On Technique

10. Roni Mahler

88 Roni Mahler “. . . set yourself up to be happy.” Roni Mahler has been a principal with the National Ballet of Washington, D.C., and a soloist with American Ballet Theatre. She is on the faculty of the Juilliard School. I got started in ballet when I was six. My mother took me to study with Madame Maria Yurieva Swoboda in New York City. Madame Swoboda eventually sold her school to the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and I later joined the company. My first professional performance was so very memorable. We were beginning our tour in Los Angeles, and I was making my debut in the corps de ballet in Les Sylphides. Waiting onstage before the curtain went Roni Mahler. Photo by John Gerbetz, courtesy of Ballet San Jose. Roni Mahler 89 up, I’ll never forget the air of magic created by the sets and lights and costumes. By creating the chance for me to dance character roles, Dennis Nahat has given me a second career, first in Cleveland and now with Ballet San Jose, where I also function as his artistic associate. Madame Swoboda recommended me as a teacher to a studio in Wilmington , Delaware. I took the train every weekend to teach two classes. Sometimes I was also asked to substitute at the Ballet Russe school. I like teaching at dance conventions. I feel lucky to have been given really good information from the day I started ballet, and I want to pass it on, if it can help. My teaching recordings were an extension of that thinking. I made the LPs in two versions—one with music only and one as a spoken class. Harriet Cavalli would choose the music, and I created the exercises. I find the value of the spoken class is that it would take teachers nearly a year to get through the entire set of ballet exercises. I’ve run into people in many places who remember me from these records, including someone who was in line behind me at the airport. Roni Mahler on Teaching Technique What is technique? Technique is the vehicle that moves you around the stage so that you can communicate with the audience. It gives you the freedom to dance. It serves as your “wheels.” How might you define it? Freedom. When it’s really good, it makes the dancer free. When not, the dancer struggles. It’s great when I, as an audience member, am not worried about it. It’s a sense of line, of how not to make a high extension look or seem disjointed and disturbing. You can have an extraordinary facility but not register with the audience. Your dancing needs to resonate with them. Facility is not technique; it fades. How do you go about imparting it? It has to be individualistic. Everybody is different. A true teacher knows how to guide every different body—to stand up, not fall down— and to make people care about what you’re doing onstage. Many are not Roni Mahler. Courtesy of the artist. Roni Mahler 91 schooled in the use of upper body, and this can be disappointing onstage, as the upper body shows you what to look at underneath. Otherwise, dancing becomes the Olympics. So you can do triple tours and entrechat huit, but let’s stay away from making it gymnastics. Is there a difference between skill and technique? The patina comes from years of being in ballet class. When I was teaching at Kansas State in the mid-1970s, a gymnast came to me two weeks prior to her floor exhibition wanting help. I said OK and had her follow me in a simple walking and port de bras exercise—two steps for each position of the arms; forward, up, side, down. Her arms were like two sticks—no connection with her chin or center. I told her the only way to help would be to enroll in Ballet 2, which met twice a week for sixteen weeks for thirty-two sessions. If she did, she would begin to have grace, but there was no way to give this to her quickly. It’s a process of osmosis—better arms, head, hands. It has an effect on people, and you cannot quantify it or schedule it. Looking and being balletic means having the right carriage and grace. Some students soak it up, Roni Mahler working with student Jonna Bolah...