Amy Reusch

There are some lifts that are dangerous if the partner isn't attentive.

I had a teacher whose performing career was ended early because a partner wasn't ready to catch her.

Perhaps these are called catches not lifts? I wonder.

Mel, were you with the Joffrey at the time of the Green Table filming for Dance in America (she was in traction at the time). Do you know who I'm talking about?

(I'm thinking if you do, you might know the lift in question)

I love it! How wonderful!! What a great way to donate to a company, and help build audience as well!* I wish the NEA would do this all over the country...

(* I'm sure NYCB fills it's orchestra all the time, but the more people see good dance, the more they want to see more good dance, so it plays beyond the single ticket sale.)

One thing that hasn't been said... a good partner can make a not so good ballerina look great and and able to do things she could not on her own... a bad partner can make a good ballerina look awful and cause her to mess up things she normally has no trouble with unpartnered...

Also, with some of the 19th century partnering, I think it was Jacques d'Amboise who told us, that the man was to always look at his partner, but she was not to look at him but rather out toward the czar...

My modern dance friends used to object to ballet's tendency to haul women around like objects.

2009! We couldn't be more ready for you! May you bring as much financial bounty as 2008 brought financial ruin! (and may the Muse be bountiful too!)

Oh yes, I'm going to look that up too. I'm really interested in these things that started with Denishawn right now, and also the other night watched that old vhs with all thes Denishawn pieces in it, including 'White Jade' and also Stuart Hodes as St. Francis. I liked a lot of it, although it's clear they all broke away from it to make their own work. I liked some of Ted Shawn's pieces a lot too, more than the St. Francis I think, and this was my first time to see any of the St. Denis and Shawn pieces

I like Stuart Hodes as almost anything!

Well, if you're really interested in Denishawn, you really ought to open communications with the Humphrey Society. Stephanie Clemens, the president, is also a Denishawn reconstructor and grew up being babysat by Denishawn dancers. She studied at Julliard (under Tudor, I know, perhaps under Limon, but I don't remember her speaking of it). She worked a great deal with Karoun Tootikian, whom I believe held St. Denis' estate. I think they tried to donate the holdings to UCLA, but one day Karoun came in and found all those beautiful scarves and costumes thrown all over the floor of the dancers' lockerroom and I think she removed the archive... but I could be mis-remembering again... they could still be there... or it might not have been UCLA.

What I don't understand is why it didn't all go to Adelphi if Ruth St. Denis founded Adelphi's dance department. Perhaps because Karoun lived in southern California, she wanted to keep it close by?

Should I call NYPL or the Doris Humphrey Society? I really would like to see 'the Shakers' and I've never actually gone over there and watched the non-circulating things. Or should I just go on over to the Lincoln Center Library, I could watch several of your tapes in that case.

You'll find all sorts of things! I recommend going to Lincoln Center if it's not difficult.

Perhaps also you'd enjoy reading Ernestine's book on Martha Graham.

I also didn't shoot the Two Dances mentioned...

Two dances

Hightstown, N.J. : Dance Horizons Video, c1999.

Call #: VC 793.28 T

Subjects Modern dance.

I've shot Day on Earth, but no coaching, only in performance. Piece involves a child performer as well as adults, if I remember correctly.

With My Red Fires is very interesting... has kind of a soviet-realist style heroine ... and a corps, something less often seen in modern dance...

I did shoot footage of Ernestine coaching this, as well as a live peformance, I think as part of a Dance Chicago festival, but it hasn't been released and the recording you mention isn't mine.

This one is on hold for me right now (I'm pretty sure). It looks like it contains the Air, but also whole dances.

Doris Humphrey technique, its creative potential, with four early dances

Pennington, NJ : Dance Horizons Video, c1992.

Call #: VC 793.28 D

Subjects Humphrey, Doris, 1895-1958.

This one was made before I came into the picture... I've seen it, but now can't remember much of it... mostly I seem to remember an interview... but honestly my memory doesn't serve here. This was a Doris Humphrey Society production though... if you do end up in contact with them.

Notes: VHS.

The 1st performance filmed Oct. 28, 1928 in the Civic Repertory Theater, New York ; the 2nd, Oct. 22, 1995 in the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and Performing Arts, New York.

This most certainly was the video we made... but it wasn't LaGuardia, it was out in Oak Park (Doris Humphrey's birthplace), Illinois and it was student dancers & professionals dancing at a Momenta! summer workshop performance. I'm not sure if the 10/28/28 date was the date of the filming or the first performance. Doesn't it look like a church? Could be I'm just forgetting, but with the LaGuardia credit, I'd check first. Ernestine was one of the dancers in the film, so... darn... I'm going to see what I have...

Well... I don't have the info on the original film, which I remember someone discovered when it was being discarded from some major studio... The actual credit (from my notes) for the other performance is:

Rehearsals Shot on Location at

DORIS HUMPHREY MEMORIAL THEATRE

ACADEMY OF MOVEMENT & MUSIC

Oak Park, Illinois

I just found the original film on Youtube (amazing what can be found there these days) and it credited the music as being performed in 1946, so I rather think that 1928 date referred to the first performance not the performance captured on film.

Let's see... that's a lot of material! I believe the Dance Notation Bureau has some of the footage as well. I believe Ernestine was the required coach on some of the scores and the video was intended as some supplement for when Ernestine was no longer able to coach. You might want to open communication with the Doris Humphrey Society too, they have some interesting things in their library. Just a footnote, but you might not be aware that the head of Dance Horizons, Charles Woodford, is Doris Humphrey's son...

What can I tell you about The Shakers? The tape or the dance? The dance portrays Humphrey's imagining of what a Shaker meeting might have been like. There's a gathering and a Matriarch and a man who calls out... the dancers shake out their sins but in a very formal non-Dionysian way, and there are some focusing phrases called out... The shaking is almost trembling that they shake out from their nervous systems out through their fingertips... if you think of Shaker arts, they're very simple, a very clean line... so the dancing is rather stiff and pure as well... the music is a recording of a shaker hymn sung by perhaps (if memory serves and often it doesn't) an actual Shaker. The tape has a run through and coaching of various segments by Gail Corbin, Ernestine's assistant, followed by some coaching by Ernestine. There are various historical images that I threw in, as an idea of what sort of thing we might use, but then, if memory serves, the producer balked about obtaining the rights so rather than hunting for further images and using them, we stayed with what we had and perhaps they were a bit repetitious. I think we concluded with a video of the performance, (with performance lighting rather than video lighting, unfortunately... there is sometimes struggle with lighting designers who are lighting a live space for a live audience to consider that the larger audience will actually be watching the video... but it's understandable).

Hi Papeetepatrick

You would perhaps like to see all of the tapes the Doris Humphrey Society produced with Ernestine Stodelle. In addition to

Air, we did The Shakers, Water Study, The Call/Breath of Fire, and Two Ecstatic Themes. The idea was to preserve as much as possible of Ernestine's coaching, and I'm delighted that you enjoyed watching it. La Guardia students? I assume you watched this live, as it wasn't part of the footage. Regarding With My Red Fires, I know I shot some coaching and performances, but I never edited it. Perhaps someone else finished the project (I had a young child and cancer to contend with, and I'm afraid completion drifted away from me). I do have a good deal of footage waiting to be edited, hopefully sooner rather than later.

We tried to have Ernestine coach both experienced and inexperienced dancers... one might wonder why we would have her work with beginners.. but you see, it seemed to the producer and me that oftentimes, over the years, certain things are lost in reconstructions because it was just assumed that everyone knew them and so they weren't explained... and yet as techniques change and evolve, sometimes what was once obvious becomes obscure... Just think of those old Petipa ballets, the ballerina's wouldn't have dreamed of doing anything so vulgar as lifting their leg above hip level! Yet a contemporary ballerina would need to be instructed to keep her leg lower... So, at times, one might wish the beginners could more fully realize the movement being asked of them... but of course we also used Nina Watts in one of the tapes, and surely she gave a full rendition. One of my favorites was watching Sarita Smith-Childs, a young but talented dancer who made quite a journey through learning Two Ecstatic Themes.

Each tape involves a slightly different situation... in some we had several coaching sessions to pull from, in others perhaps only a little. And yes, they're very detail oriented. Half of them were shot in a brick building with no air conditioning, during a historically bad heat wave, during which I think there was something like 500 heat-related deaths in the Chicago area, so we were all a bit drained, were it not for Ernestine's inspirational manner. We were making them before DVDs were common. I can't decide whether it would be better to be able to skip through the coaching points or whether that would incline coaches to skip as well... it's somewhat difficult because they weren't really intended for the general audience.

It's been a long while since I last saw the footage, it's time to get back to work.

The tapes are in the non-circulating collection at NYPL, I believe, at any rate they were given betacam copies of the originals as well as written transcripts of all the coaching sessions.

RIP Ernestine.

One of the problems is that some of us only know these dancers (beyond their legend) from whatever film remnants exist... not always the best evidence.

It's very curious! The poses all seem inspired by photographs, but the movement in between is so unnatural... as if the animator studied stills but didn't have a live dancer for inspiration. Lovely & charming!

If you watch Virginia Brooks' documentary about the children in Nutcracker, in dress rehearsal you'll see Balanchine catch Marie's slipper! (much to everyone's surprise!)

Thank you thank you Paul! This troubled me for years because I thought I remembered being taught that Sugarplum Fairy was originally composed for glass harmonica... but when I brought it up about 15 years ago at a ballet company performing another piece to glass armonica, was told no, no... the celeste... and I must be mixing up Tchaikovsky with Mozart. But I see in Wikipedia Tchaikovsky's first draft called for a glass harmonica! (although apparently probably not Franklin's instrument but some sort of glass "xylophone").... ???.

At least I don't feel quite so silly now...

I think some of the issue is that some ballet schools are not as conscientious about teaching their students how to break in a pointe shoe for quietness. In the past, there were fewer pre-professional ballet schools in the USA at the level where students would go on to dance professionally. Many, but definitely not all (and I can think of one well-known US school and company who has never paid much attention to the sound of the shoes), of those schools insisted on quiet shoes for their school performances.

I vote a little that pointe technique is changing and some of it has to do with the cost of the shoes... at what they cost nowadays, no wonder beginning students (and their parents) are leery of breaking them in enough to be quiet and supple... and perhaps what starts with beginners continues as a trend as the students become more advanced... (and shoes like Gaynors don't actually break in, though they are perhaps quieter)... it all leads to a different technique if you can't roll quietly through your shoes or you're letting the shoe do the support work instead of the muscles... one tends not to slam one's toes down on the floor in a soft broken in pointe shoe.... (maybe we should put some blame on those toepads too....)

and then again,who outside of RAD has time to darn them?

I think cost is part of the trend.. not the whole story but definitely a strong influence.

About 500 Russian kids audition each year;

Why do only 500 audition? It seems Vaganova would draw more... or is it on a first-come, first-served basis, with only 500 being allowed to audition each year?

well, the problem is, if they don't ever produce any new choreography, then they're just a museum... ? ... but... I guess I'd rather they saw their role in providing new choreography more as providing a laboratory or workshop for emerging choreographers, with a small production budget, than in commissioning big new pieces to present.... couldn't their repertory of Humphrey & Limon sustain the company in larger productions? I mean, Ailey seems to draw strength from Revelations over & over again... ballet companies do Swan Lake & Nutcracker ... the Limon company has beautiful dancers, doesn't the world want to see this work any more? It seems like trying to be options 3 & 4 is spreading themselves a little thin... though perhaps including the occasional work would be okay. Apologies for nattering... and who am I to make suggestions... but.. I was just as disturbed when Graham did Susan Stroman... there's this feeling that the company is straying from it's soul.

Whose production of Nutcracker was ABT presenting in 1947? That's a beautiful photo of Alonso & Youskevitch in it... or was it a studio pose not related to the actual choreography?

Alicia Alonso & Igor Youskevitch in the American Ballet Theater production of "The Nutcracker."

I find her arms beautiful and charming... except I'm struck by how her elbows jut out in the transitionary position and find that surprising in an aesthetic so attached to roundness & softness...

Wouldn't Imperial Style be less acrobatic than Vaganova, with more modest extensions, etc., in keeping with the aesthetics of its era? Wouldn't the differences between Vaganova and Soviet be merely that "Soviet" has ceased to exist, while the Vaganova Academy continues and therefore continues to evolve? Weren't "Soviet" & "Vagnova" synonymous when they were concurrent?

I think a revival of Tudor is exactly what ballet needs. Without going on a long tirade about it, ballet has become a bloodless, technical art form, and ballets that force the dancers to act...

Hasn't the field gone as far as it is interesting to go with technique and physical instrument... I mean, so many dancers are now beyond flexible into practically contortionist range...(who really wants to see an oversplit? At what number of does a series of fouettes begin to lose interest?)... Isn't it time for the pendulum to swing back? I never tire of musicality, but simple technical virtuosity after a while leaves me jaded... There is nothing wrong with dancers having personality, and there's nothing wrong with providing a plot vehicle for personality either. Who is the "new Tudor"? If we've seen a lot of Balanchine knock-offs, who are the Tudor inspired choreographers?