Martha Hill and the Making of American Dance

Students and Master Teachers, 1960–1961

Students and Master Teachers, 1960–1961 Although lively discussions among Juilliard’s faculty members were generally confined to dining-room conversations, strong opinions sometimes surfaced at end-of-the-year jury examinations . It was a time when the entire dance faculty came together for two to three days at hourly wages to evaluate each student’s progress. Of course, a faculty made up primarily of artists presented its own difficulties: José once qualified his admiration of a student’s study with the comment, “When I seethe with jealousy and wish the work was my own, I know the work is good.”1 Expectations ran high and, as might be expected, emotional outbursts were commonplace . Martha handled each situation with ease, often taking the opportunity to reconcile personal differences that had developed among faculty members. Personal remarks to young aspiring artists—some already suffering from fragile self-esteem—if generally honest, were sometimes harsh. Dancerchoreographer Martha Clarke, whose brilliant career began as a founding member of the innovative company Pilobolus (she was later cofounder of Crowsnest ), recalled one such end-of-the-year session where she performed a short, consciously awkward solo to a Bach piece for clavier and strings. The faculty members who had nurtured the composition thought that the work was superlative . José did not: “My dear, you are throwing dirty dish water at a monument .” Clarke was somewhat appeased later that afternoon when Tudor stopped her in the hallway to say he thought the solo was interesting. She recovered enough to celebrate her “first artistic controversy with a bottle of champagne.”2 The next year, Martha Hill saw to it that Clarke was “protected” under Sokolow’s choreographic wing, where her “strangeness” was amply appreciated . But Hill, too, was sometimes very blunt with her comments—a peculiarity that grew more pronounced over the years. She was capable of telling students that they weren’t “Juilliard material” and should not return to the school.3 In the fall of 1959 at his entrance exam, Carl Wolz faced this formidable dance jury. The department’s audition style was to seat the faculty behind a long table— Martha in the middle, ballet people on one side, modern on the other, with composition and notation teachers at the ends. All jotted notes on forms as students took brief classes in both ballet and modern styles, before performing a study of their own creation. At such occasions, Martha was at her best and most officious. Carl’s decision at age twenty-five to enter the dance profession was not unusual among Juilliard’s recruits during this time—particularly among the males. After a stint in the navy, Carl had received a degree at the University of Chicago and planned to become an architect. With a passing interest in dance, he had studied a little ballet and, on a lark, went to see the touring Doris Humphrey Dance Theatre perform. “I thought, ‘Wow! This is great stuff.’ While talking to company members, they said, ‘Oh, do you dance? Why don’t you come to NYC and audition?’ So, I thought if Juilliard accepts me, I’d go into dance. If not, I’ll continue with architecture.” At the end of the brief solo that Wolz had prepared for Juilliard’s entrance exam, he overheard someone whisper , “He’s awfully old,” and Martha’s distinctive voice reply, “Well, there are other careers in dance besides performance.” To his great surprise, “they took me.” The event marked the beginning of a strong friendship that lasted for the rest of Martha’s life. From then on, Carl carefully watched Martha’s office management style as a work-study student, “mostly typing names into her enormous address book to keep it up to date.” He observed, “Martha was a very cool lady. She saw that life has problems and living is solving those problems. She met each day with a new fire to be put out—always very positive about things.” He was always aware of Martha’s constant struggle to keep the department afloat: at that point it was common knowledge in the dance office that the New York City Ballet contingent was an increasing threat to the future of the dance department. Yet, “she was never bitter. Martha just fought the next battle.”4 Knowing of his interest in architecture, one of the assignments Martha gave to Carl was to care for the architectural drawings and blueprints that arrived periodically for the new Juilliard building at...