Fordancerand choreographer Jamar Roberts, work means more than simply creating movement. It’s about recalling pivotal moments throughout history, his childhood and current events, and bringing them back to life. Roberts’ passion for Black storytelling is translated through the depth of research he does for each project, amplifying messages of love and tragedy for his audiences. When Roberts dives into often forgotten eras, music and topics, he hopes to learn as much about them as possible to tell each story through dance, with grace and authenticity.
Roberts first got his start as a dancer for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2002, where he worked his way up to serving as resident choreographer of the company from 2019-2022. During his time at the company, he created five bodies of work ― his final one, “In A Sentimental Mood,” debuted last year. The piece fused Duke Ellington’s music with experimental and alternative sounds from Rafiq Bhatia of Son Lux, to help dancers tell a story of Black love.
Roberts’ work lends itself to conversations about the fixation on Black pain and strife in American film and music — particularly projects that are not helmed by Black artists themselves.
Sasha Arutyunova for HuffPost
“The story was inspired by a duet in Alvin Ailey’s ”Blues Suite.” There’s this sort of tumultuous situation that’s happening within that, so I wanted to do a more contemporary take on that in terms of theme, and also movement and vocabulary,” Roberts says, about the project. “They’re in a lovers’ quarrel — and by the end of the piece, she jumps into his arms and they swing off into the wings. So they kind of kiss and make up in the end.”
Roberts’ work lends itself to conversations about the fixation on Black pain and strife in American film and music — particularly projects that are not helmed by Black artists themselves. Often, art depicting the Black experience fixates on physical and sexual trauma — or it simplifies our culture, devoid of nuance and the complexity of the relationships we cultivate.
That’s not to say that period piece films about American slavery or stories about Black grief aren’t important. In fact, Roberts has many works that center grief or tragedy.
But pieces such as “In A Sentimental Mood,” which shows that Black love can play out onstage without suffering at the center of the story, is not only beautiful but necessary. The project is just one of many examples of the intention Roberts places into his work. And it’s proof that Black artists need to be given the space to create work about both joy and despair, and everything else in between.
Writers are muses for Roberts, who cites Toni Morrison when he thinks of some of the most powerful influences on his interpretations of love.
Sasha Arutyunova for HuffPost
Roberts describes all romantic relationships ― not just Black love — as complicated, and that informs how he shapes a production. “What helped me do that were all the other elements of theater outside of my choreography — the scenic elements, the costuming,” he says. “They’re dancing on a red carpet, which is symbolic of love, passion and desire. There’s even one moment where the entire piece is flooded with red light. So there is a moment towards the end of the piece where they both kind of see eye-to-eye and come to terms with one another.”
Ultimately, Roberts wants to transport consumers of his work to another place in time, putting them in the headspace to empathize with what’s happening on stage. The Black experience, he reminds me, is multidimensional, and so his work has to be. Another recent project for Alvin Ailey called “Holding Space,” told the story of “radical humility” amid civil unrest and demonstrates the vastness of being Black.
Writers are muses for Roberts, who cites Toni Morrison when he thinks of some of the most powerful influences on his interpretations of love. Her novel, “Paradise,” stands out to him specifically because of its portrayal of female characters; they remind him of the women in his own family. Roberts tells me that he has sometimes drawn from his own family dynamics to help flesh out his stories.
Roberts describes all romantic relationships ― not just Black love — as complicated, and that informs how he shapes a production.
Sasha Arutyunova for HuffPost
Roberts is part of the Ailey legacy that has always centered Black love in all its iterations. One of the company’s most famous pieces, “Revelations”by Alvin Ailey, utilizes African spirituals and gospel songs to explore both grief and holy joy. Roberts says this story took him back to memories of going to church with his grandmother.
“I grew up going to church with my grandmother all the time, so that entire ballet is so familiar to me, from the hymns that you hear in the music to the costumes that the women wear,” Roberts says. “What was impressive was the way that Alvin was able to capture the essence of church, community, and really the Black experience within that one singular piece. I think that’s a really tough thing to do with dance.”
Roberts is part of the Ailey legacy that has always centered Black love in all its iterations.
Sasha Arutyunova for HuffPost
Roberts is currently working with several ballet companies, blending his background of contemporary and modern style with more methodic movement. It’s both challenging and rewarding, he tells me. And as always, Roberts is observing what’s happening in the real world as he begins to imagine his future projects.
“I always lead with love in a lot of my work, even if it’s not the theme of the actual work — just my love for the dancers who are performing,” he says. “I always try to layer the work so that there’s something really beautiful in it that they can connect to.”
Lexington-native Mikelle Bruzina and Harald Uwe Kern were named Louisville Ballet's new artistic directors after former artistic director Robert Curran's abrupt resignation earlier this year after nearly 10 years with the ballet.
Bruzina and Kern have been part of Louisville Ballet for more than 15 years and their combined time in the company brings 36 years of experience to their roles, according to a news release. Lousiville Ballet also stated that Helen Daigle was promoted to principal repetiteur and senior rehearsal director of the company.
“Louisville Ballet is committed to fostering growth and opportunity, particularly within our own organization, where exceptional talent resides to propel the company forward,” CEO Leslie Smart said in the release.
Bruce Simpson and Helen Starr, former artistic director and associate artistic director, respectively, served as interim artistic advisors until the roles were filled. Simpson and Starr "emphasized the value of generational and institutional wisdom within Louisville Ballet," according to the release.
Bruzina has been a part of Louisville Ballet for 28 years as a member of the Corps de Ballet, principal dancer, and in the role of Senior Ballet Mistress. Bruzina has also served as co-associate artistic director of The Louisville Ballet Studio Company.
Kern joined the company in 2005 as a Ballet Master and has also been a Senior Ballet Master. "Over thelast 18 seasons with Louisville Ballet, Kentucky audiences enjoyed his stagings and choreography as well as his stagecraft as a performer," the release stated.
Daigle served as rehearsal director of the company and has been part of Louisville Ballet for 20 years. She has performed in productions including "Lark Ascending," "Sleeping Beauty," "Giselle," and "Don Quixote."
The leadership changes come after the Louisville Ballet announced a series of cost-saving changes to its 2023-24 season aimed at pulling itself out of a financial hole. Smart previously told the Courier Journal it has set an unprecedented fundraising goal of $3 million in contributions for this year to help buoy the struggling organization, which was seen massive loses post-COVID shutdown.
The sweetest holiday tradition in Kentucky. Experience the nostalgic holiday tale of Marie and her Nutcracker prince as they journey to the magical world of the Sugar Plum Fairy. The Brown-Forman Nutcracker is a delight for all ages with a distinctly Kentucky flavor.
“For a dancer to be on stage and to have the orchestra in front of them, that is where we want to be, but it's a significant cost,” Smart previously told the Courier Journal. “It's $330,000 for us to have the orchestra perform during 'The Nutcracker,' and so it was a very difficult decision for us to make.”
The 2023-24 season continues with "Distilled" Nov. 10-12, "The Brown-Forman Nutcracker," Dec. 8-24, "#CHORSHOW," Jan. 24-28, and Feb. 2-4 and "Romeo & Juliet," March 1-2. Tickets can be purchased at louisvilleballet.org.
Strictly Come Dancing 2023, Craig Revel Horwood; Shirley Ballas; Motsi Mabuse; Anton du Beke, BBC,Ray Burmiston
Strictly Head Judge, Shirley Ballas
Strictly is back for its 21st series! How does it feel to return to the judging panel for such a monumental series?
I’m super excited to return to the panel, it’s going to be one superb series. I feel so lucky to get a front row seat in the ballroom, it is a real privilege. I cannot wait to nurture and guide our new celebrities to help them become the best dancers they can be.
We’ve asked all the Pro’s what they were doing when they were 21, what were you doing when you were 21? And what was life like for you?
When I was 21 I was married to my dance partner. We were aiming to be world champions and we were dancing professionally and lecturing all over the world.
Every year there is so much excitement when Strictly comes back on our screens, what keeps audiences coming back for more?
I think the injection of glitz and glamour lightens up audience’s living rooms. I think viewers love to follow the journey of our celebrities throughout their time on the show and they enjoy having their own opinions and thoughts on the dances.
What is the biggest joy from your job as a Strictly judge, and the biggest challenge?
The biggest joy is being a small part in the nations favourite show and sharing my knowledge and passion for dance. The biggest challenge is when I hear Anton vote differently to Craig and Motsi in the dance off and then the final say is down to me. It’s so heart breaking having to send anyone home.
If you could only dance, one kind of dance style for the rest of your life what would it be and why?
I think it has to be the rumba, as it’s the dance of love. It’s fast, slow, sharp and soft – it’s got everything in there and it’s such a passionate dance.
Do you have one stand-out dance and/or celebrity dancer from last year’s Strictly Come Dancing?
It has got to be Hamza’s Salsa, what a surprise! The way he was flipping and throwing Jowita around like there’s no tomorrow, it was so impressive. I think that moment will go down in Strictly history.
If you could only pick one favourite performance from all your series so far, what would it be, and why?
I think it would have to be Kelvin Fletcher’s Samba with Oti in Week 1 in 2019. I really don’t know how it could be topped! He has this big smile on his face and his bright blue shirt. It was absolutely outstanding and also technically astonishing – definitely one to remember.
Strictly returned to Blackpool last year, after some time away, how was that, and does it make you excited to return this year?
It was amazing to return to Blackpool, the ballroom there is an iconic venue that holds a very special place in my heart. Being in Blackpool takes everything to a whole new level, it’s the home of ballroom dancing and the walls are steeped in history.
We have 19 brilliant Pro’s for this series, how would you sum up their contribution towards the show making it what it is?
It’s really simple, we wouldn’t have a show without the marvellous professional dancers. They put their all into it and work so hard to bring out the best in their celebrity partners. They dedicate so much of their craft to the show and it pays off each and every series when we see the level of dancing improve. They are such a joy to watch.
Is there a song that will never fail to get you on the dancefloor at parties or weddings? It has to be I’m Still Standing by Elton John. I just can’t resist a jive when I hear that song!
Finally is there anything you are particularly excited for this series?
To be back with my beautiful Judges and for all the laughs and smiles. I’m also really looking forward to fan-girling over Angela Rippon! She announced me during the UK championships many times during my competitive career so her voice brings back so many fond memories.
Strictly Judge, Anton Du Beke
Strictly is back for its 21st series! How does it feel to return to the judging panel for such a monumental series?
I tell you what, I am naturally, brilliantly excited about the whole thing, I can’t wait. For me it’s just a magical time of year when Strictly returns to our screens. It always starts in the summer and goes into the autumn and winter. It’s just brilliant. The excitement about Strictly Come Dancing coming back with all the celebrities and just being in the building with everybody milling around, delighted and happy and joyous and all the brilliant teams back together. It’s so wonderfully exciting.
We’ve asked all the Pro’s what they were doing when they were 21 What were you doing when you were 21?
I would have been dancing, competing, practising and flying about trying to get better, that was my life really. I have literally been dancing every day of my life and also at 21 I think I was working in a bakery. I would have started work at the bakery at three o’clock in the morning, and then dancing at night and competing at weekends. Baker by day, dancer by night!
There’s so much excitement when Strictly comes back. What do you think keeps audiences coming back from?
It’s so multi layered and, I don’t want to repeat myself too much, but it is just brilliant because there’s so much about it you can love. Firstly, it’s the best of the best, there is so much on the show you can enjoy.
Obviously you will want to know who the celebrities are, some you’ll know and some you won’t know as well, and audiences will get a favourite immediately so that’s always exciting in the first show. The music’s amazing, the Judges are brilliant, Tess and Claudia are incredible, the frocks are fantastic, then you have all of sets and the lighting! The show is so multi-generational as well.
What is the biggest joy from your job as a Strictly Judging and what’s the biggest challenge?
The biggest joy is being part of it and turning up every week. It’s a real surprise and a fortune that I’ve been a part of the show since the beginning, and there’s only Craig, Tess and I left from the very first series and to have been part of a show that is part of the fabric of British consciousness – and the world’s, it’s such a global show – is sort of overwhelming, if I think about it too deeply it blows my mind. To be a part of that since the beginning, I feel massive pride. I love it now as much as I did then and I’m delighted about that as well.
What is the biggest joy from your job as a Strictly judge, and the biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge is eliminating somebody and sometimes it’s tighter than you’d want it to be, but that’s the job and that’s what I’m there for, so that is the most challenging part. Trying to be encouraging, trying to help people – that’s the fun part.
If you could only dance one kind of dance style for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
Probably a ballroom dance of some sort I’d imagine, taking a lady into my arms and dancing together. However, if I could do one thing more now, I’d like to become a better tap dancer because I don’t tap as well as I’d like, and I’d like that skill.
Do you have one standout dance or celebrity dancer from last year’s Strictly?
Helen and Gorka’s couples choice dance to Mein Herr and Hamza did some numbers that were staggering, but for pure dancing and precision Helen’s was the standout moment from last year for me.
Strictly returned to Blackpool last year after some time away, how was it, and does it make you excited to return this year?
Oh wasn’t it brilliant?! It’s such a massive production and we all go up to Blackpool and then rig it all up and it takes ten days, I mean it’s a huge thing, but it’s so worth it! It’s a wonderful moment in the series as well, but it means so much more than just going to Blackpool, we’re going for the tower ballroom which is such an iconic venue.
We’ve got 19 brilliant Pro’s this series, how would you sum up their contribution in making the show what it is?
Oh epic, the Pro’s make it what it is, I’ve always felt this really. They’re the ones to put the content for the show on the floor, they perform the group dances, they choreograph their celebrity routines, and they work with the celebrities to get the best out of them. The Pro’s are extraordinary talents and remarkable performers.
Is there a song that will never fail to get you on the dance floor at weddings and parties?
Dancing Queen by ABBA.
Finally, is there anything you’re particularly excited about for this series of Strictly Come Dancing?
Just all of the above, although I am really excited about the Judges number at the beginning. What I would love to do one year, is to do a dance with one of the professionals for one of the artist numbers like I used to. There’s nothing quite like performing, it’s magical, the thing about dancing with a celebrity is you get voted off, and that’s the bit I hated!
Strictly Judge, Motsi Mabuse
Strictly is back for its 21st series! How does it feel to return to the judging panel for such a monumental series?
It feels amazing, and I’m super excited to meet everyone and to see how this season will develop.
We’ve asked all the Pro’s what they were doing when they were 21, what were you doing when you were 21? And what was life like for you?
I had been in Europe for three years and was dancing, minding my own business. Just dancing, my life was dancing. I was dancing in Germany and preparing for a championship. Nothing else, eat, dance and sleep, that’s it.
Every year there’s so much excitement when Strictly comes back on our screens. What keeps audiences coming back for more?
The audiences love the dances and they love the show, it’s a beautiful, emotional show, full of glitz and glamour and we all get to share it together. It’s just such a special time of the year when Strictly starts.
What’s the biggest joy from your job as a Strictly Judge and what’s the biggest challenge?
The biggest joy is being part of such a professional and wonderful team that is huge and everybody’s giving 110% and that that to me is quite inspiring. I think the biggest challenge for me is always the dance off because I bond with all the contestants and sending somebody home is never easy.
If you could only dance one kind of dance style for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
Probably the Rumba because that means I get to dance with my husband all my life.
Do you have one standout dance and or celebrity dancer from last years’ Strictly?
I think the Salsa from Hamza and Jowita will remain unforgettable.
If you could only pick one favourite performance from all your series so far, what would it be?
It would be the week one Samba from Kelvin and Oti because he wasn’t meant to be on the show. Jamie Laing had broken his leg and then Oti got Kelvin and no one could have planned anything like that, and he comes on the floor and they just burned the floor. It was absolutely amazing!
Strictly returned to Blackpool last year after some time away, how was that and does it make you excited to return this year?
It was fantastic being back in Blackpool because I also felt like everybody had their game on and I just can’t wait to be back in in the tower ballroom for this new series.
We have 19 brilliant Pro’s for this series, how would you sum up their contribution towards making the show what it is?
Well, the show wouldn’t be what it is without the Pro dancers, it’s quite simple. It wouldn’t be what it is without the dancers, They’re such a big part of the show, they are the other half of a couple, so they are very, very important.
Is there a song that will never fail to get you on the dance floor at parties or weddings?
You Are The First, The Last, My Everything by Barry White
And finally, is there anything you’re particularly excited about for this series?
I’m particularly excited about all the stories we’re going to hear, I believe in the power of personality, there are brand new celebrities so I just want to see their personalities on the floor.
Craig Revel-Horwood
Strictly is back for its 21st series! How does it feel to return to the judging panel for such a monumental series?
It’s like coming home for me. Every year, for the last 20 years, I have been coming home to Strictly and this is no different. I think even better because the line-up for this series is absolutely phenomenal.
We have asked all the pros what they were doing when they were 21. What were you doing when you were 21?
I had my 21st birthday in my hometown of Ballarat, Australia as I hired a bus to take the cast of Me and My Girl, a show I was in at the time there, and had a fantastic time. I remember my 21st so well, because it was just incredible set in a haystack and very Australian and very non-theatrical even though it was full of lots of theatre people. It was a blazing hot day as well and everyone got burned, 21 was a great year for me in the theatre.
Every year, there’s so much excitement when strictly comes back. What keeps audiences coming back for more?
I think it’s a programme that they can rely on. They know it’s the lead up to Christmas and it’s something they know, something they love and it’s something they feel a part of. I think it embraces everybody and it has won the hearts and minds of not only this nation but so many. So there’s something going right with it. I think it makes you feel like a part of the community which I think is great.
What is the biggest joy you take from your job and what’s the biggest challenge?
The biggest joy I take from my job is getting front row seats to the best dance show in the world and the biggest challenge I think for me is making the right decisions when we’re letting someone go. I think that’s the hardest thing for me in the job.
If you could only dance one kind of dance style the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
A Charleston because that’s my speciality, and it’s completely different. It’s such hard work and will keep me thin for the rest of my life. Anyone can do it and it doesn’t matter how old you are, you can still get a bit of swivel in there!
Do you have one standout dance or celebrity dancer from last year Strictly?
I loved Fleur in Blackpool, she was amazing, this is when Fleur came into her own, I just loved it. She was right at home and rocking it and I got out my 10 paddle for the first time, which was great. If you could only pick one favourite performance for all your series what would it be? I think Anton Du Beke dancing with Ann Widdecombe, where he did the aeroplane move I just went ‘I cannot believe this is actually happening in front of my very eyes’ and that will stay with me until my death for all the wrong reasons, but every reason that that tells you what Strictly it’s about. I think one of the best dances I’ve seen was Rose and Giovanni, I thought that was just amazing.
Strictly returned to Blackpool last year after some time away, how was that? Does it make you excited to return this year?
Yes, I really loved Blackpool! I filmed a couple of programmes up there over the summer and it was absolutely fantastic because I never get to go there in the summer. The audiences are great and the venue is bigger and I think that’s exciting. And of course it has that wonderful sprung floor, so it’s always great.
We have 19 brilliant Pro’s the series, how would you sum up their contribution towards making the show what it is?
Well, they really make the show. They are the teachers, they’re the nurturers, they’re the embracers, they’re the ones that pick up the pieces after the Judges have judged them, they have to be all sorts of different things apart from just teachers, and they also have to be there to support, so they work really, really hard. They’re the first ones in the last ones out and they’re just amazing.
Is there one song that will never fail to get you on the dance floor at parties or wedding?
I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. It’s disco, It’s my era darling and love it.
Finally, is there anything you’re particularly excited about?
This series, I’m really looking forward to see all the group numbers because I love those and I never get to see those until the day. Normally, I get to see them rehearse and all of that but that’s what I look forward to the most.
Strictly Come Dancing continues on Saturday 23rd September at 6.15pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
The Mayyas dance troupe set out to “prove to the world what Arab women can do, the arts we can create,” one member said on Tuesday’s “America’s Got Talent.” (Watch the video below.)
The Lebanese troupe amazed the panelists and audience with coordinated arm movements that generated a kaleidoscopic vibe and a creature-like illusion. The routine delivered on Mayyas’ promise to “hypnotize.”
The same performer said earlier in the segment that “being a dancer as a female Arab is not fully supported yet” ― but Simon Cowell said the group’s performance will make a difference. He called them “arguably the best dance act.”
Judge Sofia Vergara gave perhaps the highest compliment, pushing the Golden Buzzer to vault the team to the live rounds. The former “Modern Family” star told the group she was “so honored to empower you even more.”
Production still featuring Bill Robinson, Lena Horne, and Emmett “Babe” Wallace from “Diga Diga Doo.” Brynn Shiovitz Collection
The pandemic, whatever grief and chaos it may have wrought in other spheres, was a boon to writers of dance books, providing sequestered time to finish projects long in preparation while awaiting the return of live performance. Nearly a dozen such tomes have landed on my desk this year. I’ve recently read three that have in common Jewish women writers, all also mothers, two in early middle age and the third, like me, a senior citizen (as well as a longtime contributor to the Village Voice). Their books advance from intensely personal to heavily academic and theoretical; each is, in its own way and for its own reasons, worthy of attention. All three have had decade-long periods of gestation and I’m happy to have them in my world.
Kara Tatelbaum’s Putting My Heels Down: a memoir of having a dream … and a day job falls into the burgeoning category of memoirs by dance artists. A quick, easy, often entertaining read, it illuminates the pressures on dancers in New York City who face spiraling expenses and the need to earn a living. Tatelbaum, a doctor’s daughter who came of age upstate and moved into Manhattan to attend college, is now married and the mother of two. She worked on this manuscript for a dozen years; Motina Books finally brought it out in 2022.
Tatelbaum is, by her own description, short, with tight Achilles tendons. Though she began taking ballet classes as a child, her teachers ultimately counseled her into modern dance and she wound up, after graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, a gifted choreographer/comedian. She taught Pilates to support herself, contending, as she describes, with the personalities of entitled women who poison the atmosphere of her classes and waste her time during “privates”:
“Manhattan’s filled with struggling dancers/instructors running a marathon merry-go-round of rehearsals, gyms, private homes. Our Unlimited Metrocards are swiped up to twenty times a day. We’re expected to arrive for sessions early for small talk, leave late while you go through your schedule … play with your pets, and … tailor choreographed sessions targeting your weaknesses and strengths all while remembering previous injuries, allergies, and family history. But we nod and smile because we need you to like us the best so we don’t get stood up.”
In an era of disappearing dance writing, it’s a pleasure to spend days immersed in tales of a romance with the art form.
In her early 30s, Tatelbaum discovered that she’d passed her sell-by date in the Pilates marketplace. She got her master’s degree in choreography at SUNY Purchase, landed a prestigious international gig that turned into a disaster, and got married. Other crises ensued. Hip surgeries were required. Therapy was undergone. She had kids, wrote and found a publisher for her memoir, flogged it eagerly on Facebook and at residencies, and built a second career writing about … wait for it … Pilates! Those who dream of a career in dance owe it to themselves to read this book and contemplate her realistic, depressing, but often hilarious picture of what might lie before them.
Yale University Press harbors a series, now composed of nearly a score of volumes, colloquially referred to as Why X Matters, to which Mindy Aloff recently contributed a lyrical excursion into her lifelong passion for dance. Other books in the series address acting, food, poetry, and baseball, as well as more academic and philosophical subjects. Readers who come to 2022’s Why Dance Matters expecting a simple answer will find themselves drawn into a wide-ranging, seven-essay adventure into the past, present, and future of the form.
Brynn Shiovitz Collection
Aloff, a native of Philadelphia, has attended to dance in New York City since the late 1970s. Before that she studied and worked at Vassar, and wrote poetry and arts journalism in Oregon. She’s taught at Barnard, edited several books, including an anthology of dance anecdotes, and written Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation. Her enthusiasm for dance, her perceptiveness, and her fluency in the English language would lead me to follow her anywhere.
And follow I do, as she tells “a personal story … cobbled together of dance, a sometime human activity and a niche art.” Aloff begins with a disquisition on a classic photograph by Helen Levitt of a couple of kids at play in an East Harlem street 40 years ago, which evolves into a study of children on dance stages — of “childhood in the theater.” Later, she engages walking on the dance stage, the process of reconstructing historic dances, choreography that floats in the air, and a collection of works that use “walking to illuminate dancing.” Her chapter on dance as a battleground explores struggles both external and internal, the latter as addressed by the program at the Mark Morris Dance Center that reaches out to people with Parkinson’s disease. She turns her voracious spotlight on Rodin’s dance sculptures, on Merce Cunningham’s solos, on how dancing civilizes and centers people, on the relation between live performance and film.
Critics are often constrained by tight deadlines and word counts; Aloff acknowledges that she’s never before “written anything this long and unpredictable.” In an era of disappearing dance writing, it’s a pleasure to spend days immersed in tales of a romance with the art form. In her epilogue, she notes the radically transforming times in which we’re presently living, “insidious, and possibly irreversible, with the very ground we tread and the very air we breathe and the very water that we guzzle to replenish our cells deteriorating and poisoned in conditions our species has devised.” She is a genuine public intellectual, with wide-ranging interests and allusions to fields far beyond dance; she thanks hundreds of people, living and dead, for facilitating her accomplishment. Give Why Dance Matters to any young person contemplating a life in the art form, but before you do, read it yourself.
Brynn Shiovitz’s 2023 Behind the Screen, subtitled Tap Dance, Race, and Invisibility During Hollywood’s Golden Age, is a dense volume from Oxford University Press; it originated as Shiovitz’s dissertation. She has spent this summer traveling the country on a book-signing tour, appearing in old vaudeville houses, and lecturing on the book’s nominal subject, “a theory of covert minstrelsy.” That rubric barely does justice to the material it covers. Shiovitz’s actual subject is racism, and the way race was handled, or mishandled, from the earliest days of sound films until the mid-1950s in American popular culture. A relatively small proportion of her material actually engages tap dancing, and most of that revolves around the figure of Bill Robinson, who managed a long career on stage and screen without donning blackface, by dint of agreeing to play second fiddle to a pretty little white girl, Shirley Temple.
Younger readers might appreciate Shiovitz’s deep dive into Bugs Bunny’s “techno-dialogic feats for the animated bestiary.”
Isabel Wilkerson’s blockbuster 2020 volume, Caste, demonstrated that writing about racism can capture a mass audience. Shiovitz’s book is much more specialized, anatomizing the phenomenon of blackface as it migrated from the stage to the screen and from live performance to animated cartoons. She points out that the original “minstrels” were white men in blackface; Black people, often forced to “black up” by theatrical promoters, got into it to make money. Shiovitz shows how blackface is associated with nostalgia, which gets infused with patriotism and damages African Americans. Stephen Foster’s melodies, closely associated with Black or black-faced bodies, “could carry racial implications without directly referring to Black people or Black behavior.” So, for an Eleanor Powell film in which the tap dancer appears in brownface, “MGM commissioned a score devoid of lyrics, a pattern we will see repeated throughout the Production Code’s reign, especially in animated sequences.”
The author grew up tap dancing, studied at NYU and UCLA, and currently teaches in Southern California. She spent years screening 230 films from the first half of the 20th century, as well as more than a hundred cartoons, in order to demonstrate, among other things, the way that Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire coasted to fame, replacing the true Black masters of the Africanist esthetic. Also under her microscope are brownface, yellowface, redface, and Jewface, all strategies Hollywood used to “other” immigrant groups (as well as Native Americans) during the interwar period of great social change. Central to her thesis is the Hays Code, formally known as the Motion Picture Production Code, adopted by Hollywood and New York producers in 1930 and designed to regulate the moral tone of popular entertainment, eliminating suggestive elements. The denigrating aspects of blackface, which reduced an entire group of people to caricature, slipped under the radar of the Code, turning up in sequences set, for instance, in Hawaii, and exacerbating racial conflict in the country.
L: Eleanor Powell performs a “tribute to the Islands” alongside Andy Iona’s Orchestra (uncredited) and ensemble in Honolulu, 1939. R: Busby Berkeley inspects Goldwyn Girls, 1935 publicity portrait. Brynn Shiovitz Collection
Shiovitz’s opus is both virtue-signaling and virtue rewarded. Combing through it will educate you thoroughly in the ways that the Catholic church, the engine behind the Code, demonized Black art forms like jazz and swing, creating environments in which white people got work ripping off the Africanist esthetic while Blacks were often deprived of credit, even when they appeared onscreen. The Production Code asserted, “No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.” Jazz music was frequently painted as a slippery slide in the direction of sin — Blacks incarnated these things, were “tricksters,” and needed to be kept strictly separate from the white wives and daughters.
Writes Shiovitz, “Multimodal racial and ethnic caricature were also used to avert White audiences from acknowledging the presence of a swing aesthetic, since swing was classified as “hot” and dangerous due [to] its ties to sexuality and Blackness.… Thus, covert minstrelsy refers not only to a particular type of masking but also requires that the masking itself mask the mask(s) at play.” Both the visual and the sonic — and the animated as well as the “real” — were environments to be carefully monitored for implications of racial mixing and the approval of occasions for sin. As Shiovitz notes, this rendered white performers “the celebrated ventriloquists of an Africanist esthetic,” providing American audiences with a “close but safe encounter with the Other.” It also suppressed any representation of gayness (“pansy flavor”) and much female sexuality, but gave a pass to figures like Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor, Jewish men who made vast fortunes and accrued great fame pretending to be Black. Dance and film scholars and the portion of the general audience awake to the dangers and damage of racism will find much value in Shiovitz’s endeavor. Those of us who escaped graduate school before the theory bomb exploded might find the proportion of her analysis devoted to tap dance a bit wanting, but younger readers might appreciate her deep dive into Bugs Bunny’s “techno-dialogic feats for the animated bestiary.” Animation technology, she asserts, replaces blackface in live action films of the early ‘40s: “Much of what the [Hays] Code deemed unacceptable in live action film for the censors was excused when the representation was not ‘real.’”
These three books carry us from the intensely personal (Tatelbaum’s memoir) through the wide-ranging, enthusiastic critical gaze (Aloff’s essay collection) to the densest contemporary scholarship. Shiovitz’s flaying of the racist content of American popular art forms in the 1930s and ’40s will change the way these works are viewed in the next millennium. ❖
Elizabeth Zimmer has written about dance, theater, and books for the Village Voice and other publications since 1983. She runs writing workshops for students and professionals across the country, has studied many forms of dance, and has taught in the Hollins University MFA dance program.
The sylvan glade romanticism of “Emeralds,” the electric energy of “Rubies,” the glittering imperial court of “Diamonds.” These are the three parts of George Balanchine’s “Jewels,” from 1967, often described as the first full-length plotless ballet. On Tuesday, New York City Ballet will open its 75th anniversary season with “Jewels,” and a tribute to all the dancers who make up the company’s history.
That’s fitting because “Jewels” was Balanchine’s tribute to his dancers of that time: to the enchanting elegance of Violette Verdy and Mimi Paul in “Emeralds”; the insouciant charms and street smarts of Patricia McBride and Edward Villella in “Rubies”; and the grand glamour of Suzanne Farrell and Jacques d’Amboise in “Diamonds.”
The idea was born over dinner at the violinist Nathan Milstein’s home, where Balanchine and Claude Arpels, from the Parisian jewelry firm Van Cleef & Arpels, were both guests. Balanchine, keen to create larger-scale work for the company’s new home at Lincoln Center, liked the idea of dancers as exquisite gems, and perhaps hoped for sponsorship. (It didn’t happen.)
“Jewels” begins with an ode to French romanticism in “Emeralds,” set to Fauré. Then comes “Rubies,” an exuberant, witty illustration of the angular modernism that the Russian-born Balanchine developed in New York, set to Stravinsky. Finally “Diamonds,” set to Tchaikovsky, evokes the grand imperial style of late 19th-century Russian classicism.
It’s a mini-history of ballet, and a portrait of Balanchine’s life in dance, which began at the Imperial Theater School in St. Petersburg; had chapters in France with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and the Paris Opera Ballet; and found its fullest expression in New York, where with Lincoln Kirstein, he founded the School of American Ballet in 1934, and City Ballet in 1948.
“It was a risk,” said Barbara Horgan, the choreographer’s longtime assistant. “We didn’t really do full-lengths. But I think he was anxious to make a blockbuster and bring in audiences.”
The audiences came — and the work’s title came a bit later. In a New York Times review after the premiere in April 1967, Clive Barnes referred to the three parts as “The Jewels,” adding, the ballet “has to be called something.” (He also offered an alternative: “The Bits of Colored Glass.”) By the time it opened the winter season in November 1967, it was officially “Jewels.”
In interviews, five of the original cast members talked about their memories of creating the ballet with Balanchine. Here are edited excerpts from the conversations.
Emeralds: ‘A walking meditation’
Mimi Paul
At my first rehearsal, Balanchine asked the pianist Gordon Boelzner to play two sections of the Fauré music. I knew the melody of the Sicilienne variation [from “Pelléas et Mélisande] because the classical radio station I listened to played it as their signature, so I said, “I like that one.” Balanchine said, “This is going to be very special for you.”
We walked to the back corner, and he started. Essentially you tried to mimic what he was showing you. He didn’t talk about much, but I remember him saying I should think of walking on a tightrope, placing each foot very deliberately in front of the other, never having both feet on the floor at the same moment. It was like a walking meditation. He was very accommodating. If something felt awkward, he would change it. Sometimes he let me invent, which I loved to do.
I think he saw an aspect of who I was at that point. I was quiet and introverted, someone who worked on my own a lot. It’s not that he drew something out of me; more that he spotted something in me. I felt extremely free.
Suki Schorer
I felt it was really me onstage in the pas de trois of “Emeralds.” Balanchine knew his dancers so well. He knew what our parents did, how we were raised. He would get you talking, not asking direct questions, but he was curious. With Violette Verdy, he really used her French port de bras and musicality, and gave her a lot of freedom in that part.
I remember a stage rehearsal, close to the premiere, where Violette said, “Mr. B., you haven’t choreographed the finale.” He said, “Oh, I forgot.” He quickly put it together and we had to try to remember it! Later he added a section to “Emeralds,” and the end totally changed.
Rubies: Off-balance, with a sense of humor
Patricia McBride
Balanchine demonstrated so beautifully, with all those hippy, turned in movements, and showing us the off-balance partnering. He worked very calmly and quietly, you could barely hear him talk, and he was very gentle. I was always a little nervous about keeping up with Mr. B., but we were pretty relaxed together.
The off-balance stuff is tricky, but if you got the musicality, that would help you. Mr. B. was really specific with the counts; he was always very precise with Stravinsky’s music. It’s mind-boggling to understand the different counts when the corps is doing one thing, and the principals are doing something else. It’s incredible how his mind could work in that way.
He never said “smile here” or anything, but in the pas de deux, he said, “Make your legs angry,” so I pounded my legs for that opening, stamp, stamp, stamp, down into the music. He let me be me. I thought it was a very glamorous role.
Edward Villella
When we started to work on “Rubies,” I thought, Oh my goodness, this has a sense of humor! Balanchine said to me, “You are the jockey, and Patty is the showgirl,” and the humor in the ballet kept evolving. In the third movement there is a section where four guys chase the principal man around the stage, and it was so much like me. I was always fooling around and laughing. I was a tough guy from Queens, an oddity who had jumped ship at maritime college, and I was so happy to be dancing.
Balanchine would spend years listening to scores. You would hear him, in the theater, taking scores apart, one note at a time, on the piano. When he came into the rehearsal room, it was never tense, because he was totally prepared and he knew us. Everything in our pas de deux was surprise, surprise, surprise. It was very difficult as a partner, there were so many unseen, extraordinary ideas. But I said to myself, He trusts me with this.
Diamonds: Grandeur without tragedy
Suzanne Farrell
Balanchine asked me if I had a preference about which jewel I wanted to be. I suggested the Stravinsky section, and he said, “I think I want you to be the diamond.” On the first day, he didn’t know how to start the pas de deux, so we began in the center. Later he added the entrance. The pas de deux has a diamond-like prism effect, a lot of separating and coming back together. At one point we actually make a diamond shape. It’s so ingenious. There is no competition between the man and woman in the pas de deux; it’s just two people coming together and doing something that neither could do alone, and making it more exalted. It’s gloriously resolved, there is no tragedy.
It was the only tutu ballet that Balanchine ever made on me, and I loved the feeling of grandeur he created through the music. I particularly love the polonaise; there is nothing like Mr. B., Tchaikovsky and a polonaise!
I feel that what links the three ballets in “Jewels” is the bourrée [a series of tiny gliding steps done on pointe]. They are different in each piece — languid in “Emeralds,” prancing in “Rubies,” and more like stylized walks in “Diamonds. No one ever applauds for a bourrée, but here they hold the ballet together.
Yorke Dance Project is a contemporary ballet touring company. Under the artistic direction of Yolande Yorke-Edgell, the company has a repertory that includes vintage pieces (Kenneth MacMillan, Robert Cohan) and that also embraces new talent and young female choreographers. Last time we photographed the troupe, the dancers had been rehearsing for a programme at Sadler’s Wells that covered MacMillan’s Sea of Troubles alongside Charlotte Edmond’s Self.
This week, the company is celebrating 20 years of its creation by Yorke-Edgell with a set of performances at the Royal Opera House. Joined by some terrific guest dancers like Jonathan Goddard, Dane Hurst, Romany Pajdak (The Royal Ballet) and Oxana Panchenko (Michael Clark Company), Yorke Dance Project is at the Clore Studio until this Friday 17 May performing works by Yolande herself (Between and Within), Kenneth MacMillan (Playground), Robert Cohan (Communion) and by LA-based choreographer Sophia Stoller (Imprint). We checked in on the ensemble earlier this month:
Strictly Come Dancing 2023, Launch Show,Shirley Ballas & the Strictly Come Dancing 2023 Professional Dancers ,BBC, Guy Levy
You’re part of a big opening number this year in the launch show with all the Judges taking to the dance floor. What can you tell us about that?
Shirley Ballas “The audience is in for a real treat, my dance shoes are back out and it feels amazing! I’ve been put through my paces, but to be dancing with my fellow Judges and the professional dancers is a feeling like no other.”
Anton Du Beke “It’s an amazingly brilliant number, I’m really delighted that we’re doing something and my fellow Judges are on great form as well. Everyone is in great shape and everyone is dancing well and it’s just a really fantastic number, it genuinely is. It felt a bit like being back in a pro number! I am on a podium it’s exciting!”
Motsi Mabuse “You think you’ve retired and you’re never going to dance again and you’ve done it all, but then Strictly calls and then the shoes are back on! I think that the audience loves to see the Judges dancing and it’s going to be a big celebration”
Craig Revel-Horwood “Well, it’s very exciting. So I’m doing an assisted backward walk over darling, which I’ve never done before, its when you drop into two boys arms, flip over and land hopefully on your feet, so that’ll be good fun! It’s really stylized, I really love the music and it’s a compilation and it’s all four Judges going up against each other!”
Strictly Come Dancing 2023,16-09-2023,Launch Show,Craig Revel Horwood & the Strictly Come Dancing 2023 Professional Dancers, BBC, Guy LevyStrictly Come Dancing 2023,16-09-2023,Launch Show,Craig Revel Horwood & the Strictly Come Dancing 2023 Professional Dancers, BBC, Guy LevyStrictly Come Dancing 2023,16-09-2023,Launch Show,Shirley Ballas & the Strictly Come Dancing 2023 Professional Dancers, BBC, Guy LevyStrictly Come Dancing 2023,16-09-2023,Launch Show,Motsi Mabuse & the Strictly Come Dancing 2023 Professional Dancers, BBC, Guy LevyStrictly Come Dancing 2023,16-09-2023,Launch Show,Anton Du Beke & the Strictly Come Dancing 2023 Professional Dancers, BBC, Guy LevyStrictly Come Dancing 2023,16-09-2023,Launch Show,Motsi Mabuse & Strictly Come Dancing 2023 Professional Dancers, BBC, Guy LevyStrictly Come Dancing 2023,16-09-2023,Launch Show,The Strictly Come Dancing 2023 Celebrities , BBC, Guy LevyStrictly Come Dancing 2023,16-09-2023,Launch Show,The Strictly Come Dancing 2023 Professional Dancers & the Judges, BBC, Guy LevyStrictly Come Dancing 2023,16-09-2023,Launch Show,Anton Du Beke & the Strictly Come Dancing 2023 Professional Dancers ,BBC, Guy LevyStrictly Come Dancing 2023,16-09-2023,Launch Show,The Strictly Come Dancing 2023 Professional Dancers & Judges, BBC ,Guy Levy
Justin Timberlake is apologizing for his dancing skills after his grooves, along with his khakis, were clowned by Twitter users this week.
Timberlake, the former ’N Sync star known for hits like “SexyBack,” got grilled online for an attempt at the “Beat Ya Feet” dance during his appearance at Pharrell’s “Something in the Water” festival in Washington, D.C., on Sunday.
The dance Timberlake attempted, according to DCist, is a “series of three-step moves and a bounce” that comes from the D.C. area and its funky go-go music scene.
“I had a long talk with both of [my feet] individually and said ‘don’t you ever do that to me again,’” Timberlake said.
“Maybe it was the khakis, it was a real khaki vibe.”
For ballet dancer Megan Hug, landing a company job was a journey—but not an unexpected one. Last season, she was an unpaid apprentice with Canyon Concert Ballet in Fort Collins, Colorado; before that, she paid tuition for three years as a trainee at BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio, and for one year in the Professional Division at Nashville Ballet. Now she’s an artistic associate with Canyon Concert Ballet—her first paid contract.
Dancers of previous generations would often join companies in their mid- to late teens. These days, directors of ballet, modern, and contemporary troupes are looking for a greater level of maturity. “Technique has developed so much that dancers need to train more to make it,” says Dr. Maria Torija, BalletMet’s academy director. “Also, you have to be psychologically ready for the pressure of a company setting. Adding two or three years in between makes a big difference.”
Megan Hug, who recently landed her first paid company job, calls the pre-professional pipeline “a very tight funnel.” Photo by Machmer Media, Courtesy Hug.
Hug believes she benefited from her trainee years. At the same time, she describes the network of dance trainee programs, apprenticeships, and second companies as “a very tight funnel” that frequently does not result in a permanent job. Even the most talented dancers can end up paying for traineeship after traineeship in the hopes of one day landing a paid position. “It may be unintentional,” she says, “but it feels like they lead a lot of us on.”
The tight funnel isn’t the only roadblock. As trainees and apprentices, dancers may perform on professional stages for years without being compensated. Not everyone can afford to work for free—much less to pay for the privilege.
How can aspiring professional dancers navigate this complicated phase of their careers? According to the experts, the key is identifying programs that nurture young dancers without taking advantage of them.
BalletMet trainees. Photo by Jennifer Zmuda, Courtesy BalletMet.
What Does the Pre-Professional Pipeline Look Like?
Because they’re intended as a transitional space between student and professional life, most trainee and second company programs cater to dancers ages 16 to 22. While they have commonalities—a rigorous schedule, a variety of performance opportunities, and some level of access to the main company and its leadership—no two are alike.
What you’ll be performing is a big piece of the puzzle. Torija says you might do “corps roles in professional settings and soloist parts in academy settings,” as well as working within your own cohort. Performing with the main company is huge, but it’s usually not guaranteed. Students may be selected at the rehearsal director or artistic director’s discretion, and certain seasons won’t offer as many opportunities. “If a company is doing Swan Lake, you might get onstage for that,” says Angelina Sansone, a ballet instructor at University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. “But what if the rep is all small ballets?”
Some places also offer mentorship opportunities. At Ailey II, artistic director Francesca Harper loves advising her dancers on career-building. “We help with things like getting headshots and reaching out to directors,” she says. “I also invite company directors to watch our rehearsals, to begin cultivating relationships that can lead to placements in those companies.”
Sansone wishes all pre-professional programs would provide the practical guidance she gives her college students. “Financial literacy, resumé-building, how to self-promote—those years should be almost like a mini degree,” she says. Unfortunately, that level of attention may be hard to come by, since trainee programs can be quite large. “As much as the directors say they want to help,” Hug says, “they may not have the time.”
BalletMet trainees and corps members in Swan Lake. Photo by Jennifer Zmuda, Courtesy BalletMet.Ballet Austin TWO and Butler Fellow dancers in Alexa Capareda’s Maria and the Mouse Deer. Photo by Anne Marie Bloodgood, Courtesy Ballet Austin.
Are You Paying—or Getting Paid?
Most traineeships charge tuition. (Ballet Austin’s Butler Fellowship Program, which is fully endowed, is an exception.) Most second/studio companies involve paid contracts. (One exception here is Houston Ballet II, which is tuition-based and under the umbrella of Houston Ballet Academy.) Apprenticeships can go either way. Ailey II’s apprentices have been paid since 2021, when Harper came on board. “Apprenticing, to me, equates to being a swing on Broadway,” she explains. “You have to be ready to be thrown onstage. It’s a challenging skill to learn, but it can prepare you for a job.”
Joining an unpaid or tuition-based program may mean relying on your family or applying for scholarships. You might also need to get a side job. Ask up front how much free time—and freedom—you’ll be given. Many ballet programs fill dancers’ days, while the Professional Division at The Taylor School is structured as a series of morning classes and à la carte opportunities. “There’s an understanding that our students are working with other choreographers or companies, or in other industries,” says Michael Novak, artistic director of Paul Taylor Dance Company.
Taylor School dancers (shown here) have the freedom to pursue side gigs. Photo by Blaga Ditrow, Courtesy Paul Taylor Dance Company.
When compensation does enter the picture for pre-professional dancers, the amount can vary widely. You might receive free pointe shoes for shows. Some companies pay trainees when they perform with the main company. Others offer a weekly stipend to second company members.
As an apprentice with Saarländisches Staatsballett in Germany, Zara Beattie was paid a living wage. “We have government funding here,” she says, adding that she received free shoes, hair products, and makeup, as well as a gym membership, access to a sauna, and physio treatments. Dancers in the U.S. are unlikely to be so lucky. For instance, Colorado Ballet’s website states, “Studio Company positions are paid part-time, minimum wage”; most dancers have additional part-time jobs. CB’s site continues, “The importance of other financial support from family, a savings account and sound budgeting skills […] cannot be downplayed.”
What does all of this mean for equity and access within the dance world? When trainee programs first started becoming more popular, Sansone recalls “a definite shift in the wealth of who could participate.” But some organizations are course correcting.
Last year, Atlanta Ballet eliminated its apprentice level, with dancers instead starting as full company members. Oregon Ballet Theatre’s new artistic director, Dani Rowe, is aiming to end low-paid apprenticeships there by 2030. Ballet Austin’s Butler Fellows study tuition-free and receive stipends during Nutcracker; associate artistic director Michelle Martin hopes to one day provide even more financial support, due to the rising cost of living in Austin. Making the program more accessible by removing obstacles for dancers from different socioeconomic backgrounds, Martin says, is a priority for her and Ballet Austin artistic director Stephen Mills.
Ailey II in Francesca Harper’s Freedom Series. Photo by Erin Baiano, Courtesy Ailey.
Making the Most of It
Trainee programs and second companies are cogs in the larger machine of a dance organization. Yes, they prepare dancers for professional life, but that’s not their only function. Studio companies can tour and perform in venues that can’t accommodate main companies. Pre-professional dancers can support the main company onstage as well as in outreach initiatives, which are important when organizations are applying for grant support. Trainees’ tuition payments are vital in a time when many arts institutions are struggling.
Those factors can lead to dancers feeling like they matter more to an organization as sources of income and free or cheap labor than as artists and human beings. And yet, getting a job in concert dance without first passing through a trainee program or studio company can feel close to impossible. So how can you make the most of your pre-professional training years?
“Think of how you can use the system best—because they’re going to use you,” Sansone says. Research what each program offers aside from the promise of a company contract. What skills will you hone? What choreographers will you work with? Where do alumni dance afterward? Dig deeper than the company’s website and social media. Reach out to dancers who have been through the program or are there now.
Antuan Byers. Photo by Rebecca Marcela Oviatt/BECCAVISION, Courtesy Byers.
While in the Ailey/Fordham BFA program, Antuan Byers dreamed of dancing with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He made it as far as Ailey II. “I realized that Ailey II wasn’t just a means to get to the main company. It was an experience all on its own,” says Byers, who is now a dancer, model, and founder and CEO of Black Dance Change Makers. “I got to tour. I worked with great choreographers. I was part of the Ailey legacy. You can’t be so focused on what’s next that you’re not appreciating this moment.”
Above all, “Don’t get stuck in the pipeline, because the pipeline might not work,” says Byers, who also serves as the dancers vice president of the American Guild of Musical Artists. “It’s a mindset shift. Whether or not you get a main company contract, you should be taking class every day, taking feedback, building relationships, finding mentors—those things don’t change. You can leave this experience and go anywhere.”
She was a sickly child. At 9, she contracted scarlet fever. “After that, the doctor said, ‘You know what?’” she recalled. “‘We’ve tried everything. Let her dance.’”
She was short, her turnout was nonexistent and her feet needed a lot of work. She is firm about one thing: If her young self were to audition for the School of American Ballet today, she wouldn’t get in — much less into the company. It was never easy for her, but dancing meant too much to quit, even when her teacher took her, at 12, to see Mia Slavenska, a star of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, perform at Radio City Music Hall. Afterward, they met Slavenska backstage.
She asked for some pliés. “I did two pliés, and she said, ‘Forget it,’” Walczak said. “‘She will never dance. She has no talent.’ And I was destroyed. For two days, I cried. My parents didn’t know what to do with me. And then I said, No. I’m going to dance.”
At around 14, she auditioned for the School of American Ballet and got in, later performing with Ballet Society, a subscription-based company formed in 1946, in Balanchine’s “The Spellbound Child.” She was insistent on another point, too: “I just really was not his cup of tea.”
She referred to herself as “one of the numbers.” She never auditioned. “He knew that I was a very fast learner,” she said. “He knew he could always count on me. That no matter what happened, I would learn it. I’d get through it. And I think that was the main thing he respected about me. And I think he saw that I loved to dance.”
Walczak was also a sharp observer. (With the dancer Una Kai, she wrote “Balanchine the Teacher,” a jewel of a book examining the fundamentals that shaped the company’s first generation.) “What made him zero in on a dancer was not only the physical, the technical, the height, the look, whatever — and Suzanne Farrell’s the perfect example of it,” she said, referring to Balanchine’s muse of the 1960s and ’70s. “It’s the intangible, uncontrollable timing of her body.”
This week, San Francisco Ballet returns to London after a 7-year absence. On display at Sadler’s Wells are many of the new works premiered last year during the company’s Unbound Festival, plus Ratmansky’s exhilarating Shostakovich Trilogy. So, what to look for in each of the four programmes?
Programme B is the most eclectic in terms of mix of styles. We have contemporary chic in Edwaard Liang’s The Infinite Ocean alongside Cathy Marston’s mini narrative gem, Snowblind, and the fantastically surreal Björk Ballet by Arthur Pita to close. Unmissable.Â
The irresistible Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming – the Justin Peck work in Programme C - is pure joy, and is paired with a nice Liam Scarlett piece, Hummingbird, which had its European premiere during SFB’s 2014 tour to Paris. We’re less into Programme D, with all the swirling bodies in the Wheeldon and Dawson works, but still worth checking it out for the beautiful lines of Sofiane Sylve (Anima Animus).Â
The ambitious Shostakovich Trilogy forms the must-watch Programme A. We discuss some aspects of the work in this interview with principal dancer Ulrik Birkkjaer:
TBB: You are cast as the lead in Chamber Symphony, the second work in Ratmansky’s Shostakovich Trilogy. How are rehearsals going?
Ulrik Birkkjaer: It has been really amazing because I am big fan of Alexei’s work. He claims it is an abstract piece, but I find so many backstories to it… it’s a very Russian work and I’ve been reading a lot about Shostakovich, so I have this feeling that I would want him to see the ballet Alexei has created, because he was so censored and he was not really a free artist at his time, which in turn might also have inspired him. It could have been a good/bad thing for his art ultimately, yet it is so apparent in his work and I feel that is what Alexei shows in this piece. I find it so touching and especially for Shostakovich, it would have been great for him to see these ballets because I think they reflect his own inspiration for the compositions.
TBB: What can you tell us about your three muses in the ballet?
UB: The piece is super autobiographical. Shostakovich had three loves in his life: the first, whom he didn’t marry, was his young love during the war. The second one, with whom he had two children, was the main love of his live and when he was older he met his third wife, who was actually only 27 at the time (he was in his late 50s), and who took care of him and supported him. So that is why I don’t see it as an abstract piece, as the pas de deux are very clearly about them. There’s the young love (Sasha de Sola), and then Mathilde Froustey comes along and there is this flirtatious pas de deux and later she dies, and the angels take her away and that is my favourite part of the ballet. And after that, with the last wife (Yuan Yuan Tan) there is this feeling of deep, supportive love. At the end of the piece, he organises the company members in a formation, and he composes his last note, his last composition and goes to rest. He sets them up and moves them around as if he was composing and then there is one note, gesture, and then the ballet ends. It is so cool…
TBB: …And quite an imaginative choreographic response to something like Chamber Symphony, which is so complex.
UB: It is also very interesting that we are coming straight from performing Neumeier’s The Little Mermaid and, in that ballet, I was performing the role of the poet, and it is also kind of autobiographical, so in that sense the roles are similar. Obviously, they are very different in tone and I try to keep a fresh take on it, so it is not the same person twice, when we rehearse back to back like that.
TBB: Are you involved in any of the other two ballets?
UB: I am also involved in Symphony No. 9. I am preparing the second couple pas de deux in that one. The piece features such a dream couple. It is this Soviet dream couple, a “propaganda poster” couple, and the second couple is maybe the opposite… the couple that doesn’t work in that society, and that is trying to either find a way out or is just not functioning. And I find it such a unique theme, not fitting in a society. The fact Alexei can show that in a ballet is amazing. That is when ballet becomes the right medium for that expression.
TBB: Since coming to San Francisco Ballet, you have been cast in lots of different roles and have had roles choreographed on you. At this stage in your career, how do you feel about being here?
UB: When I first joined, it was literally at the start of the Unbound Festival so my first three months with the company were spent creating four new ballets, so that was an amazing experience. It is a dream to start like that in a company, not having to fill old shoes. I feel very lucky about that, and it is funny because I have met people who asked me if I missed the storytelling aspect of ballet, because the image of a North-American company like SFB is more contemporary. But then, I find myself in a situation where I can do a lot of storytelling anyway and a lot of other artistic development, so I am really enjoying that.
TBB: It is interesting you mention this contrast, because the other Ratmansky ballet we saw you in (some time ago) was The Golden Cockerel, which is pure storytelling.
UB: I think that might have been the last one, but when I was growing up, Ratmansky was a Royal Danish Ballet principal. I must have been 14-15 years old, and I admired him greatly as a dancer, and then he also started choreographing in Copenhagen. I remember he got this last minute gig. A director pulled out from The Nutcracker and he stepped in, with just a few months to prepare. So I was part of that when I was 16, dancing in the corps de ballet. I did a mouse and one of the bees in his Waltz of the Flowers.
TBB: Is his Nutcracker for RDB similar to the one he did for American Ballet Theatre then?
UB: I haven’t seen the whole of ABT’s version, but I’ve seen clips of it. We did that Nutcracker for a number of years and then I understudied the central pas de deux, so I know that old version quite well. I’ve now watched some clips of ABT’s Nutcracker on YouTube and my reaction is ‘oh my God, that is the same, but it looks so much harder now’. It must be one of the hardest pas de deux ever.
TBB: Coming back to The Golden Cockerel, you created the role of Prince Guidon?
UB:The Golden Cockerel was a very Russian piece – the sets were so colourful and extreme – and maybe the RDB was a little bit like ‘huh?’. So I remember him telling us to forget about small, natural gestures, that they had to be ‘Bolshoi gestures’. I remember when I created Guidon, the solo was so intense. Working with him in the studio was the best, he is such a demanding balletmaster!
TBB: Do you have any current side projects or future plans?
UB: My immediate future plan is that we are going to be at the Joyce Theatre in New York this July, with a group of dancers from the Royal Danish Ballet, which I am actually organising because I already did something similar there, the Bournonville Celebration, which we also did in London (in 2015).
TBB: We remember it and it was an amazing evening!
UB: The Joyce asked us to do it again. So we want to bring it back, but not just repeat the programme completely, which is a little difficult because you could in theory take other work that hasn’t been performed in a long time, but if the dancers haven’t done it recently, it would take a while to put together. We are still bringing the second act of La Sylphide, because it still is Bournonville’s most important work, and we are also doing Napoli. Besides that, we are doing different ballets which are also currently in rep at the company.
What I found effective last time was the simplicity of the message: what it is about Bournonville that makes him special in the dance world. One thing is the sense of community on stage, and also in a lot of ballets, like Kermesse in Bruges, you have the “love pas de deux” taking place in front of the whole village per se. All these typical villagers coming together and within that there is a story about normal people taking place. So I wanted to do with this programme as well, so we will try. For this year, the first part of the programme represents the darkness, going through some trouble and finding the positive at the end. So we are starting with La Sylphide Act 2. And the second part of the programme will take place in a village setting, with the love story of the Kermesse in Bruges that everyone watches, and then the lovers become the wedding couple from Napoli.
TBB: In London you had dancers like Gudrun Bojesen, who are no longer performing. Who is coming this time, a new generation?
UB: That is also the challenge, and part of the reason why I chose Kermesse, because it has a younger feel. Some of the younger dancers can excel in that. And tours like that are important for them to realise how vital Bournonville is to the Royal Danish Ballet.
TBB: You’ve had a long career performing so many different roles from so many genius choreographers. Are there any other ballets left to conquer?
UB: Of course, Mayerling and Onegin for instance, I haven’t done. But I think it is important not to wish you were anywhere else in a sense, because if you are always striving, saying ‘if only I were like that’ or ‘if only this happened to me, then I would be happy, and then I would be the artist I want to be’. Ultimately, it is about whatever process you are in. So yes, I would love to try Mayerling and Onegin, but it is way more about process and who you are working with, balletmasters or partners, rather than any ballet. Smaller works can also be amazing experiences.
Then that becomes a real experience, and if you are always dreaming away from the moment you are in, then you won’t really experience it. And you might get to do Onegin, but you might not get along with your partner, or the person who sets the ballet doesn’t like you. There are so many variables and then it can be a horrible experience even if it is an amazing ballet. So I try to live by that, at least. It is about making every day your life.
San Francisco Ballet is at Sadler’s Wells, London until 8 June 2019. For tickets and more information on the four different programmes being presented, visit the Sadler’s Wells website.
