
to the classics too.
It was totally ...
So I mean, I'm immediately attracted to it,
and I always followed its performances with great interest.
But the opening night of Pillar of Fire,
which I attended, in a sense affected my entire life.
I mean, all of us, at times, I think we hear
certain composers or hear certain great instrumentalists
or look at certain paintings,
but if we're creatively inclined,
there are those moments in life that occur
at which literally change our lives.
The Pillar of Fire did.
It really, it brought something to me in terms of
dance and ballet that I had never experienced before.
Now other artists have experienced that
with other choreographers.
Martha Graham, for example, has changed people's lives,
and there are other choreographers.
So I always was, I felt very close to the company,
although I was simply a spectator,
and I became first associated with it
when I volunteered to do Fancy Free.
I sought the job.
I knew Jerry was doing this ballet.
I remember going to a rehearsal
in the old Metropolitan Opera House.
He was, and I looked through
the door into the rehearsal hall
and I saw this les purgesnat
that Leshine was choreographing.
It was really quite a dreadful ballet.
(laughter)
It's called Fair Sorchansk.
>> Oh, god, yes. (laughter)
>> It was sort of something Rock Ballet Theater
never should have done, I think, but they did it anyway.
There was Lucia, hauled around the rehearsal hall
with a great red wig.
(stuttering)
>> She was a
witch or something. >> Witch or something.
That was the first time I ever saw Lucia.
There was Jerry Robbins being hauled around,
and he was sitting on this broom.
He and Cretze and a few others.
They were being hauled around this very splintery floor.
After it was over, well, Jerry got up
and rubbed his behind and came over,
smiling rather ruefully, and said, well,
you're Oliver Smith, are you?
And I said yes.
He said, well, it's pretty rough down there.
(laughter)
That was my first meeting with Jerry.
Then it was a very happy collaboration.
He wanted to ...
He didn't have a composer for his ballet,
and I happened to know of
Lenny's work at Curtis in Philadelphia,
and I was very impressed with him as a student.
So I simply suggested him as a composer.
I think it was his first
serious piece of music that he'd written.
He'd done songs at nightclubs and things
and accompanied the Betty Common
and Elf Green and those people in village clubs,
but he'd never done any serious composing.
So he wrote that score,
and of course we all know how remarkable it was.
I had the good fortune to design the setting
for that ballet, and through that,
I met Lucia on a much more, as part of the company.
We've always liked each other enormously
and respected each other very, very much.
I got to know the family of Ballet Theatre,
and it is a family.
Of course, I think all ballet families are.
I mean, Ballet Russe was a family too.
>> That's true.
>> Very much so.
But I got to know Nora and, of course, Hugh and Antony.
I felt very much a part of it.
I also had the opportunity to design Interplay
for ballet theater and onstage that Michael Kidd did
and Waltz Academy with Mr. Balanchine.
So by the time I had done that many ballets,
I really was part of the family
and was brought into the group.
Of course, then later when
Lucia and I became directors together.
I might mention how that happened.
>> Yes. (inaudible)
I wish you would.
>> Could be rather interesting.
I think Lucia has always championed new choreographers.
I mean, that's been one of her beliefs.
As she was, of course, very influential
in helping tutor, I mean,
in supporting tutor in Pillar of Fire,
and she was very important in the production of Fancy Free.
It had always been one of her enthusiasms.
When Lucia's enthusiastic, she is
Very, not only is she very supportive, she's very tenacious.
(laughter)
And she, those things that
she supports have a way of getting on.
I'm tenacious too, in a very ...
(laughter)
So together, I think we had
sort of a formidable team, I think.
But when we were at ...
We were having a certain conflict with
a very famous impresario
and a very remarkable man, actually, Sol Hurok,
who was chiefly interested in Russian ballet.
He was passionate about it, and he was Russian.
I think that we felt that the company,
and this has its ironic side, too,
was becoming too Russian.
So we wanted to also embrace
the American choreographers, American dancers.
Yet out of that conflict, I won't go into all the details.
It would take an entire afternoon.
We assumed the direction so that
we could have the artistic control.
We didn't think we would be doing it for so long.
I mean, it was going to be a short ...
(laughter)
But we ended up in--
>> 35 years.
>> 35 years of a relationship.
>> Short 10 years, yes.
(laughter)
>> I've something, excuse me a while,
something I would like to say about Igor,
which I think he's an enormously modest man,
as you can observe.
I think that what he did when
he came into Ballet Theatre in '46,
like all very great dancers,
he brought with him his own great personal sense of style
as well as beauty and presence on stage.
He was a very important star,
one of the leading dancers in the world, actually--
>> Yes.
>> When he came to Ballet Theatre.
His arrival in the company and his presence in the company
actually had an enormous amount to do with
coordinating what I would say at that time
the classical style was in the the company.
He brought wonderful qualities.
All the young dancers watched him very, very carefully,
not only Eric Braun, who was a supreme dancer,
but Royce and other dancers.
He, in a sense, changed the whole male style
in that company and elevated it enormously.
That was one of the ...
It helped, I think, a great deal
in developing the classical style of ballet theater,
because Fokine had died.
>> Yes.
>> And was no longer, his presence wasn't there.
Massine had left, and so there was no focus that way.
I think that he was very, very important,
and we're very, very grateful to him.
That's why I'm here today.
(laughter)
>> Right.
He'd left, not because he was angry with us,
but because he has a rehearsal.
But I think I know what Oliver Smith says is true
that young dancers watched him from the wings
and learned of his style because he was
the finest classical stylist of that time.
I don't think he had any equals at all.
One of the other aspects that ballet theater benefited by
was his association with the
Cuban American ballerina Alicia Alonso
because they became, in the annals of ballet history,
what Pavlov and Mordkin, Karsavina, and Nijinsky,
Marco Vendolin, they were in that great line of,
if I may use a good American expression
which Sallie would approve of, they were a great team.
A remarkable team that with Ballet Theatre,
they danced together for 10 years.
And after that, in guest appearances,
another five years was added,
so that Igor not only was a model of
the premier danseur soloist but of the partner of the actor
of the cavalier of the gallante and
relationship of the ballerina with the danseur.
It was a remarkable period in dance for then.
I think it would be a very good idea for you up front,
if you would like, since we have assembled here
in honor of Igor Youskevitch,
people that span different periods from ballet theater.
If you have any questions you'd like to address
to anybody on the panel, I'm sure they'd be delighted
to answer if you would just stand up,
breathe from the diaphragm, and say your question.
I can't see very well from here
because of these marvelous lights,
which I'm sure are terribly flattering to the ladies.
(laughter)
But if you do have a question, please do ask it.
Oh, you're also shy.
(crowd murmuring)
>> He has one.
>> Yeah, good.
>> I'd like to address this to you.
In your many years of reviewing
the ballets of the American Ballet Theatre,
do you have a favorite ballet
or do you have a favorite ballet song?
>> No, I never did.
It's ...
I don't think a critic can, actually,
because at a given performance, it's of the instant.
Since Sallie was talking about Pillar of Fire,
I'll mention that.
That was an unforgettable night in the theater,
the world premier of Pillar of Fire,
when Nora Kaye really did become a star overnight,
something that you read about in magazines and books,
and it really happened.
27 curtain calls and all that,
and it was something that meant a great deal to me
because it was an adult ballet about
adult people and adult feelings.
It was an example of Western Europe
as distinct from ballet in Russia
of getting away from fairy tales.
Not that we don't need them, god knows we need them,
but I had always wanted,
ever since I started as a critic very young,
to have the public know that
even though dancing was diverting,
it could also be stimulating and illuminating.
If the drama could range from a farce to King Lear,
certainly the art of ballet could do the same thing.
Well, Pillar filled in that
particular gap at that particular night,
and it was just, just marvelous.
So for that moment,
that was the most important thing that ever happened to me.
Yet conversely, when the Sadler's Wells Ballet
opened in New York and Margot Fonteyn
came running onto the stage as protected Princess Aurora
and smiled at the audience
and then stood on that ridiculous pedestal,
which is her own toe shoe, well, everybody worshiped her.
That too was another miracle for me in the art of dancing.
So I couldn't possibly pick any one moment because
they're all, all the great ones are extremely important.
I will tell you after seeing,
I once saw five four act Swan Lakes in two and a half days.
That was a hell of a lot of
Tchaikovsky and feathers before that went.
I was about ready for Martha Graham
going into one of her mazes,
but after two weeks of Martha Graham being doom eager,
I'm ready for the Radio City Hall Rockettes.
So the thing is I love every kind of dancing
that you can possibly think of if it's good.
I just wish I was there that time in 1793.
Alexander Placide did a hornpipe on a tightrope
while playing the violin
and displaying the American flag in various attitudes.
I would have loved that too. (laughter)
But to answer your question, if for the moment,
it's the best, that's my favorite, but only for that moment.
Do we have some more?
Lucia, you were very good at seeing.
(audience murmuring)
Yeah.
(laughter)
Oh.
For Miss Chase.
(inaudible)
>> What was the
immediate reaction to your circle
and the circle of ballet theater?
>> We'll meet you backstage.
(laughter)
>> Who is he?
Who is he?
Elizabeth.
>> I will only say one thing,
that when Mischa came in just a year ago.
And Mischa's wonderful.
He's most attractive on stage.
He's got a terrific charm and he's great,
but let me see, should I say this?
(laughter)
>> Oh, why not?
>> Well, all right, why not?
You won't tell on me.
Listen, if you should.
Well, I was supposed to prize first in the world when
Mr. Kraywitz, he was under Donald Kendall.
Donald Kendall was the head of PepsiCo,
and god bless him,
he's head of the Ballet Theatre Foundation,
and he gets the money for us.
He's marvelous.
But Erm asked me, Don would like to see me,
and it was about my contract.
I said, oh.
He said, would you like your lawyer there?
I said, not if I see him alone.
If you're going to be there, I'll take my lawyer.
(laughter)
When they asked me, I said,
well, oh, I hadn't thought of that.
I said we must get a successor, so what's the hurry?
(laughter)
So I wasn't very good about it but
(inaudible)
I was perfectly willing, but I said that two words
not in my vocabulary, either retire or resign.
So I moved over and they couldn't be nicer to me.
I'd stick around.
I have a Marco, (laughter)
a smile on my face and keep my mouth shut.
It works very well.
>> And as--
(voice drowned out by laughter)
And as Mr. Smith says, she's tenacious.
(laughter)
>> Lucia, last season, I went to see your performance,
and I went backstage to say hello to the crew.
I walked down the hall through the door,
down the hall to the stage,
and there was Lucia with Enrique
with yellow papers in her hand.
(laughter)
It was exactly the same.
>> But I don't interfere.
>> No, no.
>> Do you have another question?
>> I do.
>> Oh, good.
>> I would like you, please,
to tell the young people here in the audience
a little bit more about the choreographers,
who also made the success of American Ballet Theatre.
In particular, could you discuss Antony Tudor,
who taught, you mentioned him several times?
You've mentioned his ballets.
Could you tell our young people a little bit more
about what he has done for ballet here?
>> Is that for Miss Chase, Mr. Smith, or both?
>> All of them.
>> Oh. (laughter)
Why don't you start, Oliver?
>> Well, Mr. Tudor's contribution, of course,
began with the very first season at the Center Theater
when he introduced Lilac Garden,
which had been performed in England
but it was his first American performance.
We were all aware,
including other choreographers and dancers,
that this was a new, great talent that was
being seen for the first time in the United States.
It was not like Massine,
who was a very prominent choreographer at the time.
Martha was barely getting started.
I mean-- >> It's really good.
>> No one was even going to see her, hardly,
but she had--
>> Just Garbell.
(laughter)
So that there never have been what you would say
a multiplicity of major choreographers.
At least I'm stating this
as my own personal opinion, perhaps.
Tudor, I feel, is one of the
four great living choreographers of the moment
or maybe five, you might include.
>> Oh boy.
>> Then there are many other
very, very gifted and wonderful choreographers,
but there are what you would say certain great masters,
which are, in a choreographic comparison to say
if you were comparing it with dance,
there are a few great premier ballerinas at Saludas.
I mean, there are, we know about four or five,
and that's it.
>> Five and that's it, yeah.
>> We're very lucky to have them.
So the Tudor did introduce this Lilac Garden,
which was a different, a whole different style of movement,
of psychological content
and extreme personal use of his music talent, I think.
Also was one of the first choreographers that I saw,
certainly, that had a new approach to dramatic content,
completely different than Massine.
Massine had done dramatic ballets,
but Tudor's had, it seemed to me,
have a more literary sensitivity is the way I would put it.
It's not very kind to Massine, but I mean.
Anyway, that's my reaction.
Then his second major work for ballet theater, of course,
was Pillar of Fire, which is, as I mentioned before, was ...
Affected me, affected my whole life.
He followed that with Romeo and Juliet,
which was a superb interpretation of the Shakespeare play.
It's still my favorite of all the Romeo and Juliets.
I much prefer it to any other interpretation of that play.
Then, of course, he followed that with Undertow,
which is a very startling and a very,
very dramatic work,
especially the composed score by Mr. Schuman.
Then he did Shadow of the Wind, which was to Mahler.
Now the time that he did Shadow of the Wind,
which is a very ambitious undertaking,
and employed, I think, 90 musicians in the pit,
which was, for any ballet company,
was a tremendous thing to assume.
Mahler, he just couldn't drag
an audience into a concert hall to hear it.
Now we live, of course, in a whole period
where Mahler is played a great, great deal.
He has enormous audiences.
He's probably, we go through
a whole Mahler year is what we have,
with the endless performances of the Ninth
and the Third and the Second and Eighth and so forth,
and so that ...
Then there were other works.
I don't think he's ever done a work that is not important,
but like all great choreographers or great composers,
there are certain mountain ranges or peaks in his work
which stand out as masterpieces.
I think, in that sense, he, choreographically,
you might say, is one of the cornerstones of ballet theater.
He was the ...
As a choreographer of international repute,
he was probably, he brought a special style
to ballet theater which no other company possesses.
(inaudible)
>> Good.
One thing that I might add to what Oliver Smith said
in comparing Tudor's dramatic works
to those of Massine and other choreographers.
In the traditional ballets,
the acting was carried forth in terms of mime, scenes.
With Tudor, the dancing never stopped
for an acting sequence.
The two were absolutely fused together
as they of course are when you see his works today.
So the gesture was not acted, it was danced.
This was true of anything and everything that he created.
A variation was not a set piece.
It was part of a total concept
and of the characterization
so that you had a total dramatic entity
which was what ballet theater was all about too.
That was one of Tudor's unique contributions.
I can tell briefly, if I may, Lucia,
a little story of a fundraising dinner
that went back, I think, as far back
as Pillar of Fire, 1942, for Ballet Theatre.
There were a great many people there with money,
and a lot of them were very tight with it,
but I sat with an American at a table with an American lady
who had married a prince, so she was a princess.
That was her only way she got there.
She said to me, she leaned over one time, she said,
well, it's a very sweet company, but, she said,
I don't understand, Mr. Terry,
why you like those Tudor ballets
and some things that Agnes de Mille does.
She said, I don't think that's what it's all about.
She said, I find them terribly disturbing.
I said, well, did it ever occur to you, princess,
that maybe you needed to be disturbed?
(laughter)
Well, I mean, I'm not wearing red because
I belong to the young pioneers in Russia or anything,
but that was probably a radical remark,
but I hope it jogged her into giving a little money
to ballet theater in those days.
I hope since she's enjoyed being disturbed.
How about, how do you feel about Tudor?
>> Oh, Tu, how do I?
>> Yes.
>> I think he's marvelous and he's,
oh, there were times when he was difficult.
Difficult, but it was always wonderful
to talk to him or anything.
And order on with it. (laughter)
But I'll have you know that
we just did Pillar of Fire twice in Los Angeles
at the Shrine Auditorium just a few weeks ago.
Mr. Tudor came up from the south.
He had rehearsed it in New York and kept it up for him,
and he had three ballerinas that were learning it.
They were, two of them, were out of the running.
We've had more injuries
than we've ever had in our lives lately.
So but Lisa Holden did it who was really the second.
She was to be the second one.
Cynthia Gregory, (inaudible), and Magali Messac.
Oh, both Cynthia and Magali
are going to be in the Met season,
but Mr. Tudor was, he came with his friend, Hugh Laing,
who's been in all these and all these ballets.
They came up from Los Angeles to see it,
and he told me after, he said, oh,
two days ago, I guess, I thought, oh, I don't want to go.
I was scared to see it.
I don't know.
And after, it was over his.
He was smiling like I never saw.
He thought it went so well,
and he asked to meet the conductor.
It was a new, young conductor.
When he told him how good the music was,
he told, I brought
the head carpenter who had painted the backdrop
and over repainted and so forth
and was so keen about the scene.
He thanked everybody and he was just delighted,
and Pillar was wonderful.
So good, so it's going to be in the Met in May.
>> Well, yes.
>> May I just add one thing?
You mustn't think that Antony Tudor is a Freudian character
and psychologically neurotic or ...
He's one of the funniest men in the world,
and the first time that I laughed out loud in the theater
was at a ballet called
Gala Performance and Judgment of Paris,
two pieces that I think are rather neglected.
He had an enormous sense of humor.
It was very amusing, and it was just as subtle.
The humor was just as subtle as his dramatic pieces were.
You know, he ...
Personally, he's a very funny man to talk to, I think.
I hate to see that part of him overlooked.
He's not--
>> He won't do Gala Performance,
and it's too bad--
>> Really?
>> Because I think this whole generation should see
what he thought of Russian ballerinas, don't you?
(laughter)
Because it really was just heavenly.
It was so like a Russian,
a ballerina in her most exaggerated state.
If you want to come backstage,
I'll tell you who she was like.
Sallie, you worked with Tudor as Lucia did, as a dancer.
Do you have something to add for the gentleman up there?
>> Yes.
Tonight I did my first Pillar of Fire.
Tudor called all his friends
and told them not to come today.
(laughter)
I haven't eaten for three days.
And I, just the performance, an actor,
the curtain call, and then I had an armload of roses.
I went down to the basement,
and I wandered around in the theater alone,
down in the basement, heaving (laughs).
I went up to my dressing room
and Tudor was sitting in my dressing room.
I went in very quietly and I sat in my place.
He was reading the newspaper with his feet up.
I started to take down my hair.
I said was my braid all right?
He said, I have no complaints about tonight, no complaints.
That was my compliment.
(laughter)
>> Oh, that's a fabulous review from him.
>> It was a scene, though, him sitting to the side,
and me going ...
(laughter)
>> All right, very unique.
>> I'm glad to say that Mischa is very keen about Tudor too,
and how they do this.
So he's going to get him to
put back one more ballet next year.
>> Which one?
>> Dim Lustre.
>> Oh.
>> But it's not completely set yet.
>> I think we ought to have another Tudor revival
which is Judgment of Paris,
then have Miss Chase back in her role.
I'll tell you, if you like inside stories,
every time it's been revived over the years,
and Agnes de Mille was in it, Maria Karnilova.
Karnilova told me the last time.
She said, well, you know Agnes is a little heavier.
She said, I've tried to keep in shape,
but when you get to be 50, there is a difference.
She said, Agnes and I looked at Lucia,
and she got into the costume that she had worn in 1940,
and there was no change at all.
We could both have killed her.
(laughter)
So applause for the figure.
I think we have time for one more question,
if there is one from old faithful there
or anyone else.
>> All right.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, I'm curious.
Mr. Smith, the recent Faircrafts article
has been about, well, it's about you and your designer team,
and it talks about the fact that,
with no one to hire you,
you've announced and produced itself.
I'm very curious,
given that Miss Chase has talked about
the man from Pepsi Cola,
I was wondering how much of your own personal money
you and Miss Chase have put into ballet theater.
>> That is a state secret.
(laughter)
>> And it should be.
>> Well, I think that's a good--
>> They put, I'll tell you.
They put in about 50% of their weekly allowances.
You had one there, one more.
>> I wanted to ask.
I was interested in Miss Wilson's comment
about the lack of rigid syllabus
in the training of American dancers
and how they were able to come together
and pull something up.
I wondered, I guess, everyone's a professional.
Or whoever, I wanted to ask her
would anyone try to put in a nutshell
what is uniquely American or what does America
and American dancers have to offer to ballet?
I know that it's a very broad question,
but we have so many international artists
from other countries performing here.
I just wanted to, what's, which part is American
and what part is traditional ballet?
What is the unique qualities that
ABT and American dancers bring to dancing?
That's all, ballet.
>> Well, if I just may start,
Igor Youskevitch said that when he moved
from the Ballet Russe to the American Ballet Theatre,
he found a certain directness
that he had not experienced before.
The other thing that he mentioned in
playing roles in classical ballets and in others
that there was a sense of dramatic and theatrical logic.
This is from an artist who had performed in both.
I like to think of it this way,
that classical ballet is distinct
from contemporary ballet or modern dance.
Classical ballet is totally international.
Each country gives it a special accent,
just the same as in the South.
The English that is spoken is ...
The words are the same, but the style and the accent
and the inflection is not that of my New England
or of somebody else's middle west or of some other section.
So it is that there's a vast difference,
or was, that's being lost now
in Russia itself between the Moscow Bolshoi
and the Leningrad Kirov.
When I first went to Russia
and in Leningrad you would mention the Bolshoi
and the big success that they had had,
Russians would look at you and say, well,
of course if you like the circus, you'll like them.
In the Bolshoi, they spoke of the Kirov as schoolmarm ballet
because it was so proper and correct.
Well, if you look at the national ballets
with the jumping Danes, they have a charm and a lightness
which is typical of Denmark.
The English ballet is much more formal,
and we are very exuberant.
I think Lucia will back me up and Oliver too
that when the American Ballet Theatre
first played in London after the war,
they found the Americans too athletic in the classics.
They liked them in contemporary things,
but they found them too classical.
I'll give you one example of what makes American ballet.
When Fokine was, for the first season,
rehearsing Les Sylphides,
one of the dancers from Philadelphia was Karen Conrad,
who had, for a woman, one of the most remarkable jumps.
We all remember her on opening night
coming out of the wings and air,
landing center stage, taking off, and disappearing.
It couldn't have happened,
but that's the way 3,000 people remember it.
But she had that elevation.
She told me that in rehearsal,
Fokine himself, every now and then he'd say,
Karen, don't jump so high.
You know, just very gentle, very solemn.
She'd say, yes, sir.
Then she'd forget and go poing into space.
Finally, at dress rehearsal,
she shot out, and Fokine said--