"checking potential" on new members...

[silvy]

I felt prompted to post this topic after reading Tony Bentley's "Winter Season".

At the beginning of the book, she tells us about the time when she entered NYCB after graduation from SAB. She refers to this period as "the end of a dream and the beginning of reality". She then goes on to say that she was given new things to learn "big, grand ballerina things" to learn. That apparently "they were checking out potential", she says (I am quoting from memory, so please excuse if my wording is not exact)

I was curious to read that such a new member were ever given big things to learn, and would like to know:

1) if you know if this is still done at NYCB

2) what your opinion is on that "practice" (I dont find the word in English - sorry!!).

Silvy

[Ari]

Silvy, I don't think it is, or ever was, a practice at NYCB to teach new dancers big solo roles, if by that you mean that it was done to them all. I remember that when Bentley first joined the company Jerome Robbins taught her a role in Dances at a Gathering which, I believe, she never did perform. Evidently Robbins thought she was talented and wanted to see if she could dance a major solo role. Individual choreographers at NYCB have always been free to choose the dancers they want to work with. I think it was nothing more than that.

[Mel Johnson]

But it's not unheard of to see a corps dancer suddenly popped into a major solo role in Nutcracker. In fact, at NYCB, it's almost a tradition.