Through the Eyes of a Dancer: Selected Writings

One Route from Ballet to Postmodern

| 3 One Route from Ballet to Postmodern from Reinventing Dance in the 1960s: Everything Was Possible, edited by Sally Banes with the assistance of Andrea Harris, University of Wisconsin Press, 2003 On July 6, 1962, the day of the first performance of the members of Robert Dunn’s workshop at Judson Memorial Church, I performed with my ballet teacher on Cape Cod. Miss Fokine (Michel’s niece, Irine) took a group of students to Nauset Light Beach, where we had class for two hours every morning and late afternoon on an outdoor platform and swam at the beach down the block in between. At the end of this idyllic summer, we gave a recital for local residents. I was fourteen. After every performance, summer or winter, Miss Fokine would pick on one poor kid who had done something transgressive, like letting dirty toe shoe ribbons drag on the floor. On this occasion, after our performance of the “Grand Pas” from Paquita, she entered our dressing room and came right at me, pointing and yelling, “Look at your hair! You look like an African Fujiyama!” We had been on the Cape for six weeks, and whenever my mother wasn’t around to cut my hair it grew like a bush. From that moment on through the rest of high school, I grew it long so I could tie it back in a bun like the other girls.When not in class, I ironed my hair or applied a godawful -smelling chemical to straighten it. I never found out what a “Fujiyama ” was, but I don’t think it’s African. That fall the Bolshoi was coming to the Metropolitan Opera House, and Me, at seventeen. I still love to stretch. (Jerry Bauer) 4 | Through the Eyes of a Dancer they were looking for American teenagers to fill the crowd scenes of Leonid Yakobson’s new Spartacus. Miss Fokine’s mother, Alexandra Fedorova, still had connections to the Bolshoi, and arranged for a bunch of us to audition. I was among the lucky group chosen to perform.We were onstage when Vladimir Vasiliev leapt like a panther and turned like a gyroscope. When Maya Plisetskaya dragged the cart like a beggar woman, we all had to point at her and laugh. Backstage, Galina Ulanova walked a few steps behind the meltingly lovely Ekaterina Maximova. My fantasy was to become the next Anastasia Stevens, the American-English girl who danced with the Bolshoi and also translated for us. Plus, she had beautiful reddish frizzy hair (frizzy—like mine!). In the summer of 1963, I went to the Delacorte Theater in Central Park to see the new Joffrey Ballet. Because the performance was free, crowds of people would come, so you had to get your ticket in the morning and camp out in the park all afternoon. I remember seeing Gerald Arpino’s Sea Shadow, with Lisa Bradley, hair long and free, undulating on top of a man. She was both pristine and sensual, and utterly gorgeous. The possibility of this kind of dancerly sexuality appealed to my budding sense of myself. That night I decided to study at the Joffrey school (officially the American Ballet Center) starting in the fall, even though it meant commuting from New Jersey. I loved the Joffrey school, especially Françoise Martinet, who wore white tennis shoes even for pointe work.The classes seemed less strict than at the School of American Ballet, where I had studied during the summers of 1960 and 1963, and the atmosphere was not quite so hallowed.1 Lisa Bradley, Noël Mason, Ivy Clear, Trinette Singleton, Charthel Arthur and Marjorie Mussman were all taking the advanced class, which I watched whenever I could. I usually took the intermediate class with Miss Martinet, Lillian Moore, or occasionally Mr. Joffrey. I tried hard to be a worthy ballet student, and when Mr. Joffrey asked me to stand front and center as an example to the others, I was thrilled almost to the point of delirium. A few modern dancers took class too. I didn’t want to be a modern dancer—that’s what my mother had been. I had studied “interpretive dance” with my mother and other teachers since I was five. I had taken the June course at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance that summer of 1963, and I continued to goevery Friday, but it remained a sideline for me.2 One day as I was walking to Washington Square...