The Truth about Dance

Maturity Questioned
Rose Wurzer and Katherine Mayfield in their 2000 article, The Competitive Edge, raised the issue of student competition, and differentiated between a good competition and a bad one. They argued that it is the teacher’s responsibility to create the proper atmosphere and should do so by sharing their time among the students, not by degrading or lifting any particular student to an extreme (as it creates polarity among the students for years to come). The authors suggested that attempting to degrade any one student would cause other students to gang up on him/her and demoralize them even further. On the other extreme, placing a student on a pedestal would create tension whereby other students might feel they have no chance of achieving the same level of technique and ability.
Wurzer and Mayfield give sound advice; however, that advice is rarely heeded in the professional dance schools I have seen. Quite often, teachers invest their time on the 3-4 students that have the best chance of joining the parent company, and the rest of the students have to learn the technique by observing these prime students and the correction thereof. The best example that comes to mind is the late Stanley Williams (1925-1997). At the time, he was recognized as one of the best dance teachers around. Nureyev, Baryshnikov, Peter Martin, Peter Schaufuss and many more visited his class on a regular basis. This class was designed to train the next dancers to join the New York City Ballet. Wurzer and Mayfield’s advice is moral and sound because they recognize that children, teenagers, and even young adults are not mature enough to see through the imbalance that they experience in the outside world. Although many of the students that join large dance schools are highly skilled and recognized in their home states, they find themselves shunned while others are preferred, day after day, by their teachers in the new environment. Handling rejection requires maturity. Some are unable to handle the situation—drop out and disappear into the population and occasionally, some attempt suicide.
In 1977, as a teenager, I left my parent’s home and began making decisions on my own. I had no choice—the country was at war with itself and with everyone at arm’s length. My journey to the United States started in England with Nicholas Beriozoff (1906-1996), a famous choreographer and teacher, who offered me a scholarship to Indiana University where he was stationed as ballet master. Within a short period of time, I found myself in New York where the top 10 male and female dancers in the world roamed the streets. One could see them shopping at the illustrious Saks Fifth Avenue, or taking dance classes in preparation for the evening’s performance. In retrospect, I must admit that I was overwhelmed and unprepared for what I was about to face; not the technical skills but the social habits that somehow had ingrained itself in the small community, that is, the dance world—a world where it is best to keep silent, and not make waves in hopes of meeting the right person who can help you achieve your goal quickly.
This is instinctive for all performing dancers who have diligently worked practically all of their lives to reach the top. They put blinders on, with help from a society that ignores them, in hopes of achieving success. After all, they are nothing but mechanical machines performing for a meager existence, taking on all assaults with a grain of salt. They know that the average retirement age for a performer is 27, and are willing to do anything from starving themselves to making themselves available to morally degrading circumstances. They are aware that the best companies more often than not make hiring decisions behind closed doors, and that auditions sometimes are just to satisfy the union and any other stakeholder involved. Mind you, more and more young dancers are able to master a high level of skill, but their future is in the hands of those who have total control over them, from income to position in the company to self-esteem.
In 2002, I was watching one of the beginning episodes of the ‘American Idol’ television program. Three judges were auditioning ranks of singers for an upcoming performance competition. They would carefully observe a singer’s performance and provide feedback regarding his/her skill and potential future, which is not that different from dance auditions. One of the judges on the show was British and was attempting to eliminate the performers by demoralizing them on national television, calling them losers before eventually cutting them. Although it is rare for an audition judge to verbally abuse someone he or she has just met, it is not unheard of, and the same individuals can even become quite aggressive and abusive to those whom they are familiar with in their company. Similarly, large schools, where hundreds of students are auditioned every year for a few openings and there is no sign of a student shortage, gives an impression that teachers and those in charge have absolute power over the students; after all, the skill has to be passed on from teacher to student directly. As a result, these youngsters become easy targets for abuse. The students are always threatened by the presence of a newcomer who could possibly fill their spot.
Parents, world over, send their children to these large institutions, paying for their housing, education, and hoping for their child to be the chosen one. These teenagers, having been trained for years in their own state under their parent’s supervision, are all of a sudden packed in a group of 2-3 per studio apartment without adult supervision—a circumstance not normally found until much later, perhaps at university level, when they are no longer teenagers and have some life experience, not to mention a decent education and hopefully an analytical mind to differentiate good from bad. These types of dance institutions most often rely on skill and ability rather than age to decide whether or not a certain group should be together. As they move into the company, again their skill becomes the motivator; hence, the teenager might be working with a 30-year-old. Somehow, once the teenager joins the dance company, they seem to be considered an adult. I have rarely seen a teenager who is in a company to be supervised by their parents, as this is looked down upon. An excerpt from Edward Villella’s book, Prodigal Son: By now I felt more at home at the school and thought a lot about Balanchine [1904-1983] and Lincoln. They both personified the special new world I wanted to be part of. Although at that age I had no real understanding of its true nature, it seemed European and provocative, certainly far removed from anything I had grown up with. For one thing, I knew that Balanchine had had several wives. At the time he was married to Maria Tallchief, who was his leading ballerina. Not long after I enrolled in the school, she danced the lead in his production of the Firebird. I was part of the opening-night audience and was thrilled by her performance. It was said that Balanchine had given her an expensive diamond bracelet after the premiere, but I was also aware of rumors about his relationship with another dancer in the company, the seventeen-year-old Tanaquil Le Clercq. One day I saw Balanchine sipping a drink with Tanny in the Schrafft’s restaurant on Madison and Fifty-Ninth Street. He was oblivious of everyone but her. By then everyone knew he was in love with her. He was casting her in many new roles and wanted to marry her. Watching them together, I felt as if I were getting a glimpse of something I wasn’t supposed to see. I was thirteen, and just then beginning to understand Balanchine’s relationships with his dancers. There was always a ballerina who inspired him.