January 17, 2021 – davidbruceblog #2

Education

• Early in her career, while she was still a student at Denishawn, Martha Graham showed talent, but she had not yet made a major impression on Ted Shawn. One day, Mr. Shawn and some of his students were working on “Serenata Morisca,” a solo Moorish gypsy dance, as Mr. Shawn tried to decide who would perform it during the next tour. At one point, he looked at Ms. Graham, who as usual was sitting quietly and observing when she was not dancing, and he said, “It’s too bad Martha doesn’t know this dance. She would look just right in it.” Ms. Graham spoke up, “But I do know it.” Mr. Shawn replied, “That’s impossible — you’ve never danced it!” Ms. Graham then demonstrated the dance, which she had learned from watching the other dancers. She was given the solo to perform during the tour.

• Arthur Mitchell of the Dance Theatre of Harlem used to go to schools for lecture demonstrations and say, “I don’t go much to discothèques anymore, so you’ve got to tell me what the latest dances are. Anybody want to come up and show me?” Once the students were up on stage demonstrating the newest dances, Mr. Mitchell would point out when appropriate, “Now you may call this step the ‘hustle’ or the ‘monkey’ or whatever, but what you were really doing was step, plié, step, plié,” and show the student what he meant. Occasionally, one of the students demonstrating the newest dance steps would have real talent, and Mr. Mitchell would give the student a dance scholarship.

• Dance teacher Carmelita Maracci was gifted. She was technically perfect and would demonstrate a dance move such as an arabesque to her astonished students, then invite them to try it. They were unable to reach her level of perfection, but they did the move better than they ever had before. One day, dancer Anton Dolan visited her classroom, so she stood up and unleased a series of dance moves — entrechats six and entrechats huit — that he had not been able to do since he was 30 years old (and that very few male dancers, and even fewer female dancers, can do), and then she sat down. After Mr. Dolan left, Ms. Maracci said, “It nearly sprung me, but I figured I had to do it. He’d heard I was a technician.”

• Edward Villella worked three hard years to learn how to partner a ballerina — before he learned to partner, he sometimes found it difficult to get ballerinas to dance with him. However, eventually he learned partnering — and learned it well. At Jacob’s Pillow, he partnered the wondrous ballerina Violette Verdy in the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, and she got off balance during a series of turns. Fortunately, Mr. Villella was ready to immediately balance her again. At the close of the adagio, when he was holding Ms. Verdy upside down and she was looking up at him, she said, “Thanks!” — in perfect tempo to the music.

• As a young man, choreographer George Balanchine nearly died and so he believed in living his life each day and not holding anything back. He would tell his dancers, “Why are you stingy with yourselves? Why are you holding back? What are you saving for — for another time? There are no other times. There is only now. Right now.” Throughout his career, including before he became world renowned, he worked with what he had, not complaining about wanting a bigger budget or better dancers. One of the pieces of advice Mr. Balanchine gave over and over was this: “Do it now.”

• Miss Beth and Miss Lynn, two children’s dance teachers in Georgia, once figured out a way to communicate with each other that they thought their students four years old and younger would not understand — they spelled. So they would make comments about students such as “P-R-E-T-T-Y G-O-O-D,” “B-A-D child,” “S-C-A-R-E-D,” and “S-M-A-R-T A-S-S.” Unfortunately, one four-year-old genius told them, “P-R-E-T-T-Y G-O-O-D spells ‘pretty good,’ B-A-D spells ‘bad,’ S-C-A-R-E-D spells ‘scared,’ S-M-A-R — .” Miss Beth and Miss Lynn stopped spelling.

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