Category Archives: Dance

From ballroom to ballet. Anything to do with dance.

Cherie Magnus’ new book, The Church of Tango, is out now.

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The Church of Tango: a Memoir, published January 21, 2012

On July 1st 2001, Cherie Magnus’ short article, The Church of Tango was published here on the-vu. Now a full-length memoir with the same title is published and it’s the talk of the milongas around the world. Cherie writes on her blog:

“Finally.

I started writing this story at the time it began–in February of 1992, when I was so depressed after my husband’s death I wanted to swallow all of his left-over meds and follow him into the beyond. So what began in a way as a journal or diary became the chronicle of my road to survival in four countries. And once I made that decision to live no matter what tragedy came my way, I plugged on, through one tremendous loss after another, by dancing. No, not yet had the tango found me, but whatever dance there was at the time came to my rescue. I had always been a dancer, and now I knew dance could save me from despair.

As my adventures unfolded, the manuscript grew and grew. I had to make cuts in events, characters, reflections and realizations. That was the hardest part of bringing this story to fruition. There is so much left out. Who knows, maybe I’ll write The Daughter of the Church of Tango, or a prequel one day.

Our students come from all over the world: China, The Philippines, Australia, Viet Nam, New Zealand, Hawaii, South Africa, India, Nepal, Finland, Russia, Israel, Scandinavia, all over Europe, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Canada and the U.S. And one question almost all ask me is, how did I end up teaching tango in Argentina?

This book is my answer.

Lots of women have come to Buenos Aires for tango, stayed a while, and went home and wrote about their experiences. There are a couple of tango histories available in English, as well as a couple of Buenos Aires milonga guide books. There are self-help books using tango as a way to better interpersonal relationships. There are some novels about tango in Buenos Aires.

My memoir is not like any of them; it is not a “tango book,” but a story of survival that cuts across death, cancer, Alzheimer’s, loss of home and homeland and cherished heirlooms and possessions, loss of shared histories, of hope for one’s children, of hope for the future, of love. But it’s also about finding love and unexpected joy. And about listening to the music and dancing.”

It can be ordered from the printer online: https://www.createspace.com/3733773

Now available on Amazon and soon as an ebook for Kindle.

College Dance and the “Real World”

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By Natalie Walters 

If you’ve hung out with a Senior in college lately, you’ve probably witnessed a least one breakdown or “freak-out”  about something along the lines of entering the vicious job competition underprepared and moneyless. If you’re hearing this from a Dance major, then they’re also worrying whether their body is pretty enough, strong enough, flexible enough, and whether they’re talented enough. And if it’s any one of my friends, then you’ve heard that they feel they have to face this transition all on their own.

Fear of entering “the real world” after college isn’t unique to dancers. Most new graduates step into the machine fairly clueless and jobless. But college is expected to equip a student with the skills they need for their projected career. Is this true for dancers?

Most dancers enter college with the intent and understanding that if dancing professionally is what they want to do, they are pursuing Modern dance. The dancers interviewed were well aware by high school that they would never be a Prima Ballerina; the career path for ballet is rather unique and set in stone over centuries. If you’re not apprenticing by your late ‘teens, the odds are bad that you’ll ever be in ABT or NYCB. That’s not to say a college graduate can’t dance for a small or local ballet company, but in Adelphi Senior and Paul Taylor Dance Company intern Elissa Cretella’s words, “I chose to go to college because I knew that I could never become a professional ballet dancer, and I was interested in learning modern and becoming a professional modern dancer.”

Attend nearly any modern dance show in New York City, and invariably, many of the dancers’ bios in the program will include the university at which they studied. This bodes well in terms of advocating the college dance route, because it shows that college graduates do get hired by modern dance companies.

But it’s worth delving into the question of whether a college education is the best choice for budding dancers. After all, it is a career that depends more on actual talent than on academic knowledge. There are no certifications or degrees required to become a dancer, as there are for, say, a lawyer or accountant. This raises the question of why a dancer should even bother getting a degree.

The answer is that for a lot of dancers, skipping college would mean not satisfying a big part of themselves as people. For those interviewed, college satisfied not only their need for technique class and dance training, but their academic pursuits as well. “I was very scholastically inclined in high school; I knew I wanted a college degree,” explains Ginanicole Caputo, an Adelphi graduate. While a substantial number of interviewees felt that attending college after high school was simply “the right thing to do,” for the others, college offered the opportunity they craved to explore and nurture interests and skills other than dance. “I wanted the best of both worlds, of my thirst for knowledge in writing and dance,” says Stephanie Falkowski, a Senior at Adelphi, currently interning with Dance Spirit magazine. College offers a special time and place to really focus on the “self,” serving as a kind of incubation period in which students have time to grow not just in their field, but as artists and as people. “Here, I am given the chance to grow. I’m being nurtured and prepared […]. Very rarely in life do you have the chance to be so openly self-centered for years,” says Sylvana Tapia, also an Adelphi Senior.

This isn’t without its drawbacks. Adelphi alum and LMProject dancer Jessie Niemiec cites a Kerry James Marshall quote from “Letters to a Young Artist” describing the cloistered, safe nature of art schools. “With any college,” she explains, “it is easy to get wrapped up in your surroundings, and the politics of each individual program, where everyone knows you; in ‘the real world,’ it is a lot of first impressions and direct contacts that get you ahead.

But mostly, after this “incubation period,”  dancers are ready and eager to enter the dance world. When asked if ready to graduate and begin their careers, Falkowski and fellow undergrad Hana Delong proclaimed very positive interest in taking the next step. “I’m ready to start the next chapter of my life,” Falkowski expressed, and she can’t wait to “work at a real job and be a real person.” Delong feels the same way: “I’m ready for a new place, a new environment.

But when asked if they actually feel prepared for this step, the answer was dramatically different. “Fuck no,” says Tapia. Falkowski: “I’m scared shitless.” Generally, when asked whether their university, Adelphi, is helping them to prepare for the upcoming stressful transition, this Senior class gave a unanimous “no.” Cretella “[doesn’t feel that her university] gave [her] enough guidance or preparation for the transition” and Tapia “simply does not feel their concern.” Delong says, “as a Senior no one has spoken to me about anything. They probably have no clue I’m graduating; no one is really looking out for us.” To be fair, they do mention that a few teachers are exception to the rule; but the department as a whole “shows little interest … in the wellbeing of their graduating Seniors,” Cretella explains

But it is not just this graduating class. “I think only one or two of my professors actually attempted to help me in the transition. Other than that, no,” added Caputo.

One might conclude that this lack of transitional preparation is part of the reason that only some comparable schools’ dance programs are regularly found in dance companies’ bios. Schools definitely differ, according to graduates’ responses, in career assistance and transitional help. Former dancer and Center Stage Hilo owner and director Pier Sircello felt well supported by her alma mater UC Irvine. “They allowed me to take classes there while I was dancing and auditioning after I graduated; and I also danced in their touring company.” She says that yes, she felt well prepared. So did Kile Hotchkiss, a graduate of the Ailey/Fordham partnership: “I felt prepared both physically and mentally for the dance world,” he says. And he describes “seminars and speakers pertaining to different aspects of the dance world,” which just might be key.

As in most areas of study, college selection does matter somewhat. But Adelphi graduate Ashley Chandler, currently employed by Circle of Dance Repertory, doesn’t think your school should define your career. She did feel prepared for “the real world.” “I received a great technical training, the opportunity to work with many different people and personalities, and [my school] provided me with a space to find myself as an artist and a performer.” She states her belief that “life is what you make it to be.” “I recommend experiencing as many different techniques, styles, teachers, and workshops as you can,” she articulates. This advice is repeated by many of the graduates. “Take techniques that may be new or uncomfortable to you,” Hotchkiss adds.

On top of technique training, other preparative tools are unanimously recommended by Seniors and graduates alike. One of these tools is taking on jobs in college, and, most importantly, saving money. “I wish I saved!” Niemiec laments. “I didn’t, and it made it very hard to go on auditions later on, because I wouldn’t be able to miss out on a day’s work because NYC rent will kill you!” In addition to savings, though, jobs offer something you can put on a resume. “I would definitely recommend getting a job at a studio, because it offers hands-on experience to another aspect of a dance career: teaching,” Adelphi Senior Kelly Leya offers

Another important tool for a dancer to utilize is the array of Summer and Winter intensives offered. Interviewees recommend going to as many as you can. “Intensives get your face exposed to the choreographers who are out there and the people you will be competing with for a job,” reasons Leya. “Every dancer should continue to stay in shape during the off season,” Niemiec points out. Another way to do this, Niemiec adds, is to regularly cross-train at the gym. “Dancing doesn’t always give you a cardio workout, and being that [dance] is such a visual art form, it is hard to maintain the physical expectations [of a dancer] without hitting the gym.”  Tapia hopes that “being disciplined and cross-training now will ease the transition from student to professional.”

The final recommendation by interviewees is to try to secure an internship. Internships can be acquired after graduation, which Leya points out may be the ideal time to do them, when the free classes that often accompany an internship can be a godsend. But for those who have participated in one during college, they felt that interning in “the real world” provides a great way to ease into it. “I am becoming a part of a community and making connections, and learning things about the professional world in a studio and behind a desk. I highly recommend doing an internship,” advises Cretella.

Despite regrets at opportunities not taken, and some dissatisfaction with transitional help and post-grad support, all interviewees responded with a resounding yes, they are happy with their college education. “I had regrets, but would not trade any of it,” discloses Falkowski. Cretella only adds that “I feel my school needs to look a little more into our futures, because if ours are successful, theirs will be, too.”

Natalie Walters is a Dance major at Adelphi University, where she has studied under Leda Meredith in dance and writing.

 

Why bother with an audience?

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By Leda Meredith

“Why have an audience? Why not just create your art for art’s sake and dance it in, say, your living room?”

That’s one of the first questions I ask students in my choreography classes. The initial answers always focus on what the audience does for the dancer/choreographer:

The audience creates performance adrenalin, provides positive feedback (we hope: who doesn’t love a good review?), just their showing up is a sign of support. There are usually a few career-savvy students who mention that the audience pays for the tickets that help pay for their artistic process.

Next question:

What do you do for the audience?

I think this is tricky. On the one hand, I abhor formula work that panders to ticket buyers for no reason other than the business end. We need to make a living, hopefully from our vocation, but I believe that art is a conversation between artist and receiver. It’s a two-way street.

Time out for a disclaimer: I am talking about professional dance and professional art, i.e. the audience is investing time and money to see/hear what you have created. Art for art’s sake, art as catharsis, art as therapy—all of these are valid but they are not what I am talking about.

Dance and all the arts have frequently changed my worldview. Sometimes in subtle ways, as when I see something especially beautiful and am lifted out of my daily worries and endless to-do list by a reminder that there is also the sublime. Sometimes by changing forever how I see or think about certain things.

But I have been at too many performances during which I thought, well, okay, it’s obvious the choreographer was feeling strongly about something, and the dancers are giving it their all, but nothing about the work makes me care because it doesn’t include me. There’s nothing to make me empathize. Half the conversation was never considered.

Here is what my dream choreography student would say:

“My heart and mind are filled with this right now. I have to say it. I have to dance it. I need you to bear witness and have your own experience of it that you will share in turn.”


Leda Meredith is the author of “Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch” (Heliotrope Books 2008). She is the winner of the 2007-2008 Teaching Excellence Award from Adelphi University. For more, go to www.ledameredith.com

Photo: Leda Meredith and Jonathan Riseling in Francis Patrelle’s “Macbeth”, Photo Credit: Eduardo Patino

 

Is Ballet Humane?

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By Leda Meredith

Today one of the young student dancers I rehearsal direct in a Nutcracker production came up to me and pointed to her right foot. A bad blister had bled through her tights and through her pointe shoe. She looked up at me with wide eyes and a well-trained ballet-school smile and asked if it was okay if she did the run-thru on flat. I said yes, the other ballet mistress said no. She kept the shoes on. During the run through, I heard, “Smile, girls, it’s Nutcracker not a tragedy!” shouted at the dancers. I looked at Susan’s foot. Her shoe was red with blood. She was smiling.

This is complicated. There are times when I think a dancer does need to perform despite bleeding blisters and such. When the curtain is going up and there is no understudy, for example. On the other hand, if this were foreign policy rather than ballet I’d say it was utterly inhumane.

I think ballet is beautiful. The ancient Chinese bound women’s feet because they thought small feet were beautiful. What did those women think? My ballet students are willing to put up with real physical and psychological pain in pursuit of beauty. Is it worth it? Is there an alternative way to get to the beauty without the torture? Are we willing to break with tradition to investigate what that way might be?

In a recent dinner conversation with Cynthia Gregory, she mentioned that during her performing career she was very protective of her body. For example, she would let whoever was running the rehearsal know that she could only do one full-out one through. This was not laziness, but a guarded attention to what her instrument could handle. She had no major injuries during her remarkable career.

Sometimes dancers abuse this principle. “I have to mark this run thru because the floor is slippery” (when it isn’t), “I can’t do the lifts today because my back is bad” (when it isn’t). Directors are sometimes right to be skeptical of dancers claiming physical excuses not to perform full out.

But then there is Susan with her bleeding feet at a rehearsal when it won’t make or break the show if she does the run thru on pointe or not. Given enough longevity, professional dancers learn how to make this call for themselves: yes, I can do this and it won’t injure me and it’s necessary vs. no, this would actually injure me and/or isn’t really necessary. But what are we teaching our dance students?

“Smile, girls, smile!” Right. Maybe that needs some rethinking.

Leda Meredith is the author of “Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch” (Heliotrope Books 2008). She is the winner of the 2007-2008 Teaching Excellence Award from Adelphi University. For more, go to www.ledameredith.com

Photo: Leda Meredith and Jonathan Riseling in Francis Patrelle’s “Macbeth”, Photo Credit: Eduardo Patino

Powwow 101

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Powwow 101 – Songs, Dances and Public Participation
An article about the original American dance form
by Corina Roberts


The Dances

There are a number of dances that have evolved from tribal traditions into the styles we see in the arena today. The men’s northern and southern traditional dances are adaptations of ceremonial dances practiced by tribal nations throughout the current-day United States. Northern traditional dancers can be recognized by their bustles, often made of hawk and eagle feathers, and their style of dance, moving to the fast rhythm of the northern drum. The southern straight dance, often referred to as the “gentleman’s dance”, is more reserved, keeping time to the slower, deeper beat of the southern drum. Southern dancers do not have bustles, but their regalia is no less impressive.

The Fancy War Dance, or Fancy Feather Dance, is an adaptation of the dances of men’s warrior societies of the northern plains. The regalia is flashy and includes a great deal of ribbon work. Double bustles flash and sway with the athletic movements of the dancers as they perform this stylized version of their tribe’s ancient ceremonies.

Grass Dancers served an important function when nations had celebrations or ceremonies. Their task was to flatten the grass where people would gather and smooth the ground. They bring good energy into the circle and make the way for the dancers who will follow. Their movements emulate the motions of smoothing the grass and soil, although today they often dance on manicured athletic fields and on gymnasium floors.

Women’s dances have also evolved over time. They too are divided by region, Northern and Southern, and further divided into buckskin and cloth. The northern woman’s regalia may weigh 70 pounds; rich with full yokes of beadwork and breastplates that hang to their ankles. Southern regalia usually employs less beadwork, and breastplates of shorter length. There are numerous tribal variations, some of which have very little or no beadwork whatsoever.

The Jingle Dress is covered in small cones. It is a healing dance, the sound of the softly jingling cones and intricate steps of the dance invoking well-being. It is said to have come to a family in a vision, and the dress is created with 365 cones – one for each day of the year. The Fancy Shawl Dance is beautiful and energetic. The dance is said to represent the girl or woman’s emergence into the world as a butterfly emerges from a cocoon, surviving the struggles of its metamorphosis and gaining strength and beauty with each floating step.
The Gourd Dance is actually a ceremonial dance originating with the Kiowa nation.
It is a warrior society dance, often mistaken for a veteran’s society, but the Gourd Dance predates the formation of the United States. Men dance within the circle to sets of ceremonial gourd songs while women wearing shawls support them from the edges of the circle. The gourd dance honors both men and women and affirms their roles of protecting and supporting each other. Please do not photograph this dance.

Public Participation
Arena Etiquette, Intertribals and Blanket Songs

There are numerous times throughout a powwow when the public is welcome to experience the circle first-hand. There are some simple things to know about the arena that will help you enjoy the experience.

The dance arena is a place of positive and healing energy. Dance for native people is an active form of prayer. We are letting our feet carry our prayers into the Earth. You will notice that many women who enter the arena have shawls around their shoulders even if they are not dressed in dance regalia. This shows respect for the circle and for the feminine aspect of all women.

During dances called Intertribals, you are welcome to come out into the arena. We dance in a clockwise pattern, except for some members of warrior societies who will dance counter-clockwise around the outside edge of the circle. They are performing the function of a warrior, keeping an eye on the arena and watching over their friends and loved ones.

Your children are welcome to come out during these Intertribal songs as well, but please ask them not to run through the arena, cut across the arena from one end to the other, shout or touch the regalia of other dancers.

You do not need to wear regalia to come into the arena during Intertribal songs. Blankets and regular shawls can be worn over a woman’s shoulders; we know that not everyone owns a dance shawl, and if you choose to cover yourself this way, we will understand and appreciate this gesture of respect.

Throughout the weekend you will notice a number of times when a blanket is placed in the arena while a song is being sung. These blankets are for people…all people…to place donations on, for specific dancers or groups of dancers who have come to the powwow without compensation to share their culture, songs and dances with anyone who wishes to experience them. It is a way of honoring the commitment of these individuals and groups, who may have traveled from other states just to take part in the gathering. It is a tangible way of saying thank you. We will impose upon our dancers and visitors several times throughout the powwow to express their generosity during these blanket songs.

Some gatherings are supported by casinos, tribal nations, cities, counties or chambers of commerce. Putting on a powwow involves an enormous commitment of time, energy and money. The Children Of Many Colors Powwow is an all-volunteer effort, produced entirely through donations and vendor fees. As such, most of the people who will dance throughout the weekend have come without any compensation. The blanket dance helps them pay for their gas and food. It is not unusual for this money to be shared among as many as twenty people, or to be given as a gift to a needy family.

Cultural Preservation – Why It Matters

For many years Native American elders and wisdom keepers have been saying that we must care for the Earth if we expect the Earth to care for us. Now, the threat of global warming is no longer a threat…it is a reality. Today, more than ever, we need the wisdom of our indigenous elders to guide us in our actions.

Native peoples worldwide have always understood that humans do not somehow exist separately from the rest of creation – regardless of our ethnic or religious upbringing, our fates are intertwined. What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves. Our actions matter. They have impact not only upon ourselves, but on the generations to come.

We need to take responsibility for our actions…for our health, for our planet’s health, for our children and for our children’s children. We need to come into balance with our finite resources and protect them. We need to act in ways that create a sustainable future.

Cultures that are aware of this balance have always existed, but they have always faced and often fallen to the pressures of the more “civilized” dominant societies; societies often out of balance with themselves and their relationship to other living things. When we talk about preserving and promoting Native American culture, we are talking about something much larger than powwows, or dancing, or learning ancient songs. We are talking about keeping alive the teachings that guide us in healthy ways to relate to other beings, human and non-human, and instruct us on how to care for our Earth so that the Earth can continue to care for us.

Indigenous cultures are not immune to the effects of the dominant societies they are surrounded by. We struggle with complex issues; what is sacred, what is marketable, and where to draw the line. We carry the additional burden of understanding that, while we must live in a society which dictates success in terms of wealth, our hunger for amassing wealth must be tempered with the teachings we know in our hearts are right and good. We know a different kind of prosperity exists; one which is inseparably connected to the health and well-being of all living things, one which has very little to do with money, property and prestige.

For native peoples worldwide, cultural preservation is about survival; personal, emotional, spiritual and planetary survival. We stand on the brink of environmental catastrophe now. The wisdom of our elders and the right relationship of ourselves to all other beings is perhaps more vital now than ever. Many of us were not raised traditionally. We have had to re-learn that wisdom which keeps us in balance.

We are in the process of revitalizing our songs and ceremonies, not for public display, but for something much greater; our survival as nations, as a species and as a living ecosystem, inter-related on all levels, from the smallest microbe to the distant stars. Our elders understood this, and they knew what was coming. It is time now for us to come forward and preserve not only our diverse and vibrant cultures, but the knowledge upon which they have been built.

Author: Corina Roberts is the founder of Redbird www.RedBirdsVision.org

The Urban Tango Phenomenon Explained

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An interview with Makela Brizuela, by Jeffrey the Barak.

In 2006, a very different dance performance was first presented in Venice California. Entitled “URBAN TANGO, The Agony and Ecstasy of Amateur Tango – In Search of the Elusive Embrace”, it was different in many ways and attracted the attention of many in the dance community.

Directed and choreographed by Makela Brizuela, the cast consisted of amateur Tango dancers, not professional dancers, and most of the cast were students of Makela. But even more unusual was the theme.

In a dance performance without spoken word, whether ballet or in this case, Argentine Tango, it takes a little more than the performance itself to explain what exactly is being conveyed by the dance. In 2006, the amateur performers seemed inspired by the passion of this event, and were heard enthusiastically explaining the concept and theme of the show to anyone who would listen.

The concept was repeated and passed along, and in some cases the theme may have been, shall we say incorrectly described as third and fourth hand versions made it down the line of communication. But one thing was clear, something about this event really got everyone stirred up.

With the reappearance of the show in February 2007, it is appropriate that the creator get a word in and talk a little about herself as well as Urban Tango…

It is unusual to find a Tango instructor with a B.A., an M.A., or a PHD, but despite her chosen profession, Makela has one of each.

J the B: How does someone with your academic qualifications choose the life of a Tango instructor?

MB: I studied ballet since an early age, and danced my entire life. When I was 10-12 years old, I used to direct my little sister (she was 6 years younger than me), to create little plays for our family. Even though dance was a major part of my life, my parents thought that I also needed to stimulate my brain, and that is why I chose a career that was as close as art as possible: Literature. I went to the University of Buenos Aires where I finished my BA

When I started to study Linguistics as a requirement, I got fascinated by the power of language in communication. At that time I realized, that I am the most passionate when I can make a difference in peoples lives by helping them out to communicate between each other. I finished my MA and PHD in General Linguistics at USC in 1999.

J the B: How did you get local Tango dancers, and students of dance to cross the line into public performance?

MB: When I started dancing tango in 1995, the power of language in communication made even more sense. I was for the first time able to connect to another human being at a total different level, feeling ecstasy without using words.

Being an Academic and a Professor would not have given me the opportunity of touching the lives of people in the same way. When I teach Tango, I can see how human beings are transformed to the best that they can be. Tango takes them to a journey of interpretations of rejection, inadequacy, isolation; all these feelings are rooted in each individual’s past. Dancing Tango is so rewarding, that most of the people are willing to face those fears, and overcome them to enjoy the dance.

J the B: In many of the descriptions of the theme of this performance, people are talking about the typical situation at a Milonga (Tango Dance) where the women have to wait for the man to ask them to dance, and of course it’s quite the same in the Ballroom community. How does Urban Tango address this?

MB: Being a woman without a steady partner in this Tango Community had taught me lots of things. There were periods where I was thinking that there were ‘scarcity of men’, other periods where I thought that ‘men are all losers’, other periods where I thought that ‘the women are the problem’, and it was a very long journey, until I realized that the power of enjoying tango is within myself. When I go to a MILONGA (social event) it is up to me to enjoy it or to be miserable in it. So, in order to have a good time, I consciously either try to meet friends there, or I will try to have a goal (for instance learning by observing dancing), or I would go just to see people. Suddenly everything started to open up.

When I started teaching I got lots of complaints from women that men are this or that, that they sit and wait forever at the Milonga, and that they do not enjoy tango, and I wanted to do something about it. That is how URBAN TANGO was born. I saw that I have a responsibility as a woman on my own, to allow other women to see that the experience of tango is totally up to them. It doesn’t matter if there are not enough men, or if some women are not nice to each other. It is up to us what we create in our community.

As a result, we started to see great changes. The men in our show, are very supportive of us, and they understand that they are helping us to express a female point of view. We are very grateful to them, and they are the proof that there are AMAZING men in the tango community, we just need to let them show up like that. We also started creating strong bonds between women, that went through difficult process of healing, but that resulted in a safe community where dancing is enjoyed.

Urban Tango shows the process that woman goes through when they chose Tango as their way of self-expression. First she goes to a Tango Class and feels the joy of it, she starts practice and to have fun with it, until she goes to a milonga and have a bad experience. That bad experience (for instance, sitting and waiting all night, or being hurt by a man, or falling in love with the wrong man, etc. etc.), does not allow her to enjoy the dance, so her first reaction is to be angry at women. That competition does not go anywhere, and then she starts to feel really sad. By supporting each other, and by allowing herself to experience that pain, very slowly she realizes that the power is in herself. From there on, she starts enjoying tango fully.

J the B: How did you approach the students and local Tango dancers with the opportunity to perform publicly?

MB: When I called my students with this opportunity I was surprised, because most of them told me that they would do the project just to work with me. I was blown away. They saw, even more clearly than me that I was aiming for a transformation of an entire community. I made sure that they understood that this project would allow them to see their dream come true, not only to enjoy the ecstasy of tango, but also to be able to share this with the women and men in the audience.

URBAN TANGO, The Agony and Ecstasy of Amateur Tango – In Search of the Elusive Embrace will again be performed in Venice, California, at the Electric Lodge, in February 2006.

Makela’s website is: http://www.makelatango.com/

Tickets for the show can be purchased here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/8979

The Ballerina Interviews

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By Kim Knode
Published March 2004

Sven Toorvald’s life and his PBS documentary, The Ballerina Interviews, give an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the ballet world. Filmmaking is Sven’s passion. First and foremost, however, Sven is a danseur.

Ballet “mesmerized” Sven at age fifteen. He signed up for classes at a local studio after seeing the film, The Turning Point starring Mikhail Baryshnikov. (The former pride and principal dancer of the Kirov Ballet who defected to the USA in 1974.) The pretty girls in Sven’s class “helped” to foster his fascination with ballet. But more than gorgeous girls in leotards, Sven treasured the athleticism of ballet.

For example, he enjoyed the thrill of performing the various kinds of high-flying leaps found in ballet. (Balanchine protégé, Edward Villella’s penchant for jumping a la Peter Pan also thrust him into a love affair with ballet.)

In addition to the athleticism, Sven delighted in the art of the dance. He decided to train full-time. As a result, the danseur auditioned for and won scholarships for schooling at topnotch dance studios in LA. Sven’s philosophy is that, “You can have anything you want if you’re willing to work for it.” He lifts one eyebrow and states, “But you’ve got to be willing to work for it.”

And he did! As a scholarship student at the Stanley Holden Studio, before beginning the strenuous exercise routines at the barre, Sven was required to clean the lavatories. Then, from morning to midafternoon, Sven learned to spin, jump and lift ballerinas.

At the Roland Dupree Dance Studio, he acquired additional ballet agility and strengthened his jazz and modern dance skills. Sven kept similar scholarship hours. (But no toilet cleaning!) He adds, “A lot of scholarship students work the front desk. Some scholarships are partial – you pay to take classes.” Sven smiles, “Of course, you still have to audition to get in.”

To increase the chances of winning scholarships, Sven’s suggestion is to “Always advance your level. Put your best ballet foot forward.” (For higher jumps, he advises, “Squeeze and engage the gluteus maximus – or minimus!”)

Scholarship or not, students who are serious about careers as professional ballerinas and danseurs feel the pressure of perfecting their ballet proficiency. All the dancers in Sven’s documentary declare that competition is severe. The ladies agreed that out of one hundred ballet students, only two or three make the cut into a professional company.


Perhaps that explains The Ballerina Interviews’ 15-year-old Cathy Seither’s sacrifice of a high school social life. (Homework is squeezed in at lunch.) “I’m dancing seven days a week,” says Cathy. “Ballet is not like sports. You have to be focused. You can’t throw yourself everywhere…And you have to make it look effortless!”
Sven was fortunate. Spotting his talent, an older ballerina at Roland Dupree’s recommended the young danseur for an apprenticeship at the Houston Ballet. Sven was accepted without an audition. One year later, Sven was admitted as a paid professional into the company’s corps de ballet.

At the Houston Ballet, Sven had the honor of learning the steps for ballet classics (such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake) from celebrated choreographer/danseur, Ben Stevenson. (The renowned Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet danseur and recipient of the Royal Academy of Ballet’s Adeline Genee Gold Medal.)
Sven also went on to dance with other ballet legends like Valentina Kozlova. (A big box-office draw at the Bolshoi Ballet. She defected from Russia to America in 1979 and joined the New York City Ballet as a principal dancer.) Sven danced and toured with her in The Daring Project.

Sven confesses that ballerinas have a tougher time than danseurs in the ballet world. There are always more ladies clamoring for positions in professional companies. Plus, once ballerinas are accepted into a prestigious company, they still have to exert tremendous effort to be considered for starring roles.

Former New York City Ballet principal dancer, Judith Fugate was picked to do a pas de deux with Mikhail Baryshnikov. However, she suffered from injuries. In The Ballerina Interviews, Judith confesses, “I danced on torn Achilles and tendons for a year.” Ballerinas “can’t go on stage with knee pads!” (In his research at the University of Washington, Professor Ronald Smith found that injuries were as frequent and damaging for ballet dancers as football players.)

Besides the strained muscles and stress of competition, ballerinas struggle with weight problems. In Sven’s documentary, former New York City Ballet principal dancer, Jenifer Ringer confesses that despite her star status, “I was taken off stage due to weight problems…It was difficult to want to dance but being kept off stage.” (When the frozen yogurt loving Bolshoi prima ballerina, Anastasia Volochkova was fired for excess weight, she sued. Anastasia won the case.)

Slim Sven who declines sweets and dines by six each evening is sure to circumvent such weighty situations. But will he leave the stage and ballet behind if he wins an Emmy or Oscar for The Ballerina Interviews? With an impish grin, Sven answers, “I’ll always keep teaching and dancing for fun!”

Currently, Sven may be dancing at a movie theatre near you in Disney’s Haunted Mansion. (Or you can catch him on DVD in Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite.) He teaches at the Westside Academy of Dance in Santa Monica, California.

Copies of the danseur/filmmaker’s Ballerina Interviews can be obtained by calling Sven at the school at 310-828-2018.


Sven Toorvald and Martine Harley photographed in The Nutcracker by photographer Steve Mason.
Kim Knode © February 4, 2004
Kim Knode’s interview articles focusing on artists, celebrities and dance champions have been published in various print and on-line publications.

Pushing the Amateurs

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Pushing the Amateurs – How one woman is trying to create a chapter of USABDA
By Jeffrey the Barak

USABDA – The United States Amateur Ballroom Dancers Association. You might expect a big dancing town like Los Angeles to have a large chapter of USABDA, but in early 2003, there is only a mostly defunct Greater L.A. Chapter, which is not only less great than it once was, it’s virtually completely disbanded.

Standard Competitors at USABDA’s 2002 National Championships

Enter one enthusiastically devoted amateur ballroom dancer by the name of Alexandra Caluen, and her quest to create a long overdue West LA chapter of USABDA.

There is no shortage of social ballroom dancing in West LA, mostly thanks to well-known teachers such as Russell Adcock and Michael Kuka, and there is more East Coast Swing, Salsa and West Coast Swing than you would ever have time to do, but USABDA is only partly about social dancing.

As the national governing body for amateur ballroom dancing and DanceSport (the competitive version of ballroom dancing) in the United States, USABDA encourages its members to compete and perform as well as to waltz the night away for purely social reasons.

If you join a chapter of USABDA, you had better be prepared to be encouraged to recruit new dancers, dance with new people at the socials and also to learn a performance routine or two as well as give serious consideration to entering a dance competition.

And why not? 99% of social dancers already know it’s all about the dance itself. A ballroom party is no place to cruise for your next date. The dancing and the constant quest to improve upon it take precedence over everything else.

And attracting beginners is essential. Many ballroom events are filled with beautiful souls who are almost too old to go on a cruise ship. As cool and fabulous as these more mature people may be, the only hope for the future of ballroom is the constant influx of younger and younger new dancers. With Salsa and Swing being so popular, there are plenty of potential recruits, but there is often an image misconception with ballroom dancing.

Latin Competitors at USABDA’s 2002 National Championships

For example, unless a Salsa Dancer is exposed to the visual wonders of advanced competitive Latin dance, they are not going to be able to erase the image of nice old grannies doing a gentle social Cha-Cha on the community center floor on a Saturday night.

Unless a Swing Dancer actually witnesses a high-speed continuity style Foxtrot, they are not going to have any inkling of how amazingly cool that is. They are going to see the word “Foxtrot” through glazed-over eyes.

USABDA is like an outreach organization that spreads the word to the unconverted. We dance because we evolved enough to be able to dance, and it feels even better than it looks. USABDA is a way for there to be more Ballroom Dancers, and better Ballroom Dancers.

So there was this void in West Los Angeles. In this case West Los Angeles also includes a 30-mile arc around West Los Angeles, and Alexandra Caluen decided to take some action to fill the void. Alexandra even bought everyone dinner following the second meeting that took place to discuss the formation of the chapter!


Alexandra Caluen with her husband Phil

the-vu: When did you first become aware of the existence of USABDA and the lack of a local chapter?

Alexandra: I don’t remember the actual first-heard-about-it moment, but I suspect that I saw an ad placed by USABDA in a magazine called Dancing USA. I joined fairly soon thereafter, and this would have been within my first year of dancing ballroom. As to the local chapter, Greater LA lost its entire board of directors last year. We thought and talked about if for a couple of months after receiving an appeal from the regional vice-president; when no one else stepped up to revive a local chapter, I took a deep breath and dived in.

You met your husband Phil in dance class?

Yes indeed. We both started lessons in August 1997, by November were practicing together, and New Year’s Eve was our “first date.” We got married October 6, 2001 and yes, we danced a lot at the reception.

How long had you two been dancing before you decided to pin on a number and compete?

I believe it was in January 1999 and we were still quite bad. J But competition has proved to be the best motivation for us to continue improving overall, to stay in group-lessons, to take private lessons. For me it’s also quite exciting since I was never athletic before. Phil did some biathlons before we met, but for him also ballroom has become an excellent outlet for that competitive urge.

What has been your greatest success so far in competition?

We placed first in a “Silver” level three-dance event (cha-cha, rumba, and swing) at USABDA’s 2002 Nationals. Big thrill, major thrill.

How much help and encouragement, with regard to the formation of the chapter, did you get from your teacher, Russell Adcock and others in the professional dance world?

Russell has always encouraged us to participate in USABDA and has been very open-minded about how he might help. Professionals aren’t allowed to actually organize events, of course. Michael Kuka and Thomas Hicks (other local instructors) are also both actively supporting social ballroom and competitive ballroom.

Junior Competitors at USABDA’s 2002 National Championships

If the West LA Chapter looks like it won’t be happening after all, at what stage do you think you’ll pull the plug on your time and personal expense?

If after one year we have the chapter chartered, and have scheduled our first social dance, and have organized one promotional event, I will keep on with it. I don’t have the kind of ego that will require me to flog any dead horses. All I require is a moderate level of interest and commitment from enough other people to actually pull off the events we all want.

How will the chapter encourage social dancers to learn a performance routine or enter a competition?

I hope that the chapter will fall out, structurally, into a sort of tree. The trunk will be the social dancers who both attend and organize the chapter dances. The branches are competition, performance/outreach, college/youth programs, a formal dinner dance, etc. We would encourage couples who dance socially to learn a routine so they can perform it at chapter dances or outreach events; we would also encourage singles to find partners for the same purpose. Those couples might then very likely be tempted to begin competing. Once you get over the initial stage fright, the performance aspect can be addictive, and if you are at all competitive, the prospect of winning a medal or trophy can be that extra motivation you need to really perfect your technique.

Ultimately, in order to attract those who haven’t considered ballroom dancing before, we need to present it in all its forms: social, competitive, whatever. The point above about “club” dancers being attracted to ballroom by the variety it offers is one that I hope we will make over and over again in our promotional efforts. The catch is that those dance clubs really are predominantly places for the younger, dating crowd. So not only do we have to frame USABDA events in such a way as to arouse the curiosity of club dancers, we have to take our message into the clubs by offering short lessons or demonstrations in the other dances that can be done to the same sort of music in the same sort of ambiance. If people like dancing at all, seeing something new will often inspire a wish to add it to their repertoire. If our hopes are realized, that wish will bring young people into the ballroom studios and they will start to enjoy all the glamour and romance of traditional ballroom, as well as the excitement of DanceSport.

If your readers are interested in learning more about USABDA, there are pages & pages of information on its website: www.usabda.org.

Thank you Alexandra!

And so at the time of writing, it is not yet certain that Alexandra will meet her goal, and that there will be a West Los Angeles chapter of USABDA, but if it doesn’t get off the ground, it will be a loss of opportunity for the area, and for every person that does not learn to dance, it’s a life wasted in the mediocrity of sitting still.

Jeffrey the Barak is the publisher of the-vu, and an enthusiastic social dancer.

Photographer Carson Zullinger’s dance photographs courtesy USABDA.org

Pole Dancing 101

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Pole Dancing 101
Sheila Kelley’s School for Bedroom Strippers
See below for writer credit

Sheila Kelley

Sheila Kelley

Sexy actress Sheila Kelley once wrapped them up in legal jargon on the 80s hit courtroom drama LA Law, these days she’s more likely to be found wrapping her legs around a pole like a stripper. And what’s more she’s teaching others how to do it. In her back garden studio of her plush Hollywood home, Kelley, 37, twists and spins around the pole like a professional, teaching her mixed age group of female students how to copy her elegant, yet erotic moves.

Kelley first became interested in stripping while studying for film roles. This fascination eventually evolved into the gritty stripper movie ‘Dancing at the Blue Iguana’, which Kelley produced and starred in along side Daryl Hannah and Jennifer Tilly. During the filming, Kelley immersed herself into the seedy life of strip clubs during which she learnt dancing techniques and tricks from real strippers. “Having had the dancer background, I took to it very easily and very well. Never in my life have I been in better shape.”

Daryl Hannah at the Blue Iguana

Daryl Hannah at the Blue Iguana

“Women come to the class terrified, like I did, but also compelled. There was just something, from the very first time I saw a stripper in a strip club I was hooked.” Kelley says who during the making of ‘Dancing at the Blue Iguana’ paid strippers to teach her their sexy dance moves.

Kelley certainly doesn’t look like a stripper sat in comfortable sweats, her look is more that of a slim and attractive Hollywood mum-next-door. When performing elaborate tricks on the pole, twisting and spinning like a topsy-turvy ice-skater, Kelley adds a touch of class that makes her act seem almost wholesome.

The thought of teaching it to others came to her while stripping for her husband, Richard Schiff, who plays Toby Ziegler, a sharp tongued Communications Director on award winning series about life in the White House – West Wing, Kelley and Schiff have two children, ages 7 and 1 and a half. “It struck me how unbelievably empowering it was for me to dance for my husband alone,” she says. “Simultaneously, you become your most open, your most vulnerable and your most powerful.”

Schiff says men are bug-eyed with envy when they find out his pretty wife, likes to strip for him. He says he has also discerned a difference in female friends who have taken her classes. “It has changed their marriages, and it’s changed the way they walk through life. There’s a centered kind of sensuality in them that might have been fighting to get through before,” he says. “Then there’s just the fun they have. They’re always howling and screaming back here. I’m playing with the kids, and then I hear this hooting and hollering, and I think, ‘Man, I want to be back there. What am I doing changing diapers?

“I probably got pregnant after a lap dance,” Kelley adds, “There’s a way to spice up your marriage.” Now Kelley teaches four 90 minute classes of her ‘Stripping for Everyday Women class’ a week. Yet the lessons aren’t designed to turn her students who are mostly upper-middle class actresses / friends ranging in age from 24 to 57, into strippers to take the stages of the seedy strip clubs on Sunset. Kelley wants stripping out of the clubs and into the master bedroom. “What I am doing is taking that beautiful art form of erotica out of a decadent place and bringing it to women as an empowering tool,” explains Kelley. One student, who preferred to stay anonymous, claimed the classes give married women a renewed sense of sex appeal. “Women my age, housewives and mothers, aren’t prepared to say, ‘Look at me, aren’t I gorgeous?’ It’s embarrassing,” said the actress and mother, who is in her 50s. “The class is incredibly embarrassing and brings out all of your insecurities. And yet, you’re dying to do it.”

“I’ve taken the best elements from all the different types of dance I have studied over the years, and created my own movement technique. It’s a 40 minute warm up flow, getting the body moving in a more feminine way, in a more curvaceous way, and after that we do pole work and each person does a routine.”

“I’ve never been able to act sexy in a movie. I was playing romantic parts and everything, but that was an area where I just felt foolish, totally foolish,” another student says. “Sheila’s very supportive and wonderful. She eggs you on and keeps saying, ‘Oh, powerful move, powerful move,’ and screaming out how beautiful everyone is. And she means it.”

The classes aren’t designed to titillate the women’s partners, that’s a bonus factor, the classes are to help women feel sexy and confident in themselves without relying on men or anyone else to make them feel that way. These sisters are doing it for themselves!

“It’s a really beautiful bonding experience. The women move from beginners, to intermediate to advanced together, so they develop this incredible bond and trust. There is just this unspoken camaraderie” says Kelley, “If you are scared, I’ll get up there and do it with you. I’ll be right next to you talking in your ear.”

“Allowing your body to move the way it wants to move naturally, being overtly sexual without apology, gives these women and myself an enormous sense of satisfaction,” Kelley continues to explain.

Kelley claims the classes not only make women feel more confident about themselves sexually but also about their bodies. “It helps them own their body no matter what. One woman thought she had a big butt and as she turned around from the last third of the dance, she had to walk back, she went ‘oh no they are going to see my big butt’ and then she claimed it, she went ‘yeah! They are looking at my big ass’. You could see it in her moves! It was a beautiful moment. She didn’t give a damn!”

“The most erotic dancer I ever saw was a 250 pound Jewish girl wearing braces who as she got up to dance, she just floated. She was a real stripper. I was awestruck, dumbfounded by her beauty. This is when I realized that it doesn’t matter what you look like it’s about how you move your body. She was a big girl, but when those hips moved the men were riveted. She was beautiful for those few moments,” explains Kelley.

“Women have such erotic power. We don’t use it because we are scared. We are told ‘bad girls do that’. ‘It’s nasty to move your hips like that’, ‘you’re a slut’ ‘you’re a whore’. I want to blow those days out of the water.” Kelley says.

Judging by the popularity of her program since it started in May, last year women want to blow that image out of the water as well. Kelley teaches lap and pole dancing to classes of 6 – 10 women of ‘all shapes and sizes’ a week each paying $50 for a 90 minute class. The waiting list is growing so fast that Kelley is looking for rented space to accommodate bigger classes and there is talk of doing a video to reach others.

Kelley’s classes may indicate that in the new millennium another sexual tabbo is being brought into the mainstream. Hollywood has recently made strippers the theme of films like Showgirls and Demi Moore’s Striptease. Crunch gyms in Los Angeles started cardio striptease classes as favored by ex-Baywatch beauty Carmen Electra. The classes proved so successful that sessions are now being offered at Crunch clubs in New York and Miami. Sexy actress/model Pamela Anderson, who has a stripper pole in her bedroom, recently announced she might give up acting to strip onstage during her boyfriend Kid Rock’s rock concerts.
Kelley has no plans to return to acting in the immediate future and won’t be staring in a movie reunion for L.A Law, which is being planned for the American network NBC’s 75th anniversary. Kelley won’t be starring in the special one off reunion show of the groundbreaking drama about the lives loves and courtroom battles of Los Angeles lawyers as it will only star first season cast members, Kelley joined in the third.

“I had an opportunity to do a pilot this year and I just wasn’t into it. I don’t get the incredibly satisfaction of giving something to somebody when I am acting these days that I get from what I am doing. This is so rewarding. I feel like it really transforms people, it really changes people’s lives for the better. I’ve got the most touching phone calls in the middle of the night from women genuinely choked up with emotion, saying ‘how can I thank you? I am a different human being, I walk through the world like a different person’. I don’t get that from acting. But I do think I will eventually get back to acting, I love to act.”

“I did not say I wanted to become a stripping teacher. This all just happened,” Kelley says. “I know how powerful I feel when I do it. I know how sexy I feel. I know how beautiful I look to me and to my husband, and that’s all that matters.”

Five ways to bring out the pole dancer in you!

1. Invest in some sassy outfits that would be fit to grace the stages of Stringfellows – if you look sexy you’ll feel sexy too! With the Internet you can shop from the privacy of your own home at discreet sites like: www.annsummers.com

2. Set the mood with some appropriate music. Kelley uses everything from Kid Rock to Jah Rule.

3. Keep eye contact with your partner as you dance. Looking at the floor is another of Kelley’s tips.

4. Learn in the comfort and security of your own home with a video on exotic dancing by Fawina a former exotic dancer from: www.exoticdanceschool.com

5. Create yourself an alter ego – swap your Mary Poppins prudishness’ for a more daring persona – developing a steamy new you will help you shed your inhibitions and leave you free to do anything you want.

Sheila Kelley can be found and contacted via her website at http://www.sfactor.com

The writer of this article comes to the-vu courtesy of the Splash News and Picture Agency. Due to too many weird emails, we have removed her name.

The Church of Tango

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By Cherie Magnus

It was known as La Cat’dral. Not easy to find in Buenos Aires’ dark side streets at three in the morning–no signs, no cars, no people in front. But once I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the old warehouse, I could hear the siren call of music. It was eerie and scary, mounting those stairs alone, but I was helpless to do otherwise, a pilgrim drawn to the altar of Tango.

The room was huge, like the inside of a barn, all wood. It was barely lit by large candelabra with most of the candles melted into pools of silky wax, some votive flames, and a few strings of fairy lights. It smelled of cat piss and dusky marijuana. A bar ran the width of the room in back, with gigantic paintings hanging over it all the way to the rafters. Shadowy figures were sitting around the room on the lumpy funky old couches and broken chairs, their conversations punctuated by the smoldering ends of their cigarettes moving in the dark.

At first I could only see the silhouettes of dancers through the smoke. Three or four couples on the warped, uneven wooden dance floor, moved, not to Pugliese or Tanturi, but to Louis Armstrong’s “Kiss of Fire.” A tall figure approached out of the gloom. “Quieres bailar?” He was young, muscular, handsome, with black rimmed glasses framing eyes that sparkled with cocaine excitement. He was so tall I had to reach up very high to wrap my left arm around his neck. He held me tight and led me with brute machismo, so unlike the subtle leads of the old milongeuros I had danced with at Club Almagro earlier that night. When I leaned against him in the traditional tango pose of female trust, he dragged me across the floor, lifted me back on my feet, turned and twisted me, giving me no opportunity to embellish or decorate his steps. I simply obeyed the movements his body ordered. It was different, exhilarating, exhausting.

“You don’t really need to work out at the gym, do you?” I asked during a break in the music. “No, I eat red Argentine beef full of blood! Blood! To make me strong!”

His eyes glittered, muscles rippled under his tight tee shirt, testosterone energy creating an almost visible aura around him. Breathless, I had to sit out the next set and recover on an old velvet sofa. I watched people arriving and leaving in the candlelight, with their high heeled tango shoes and backpacks. The informality of the setting and the dancers’ attire and attitude clashed with the formal tango they danced so seriously. It was like watching a play: pure mesmerizing theatre.

Armed with two years of tango experience in Los Angeles, New York and Amsterdam, and with knowledge gleaned from a trip to Argentina last year, I had flown off to Buenos Aires alone. I had no plans to connect with a group or to take any lessons. I simply went to dance tango.

I rented a room in the middle-class neighborhood of Caballito. Three other rooms in the apartment were rented to dancers, and the vivacious landlady, Maria Teresa, was a tanguera too. So whenever we met up with each other in the kitchen or the lone bathroom, we had plenty to talk about.

You can dance in Buenos Aires from after lunch until five in the morning. In the afternoon, the tables in the Confiteria Ideal–an elegant Belle Epoque ballroom of marble and mirrors–are littered with the cell phones of businessmen and housewives, also frosty ice buckets with bottles of sparkling sidra, the Argentine apple-cider champagne. Evenings you can go to practicas or take lessons until midnight. Then everyone hits the tango halls until the sun comes up. Repeatedly I went to bed with birds chirping and sunlight brightening the curtains of my room.

Every day, my friends and I discussed who danced where and with whom as if tango were the most important subject on earth. If I lived in Argentina, I would never work. I surmised that the dancers of Buenos Aires don’t keep a 9-5 schedule. Either that or they never sleep.

One night Maria Teresa drove us to Sin Rumbo. The historic milonga is far out of town, but famous as the “birthplace of tango.” Maria Teresa called it the “church of tango,” the genuine tango cathedral.

It was very different from La Cat’dral The harsh overhead florescent lighting illuminated a dozen people seated at tables and a few couples on the small, black and white checkered floor. The dancing style was more open, less crowded than in the packed town clubs. One couple caught my eye: a middle-aged pair a foot apart performing complicated figures with bored faces. “Married too long,” observed Maria Teresa, whose day job was as a psychologist.

Torquato Tasso was another small, cramped, inelegant tango hall, yet famous nevertheless. At first I couldn’t see why. Jetlagged and tired, I wanted to leave by two a.m. But when twelve white-haired portly men in tuxedos took the small stage, I hung around. Luckily for me, because they were the original members of the famous D’Arienzo Orchestra. With five bandoneons (Argentine accordions), a piano, violins, and double bass, they recreated the fabulous music of the 40′s and 50′s that all tango aficionados cherish.

I asked Maria Teresa, “Do you agree that the bandoneon is the sexiest instrument a man can play?” “Ooh yes!”she laughed. “Just look where they hold it!”

Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I went to Pavadita on Avenida Corrientes. It too was upstairs, and after parting the velvet draperies at the top, I smelled the incense, burning to mask the musky stale odors of the windowless hall. At Pavadita, the men sit on a kind of stage at little tables, and the women sit in front of the bar and scattered around the room. Each time the music begins, men and women stare at each other across the empty dance floor. The women select the men they want as partners, and the men respond–or not–with raised eyebrows and inquisitive looks. After a woman nods affirmatively, the man gets up, crosses the room, and, when he’s close to her, she stands up and meets him ready to dance. These negotiations are invisible to all but the participants, and serve to prevent the embarrassment of public refusal. It’s a heady thing for us female tango tourists who are not used to it.

We catch the eye of a man who has just lit a cigarette and crossed his legs in a pose of relaxation…but suddenly he stubs it out and arrives in front of us to dance just because we looked at him.

I had already learned the infamous Code of Tango, and so I knew what was expected of me and how to behave. It’s all about invitation, wanting, rejection, needing, appearance, sensuality, attitude, sex.

I saw that young women are always invited to dance, no matter their skill levels, and old women hardly ever receive invitations, unless it is as favors from a friend or husband. And all the men wishing to dance, no matter their age, looks, or status, can tango as much as they liked.

Men wanted good-looking women; women cared more about the tango skills of their partner. That’s unfair, but it is a man’s world on the tango floor, always.

It is difficult to sit at a table with a man you like while he’s searching the room for prospective dance partners. Too, if you sit with a man, other dancers will ignore you, not wanting to infiltrate another guy’s “territory.” But the fellow at your table can catch the eye of any woman in the room and leave you to dance with her. That’s the Code.

The milongueros (tango hall habitues) of Buenos Aires are not young. They have had many years to perfect their art, are always formally dressed in wool suits and ties no matter the weather, and invariably smell of soap and French cologne. I love dancing in their traditional close embrace. For the milongueros there is only the milonguero style.

On my first trip I was absolutely petrified every time I was asked to dance. This year Carlos Gavito, Omar Vega, and other tango superstars approached me as if they were just anybody–or I was really someone.

At Club Gricel, I was afraid to look at Gavito for fear that he would think me too aggressive. I had taken a few lessons from him in Los Angeles when he was on tour with “Forever Tango,” so we knew each other a little. At the milongas, Gavito only danced with the best and the youngest women. Yet, from the corner of my eye, I saw him stand up, button his jacket, and walk around the dance floor to my table. Oh my gosh, I thought, glancing behind me in vain for the woman who was the object of his invitation. When he returned me to my table ten minutes later, the local women sitting with me were astonished. I could just hear the buzz: “Who is she?”

On my last day in Buenos Aires I danced an impromptu demonstration in the park with Antonio, a handsome milonguero who owned only the elegant suit of clothes on his back. We tangoed beneath a huge fig tree to music from a boombox tied to the bicycle of a grizzled old man. Elderly couples, young children, even a woman in a wheelchair, all cheered and threw money and candy at us while we danced. It was a miracle that I could glide so gracefully over the rough bricks in backless high wedgies with rubber soles.

Thank goodness I had prayed at La Cat’dral.

With degrees in English, Dance, and Library Science from UCLA, Cherie has published many articles in professional journals and magazines. Her solo travels to Europe and Latin America have inspired several pieces published in Skirt!, PassionFruit, Moxie, JourneyWoman, Dancing USA, GoNomad, Open Spaces, Porthole, The Cusco Weekly, the-vu, and various online magazines. She was the dance critic for the Cerritos News in Orange County, California before moving to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She is currently at work on a novel situated in France, when she’s not out dancing. Follow her blog at http://tangocherie.blogspot.com/

Drunk on Tango in Argentina

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By Kim Knode

Award-winning filmmaker, Adam Boucher declares, “I like to make documentaries like Tango: The Obsession as a discovery process which I can share with the audience.” Apparently audiences take pleasure in exploring subjects such as tango in Argentina together with Boucher. After a showing at the Smithsonian Institute in 1999, the Argentine Embassy was moved to declare Boucher’s documentary, “a significant film.” (Also, in the April of 2001, a representative from Jungle Films reports that recently a request for two thousand video versions of the film came in from Germany.)

The 1999 Marin County Film Festival also acknowledged the significance of the “Tango” and awarded Boucher first place. In the same year, at an Orlando, Florida film festival, despite the sold-out performances, Tango: The Obsession took second place. (The opinion poll after each screening may have influenced the ranking.)

The thirty-something director shifts his slight five-foot nine frame in a black easy chair as he starts to tell me about Orlando. (Outside, the twilight shadows fall on the streets of Santa Monica.) Inside my brightly lit office, I can see Boucher slightly blush. He grins and his green eyes flash as he confesses; “I got in an argument with a guy in the audience about tango.”

Boucher strikes me as a sweet, mild-mannered man. (He chose Argentine tango as a topic for his first film because he wanted to learn about the dance that “made my mom’s life happier and better.”  Boucher also dedicated the movie to his mother.) So I am momentarily surprised by a streak of the confrontational in Boucher. But then I remember that everyone has an opinion about the Argentine dance. (Not one dancer that Boucher interviews in Tango: The Obsession is neutral on the subject.)

Carlos Copello of The Tango Lesson (film) and Forever Tango (stage) fame compares tango to a drug.  In Boucher’s documentary, the Nureyev of tango mimes a drug addict shooting up. “It’s like you start to give yourself tango injections – continuous tango injections,” he says.

Despite the best efforts of his teacher, Boucher did not get addicted to the Argentine dance.  His  instructor?  Ten-year old, Geraldine Rejas, (featured in the film) started lessons at age four.

“Why did you choose a child?” I ask.

“She picked me,” he replies. “Geraldine was a good teacher. And there wasn’t the sexual tension of being in the arms of a woman.” He explains that tango with contemporaries is a little intimidating. “I mean what usually takes two or three dates (in North America)…You’re doing on the dance floor!”

Seduction and sexual tension is a part of the tango.  However, Boucher and his movie embrace a larger truth about the scintillating dance. “It is like a meditation,” says the documentary filmmaker. “There is no talking. And you can almost hear each other’s heart beat.” Boucher takes a sip of water and continues, “I experienced many of my ‘moments’ (of epiphany) dancing to “La Mariposa” – “The Butterfly” by Osvaldo Pugliese.”

“I get transformed because I get absorbed in what I’m doing. I don’t think about this or that. I just think about what I’m doing,” is how Margarita in Tango answers Boucher’s questions about the impact of the Latin dance on her life.

The swarthy, middle-aged Margarita matter-of-factly states in the film: “I was taught to dance by my mom’s brother.” (When she was six and seven years of age, she practiced her steps with a broomstick.)

Another lady in her forties, Boucher interviews in Tango: The Obsession whispers that daughters from good homes were not permitted to attend the late night tangos. So the younger girls picked up steps from older cousins. And then practiced with one another at home.

Besides the class restrictions to enter the milongas (dance salons), in tango’s earlier days in Argentina, only adults were allowed in. One man with a huge smile and gaps between his teeth sips espresso and elaborates on the details of his youth with delight into Boucher’s camera. He speaks of sneaking in with other little boys to watch Argentina’s experts twist, tangle and turn with ladies in stiletto heels. “We would hide and then do what they did.” (His initial tango training also started at home with older relatives.)

Thanks to his dancing mother’s connections to Copello, Boucher was granted entrance and access into the authentic (no-tourists-type) Argentine tango clubs.  However, all the credit goes to Boucher for his ability to create intimate conversations on camera while delving into the heart of the tango dancer.

He tells me he spent hours “hanging out” with lovers of tango to gain their trust. (In and out of the dance halls, time was spent munching media lunas (a half moon croissant) and downing “watered down versions of Italian espresso.”) He says, “In Argentina, it is common to share espresso with a fellow tanguero. In fact, they drink one after another.” Boucher states, “I am not particularly a coffee man. However, friends are treated like family. And quality time like drinking a coffee together is cherished.”  The filmmaker smiles and says, “So under those conditions how could someone not love coffee?”

Boucher may also have needed the extra boost from the caffeine. It is evident that the director did hours of homework on the history of the dance. Countless frames of black and white footage and sepia tone prints illustrate the emergence of tango. In addition, interviews with historians illuminate the beginnings of Argentine tango.  (Boucher’s clips with the so-called intellectuals of society – the historians – also take on the tone of a friendly chat on a street corner.)

One of the attention-grabbing moments of Tango: The Obsession was the proclamation that Italian immigrants were instrumental in the development of the dance.  Photos of the European men arriving in Argentina – a land of opportunity – exemplify some of the strains of melancholy, which filtered into the tango.

Tango: The Obsession demonstrates that Italians were not the only ones who needed a dance to deal with the blues. The early blacks of South America, the solitary gaucho, the stressed out citizen living in a high-tech society are all featured in the film.  Boucher’s probing camera lens provides insight (with his interviews and photographs) into why tango becomes an obsession. He gives us a glimpse into the lives of tango dancers who answer the call to touch and hear each other’s heart beat.

To order the film in VHS or PAL format or simply to learn more about Tango: The Obsession:
On the web: go to http://www.tangovideos.com/ or Amazon.com. You can also directly contact the distributor, Jungle Films: Jungle Films 11271 Ventura Boulevard, PMB512 Studio City, CA 91604 Tel: 818-771-8668 Fax: 818-753-8305

Kim Knode’s interview articles focusing on artists, celebrities and dance champions have been published in various print and on-line publications.

Tango in the Twilight

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By Kim Knode

At a recent Southern California United States Amateur Ballroom Dancers (USABDA) competition (held at the Glendale Civic Auditorium), I caught up with Dr. James Kleinrath.  The good doctor, a retired dentist, is the reigning three-time National Senior Smooth Champion along with his dance partner and love of four years, Melody Singleton. (They will defend their title in Salt Lake City in August at the USABDA National DanceSport Championship 2001.)

I arrived in time to see the couple whirling around the dance floor with a vigorous Viennese waltz, a snappy Astaire-Rogers foxtrot and a tango with sharp hairpin turns. I watched almost in a state of disbelief.  “This is the Championship Senior American Smooth division?” I had to double check. “This division is reserved for seniors, right?”

In the USABDA arena, a senior is someone who is fifty-plus. The athletic ability of the older dancers is remarkable. The lifts, spins and all the other steps the younger kids are doing are demonstrated with pleasure filled eyes and smiles.

After stepping off the floor, Singleton keeps her adrenalin going by running! The statuesque brunette (looking like an advertisement for Jane Fonda workout videos) sprints off to change costumes for the next event.  (The confident senior champions have entered another event featuring competition between ballroom dancers aged thirty-five and up.)

Kleinrath needs no change of apparel. He is dressed in a tuxedo that serves as a standard outfit for men competing in the “smooth dances” like the waltz, tango and foxtrot. I tap him on the shoulder and ask for an interview. Despite the tails, he still gives the appearance of an eagle scout. Kleinrath stretches every inch of his 5’10” skyward.  His chestnut colored hair is combed flat. And his brown eyes dance with delight. Kleinrath’s boyish grin also reveals an eagerness to do his duty – to share the joy of ballroom dancing after fifty.

His energetic voice matches the youthful appearance. “What do I love about ballroom dancing? Well, It’s wonderful to move to music!” declares Kleinrath.  Like a delighted schoolboy he continues, “I particularly enjoy the lead and follow aspect of ballroom dancing.”

Indeed, ballroom dancing (also called DanceSport) takes two to tango and maneuver one response to the stimulus on the dance floor.  The wildcard elements of the traffic created by the patterns other couples weave on the dance floor in addition to the music all ensconce ballroom dancing in a bit of mystery.  And Kleinrath loves it because, “A new dance is created every time!”

Did the former dentist always dance?  He chuckles and shakes his head. “No. Twelve years ago, after a divorce, I went to my first ballroom dance class to meet women.” He may not have encountered the female fantasy of his dreams; but Kleinrath fell head over heels in love with ballroom dancing!

For Kleinrath the pastime quickly transformed into a preoccupation.  Presently, “Melody and I spend about fifteen to twenty hours training in the studio,” says the dentist turned dancer.  “Plus, we train with two professional dancers in San Francisco.” The senior champion acknowledges that, “Dancing at the competitive level requires a great time commitment.”

“I am grateful that I found the profession of dentistry when I was younger because it gave me something useful and important to do.  Today, it gives me the financial means to pursue competitive dancing.” Flashing his pearly whites, the former dentist says, “There are many times I stand in the dance studio thinking there is nowhere else I would rather be.”

I ask if his food and fitness routines changed after he took up dancing. “Not much,”  he says. “I decided many years ago that regular exercise and weight control are important no matter what else is going on in my life. And both Melody and I are runners, we both have been running over twenty years.”

Surely with all the time in the dance studio they do not run now?  “Oh yes.  We do about fifteen miles a week. I also do a one-hour workout in the gym with weight (lifting) machines three times a week. And Melody does stretches.”

Do they ever relax? “Both of us like theatre, music and dance performances,” replies Kleinrath.  (My mind flips to the articles I have read on professional basketball players closing their eyes and visualizing perfect free throws. Sounds to me like more preparatory material and memorization of winning moves for the dance floor!)

The champion dancer continues, “We do like movies. And Melody likes to cook up low-fat meals with interesting sauces for us.” (He adds, “Actually she likes cooking more than eating.”)

Singleton may whip up an irresistible béarnaise in the kitchen. But on the floor the duo really cook! By evening’s end, the couple cleans up with a first place trophy in the Championship Senior American Smooth (waltz, tango, Viennese waltz, foxtrot) category.  When competing with the thirty-somethings in Division B of the International Standards (which includes quickstep and the American Smooth dances with different rules about footwork and “frame”), the duo pick up a second place trophy.

The marks of the DanceSport judges are easy to understand. Trying to watch other couples when Kleinrath and Singleton are on the dance floor is a challenge.  There is something about people in love.  One cannot help but watch the exchange of smiles between the partners as they playfully interact with the audience.  (Kleinrath will send Singleton reeling very close to the lap of a seated audience member only to retrieve her to his side ever so smoothly.)

Also, the team’s choreography is unforgettable. In the middle of a waltz, Kleinrath will lift his lady into the air like an older Baryshnikov.  During a tango, Singleton flicks the skirt of her burgundy velvet gown (with a river of silver running through it – reminiscent of a Z) to create a Zorro-esque sweeping action.

Kleinrath confesses that the electricity audiences see on the dance floor sometimes turns into static off the competition stage. He admits that, “Competing together is very hard on a relationship. It’s so easy to fall into the ‘it’s your fault’ trap.”

He quietly states, “I have to give Melody a lot of credit here. She is very good at forgiving. With Melody I feel great acceptance.”

“And I think the main difference for me regarding relationships after fifty is also acceptance.  I don’t feel the need to make everything perfect.” Kleinrath explains, “So many times in past relationships I have felt great pressure to change my partner and/or myself.”

The dancer also confesses that in the area of diet he is not flawless either. “My favorite food is Mexican. When Melody and I are in a hurry, it’s usually Taco Bell!”

Neither Kleinrath nor Singleton are big on alcohol (a clear head is a must for maneuvering effectively around the dance floor).  However, “When I drink – which is seldom,” says Kleinrath, “I like mixed drinks. Melody enjoys sampling lesser known California and Australian wines.”

I ask Kleinrath about the champion-winning couple’s first dance together.  The first dance was apparently a smooth-as-silk Strauss waltz at a “large local dance.”  However, Kleinrath laughs as he recalls, “Our second dance together, we managed to entangle feet in a quickstep and fall down in front of four hundred people!”

From divorce to doing the tango with a devastatingly dazzling brunette and from novice to national dance champion, James Kleinrath proves there is wisdom in the adage, “Practice makes perfect” in the twilight years.

Kim Knode’s interview articles focusing on artists, celebrities and dance champions have been published in various print and on-line publications.

La Salsa Cubana Experience

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By Cherie Magnus

These days ladies alone do pretty well anywhere in the world they travel. The world has gotten used to women on their own in airports and hotels due to business traveling, and more recently, vacationing.

I’ve traveled alone in many countries and I wholeheartedly recommend it for those decisive independents who don’t get too lonesome at dinner. I’ve wandered by myself through Paris, Florence, Buenos Aires, as well as all over the United States.

But the one country where it doesn’t work out well is Cuba.

I had fallen in love with the country and its people in January on a cultural exchange in a group of about forty people. Not wanting to wait until it got too hot or until the end of the rainy season which would soon begin, I went back on my own in April. (To be sure I had my U.S. Treasury License to do research with me.) Wanting to avoid both the high cost and tourist ambiance of the big hotels, I rented a room in a crumbling 18th c. palacio on the Malecon, with a balcony overlooking the sea and the lighthouse across the bay.

The owner was friendly and accommodating, the location was fantastic, I had maps and a list of phone numbers of people I had met in January. Oh and the weather was perfect.

But I had a problem. I was an American woman. A tall, pale-skinned redhead, there was no way I could blend in as I always try to do wherever I go. It is impossible to walk down any street in Havana day or night without every man on it calling out to a female tourist. It isn’t dangerous, just not comfortable. Mostly of course it’s the younger men, and I suppose it’s equivalent to U.S. construction workers–just part of their macho roles as men. The older Cubanos’ machismo translates into courtliness.

I took a bicitaxi one afternoon from the Cathedral clear across town to calle San Miguel to deliver a letter from the States. The little old man cycled me over potholes and around pedistrians and trucks to the remains of an old hotel. Without comment, he chained up his bicycle and led me into the lobby, inquiring of several people the correct room. I could tell that there was no way he was going to let me fend for myself in that dark warren of habitacions, like a medina in Cairo. He was only satisfied when we found the correct room, which was divided into three tiny windowless areas altogether no bigger than a broom closet.

Two men were playing chess in the middle space in the front of the open door. When they didn’t understand my explanation of why I was there, the woman across the hall came over and instantly got a handle on the situation, and I delivered my letter.

The taxista was sitting in the shade by his bicycle when I came out into the sunshine, as I had asked him to wait for me. From there he pedaled me back across the square and plazas to El Floridita, where I had to change my $20 bill in order to pay him. Then I joined all the tourists drinking daiquiris and flashing their pocket cameras while posing in front of the Hemingway memoribilia on the walls. I joined a table of Belgian girls and we talked about Jacques Brel and sang some of his lyrics together. It felt good to be in a group of women.

A tourist woman alone feels vulnerable in Cuba wherever she goes, despite the policeman on nearly every corner day and night. She can’t lose herself shopping, because there isn’t any. People-watching on the Malecon or Prado is an open invitation to be hassled or hustled.

She’s more comfortable in the bars, lobbies and dining rooms of the tourist hotels because there is a security person for every few guests. But then she’s just meeting other tourists, and probably those from her own country. Cubans aren’t allowed in the tourist hotels, except in the public areas by special invitation.

This is the one country where I suggest going in a group. Especially if you are a dancer like me. In Buenos Aires I boldly go alone each night to the tango halls where I dance until dawn with no problems. There is a strict formal code of behavior there, and in my six trips to Argentina, I never once had any sort of difficulty.

Cuba doesn’t work like that. There are very few salsa clubs per se, and I wouldn’t recommend a woman entering them alone, hoping to dance, as she might in Buenos Aires.

The Cubans dance all the time, but informally at parties and casual gatherings. They can’t afford the clubs which are very expensive. And so it’s mostly other tourists who are at the clubs anyway.

So unless you meet local people who invite you to their fiestas, a Havana trip will not usually provide hours of salsa dance experiences.

Live musical groups perform in bars and cafes everywhere so you can listen to some great stuff, but in order to dance, you must bring your partner.

Women who want to dance salsa or to study folklore and religion or education or medical care in Cuba will learn more and have more fun in a group of like-minded individuals.

And as a matter of fact, I will be taking a small group of salsa dancers from Los Angeles in November 2001 to study Cuban music and dance, “The Salsa Cubana Experience.” Now that I know the ropes, I want to share what I learned about where and how to dance in Havana with other dancers, and to have fun in a mixed group of Americans and Cubans together. Also to help foster understand between our two cultures, where there is so much misunderstanding and misinformation. Let the music and dance bring us together.

With degrees in English, Dance, and Library Science from UCLA, Cherie has published many articles in professional journals and magazines. Her solo travels to Europe and Latin America have inspired several pieces published in Skirt!, PassionFruit, Moxie, JourneyWoman, Dancing USA, GoNomad, Open Spaces, Porthole, The Cusco Weekly, the-vu, and various online magazines. She was the dance critic for the Cerritos News in Orange County, California before moving to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She is currently at work on a novel situated in France, when she’s not out dancing. Follow her blog at http://tangocherie.blogspot.com/

Ron Montez and Dan Radler

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The Coast-to-Coast Meeting of the Champion Minds:
Ron Montez and Dan Radler

By Kim Knode

Just So Stories author and Nobel Laureate in Literature Rudyard Kipling says,  “East is East, West is West and never the twain shall meet.”  However, when it comes to the how-tos of garnering championship titles in DanceSport, two top American champion dancers and adjudicators agree.

Here are some insights from interviews at the residence of seven-time U.S. Latin champion, Ron Montez in San Diego and exchanges via e-mail and telephone with Dan Radler out of his Watertown, Massachusetts studio. (Radler is a former Ten-Dance champion and representative of the U.S.A. at the World Championships.)  Next time you gasp at the breathtaking performances of the dancers or the unbelievable results of a competition, you might keep in mind the tenured professionals’ tips.

Montez, a seven-time U.S. Latin Champion (1979-1985) and host of  (possibly the longest series on television), PBS Championship Ballroom Dancing, says that when evaluating competitors as a judge, “You do a certain amount of scanning and specific looking as necessary.  But you end up with a very quick opinion – based on your experiences and expectations.”

Radler explains that, “At least six couples are being judged simultaneously. So the criteria that a judge might choose to consider are actually too numerous to examine individually in the brief time allotted.  The experienced judge, having seen and studied dancing at all levels, can quickly assess the performance of the couples.”

I ask Montez about the in-your-face performers who wiggle and gesticulate in front of judges.  Karla Montez, who teaches along with her husband on the Anyone Can Dance instructional videos, starts laughing. “It’s obnoxious!” she says.

I nod my head in vigorous agreement as Montez declares, “Oh, I don’t think of it that way.  I just see it as part of their performance.  I think of myself as invisible.  I know they are not doing it totally for my benefit. There are a bunch of other judges around the floor.”

Karla replies, “I think they are doing it for the judge’s benefit.” She waves her arms about and says, “Look at me! Here I am!”

Karla and I giggle as Montez seriously states, “But if you are a judge and a couple is directly in front of you, rarely do you evaluate them.  I won’t evaluate a couple if they are too close to me. I need to get a good perspective.  I might be evaluating a couple whose backs are turned to me across the floor.” The former champion pauses and grins, “Couples have no idea when they are being looked at.”

To improve the chances of high marks, when the adjudicator is glancing at a pair of dancers, Radler reminds his protégées that, “Persistent practice of postural principles promises perfection.” The New Englander reiterates (what my statuesque aunt always told me as an adolescent): “Good posture makes you look elegant and exude confidence.”

Montez agrees with Radler and says that “crooked bodies” definitely get low marks on his score sheet.  Conversely, points pile up quickly for “a couple who is technically good and has good footwork, balance and all the technical aspects.”

Radler concurs, “foot and leg action is important.”

I ask for examples.  The Ten-Dance champion answers without hesitation. “The stroking of the feet across the floor in foxtrot to achieve smoothness and softness…In tango – the deliberate lifting and placing of the feet  to achieve a staccato action.”

Radler adds that another crucial aspect “In smooth dancing is the stretch of the woman’s body upwards and outwards and leftwards into the man’s right arm to achieve balance and connection with his frame as well as to project outwards to the audience.”

Montez also maintains that, “The man’s role is to frame and to circle and to present his partner. For that reason, I dislike men’s see-through shirts intensely.” He continues, “Those sheer shirts where they show their nipples. I think it’s disgusting. It’s like look at me!”

His wife (and mother of three Montez children) makes the point, “It takes away from the masculinity that we need to keep for other viewers looking at this sport.”

I ask Montez about ladies’ costuming. “Nowadays, the Latin dancers may wear a mini skirt or they may wear some other kind of string thing. I like to see some type of skirt because it adds to the movement as the lady spins and whips around.”

Karla adds, “When Latin (competitions) started, women wore skirts so when she turned the skirt would continue.  Now it’s not the skirt that continues so there is no beauty.”

Montez maintains it is old-fashioned common sense when it comes to costumes. “If a girl is wearing a low back (outfit) but she doesn’t have an attractive back, it’s not a wise decision to wear that dress.”

“Costuming, the flow of choreography as well as intangibles as how a couple ‘look’ together and whether they ‘fit’ emotionally all have an affect on the judge’s perception and markings,” states Radler.  (Of course, crucial elements like timing and rhythm adherence are always figured in. As Radler says, “The music is boss.”)

Subtle and not-so-subtle signals sent from the dance floor are important.  “I don’t like purely physical dancing where they are out there trying to – I don’t know – kill each other!” says Montez. “Overly physically demonstrating one’s craft to the judges is not necessary.” He smiles and says, “You shouldn’t be tired after watching them. The appearance – should be one of ease.”

Radler likes to see “Power and energy.” With enthusiasm he states, “Energy is exciting to watch! I’ve noticed that, in a jive, it always seems to be the most energetic couple that wins this dance.” However, he does warn DanceSport competitors that, “the energy must be controlled, not wild.”

The Massachusetts coach continues, “It goes hand in hand with presentation.  Does the couple sell their dancing to the audience?  Are they exuding their joy of dancing and confidence in their performance?”

Montez also prefers, “couples who – along with technical mastery – have a good rapport . And who genuinely seem to be enjoying dancing with one another.” The seven-time champion contemplates for a second and continues. “It’s a very delicate balance. Some are too much into one another – like a social dance.  And some are too into performing and doing a ham dance!”

The champion declares that at the top of his list are, “performers who are able to convey their love of dancing.” And why not? From East to West, whether we are sitting on the sidelines or quickstepping our hearts out on the dance floor, love is the reason why we participate in DanceSport.

Kim Knode’s interview articles focusing on artists, celebrities and dance champions have been published in various print and on-line publications.

A visit to the home of Ron Montez

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Living and Dancing in San Diego with the Champions
A visit to the home of Ron Montez

By Kim Knode

America is most familiar with Ron Montez as the co-host of the popular PBS series, Championship Ballroom Dancing. In the international DanceSport (ballroom dancing) community, the seven-time U.S. Latin champion is not just a handsome face on television. Montez is the “back by popular demand” expert at competitions and in dance schools due to decades of experience as a dancer, coach and adjudicator.

The retired competitor is frequently invited to fly away from his twenty-year San Diego sanctuary to judge DanceSport competitions and conduct classes in the rhythm dances (distinguished by a controlled wiggle called Cuban hip motion) such as salsa and cha-cha. For instance, this summer, Montez will pack his bags to join fellow ballroom celebrities at dance camps for adults. (The sell-out camps are a far cry from scout outings into the woods.) Spacious ballrooms sparkling with chandeliers in places seductive like Las Vegas to sedate like Provo, Utah see top talent gather to teach dance fans at premium prices.

In addition to the airfare and admission into the dance camps, DanceSport enthusiasts will often pay eighty-five dollars and up for a private one hour session with Montez. In addition to waltz workshops and such, students often get a chance to compete and perform, which adds up to adjudication dollars for experienced judges like Montez. However, as lucrative as the events outside of Southern California may be, San Diego’s dancing man prefers to stay close to home.

So DanceSport competitors from all over follow their road maps and dreams of golden trophies to visit the wizard of Latin dancing in San Diego. (Traffic may increase with the approach of the possible entrance of DanceSport – ballroom dancing – into the 2008 Olympics.) If the dancers are lucky enough to garner an appointment, the Champion Ballroom Academy on Fifth Avenue is where they generally meet Montez. (In 1995, the school was voted as the best dance studio in America. The owner, Mary Murphy is also a U.S. ballroom dance champion.)

After weeks of telephone tag, I am the fortunate one who is granted an early April sixty-minute interview at the champion’s home. Montez promises to squeeze me into his schedule on a lunch break away from his duties as judge at the Southwestern Regional Dance Championships held at the Holiday Inn San Diego-On The Bay.

Gazing out of the taxicab window en route from the San Diego Amtrak Station to the Montez residence, I see a myriad of streets all starting with El Camino (meaning “the way” in Spanish). Blooming hydrangeas, foxgloves and other botanical delights spring forth from meticulously manicured gardens. Houses stand proud and pretty with coats of freshly painted pastel pinks, yellows and blues. The sky is filled with puffy white clouds. Is this paradise? (I am knocked back to reality as the East African taxi driver tells me of his escape to San Diego for a better life.)

Arriving at the address on my post-it, I cut an amicable deal with the cabbie. (He agrees to wait an hour and take me back to the train station.) I knock on the door of the picture postcard house and am greeted by Karla Montez, a former Jazz dancer. Her form-fitting black top and pants accentuates her trim figure. She is a mother of three and still looks fit as a fiddle. (Perhaps it is the running after her four year old that burns the calories. Or maybe it is all cha-cha and mambo she does with her husband in their video series, Anyone Can Dance.)

She graciously accepts my arriving early for the interview. With a smile, Karla directs me to wait on one of her Easter egg blue couches. Heading into the kitchen, she says, “Ron should be home pretty soon.”

Framed family photos smile back at me from every corner. My eye wanders from a baby boy wearing only his daddy’s necktie to a tanned Montez family with leis around their necks looking like they are enjoying a Caribbean cruise.

I follow the trail of pictures of the Montez children at different ages to a placard studded with red hearts that reads, “One hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove…Or how much money I had in my bank account…” The last line reads, “But the world may be a little better because I was important in the life of a child.”

I do not see any trophies or award certificates or even dancing photos of the champion. I only see that Ron and Karla Montez are champions of the family. My impression of stepping on to the set of The Donna Reed Show is enforced as Karla comes out of the kitchen with a tray of freshly brewed coffee and freshly baked blueberry muffins!

She sets her goodie laden tray on the (polished) coffee table and pries open the lid of a rose red tin. Karla says, “These homemade chocolates were a gift to us. I can’t eat them all!” She starts to offer me one of the scrumptious morsels but spies a dark chocolate that has been sampled. Removing the confection from the mix, Karla laughs. “Looks like a Ron!”

I decline the chocolates but not Karla’s blueberry feather light muffins. In between bites, I comment on the tranquility in her home. She grins and explains that her four-year old son is with a trusted sitter. Also, as a gift to her husband, she turns off the music before he comes home. “Ron likes to listen to talk radio because he hears music all day. And I’m hearing the kids talking all the time so I’m always turning off the talk radio and turning on music.”

“What kind of music?” I ask.

Karla chuckles and answers, “With two kids in the house, I like anything that is calm! I usually listen to easy listening stations like 96.5.”

The quiet is broken with a barking dog. Montez makes a grand entrance into his home. His stride is strong and sure. Montez carries an aura of a man who is comfortable in the spotlight.

Montez looks exactly like the man I see on PBS with raven black hair and eyes sitting with perfect posture opposite actresses like Sandy Duncan and Barbara Eden who effervesce with “oo”s and “ah”s while competitors razzle-dazzle with flashy moves and rhinestone studded costumes. (Montez, in contrast to his female co-hosts, provides commentary in an even tone on the footwork and choreography of the dancers dueling for the title of champion.)

As Montez settles himself on the sofa, I ask him about his history. The dancer who was an undefeated Latin dance champion for seven years explains, “When I finished high school, I was kind of up in the air. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My sister had the bright idea of getting me involved in some kind of ballroom dance teacher training course. My sister and brother-in-law were Arthur Murray instructors in Arizona.”

Cracking a small smile, he continues, “So I said OK. I didn’t have anything better to do at the moment.”

But when Montez started the training with his first teacher, Nancy Elliott, he felt a surge of enthusiasm. “Nancy presented ballroom dancing to me in such a way that it was very appealing. She presented the masculine and feminine roles in a way that were right and well balanced to me.”

I ask him to translate his statement. “Well the man’s role – what he was supposed to do, what he was supposed to look like, the way he was supposed to conduct himself, the way he was supposed to move versus the female. You had a secure position of what you were supposed to do – either sex.”

Montez confesses that, “Of course, in the beginning I didn’t know anything about teaching – a little bit about dancing maybe. But I loved dancing. And I got hooked!”

And Arthur Murray students got hooked on Montez’s magic touch in the classroom. He acknowledges that, “I was teaching all the time…The lessons just sold themselves!”

After years of playing dance professor, however, he found himself “burnt out.” Montez says that, “I hadn’t been receiving a lot information. I was hungry for any kind of information – even dance information.” So he seized an opportunity to attend Brigham Young University. “For a while it gave me a chance to soak up something,” he says.

Book learning was not the only thing Montez absorbed at BYU. “I did my first competition in 1972 in ballroom while I attended Brigham Young.” Like a scientist reciting the results of an experiment, he recalls, “It was my first competition. And I got a taste of competition and the thrilling aspect of it. I thought that it was motivating and a lot fun.”

How did he place? “I won the Rising Star Division and was like fourth or fifth in the Professional Division. I liked being successful, being able to express myself and have people appreciate it.”

His joy carried him into seven continuous United States Latin Champion titles from 1979 through 1985. He retired in 1986 from competition dancing. Nearly a decade later he began a new challenge when he exchanged marriage vows with Karla.

Montez declares that, “Family is the biggest challenge of all. I mean dancing is attainable if you just do it!” With conviction he continues, “But you are not confronted with the challenge and the problems. You also don’t get the fulfillment of home and family life.”

As a father of three, he still marvels at, “My family interacting with one another and learning and growing and becoming more responsible – that development is such an amazing thing.”

As parents and as dance professionals, I ask how the couple feels about DanceSport training and ballroom dancing in the Olympics.

Karla replies with conviction. “There are not enough ballroom dance workshops – especially in San Diego.” She adds, “Ashley (her teenage daughter from a former marriage) used to compete. Ron choreographed her (award-winning) Latin routines. But her partner moved away to Boston. It’s hard to find young boys who dance.” (Ashley is now a member of a cheerleading competition team.)

Besides the lack of an infrastructure of ballroom schools for children in America, Montez says, “there is the perception problem. Most Olympic officials think ballroom dancing is a social thing for nightclubs – nothing to do with athletics.”

He adds that, “I would welcome ballroom dancing as an Olympic sport. Young people would flock to dancing.” Montez maintains, “Ballroom dancing is healthy – you learn cooperation and you get exercise. You concentrate on the music and you work with another person on certain technical aspects together.”

Montez looks at his wife and she nods her head in agreement. He continues, “You participate with a person of the opposite sex with music as your medium.” Montez adds that ballroom dancing allows for a natural development of a relationship over time. Interaction is not forced and can fully develop as dance instruction takes the foreground.

The promulgation and entry of DanceSport into the Olympics, however, does not keep the former champion awake at nights. Uppermost in the mind of Montez is his family. “Dancing is an instrument I use to provide for my family. Family is my focus now.”

Besides spending time with his family, what are the former Latin champion’s favorite pastimes? Montez smiles. “Well, I enjoy reading biographical books. Right now, I am reading everything I can about the life of Jesus Christ on this earth and his death.”

Anything else you like to do? I ask.

Karla mimes a man sprawled out on the sofa. Montez admits that, “Yes. I like to watch football.”

It is reassuring to know that the former champion who moves like a Greek god on the dance floor partakes in the mortal pleasures of a San Diego Chargers game! And the Chargers may not come close to championship trophies this season!

However, as I walk away from my interview with Ron and Karla Montez and I hear the taxi honk his horn; a muse whispers in my ear. “After climbing to the top of Mount Olympus, you get a view of the bigger picture.”

Kim Knode’s interview articles focusing on artists, celebrities and dance champions have been published in various print and on-line publications.

Bodies, Monks and Mourners, On Stage!

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Bodies, Monks and Mourners, On Stage! (Backstage call for Act III “Romeo and Juliet.”)
By Cherie Magnus

I’m in an elaborate costume on stage in front of 6,000 people, there ‘s a full orchestra playing Prokovief in the pit, my teenaged son, dressed as a Renaissance servant, is standing next to Natalia Makarova, Barishnikov is watching from the wings. Am I dreaming? No, I’m a ballet mother and a Supernumerary for American Ballet Theatre’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

The Shrine Auditorium, cavernous, ornate, rarely used except for the Academy Awards, was ABT’s usual home when in L.A. While the company proper was off at a gala fete and fundraiser at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, a motley crew of thirty men and women hoping to make the Super cut lined up for appraisal in the Shrine’s freezing rehearsal hall on a cold Sunday in March, 1985.

We were all types, sizes and ages, not just the “tall, ballet type” advertised for on the bullet board at my son Jason’s ballet school. We all took off our jackets and sweaters and lined up according to height in front of a seated panel of three.

I had dressed for warmth and comfort not beauty, and I felt strangely vulnerable, fat and naked in the lineup. I’m too old for this, I thought. Immediately I was asked to step forward along with two other middle-aged women. They’re eliminating me at once because I’m not right, not what they want, I thought. The old insecurity and fear of rejection was lurking close to the surface.

But it was just that we three had been pre-selected to be “Market Ladies” because of our height. At first I was disappointed that I was not to be an “Elegant Lady” (due to my bust size–the first time 36A was ever too large) Our roles were determined by what costumes we fit, that’s all.

We Market Ladies had fun mixing with the company on stage, walk around acting naturally, participate in the action first hand. Some of us treated the dancers by sprinkling candy in our market baskets among the plastic products. I put M&M’s in with my grapes.

We wore different multi-layered costumes weighing perhaps twenty pounds each. Underneath was a full-length heavy petticoat with a ruffle. Then, in my case, a dress of heavy beige upholstery-like fabric with slit sleeves and lacing up the front and back, plus a long tunic of another beige fabric laced up the front and sides. My headdress, of faded-looking beige and violet muslin, had an Arabic flair and a wimple fastening under the chin. Each of us wore similar but differently detailed costumes.

Since there was only one professional union dresser, it was necessary for us Supers to help each other in and out of the difficult hooks and laces-no zippers! We formed a costume daisy-chain before and after each act with the dresser at the end. In this way we got our laborious changes down quickly, and I got an amusing snapshot of eight people concentrating hard on lacing each other up.

Jason was cast as a Green Little Bearer for the ball in Act I, and a monk in the Capulet tomb in Act III.

When the Supers arrived for our first rehearsal, the company class was just winding up. Dancers familiar to us from photographs and the stage looked like typical ballet students in their colorful and eccentric rehearsal clothes. But a sight unfamiliar in a ballet studio was the several animals stationed around the outside of the practice floor, tethered to the barres with leashes.

At that time, there were about twelve dogs and eight cats which traveled with the dancers, and the dogs usually attend class and rehearsals with their owners. There’s even a dog walk-on in “Giselle” and “Swan Lake, so often the larger animals get a chance to be on stage.

In the meantime, the pets add love, comfort, and companionship to the dancers’ life on the road. There were so many animals backstage (they were always polite and well-behaved) that a dog and a large bag came to mean “dancer” to the fans at the stage door. Opening night there was a black-tie reception after the performance in the rehearsal hall for the Friends of ABT–those who contributed substantially.

All during dress rehearsal and the performance afterwards, the caters were setting up. Topiary trees with fairy lights surrounded white tables topped with Cinzano umbrellas around a small dance floor. Festive tents covered the bar areas and the disc jockey’s equipment, which included Italian popular songs.

There were white flower carts filled with fruits and cheeses, an Italian ice pushcart dispensing zabaglione, chocolate-hazelnut, and wild-blueberry ices in little paper cups, and a long buffet of hot and cold pasta dishes. The preparations went on for hours before and during the performance, and as we hurried back and forth between dressing rooms and the stage, we Supers eyed the food and drink being set out. After the second act the lighted Italian fountain was turned on and we were ready to run over and stick a paper cup under it, hoping it was champagne.

The word went around that the cast was invited to the party and that the Supers were considered part of the cast! This was an unexpected perk to our $10 per performance with free parking, and one we enthusiastically appreciated; by that time we had been in the Shrine for ten hours.

Jason dashed over and grabbed a glass of champagne, and began a conversation with the late principal dancer Patrick Bissell. (“Loved your double cabrioles last night in “Raymonda!”)

But I didn’t know what to do; i.e., On the one hand, I love gala parties like this under normal conditions; On the other, I was dressed in a red corduroy jumpsuit and sneakers, not the latest word among the sequin-and-fur set now streaming through the doors from the auditorium.

On the one hand, many of the company dancers were wearing warm-up clothes; On the other, obviously I was not a skinny young company ballet dancer. But I was hungry, thirsty and excited, and so I sidled over and got some champagne (Italian, too, I supposed) and tried to look natural.

I got a plate of pasta and retreated from the glittering garden back over to a circle of metal folding chairs near the Supers’ makeshift dressing rooms, where several Supers were sitting like happy outcasts. Occasionally some of the regal people seated at the white tables inside the circle of lighted fichus trees would turn their heads and glance in our direction, not actually seeing us at all.

Most of the guests were looking for celebrities, of course, and Baryshnikov was there at one of the umbrella tables, as were most of the company dancers.
One of the little boys playing pages ran around asking the dancers to sign his program. Even Jason felt too much a part of the adult world, of the dance world, to ask, though he too would like the souvenirs.

Asking for autographs definitely divides the pros from the amateurs. There’s them and then there’s us, and for the duration of “Romeo and Juliet” the illusion of being part of American Ballet Theatre was worth more than autographs of the stars.

People were raving about the Italian ices, and so Jason grabbed me and pulled me over to join the short line in front of the cart.

Behind us stood two tall, black-tied men, who assumed we were ABT members and politely asked us questions as if we knew the inside stuff.
We ate our ices and faded into the background, and eventually out the stage door into the cold night, trailing stardust and fatigue.

After a few performances we felt like true professional company members as we hurried to sign in, put on our makeup, and prepared to wear our heavy, uncomfortable costumes.

It was difficult even to walk in those outfits, and we Market Ladies didn’t mind at all when we were ordered to remove them immediately upon exiting the stage and put them on again right before Act II. We were not allowed to sit down in them or eat, drink or smoke in them. I wondered about going to the bathroom, but knew it would be impossible to lift those heavy skirts anyway. Luckily the subject never came up for me.

By this time we had learned to quickly dress into our street clothes after coming offstage and sneak into the box right next to the wings. You could only see half of the stage from there, but it was better than standing in the wings where we were in the way. The large orchestra rendering Prokofiev’s powerful score sounded fuller and more immediate from the audience, too.
While onstage, we Supers were to react to the events taking place and join in with the company at certain times, acting and interacting.

We didn’t have to feign fear in Act I when the Capulets and the Montagues whipped out their swords and set about killing each other. The stage was crowded with people and the large set, and each performance of the fight got more wild.

Twenty men thrusted and parried with real swords (with tiny rubber tips), jumping from landings, leaping through doorways. It was different every time, but always skilled and exciting, and the supers didn’t always know where to stand to get out of their way.

As the bodies piled up, the “dead” Capulets and Montagues made jokes and funny faces to those onstage who could see them. They seemed to have a wonderful time.

Nor did I have to pretend sorrow and horror in Act II at the death of Tybalt. I was moved to tears every time Lady Capulet (Georgina Parkinson) rushed down the stairs to Tybalt’s body and seized the sword in a frenzy to attack the remorseful Romeo. Then, convulsed with grief, she sank agonizingly to the floor and rocked the dead Tybalt in her arms to the wailing of French horns, trombones, trumpets and the pounding of the tympani. It was incredibly powerful, indelible. (She always gave him a friendly pat after the curtain fell.)
The last performance was danced by Natalia Makarova and the house was packed, 6,000 people. I couldn’t believe she could be better than the other Juliets I saw, but she was.

When she died in the tomb to that poignant minor theme, the audience was on their third Kleenex. Even Martin Bernheimer, the Los Angeles Times’ Critic Terrible at the time, praised her performance, saying that “Makarova is Juliet!”

Fourteen-year-old Autumn, Jason’s ballet classmate who was playing an Elegant Lady super, pressed a beaded bracelet she had made into Makarova’s hands in the wings after the many curtain calls. Overcome by emotion from the performance, Autumn couldn’t stop her tears. We were all aware that Makarova, at 44, was nearing retirement by her own admission and that we may not see this Juliet again.

In seven performances with seven different casts, including six Romeos and six Juliets, we saw seven different ballets. The choreography was the same and was always danced at a high technical level. But this proved to us the importance of acting, personality, drama, interpretation beyond technique. When Danilo Radojivic’s Mercutio felt his wound in his death scene, I actually “saw” blood on his hand, and I was six feet away from him!

It was “our” last performance, the next ABT “Romeo and Juliet” would be danced in Detroit. Supers were frantically snapping instamatics on the “Cinderella” set which was being assembled near our dressing rooms, as that was the next full-length ballet planned for Los Angeles. We all wanted to see how we looked (no full-length mirrors in the ladies’ dressing room, no mirror at all in the men’s) and to record our moment of glory for scrapbook posterity.

As each costume came off after a scene, it was packed away, and by the end of the ballet, nothing remained of “Romeo and Juliet” in the dressing rooms but huge labeled and sealed cardboard boxes ready for loading onto the trucks.

Most of the supers were anxious to see Superstar Himself, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and since he wasn’t dancing at all during this Los Angeles season, we wondered if we would.

But we did see him, several times in fact, the first week. (What a shock to see my fifteen-year-old son Jason tower a good three inches over this bigger-than-life man!) Misha was there opening night, the next night for the party, and the night Makarova danced.

That night, during Act III, Jason and the other Supers playing monks were waiting in the wings for their cue, many still transfixed from watching Makarova. The monks were to enter the Capulet Tomb carrying huge lighted candlesticks. Seven monks on the right, eight on the left (the last one being the disguised Romeo sneaking into the tomb), circle the biers and exit up long flights of stairs on each side.

From my seat in the box, I saw the eight left-hand monks enter, but only three right-hand monks–Jason’s side. It looked strange and off-balance, and Romeo’s significance as an extra monk was lost. Jason and three other monks were waiting in the wings for their cue as they had the previous nights, but somehow missed it tonight. Suddenly they saw the lighted candles of the rest of the monks moving across the stage, too late for them to catch up.

“Great, that’s just great!” uttered sarcastically in a Russian accent caused Jason to look to his left and see the great Baryshnikov himself watching this blunder from the wings. Pulling his cowl down over his head, Jason slunk away in shame to take off his robe and to remain anonymous!

Afterwards, Baryshnikov was hounded for autographs inside the stage door by audience members who had found their way backstage. Jason and I made our way through the crowd with our shoulder bags as people stared at us, hoping we were somebody.

By the time we got into our cars and were slowly inching by the stage door on Exposition Blvd., we were just in time to see Baryshnikov gleefully carrying a cello case quickly through the crowd which was not on the lookout for a musician.

He nearly made a successful escape until the crowd as one body recognized him and took off after him into the parking lot like a swarm of bees. That was the last we, too, saw of the legendary artist during our ABT season. And for this whole two-week wonderful adventure, we had to say a most super enthusiastic, Great, just great!

With degrees in English, Dance, and Library Science from UCLA, Cherie has published many articles in professional journals and magazines. Her solo travels to Europe and Latin America have inspired several pieces published in Skirt!, PassionFruit, Moxie, JourneyWoman, Dancing USA, GoNomad, Open Spaces, Porthole, The Cusco Weekly, the-vu, and various online magazines. She was the dance critic for the Cerritos News in Orange County, California before moving to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She is currently at work on a novel situated in France, when she’s not out dancing. Follow her blog at http://tangocherie.blogspot.com/

A Passion for the Dance

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A Passion for the Dance:  Choreographer Francis Patrelle
By Leda Meredith

Photo Credit: Eduardo Patino

There are few choreographers I know of that are as generous and loyal to their dancers as Francis Patrelle, or who care as much about making sure that each dancer is shown at their best. Dance is a verb, not a noun, and without the dancers up on that stage the choreography does not exist. Francis Patrelle’s work is an ongoing celebration of the people who bring this art form to life.

He is also a storyteller who has survived, and thrived, during an era when the trend in dance was toward the abstract and impersonal. In doing so, he has carried forward a legacy inherited from his Juilliard teachers, Anthony Tudor and Jose Limon. Francis Patrelle’s ballets speak to audiences who want their hearts to be moved as well as their intellects.

Q: What do you require in order to create your best work?

FP: To create my best work, first of all I need a tension-free rehearsal room. Not that everybody has to be happy and go-lucky, but we all have to be there for the same reason, and, hopefully, to leave our egos behind. That includes mine. We all have to be working towards the same purpose. This business is so physically hard, why do we need to beat up on each other?

Thirty-something years later, still choreographing, I still love dancers. I love the process. And I hope to be doing it till the day I die. I am happiest in the rehearsal room. I am happiest creating. The audience, though, does not need to know the process. A quick and juicy and fun-filled rehearsal process may not give a better performance than a hard, pulled out, difficult rehearsal process. As long as there is the final result, the audience doesn’t care. But when I’m creating, I enjoy the giggling and the laughing — even when I’m doing death. Sometimes when you’re doing heavy drama and life struggles, approaching it through humor in the rehearsal room is the only way of going about it.

Q: Is there a “Patrelle Dancer”?

FP: Yes, I think there are dancers that I feel very comfortable working with. Martha Hill, the founding director of the Juilliard Dance Department, used to say, “The American Dancer is one that could have pointe work ready to enter into American Ballet Theater, and then do a back fall at the same time.” That would define a Patrelle Dancer. I love exquisite pointe work; I love beautiful, articulated, defined legs and positions; and I then I want you to be able to lose all of that and bend on the stage and bring sweeping and luxurious movement. I also need and require a sense of maturity and of life in a dancer.

Q: When you are preparing to choreograph a new ballet, do your mental images include the dancers whom you know you will be working with?

FP: Of course. There are two basic ways I choreograph a ballet: eighty percent of the time it has been that I have a particular dancer or dancers in mind, and I am working to create vehicles for them. Their personal motif: their lines, their musicality are all in that first ballet. The second way is that I have a story that I’m needing to tell, and then I go and find the dancer that in my mind defines, or helps define, that story. That’s slightly harder, and ultimately more rewarding.

Q: What is your choreographic process in a situation when it isn’t possible to be familiar with your cast ahead of time?

FP: When that has happened, especially when I am working with a lot of the youth companies that I’ve been working with recently, I must know the music as well as I know my own name. I must know exactly what I want to say in the ballet. I usually try to write out cards, scene by scene, of where I want to go, even down to floor patterns, without a single step in my mind. The steps have to come from the dancers, because I’ve always enjoyed and had this need to make dancers look as best as they can. I never superimpose my motifs on somebody who can’t do them. So if I know exactly what I want to say, and I know the music backwards and forwards so that I can play with it, that’s the way that I go into a rehearsal with dancers that I’m unaccustomed to working with. That is singularly the hardest situation to go into.

Q: How does the original cast of one of your ballets influence the choreography for you and for future generations who will perform the ballet?

FP: They actually define the roles. Let’s take my ballet of Romeo and Juliet. We have now done the ballet five or six times. The roles have changed, the production itself has gotten more mature — I was young when I created that — but the structure and the basic theme steps have always stayed the same. And the original dancers’ moves and motifs follow the production all the way through, even if it has changed over the years.

Q: How do you approach recasting a ballet that has already been premiered?

FP: In two ways. The first, to make everybody’s life a little easier, is to cast similar body types, similar musicality, similar levels of maturity. And then, every once in a while, there is someone who is so stunning, so energetic, so right for something, that even though they may be completely different that I don’t mind going into the studio and changing the role to make it for them. Joni Petre-Scholz could not be more different as Lady Macbeth from Leda Meredith, the creator of the role. Both are unbelievably valid, both are wonderful Lady Macbeths, and both have been an absolute joy to work with. But I did have to go in and help mold the steps to fit Joni’s body, which is a different body type. But what I was looking for in that particular case was the drama, not the body type. The drama – because if you can’t tell the story there is no Macbeth. It’s as simple as that.

When asked if he had any additional comments, Francis Patrelle responded:

I would also like to say that I personally over the years have tried desperately, whether it’s in class or on stage or in interviews, not to talk badly about any other choreographer’s work. Every time you create, whether it’s a ballet, a painting, a song, you’re putting your heart and soul into it. Nobody goes about the business trying to do the worst job they know how. Every time they do it they try to create a bit of genius. So we don’t need to be beating up on each other. I go to see everybody and everything, and when I enter the theatre, I say to myself, “This has been created by my best friend” (even when I don’t know the creator). It makes everything more enjoyable.

Leda can also be found at ledameredith.net

As a performer, Leda Meredith’s career spans contemporary dance, classical ballet, and theatre. Her performances have taken her to twenty-five countries on four continents. She has been a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre II, Edward Villella, Manhattan Ballet, Dances Patrelle, and others. She was a company member of Jennifer Muller/The Works for over seven years, and originated numerous roles in the repertory. She returned as Artistic Associate Director for the company’s 25th anniversary season in 1999-2000.
Her piece Lullabye Lane, premiered as part of Jennifer Muller/The Works’ 25th anniversary season at the Joyce Theater in New York. With original music by composer James Sasser, Lullabye Lane marked their seventh collaboration. They recently completed the full evening work Small Talk At The Volcano. In Spring 2000 she co-created a cabaret style piece entitled All About Angels and Eggs, with Michael Jahoda and Maria Naidu at Dansatelier in Rotterdam. Other choreographic credits include works for Malaparte Theatre Company, the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York, Dixon Place, Peridance International, the Hatch Saturday Series, First Fridays at Five, and the Arts on the Hudson Festival.
She is a returning guest instructor for the Henny Jurriens Stichting in Amsterdam, Western Washington University; and Dance Loft in Rorschach, Switzerland. Leda is currently on faculty with Ballet Academy East. She has taught as part of the 1996 Iles de Danse in France, and for the Artist’s Trusts International Course in England. In December, 1999 she was guest instructor for Carolyn Carlson’s Atelier de Paris. Other dance programs she has taught for include the California State University at Los Angeles, and Brigham Young University in Hawaii.

Making It Your Own

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By Leda Meredith

Joni Petre-Scholz & Abdul Rasheed in Patrelle’s ‘The Yorkville Nutcracker’. Photo Credit: Eduardo Patino

Here is a scene that any dancer would recognize: You are in a studio with a mirror, barres around the walls, a stereo system, a TV and VCR. There is an opening night coming up, and you don’t know all of your steps yet, let alone what you want to do with them as an artist. There is another, older, dancer in the studio with you, showing you the choreography (a word which means “map of the dance”).

Dance is taught in person by one generation to the next, a hands-on sharing of information and example that cannot be effectively transmitted in any other way. In many ways, dance is like the oral traditions of centuries past, in which history and lore were passed from memory to memory without ever being written down. As Anne Kochanski says, it is “… quite a beautiful and intimate exchange.”

In Passing the Torch, I wrote about my experiences teaching roles that were created on me. But what was it like for the dancers I was teaching? Rather than share my memories of what it is like to inherit a role, I decided to interview two dancers who are living that experience.

I have known Joni Petre-Scholz, principal dancer and rehearsal director for Dances Patrelle, since 1988 when we toured the Far East with Manhattan Ballet. One of the ballets we performed on that tour was Francis Patrelle’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. Joni had already worked with Mr. Patrelle before that tour, and in the decade that followed, I originated many roles for his company, Dances Patrelle. I am currently restaging his ‘Macbeth’ with Joni in my original role of Lady Macbeth.

I met Anne Kochanski, principal dancer with Jennifer Muller/The Works and Leda Meredith’s Story Dance, when she replaced me as a dancer with The Works. I had the opportunity before I left to spend several months teaching Anne my roles. There was a wonderful sense of passing on a legacy, not only of the roles I had originated but of those I had inherited from my predecessor, the legendary Angie Wolf. At twenty-two, Anne has already become an excellent teacher, sharing her passion for dance with the next generation.

Q: How do you approach learning a role?

Anne: I make sure that prior to beginning, I clear my mind as much as possible of any thoughts that don’t pertain to the process. From there I soak in as much information as possible. Along with learning the basic movement, I also clue into what the atmosphere may be, what the dramatic intentions may be, all in one full swoop, as opposed to learning the basic movement and adding the dramatic intention and atmosphere on top of that.

Joni: I like to approach a role from the physical aspects first. Getting the choreography and having it settle in the body so that I don’t have to remember sequences is my first step. I like to make a story in my head so that the movement flows with the music. The music creates the accents and gives texture to what is being said with the movement. With a dramatic piece like Macbeth, it is important to define the style and period as well as the character of the person you are portraying.

Q: How is the process different if the role is being created on you?

Joni: The work process is similar. A few perks are that movements feel more natural and generally comes from your natural strengths, which is not always so when you learn a role created on someone else’s body. When you create a role, you are part of the process of creating a language for your character.

Anne: For a role that is being created on me, I find that my brain really has to be in high gear. In this case I feel that the process is much more collaborative and that I am aiding the choreographer in fitting all the pieces of the puzzle together.

Q: How do you make the role your own?

Anne: It is a bit of a process for me, one in which time is definitely involved. I can recall dancing certain roles and afterwards feeling as if the spirit of the original dancer had inhabited my body! I didn’t feel that I had just performed. But now I realize that once I have gotten all the technical and dramatic instruction, then it’s time to go back and say to myself, “Okay, how does this work on my body, how do I relate to this character?”

Joni: When working with videos it is easy to see the overall effect certain movements convey and to get tied into using another dancer’s body language. I think the key is to identify what is being said by the character and try to find out how you will say it. What are the movements that are effective? How can I make that work for me? I like to find something about the character that is like me so that I can relate to some part of their actions.

I found it interesting that Joni and Anne both mention the pitfall of taking on too much of an original cast’s interpretation. Video tape recordings are commonly used today in reconstructing choreography, but they are imperfect records of live performance. Many details simply don’t show up on performance videos, which are commonly shot from the back of the house. And even the best performance video merely crystallizes one night’s version: the same cast may have made quite different dramatic and phrasing choices the next night, but since that wasn’t recorded those options will not be learned by subsequent casts.

Q: What is it like to be taught a role by the person who originated it?

Joni: It is invaluable to have the person who created the role teaching it. They can recall why certain series of steps exist, they can define original motivation for dramatic points. Not to mention the fact that they remember the shape and feel of that character and can give you road signs and guiding markers to shape your portrayal.

Anne: I feel that I not only learn the choreographer’s intentions and desires, but I am simultaneously picking up on the subtler points of the role, points that perhaps only the original dancer, having lived in that role, could convey. I also find it to be quite a beautiful and intimate exchange. Especially when the role is one that was very special to the original dancer. I imagine that it can be quite bittersweet to pass the torch on to someone else and so I do my best to show the original dancer that I can be trusted.

Leda can also be found at ledameredith.net

As a performer, Leda Meredith’s career spans contemporary dance, classical ballet, and theatre. Her performances have taken her to twenty-five countries on four continents. She has been a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre II, Edward Villella, Manhattan Ballet, Dances Patrelle, and others. She was a company member of Jennifer Muller/The Works for over seven years, and originated numerous roles in the repertory. She returned as Artistic Associate Director for the company’s 25th anniversary season in 1999-2000.

Passing the Torch

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By Leda Meredith

Photo by Eduardo Patino of Leda Meredith as Francis Patrelle’s Lady Macbeth

I am standing in front of a full-wall tapestry in a museum. It is magnificent. Reading the museum’s pamphlet, I learn that it took three generations of craftsmen to complete. Did they stick to the original design, or add their own touches? Did the grandchildren’s generation have a hard time finding the exact same blue to match the sky? Did the symbolism of the tapestry have the identical meaning for them that it had when their grandparents’ generation was doing the stitchery?

The experience of passing on a role to someone else can be a delight or a strain depending on the people involved. Some choreographers will alter the choreography of an old work to suit a new cast, others insist that it be taught verbatim. Some dancers want to learn from a previous generation’s experience, others prefer not to be influenced by anything other than their own viewpoint.

This month I am restaging Francis Patrelle’s Macbeth. He choreographed it in 1995, and I was his original Lady Macbeth. Even while the role was being created on me, I was acutely aware of the centuries of actresses (and originally, actors) who portrayed Lady Macbeth. Turning to the play itself, I reached even further back through the generations, and delved into my personal understanding of what Shakespeare wrote.

But that was only my understanding, at that particular time. I would dance the role quite differently if I did it today.

Teaching a role that was created for me is delicate. I must communicate much more than the sequence of steps. I must also convey details of the choreographer’s intent that a second generation of dancers might not be able to surmise. If a dramatic choice I made was used and elaborated on by the choreographer, then that choice is now part of the choreography and needs to be taught. On the other hand, some artistic choices may have worked for me but be inappropriate for the dancer learning the role. My job is to provide enough information for the current dancer to develop her own interpretation of the role, keeping it in line with the choreographer’s original intent.

The magic starts after the steps have been taught, the information communicated, the role discussed: after the bridge between one generation and the next has been built.

It is my own belief that certain roles have a life of their own, and that the role itself steps in at a certain point to inform the player’s actions. So I watch as the current Lady Macbeth, Joni Petre-Scholz, begins to get a certain glint in her eye, a certain timing to her gestures. It is not my version I am seeing, nor should it be, but I recognize that Lady. I have looked out through her eyes, I have thought her thoughts. Shakespeare’s character has taken over the teaching, and I can turn to working with the other dancers knowing that Joni is well on her way to her own Lady Macbeth.

As a dancer, I’ve stepped into many previous generations’ shoes, found my own way across the bridge between learning and making it my own. As a teacher and director, I’ve tasted the sharp joys of letting go of my memories of how it felt to perform a role, and then of being delighted by a new dancer’s process of discovery. I have learned to be grateful to dancers like Joni Petre-Scholz of Dances Patrelle and Anne Kochanski of Jennifer Muller/The Works, who respect the past enough to learn well, but are fiery enough to find their own way. I find myself wondering how my mother, Penelope Lagios Coberly, herself a former soloist with San Francisco Ballet, felt when she sat in the audience watching me perform.

If you look closely at some of the famous tapestries, you can spot small patches that appear to be unfinished. A corner of a cloud left unstitched, a part of a border missing, a petal sketched but not sewn, as if waiting for the next generation to begin where the last had left off.

Leda can also be found at ledameredith.net

About the writer:
Leda Meredith’s biography deserves to be reprinted in full. the-vu proudly welcomes her exceptional talent to our pages.
As a performer, Leda Meredith’s career spans contemporary dance, classical ballet, and theatre. Her performances have taken her to twenty-five countries on four continents. She has been a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre II, Edward Villella, Manhattan Ballet, Dances Patrelle, and others. She was a company member of Jennifer Muller/The Works for over seven years, and originated numerous roles in the repertory. She returned as Artistic Associate Director for the company’s 25th anniversary season in 1999-2000.
Her piece Lullabye Lane, premiered as part of Jennifer Muller/The Works’ 25th anniversary season at the Joyce Theater in New York. With original music by composer James Sasser, Lullabye Lane marked their seventh collaboration. They recently completed the full evening work Small Talk At The Volcano. In Spring 2000 she co-created a cabaret style piece entitled All About Angels and Eggs, with Michael Jahoda and Maria Naidu at Dansatelier in Rotterdam. Other choreographic credits include works for Malaparte Theatre Company, the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York, Dixon Place, Peridance International, the Hatch Saturday Series, First Fridays at Five, and the Arts on the Hudson Festival.
She is a returning guest instructor for the Henny Jurriens Stichting in Amsterdam, Western Washington University; and Dance Loft in Rorschach, Switzerland. Leda is currently on faculty with Ballet Academy East. She has taught as part of the 1996 Iles de Danse in France, and for the Artist’s Trusts International Course in England. In December, 1999 she was guest instructor for Carolyn Carlson’s Atelier de Paris. Other dance programs she has taught for include the California State University at Los Angeles, and Brigham Young University in Hawaii.

For Love Or Money

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By Leda Meredith

“If you care so much about the money, you must not care about your art.”

That astonishing statement was made by the executive director of a dance company with whom I was about to embark on a six week tour. It was in response to a question I’d asked about when we would be paid while we were on the road. I was trying to take care of the practical details such as how to cover my rent and bills while I was traveling. The last thing I was expecting was an attack on my motivation as an artist!

I wish I could say that this director’s statement was a bizarre exception to the prevalent attitude toward dancers and money, but experience tells me otherwise. The artist-starving-for-their-art myth has lodged in the subconscious of dancers and non-dancers alike.

The fact is that dancers are often willing to work for free, or for less than a living wage, simply because they are desperate for a chance to perform. The logic is that a dancer’s career is short, and one must fill it with as many dances as possible. “There are more dancers than there are jobs” is a common observation.

Imagine that you are going to hire someone whose job requires years of intense and specialized training before they begin to work in their field. Now imagine that this person has, in addition to that training, years of professional experience and comes highly recommended. What would you expect to pay?

Would you pay an architect less because they happened to love designing buildings?

Within the dance world, one often hears that there is a lack of funding for the arts. Is there? Paintings sell for millions of dollars, Broadway shows sell at $60 a ticket, and more than a few film actors will be receiving residual payments for their performances for years to come. And let’s not forget that the ubiquitous Nutcracker continues to support dance companies whose other, perhaps more interesting, concerts lose money.

I’ve also heard that the reason funding for dance continues to dwindle is because dance doesn’t provide an “essential” such as food, shelter, or military defense. I know for a fact that people are willing to spend money on “non-essentials”. A designer dress can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars. An interior decorator can charge more per hour than any dancer would dream of asking. And I would argue that dance has the potential to provide something profoundly essential – if you value your heart and spirit, two parts of a human being that are rarely factored into today’s economics.

I confess that I’ve postponed writing this article for many weeks because I don’t have any immediate solutions to offer to these issues. But sometimes it is helpful simply to begin raising the questions.

Three things seem clear to me: dancers need to begin valuing their work, we need audiences that are moved and delighted by dance, and the dances that will move and delight them.

As a performer, Leda Meredith’s career spans contemporary dance, classical ballet, and theatre. Her performances have taken her to twenty-five countries on four continents. She has been a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre II, Edward Villella, Manhattan Ballet, Dances Patrelle, and others. She was a company member of Jennifer Muller/The Works for over seven years, and originated numerous roles in the repertory. She returned as Artistic Associate Director for the company’s 25th anniversary season in 1999-2000. Her piece Lullabye Lane, premiered as part of Jennifer Muller/The Works’ 25th anniversary season at the Joyce Theater in New York. With original music by composer James Sasser, Lullabye Lane marked their seventh collaboration. They recently completed the full evening work Small Talk At The Volcano. In Spring 2000 she co-created a cabaret style piece entitled All About Angels and Eggs, with Michael Jahoda and Maria Naidu at Dansatelier in Rotterdam. Other choreographic credits include works for Malaparte Theatre Company, the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York, Dixon Place, Peridance International, the Hatch Saturday Series, First Fridays at Five, and the Arts on the Hudson Festival.
She is a returning guest instructor for the Henny Jurriens Stichting in Amsterdam, Western Washington University; and Dance Loft in Rorschach, Switzerland. Leda is currently on faculty with Ballet Academy East. She has taught as part of the 1996 Iles de Danse in France, and for the Artist’s Trusts International Course in England. In December, 1999 she was guest instructor for Carolyn Carlson’s Atelier de Paris. Other dance programs she has taught for include the California State University at Los Angeles, and Brigham Young University in Hawaii.

Part Four of The Essential Imagination Series

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Living Other Lives
Part Four of the Essential Imagination Series
by Leda Meredith


Photo by Tom Caravaglia, of Leda Meredith and Michael Jahoda in Jennifer Muller’s ‘The Spotted Owl’

This is the article that inspired my quest to bring Leda Meredith to the-vu Jeffrey the Barak, Publisher.

Stepping onto the stage, I am living two lives at once. Three, if you count my life outside the theater which is waiting for me once I step back through the stage door into the night air. For the moment, though, that life is forgotten.

The lights are harsh in my eyes but warm on my skin. Part of me is keeping track of the necessary details of this job: The floor is a bit slippery tonight. I remind myself to drop my center of gravity to help give me more traction. I am counting the music for this next section, which is in counterpart to the other dancers. The lift we worked on this afternoon is coming up in eight counts and I am remembering the changes the choreographer gave my partner and I. Next come the spacing corrections I was told about in the dressing room at half hour. I am vaguely aware that my right shoulder is sore and stiff. The audience feels like a good one, packed house and several friends out there.

That’s one life.

In this dance I am portraying a woman in a classic love triangle, torn between the man she desperately wants who rejects her and the man who is trying to win her affections. The imaginative work has already been done in rehearsal. I know who she is, what motivates her to choose one man over the other, where this is taking place, what pleases her and what makes her despair. I have imagined, vividly, how she came to be at this point in her life where she cannot see her way out of unrequited love. I have tested all of these imaginative choices in rehearsal and adjusted them whenever they did not match the choreographer’s vision. Now there is only one imaginative leap left to make. I must become the character.

This is like the make believe games we all played as children, but with much higher stakes because I need to be believable enough to take the entire audience on this woman’s emotional journey. And for a dancer, there is the added challenge of using a highly athletic, specific physical esthetic as the vehicle for that journey.

When I am teaching, I sometimes explain the experience of performing a character by using a metaphor from the original Star Trek series. It is as if you are both Spock and Captain Kirk. One part of you is very calmly taking care of things such as musical counts, remembering corrections, pre-setting props. That is Spock, the logical mind. But Spock is not the captain of the ship. Romantic, impulsive Kirk is the captain. This is the spontaneous heart of your performance. This is the part of you that is responding to the dramatic situation as if it was happening for the first time (even if you’ve performed the piece a hundred times!). This is the part of you that is, during the performance, making the life choices of another person.

Both are essential. And neither, alone, guarantee success. That is one of the thrills and mysteries of live performance. A personal willingness to give one’s best and take what comes is a useful a cure for performance anxiety. So is recognizing that the butterflies in your stomach mean you have a wonderful reserve of exceptional energy at your command. Why perform if it’s going to feel as flat as waiting in line at the grocery store? Performing is meant to feel anything but ordinary.

What makes possible that final mental and emotional leap of becoming the character you and the choreographer and/or writer have imagined?

There is the preparatory work I mentioned of creating the character vividly in your mind (see Detail and Nuance, and Make Believe). Your imagination will work for you prolifically if you are incorporating elements from your own life. That third life I mentioned at the beginning of this article, my “real life”, is my source material for everything I do onstage. Perhaps I have been in something like the character’s situation at some point, or perhaps it is entirely foreign to me. Even in the latter case, I will have felt some version of the character’s emotions. I will be able to remember situations that called up those emotions in me. In the case of the love triangle I described above, I can remember wanting something out of reach so desperately that I believed I could not be happy without it.

It is also useful to remember that crazy people do not know they are crazy, bad guys think they have a reason for what they are doing, and even ingenues sometimes feel guilty or unworthy. I let the audience decide whether I am portraying a hero or a villain tonight. In order to step into the character’s point of view, I can not afford to be judgmental. I am playing a person, not a stereotype. My job is to flesh out that fictional character and make her real, make her feelings and actions believable. In order to do that, I cannot afford to step outside the action and judge whether she is good or bad.

As I wrote in Essential Imagination, “Many times I have had a performer back off from the specificity and choices I describe above because they would be ‘too real’ or ‘too personal’ or ‘too revealing’. Indeed. That is what we offer as performers. Our willingness to risk ourselves, our personal points of view in full view of an audience is what makes an audience willing to trust us. But when the curtain goes down, we must have the skills to step back out of the world we have been creating during the show.”

Coming offstage, I am drenched in sweat and grinning from ear to ear. My partner swoops by and gives me a hug and two thumbs up. This was a good show. I register a few compliments on the way back to the dressing room and nod my thanks. Make up off. Tell the wardrobe assistant that I heard something tear in my costume during the show and he might want to check it. Into a hot shower. The hot water feels good but someone is shouting that we have to be out of the theater in 10 minutes. When I come out, I see my husband chatting with one of the tech crew. He gives me a big, wonderful hug. “What do you want to do about dinner?”

Cherish your senses as a way to “come home” from living another person’s life onstage. The feel of the hot shower. The sight of a familiar face. The taste of food and drink. The sound of laughter, traffic, voices. Retell your favorite parts of the show, or write them down. Turn the lousy moments into tales to laugh about. Reach down to ruffle the cat who greets you when you step through your front door. When daily life is going through a rough spell, consider it part of your job to be as present offstage as you are onstage. That is what we do. A bridge must have two sides, and artists are the bridge between imagination and daily life.

Leda can also be found at ledameredith.net
As a performer, Leda Meredith’s career spans contemporary dance, classical ballet, and theatre. Her performances have taken her to twenty-five countries on four continents. She has been a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre II, Edward Villella, Manhattan Ballet, Dances Patrelle, and others. She was a company member of Jennifer Muller/The Works for over seven years, and originated numerous roles in the repertory. She returned as Artistic Associate Director for the company’s 25th anniversary season in 1999-2000.
Her piece Lullabye Lane, premiered as part of Jennifer Muller/The Works’ 25th anniversary season at the Joyce Theater in New York. With original music by composer James Sasser, Lullabye Lane marked their seventh collaboration. They recently completed the full evening work Small Talk At The Volcano. In Spring 2000 she co-created a cabaret style piece entitled All About Angels and Eggs, with Michael Jahoda and Maria Naidu at Dansatelier in Rotterdam. Other choreographic credits include works for Malaparte Theatre Company, the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York, Dixon Place, Peridance International, the Hatch Saturday Series, First Fridays at Five, and the Arts on the Hudson Festival.
She is a returning guest instructor for the Henny Jurriens Stichting in Amsterdam, Western Washington University; and Dance Loft in Rorschach, Switzerland. Leda is currently on faculty with Ballet Academy East. She has taught as part of the 1996 Iles de Danse in France, and for the Artist’s Trusts International Course in England. In December, 1999 she was guest instructor for Carolyn Carlson’s Atelier de Paris. Other dance programs she has taught for include the California State University at Los Angeles, and Brigham Young University in Hawaii.

Part Three of The Essential Imagination Series

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Make Believe
By Leda Meredith

Photo by Eduardo Patino of Leda Meredith in Francis Patrelle’s ‘Macbeth’

Several years ago I was coaching a young dancer in a dramatic role and I asked what her interpretation of the character was. She looked at me with utter confusion and then described the mood of the entire ballet. She hadn’t thought about how her role contributed to that “mood”, and had no clue as to how to go about building a believable character. Suddenly I understood why, despite the dramatic angst in her dancing expression, I had not been moved. I was shocked, because this dancer was (and is) a soloist with a major company.

There is a misconception in the dance world that some people are born with a talent for dramatic work, just as some dancers have more flexible bodies than others. The assumption is that no further learning is necessary. But just as it takes training and strength to translate flexibility into a high extension, it takes training in specific skills to translate a good dramatic instinct into a believable performance.

The dancer I mention above is very, very good from a dance -savvy person’s point of view. But she does not have the knowledge she needs to be able to deliver a performance that could also appeal to a non-dance audience.

Does this matter? After all, isn’t dance one of those aristocratic arts in which the general public’s understanding isn’t expected? Wouldn’t it cheapen the art form to appeal to a wide audience?

If so, then please explain to me why so many ballet companies still schedule a Nutcracker every December. And please don’t complain about how little dancers get paid: if audience equals the ability to pay the performers, then we need a wider audience for dance! (For more on this subject, please read How Often Do You Get It?).

Believability has a charismatic appeal that can only benefit both audience and artist. It requires excellent and imaginative acting skills from a dancer. I strongly believe that all dance schools should include acting training for their students. Unfortunately most do not. This leads to many well -meant but either dry or overacted performances.

There is more than one article’s worth of information here, but I’ll begin with two of the points dancers often miss when working on a role:

Who, Not What

In Essential Imagination I wrote:

The situation is the writer or choreographer’s job. You can’t play a situation. You can only play a specific character’s thoughts and emotions as they live through a situation. You don’t play the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, for example. You play your specific character’s hope, action, love, desire, fear, and despair.

Who, not what means that within a tragedy yours may be a comic role that provides needed contrast. Within a comedy, somebody has to play the straight man. Identify what purpose your part serves in the piece as a whole, and then play it clearly and believably. Trust that the mosaic of all the elements of the piece, including your role, will create the intended effect.

You Can’t Fake It

In order for an audience to believe, you must believe. Period. While you are dancing you must believe what you are doing one hundred percent. (Even if you don’t agree with the direction, even if you don’t like the choreography).

Each of us already knows how to do this. When you read a great novel or watch a great movie, you find yourself caring about what happens next even though it is fiction. That ability to suspend disbelief and to care about an imaginary person’s life is exactly the same door you walk through each time you step onstage. It is also what you are asking the audience to do.

Part of creating believability is not repeating. What worked beautifully last night will fall a little flat if you try to repeat it tonight. The smile that lit up your face as you held that arabesque balance will not be as luminous if you try to conjure it up at exactly the same moment night after night. Trust your creative imagination. There will be a new smile somewhere unexpected during the show, and all the more memorable because it will be genuine and spontaneous.

The audience will journey exactly as far as the creators and performers do. There is magic in believing.

Leda can also be found at ledameredith.net
As a performer, Leda Meredith’s career spans contemporary dance, classical ballet, and theatre. Her performances have taken her to twenty-five countries on four continents. She has been a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre II, Edward Villella, Manhattan Ballet, Dances Patrelle, and others. She was a company member of Jennifer Muller/The Works for over seven years, and originated numerous roles in the repertory. She returned as Artistic Associate Director for the company’s 25th anniversary season in 1999-2000.
Her piece Lullabye Lane, premiered as part of Jennifer Muller/The Works’ 25th anniversary season at the Joyce Theater in New York. With original music by composer James Sasser, Lullabye Lane marked their seventh collaboration. They recently completed the full evening work Small Talk At The Volcano. In Spring 2000 she co-created a cabaret style piece entitled All About Angels and Eggs, with Michael Jahoda and Maria Naidu at Dansatelier in Rotterdam. Other choreographic credits include works for Malaparte Theatre Company, the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York, Dixon Place, Peridance International, the Hatch Saturday Series, First Fridays at Five, and the Arts on the Hudson Festival.
She is a returning guest instructor for the Henny Jurriens Stichting in Amsterdam, Western Washington University; and Dance Loft in Rorschach, Switzerland. Leda is currently on faculty with Ballet Academy East. She has taught as part of the 1996 Iles de Danse in France, and for the Artist’s Trusts International Course in England. In December, 1999 she was guest instructor for Carolyn Carlson’s Atelier de Paris. Other dance programs she has taught for include the California State University at Los Angeles, and Brigham Young University in Hawaii.

Part Two of The Essential Imagination Series

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Detail and Nuance
by Leda Meredith

photo: Tom Caravaglia

Make believe

No, not fantasy, but truly how to make someone believe.

How to make an audience suspend disbelief in what they are witnessing long enough to be moved by what they have seen and to think about it for years afterward.

What do you remember from the performances you have seen in the past? Think not just of dance, but also of theater, music, movies and other arts that depend on live performers for their origin.

Among my personal memories I find the way Gelsey Kirkland’s Giselle stroked Albrecht’s arm before she faded into the wings, Janis Joplin’s laugh at the end of Mercedes Benz, Keith Jarrett’s voice chiming in over his melancholy piano during the Koln Concert, Angie Wolfe’s sky-turned face and arched chest as she was set down by a trusted partner, Cynthia Gregory learning how to strut with a feather boa in Francis Patrelle’s Red Ellington, Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones saying, “Why did it have to be snakes,” Makarova’s supple feet as she ran across the stage…

Look at the reviews in today’s paper – if they are well written they will mention specific moments that lodged in the reviewer’s memory.

We remember these moments – why? What did the performer, choreographer, director, writer, composer do to make them memorable?

Honesty and Imagination

Every human being possesses the potential for every conceivable emotion.

If you think this through, it can be a scary concept. It implies that given the right situation, anyone could feel an overwhelming passion, a murderous rage, a religious ecstasy, a suicidal despair.

How else to be able to portray something believably onstage? I have never died, nor killed, nor been a heroine, and yet I have portrayed each of these. If I could not imagine how someone could arrive at those circumstances, I could not dance them believably.

But every human being does not possess the character for every conceivable action.

So what might lead Lady MacBeth to encourage her husband to murder might only lead me to be frustrated by an inability to change circumstance. As a performer, I have to be able to imagine what it would be like to be someone else, making different choices. And there is no right or wrong in these choices, there is only what someone did because that is who they were and how they felt when this event (given by the script or choreography) happened. “There are no devils, only fallen angels” is a useful thing for performers to remember.

If I cannot imagine it as a performer or choreographer, how is the audience supposed to?

Internal Dialogue and Images

These are two invaluable tools for creators and performers.

To experience their effectiveness, try this simple exercise:

Raise an arm to shoulder height with the index finger pointed while saying out loud, “Get the hell out of here!”

Now perform the same gesture while saying, “You’re the one I’ve chosen.”.

Now do the same gesture imagining that you are raising your arm through the waters of a warm, Mediterranean sea.

Now that you are raising it in an ice cold, bitter wind.

Same gesture, entirely different messages. Onstage, dancers need to remember to keep specific, detailed thoughts going while they are moving. The alternative is the vague “eyebrow acting” that leaves no one moved (see my article Essential Imagination for more about this disease).

The Magic of Intent

When your imagination is fully engaged as a performer or creator, you understand the character’s intent and the details occur to you as you do them creating a completely believable spontaneity. If you are a teacher or director, you can guide your dancers in this process by asking them to consider:

Who the character is.

When they are living.

Where they are living (a city street leads to different body language than an open hillside, for example).

What they care about and what is at stake.

For a clear example of how specific intent changes visible action, try the same shape or movement done with different motivations. An arabesque can be done to show off its height and technical proficiency. Or to reach for a lover across the stage. Or to express melancholy. Or to aim an arrow-like accusation. Or many, many other things which do not change what is being done but drastically change how.

Keep It Personal

The details which will emerge from a performer’s or creator’s imagination will be highly personal. Each of our unique takes on what we are embodying will be ours and no one else’s. To be effective we must be willing to reveal these pieces of our soul.

Don’t censor your imagination while you are working, but do guide it with the parameters set by the director and the material.

Censorship is death to creative work, even if it is just a thought such as, “But I’m not the kind of person who…” If you are a performer, you can portray any kind of person and that is no reflection on who you are in the rest of your life. If a choreographer asks for it, you can deliver.


Leda can also be found at ledameredith.net

About the writer:
Leda Meredith’s biography deserves to be reprinted in full. the-vu proudly welcomes her exceptional talent to our pages.
As a performer, Leda Meredith’s career spans contemporary dance, classical ballet, and theatre. Her performances have taken her to twenty-five countries on four continents. She has been a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre II, Edward Villella, Manhattan Ballet, Dances Patrelle, and others. She was a company member of Jennifer Muller/The Works for over seven years, and originated numerous roles in the repertory. She returned as Artistic Associate Director for the company’s 25th anniversary season in 1999-2000.
Her piece Lullabye Lane, premiered as part of Jennifer Muller/The Works’ 25th anniversary season at the Joyce Theater in New York. With original music by composer James Sasser, Lullabye Lane marked their seventh collaboration. They recently completed the full evening work Small Talk At The Volcano. In Spring 2000 she co-created a cabaret style piece entitled All About Angels and Eggs, with Michael Jahoda and Maria Naidu at Dansatelier in Rotterdam. Other choreographic credits include works for Malaparte Theatre Company, the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York, Dixon Place, Peridance International, the Hatch Saturday Series, First Fridays at Five, and the Arts on the Hudson Festival.
She is a returning guest instructor for the Henny Jurriens Stichting in Amsterdam, Western Washington University; and Dance Loft in Rorschach, Switzerland. Leda is currently on faculty with Ballet Academy East. She has taught as part of the 1996 Iles de Danse in France, and for the Artist’s Trusts International Course in England. In December, 1999 she was guest instructor for Carolyn Carlson’s Atelier de Paris. Other dance programs she has taught for include the California State University at Los Angeles, and Brigham Young University in Hawaii.

Confessions of a Closet Dancer

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By C A Crossman

On Their Way To The Top, watercolor by C A Crossman

On Their Way To The Top, watercolor by C A Crossman

Oh Please, Don’t Make Me Dance…
(Confessions of a Closet Dancer)

I am not a dancer. Oh I’ve dreamed of dancing, longed for dancing, but more often than not, I have found myself clinging to a table leg and saying in an agonized voice to a confused escort: Don’t make me dance! Oh Please, don’t make me dance…

So how did I find myself on my 43rd birthday, in the arms of a tall, handsome, professional dancer (who also happens to be my brother, Steven); doing the fox-trot at a Ballroom Dance Competition?

Well, somehow, my galloping case of hoof and mouth disease had reared it’s ugly head. Months before, I had found myself bragging to a friend, “When Steven comes out on vacation, I’m going to learn to dance at last and maybe even compete in a ballroom competition!” (At the time, I stated this more for effect than truth).

My mistake was in repeating the conversation to little brother. He seized the chance to make me live up to my words! “You can’t spend the rest of your life just dancing in the living room with the cats!” he declared. (I’m still not quite sure why I couldn’t…)

Before I knew it, helpful friends were mailing me eyelashes and fingernails. Green velvet and rhinestones were purchased. From my brothers suitcase emerged a pair of rhinestone covered dancing pumps, which looked especially lovely with the blue jeans I wore to my first lesson. (Big mistake! Mirrors are everywhere in a dance studio, so wear something slimming. Of course if I could design such a transforming outfit I’d be rich and famous.)

At the start of my lesson, I was told that the only obligation I really had was to stand up straight and look to the left. This sounded easy! The part I didn’t realize, was not only did I have to do this while moving backwards, I had to follow some man and trust him not to run me into a wall. (Definitely a challenge for a type A control freak like me!)

This was only the beginning! One is expected to do this in time to non-existent music, to hold one’s frame, follow where led, not talk back and smile!!! I’m not even going to mention the hip action required by the rumba. (I don’t recall actually requesting to learn the rumba, but I believe the statement made was : “If you’re going to dance swing, you might as well dance another rhythm class.”)

I have come to believe in life, that one should be careful what one asks for; the universe having a surprisingly quirky way of granting our requests. Just as I was feeling that dancing might not be so bad; I mentioned a broken leg would save me from the hated rumba (The rumba a dance I’m convinced is the official Dance of Hell.) Bingo! I fell down a small hill while walking my dog and ripped the ligaments in my ankle to shreds.

I will admit that Steven was the only one who did not hint that there was a method to my madness. He did announce however, to all and sundry, that I “Had tripped whilst putting my foot in my mouth.”
I spent the remainder of my brother’s visit, lying on my back with my leg in the air and an ankle the size and color of an eggplant. The dance competition was six weeks away. (So what if I only knew three steps?! The weekend was to be about FUN not trophies!)

I progressed from walking cast to ace bandages and neoprene. Steven returned from California for a day and a half. I still couldn’t get on my dance pumps. I went brain-dead for the first few dances, but stumbled around the floor adequately enough to practice all four of my entries.

My ballgown was ready for it’s final fitting. Viewing myself in the mirror, I suddenly felt like Cinderella! Ensconced in an outfit that at least made me look tall thin and graceful, I began to think the whole thing just might work. Having a Fairy God-Brother helped!

I arrived in Denver, determined to dance or die. Because Steven and I share my birthday, The rumba I announced was to be my birthday present to him! He contained his joy… (After all, I was disappointed on my second birthday to get a brother instead of a pony!)

The very first lesson about Ballroom Dance Competitions is: Put on your hose, before you put on your fingernails! Steven glued three inch, hot pink nails with silver spangles on my fingers and rendered me completely helpless for the next four hours… Luckily there was willing help at hand!
Janice, wise in the ways and methods of turning ducklings into swans, took me under her wing. With only an occasional spill of eyelash glue (I can’t see without my glasses anyway, so why did I need to open my eyes?), a sweep of eye shadow and a lacquer of hair spray, I was pronounced “done”. All that remained was my ballgown and hose…

Luckily as a dress designer, Steven has dressed more ladies more times than I’ve dressed myself. Because I can assure you, there is no way, even with gloves on, that anyone can get the crotch of her dance tights any higher than her knees, while wearing three inch nails. Steven and I have always been close, but we reached new heights that day when he pulled my tights into place! (I was the hit of the elevator, giving several men the chance to be gallant in the button pushing department. You never really appreciate all the things your fingers do for you until they are rendered useless.) One last suggestion: Go to the bathroom before you put on your nails and for heavens sake, don’t drink anything!

My fellow dancers hooked me into my bra, dress and shoes. Steven put on my jewelry and fixed my skirt. (It wasn’t quite backward nor forward; I wasn’t sure where the ruffle belonged…) I slipped into a catatonic state and off to the dance floor we went.

I wish I could tell you my impressions of that climactic moment, our first dance. But all I remember is realizing that I really couldn’t see without my glasses, that my left leg was not with the program and that my hips were frozen. Oh and I couldn’t remember what a rumba was! Was I supposed to bake it or dance it?

I have no recollection of any dance that night. My only thought as we began the swing was, “This is my reward dance!? I like this dance?!” The wonderful people from my home town were lovely and supportive. They kept saying things like, “Oh now, was that sooo bad?” ( I’m afraid most of me wanted to scream “YES!”) I do confess, my Swiss army knife came out and the nails came off as soon as the last dance ended.

The following day, I danced fox-trot and waltz. Again I found my left leg somehow didn’t think it was included in the proceedings, but I almost remembered not to duck during my underarm turns; I only stopped four times, and I only said a bad word (at least audibly) once. The video shows me holding my frame, remembering to pick up my skirt, laughing with another dancer when he reminded me it was my last dance and saying THANK-YOU GOD! as I walked off the floor!

Was it fun? More so in retrospect than actuality.

Did I set the world on fire, sweep all the dances, wow the crowds and take home an armful of trophies? Not even Steven could have pulled that off after only four lessons and a sprained ankle. (I actually did place higher than someone, and one judge even placed me third in a class of seven.)

Will I still climb under the table at social functions? Probably.

Did I achieve what I set out to do? I think so, I danced with my brother, on our birthday and he says I did well.

Would I do it again? You Bet! I’ve got a gorgeous dress, those long white gloves and I’ve always wanted to learn the quickstep…

C A Crossman copyright 2000
This article has been published previously in Dancing USA magazine.
C A Crossman is a writer and artist. Her most recent accomplishment has been brushing up her waltz for her wedding last September.

Part One of The Essential Imagination Series

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Essential Imagination

By Leda Meredith

“It’s just your imagination.”

Was there ever a more detrimental thing to say to a child, especially a child who may someday wish to be a performer?

Think about it: the computer screen you are looking at would not exist if someone hadn’t imagined it first. The design of the chair you are sitting upon had to be imagined before it could be built. Even something as basic as what to have for dinner depends on your imagination.

The essential function of imagination may be more obvious in the performing arts. What dancers and actors do “isn’t real”. It is all make believe, right?

Yes and no. The emotions and situations you are watching depend on the imaginative skill of the performers, writers, choreographers and composers. They also depend on your imagination as an audience. But the belly laugh that escapes you is very real, as are the tears that fill your eyes, and the disturbing new point of view you may walk home thinking about.

It is my experience that a performer who can cross the bridge between fictional situations and the audience’s very real response has a highly trained and disciplined imagination. In this article I hope to give an overview of some of the skills of imagination which make the difference between a performer who leaves us unmoved (even if impressed) and one who awakens our emotions and challenges our perceptions. In future articles I will share specific techniques that I have found useful both when I am onstage myself and in teaching performers. Each of the general headings below will be developed as an article unto itself.

Detail and Nuance

“God is in the details,” William Blake said. Let’s say you are watching a piece about a love affair. The dancers have smiles pasted on their faces and their eyebrows are pinched upward in some sort of angst. This is supposed to represent passion. Is this what your face felt like the last time you looked at someone with undeniable desire? Probably not. So you will watch this performance somewhat outside the action, recognizing what it is supposed to be, but not experiencing it.

Now suppose that one of the performers reaches out to touch a stray lock of hair. And their attention is truly on that lock of hair, as if no other color, no other scent, no other texture but this could please them. Perhaps this has happened in your own life, or you hope it will?

Who Not What

The situation is the writer or choreographer’s job. You can’t play a situation. You can only play a specific character’s thoughts and emotions as they live through a situation. You don’t play the entire tragedy of Romeo and Juliet in a single line, for example. You play your specific character’s hope, action, love, desire, fear, or despair from moment to moment. It is the tapestry of those moments woven together that creates the author’s message. Playing the situation rather than the person in the situation leads to overacting and generic emotion that leaves the audience with nothing to personally identify with.

How

This is the individual artist’s domain. The steps or words are set for them, the overall point of view dictated by the director, but how to express that point of view through those givens is where choice and artistry begin. This is why no two performers will ever play the same role exactly the same way. Young performers need to be encouraged to make personal choices about how they want to do the material, and learn to wed their choices with the director’s vision. This takes training, even if the performer’s instincts are usually good. It is a learned skill to be able to recognize an instinct, explore it, determine its appropriateness to the direction, and use it onstage.

Getting Home Again

Many times I have had a performer back off from the specificity and choices I describe above because they would be “too real” or “too personal” or “too revealing”. Indeed. That is what we offer as performers. Our willingness to risk ourselves, our personal points of view in full view of an audience is what makes an audience willing to trust us. But when the curtain goes down, we must have the skills to step back out of the world we have been creating during the show. That lock of hair may belong to someone entirely inappropriate for us to be attracted to in everyday life. I’ve found that performers are only willing to dive in as far as they trust themselves to get back out again.

Leda can also be found at ledameredith.net

About the writer:
Leda Meredith’s biography deserves to be reprinted in full. the-vu proudly welcomes her exceptional talent to our pages.
As a performer, Leda Meredith’s career spans contemporary dance, classical ballet, and theatre. Her performances have taken her to twenty-five countries on four continents. She has been a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre II, Edward Villella, Manhattan Ballet, Dances Patrelle, and others. She was a company member of Jennifer Muller/The Works for over seven years, and originated numerous roles in the repertory. She returned as Artistic Associate Director for the company’s 25th anniversary season in 1999-2000.
Her piece Lullabye Lane, premiered as part of Jennifer Muller/The Works’ 25th anniversary season at the Joyce Theater in New York. With original music by composer James Sasser, Lullabye Lane marked their seventh collaboration. They recently completed the full evening work Small Talk At The Volcano. In Spring 2000 she co-created a cabaret style piece entitled All About Angels and Eggs, with Michael Jahoda and Maria Naidu at Dansatelier in Rotterdam. Other choreographic credits include works for Malaparte Theatre Company, the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York, Dixon Place, Peridance International, the Hatch Saturday Series, First Fridays at Five, and the Arts on the Hudson Festival.

She is a returning guest instructor for the Henny Jurriens Stichting in Amsterdam, Western Washington University; and Dance Loft in Rorschach, Switzerland. Leda is currently on faculty with Ballet Academy East. She has taught as part of the 1996 Iles de Danse in France, and for the Artist’s Trusts International Course in England. In December, 1999 she was guest instructor for Carolyn Carlson’s Atelier de Paris. Other dance programs she has taught for include the California State University at Los Angeles, and Brigham Young University in Hawaii.

Technique Is Only The Beginning.

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By Leda Meredith

photo by Bill Hedberg

“There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years…”

When I was twelve years old my ballet teacher, Jody White, asked her students to read the Walt Whitman poem that begins with these lines. She and her husband, Ralph White, insisted that their students think beyond technique to the artistry that inspires audiences and leaves tracks in the history of dance. They led me to understand that a performing artist’s work is made up of the palette of colors that their life gives them.

“Leda Meredith stood out in a beautifully nuanced portrayal of Lady Macbeth.”

That review was written by Jennifer Dunning of the NY Times for Francis Patrelle’s ‘MacBeth’ in 1994. Fine, but how did I get there? How does a young dancer translate her or his passion into believable characters that will move an audience? A high extension or multiple pirouette is not enough. Those must become the tools, the verbs used to express something more.

I realize that I am going against the current trend here. I have danced so-called abstract work, and loved doing it. But when I look for where this performing art form can make the most impact, I think of moving audiences, making audiences think about something in a different way. Making that guy in the fourth row, the guy who hasn’t cried in years, shed a few tears and go home happier for it. Making that woman in the balcony, who was about to give up, notice that there is beauty in the world, and go home seeing the stars between the skyscrapers for the first time in years.

Technique is invaluable, but only as a language. If I have poor technique, it is as if I am muttering. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the idea I am trying to express is: you won’t get it. On the other hand, if all I am about is technique, it is as if I am reciting perfectly pronounced ABCs…who cares?

If there are any students reading this, please listen: learn your technique(s) well, otherwise none will be able to understand what you are trying to say.

Professionals, pay attention. What do you have to offer the audience – the role – the art form? It is upon your choices that the next generation of dancers will build their careers.

Leda can also be found at ledameredith.net

About the writer:
Leda Meredith’s biography deserves to be reprinted in full. the-vu proudly welcomes her exceptional talent to our pages.
As a performer, Leda Meredith’s career spans contemporary dance, classical ballet, and theatre. Her performances have taken her to twenty-five countries on four continents. She has been a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre II, Edward Villella, Manhattan Ballet, Dances Patrelle, and others. She was a company member of Jennifer Muller/The Works for over seven years, and originated numerous roles in the repertory. She returned as Artistic Associate Director for the company’s 25th anniversary season in 1999-2000.
Her piece Lullabye Lane, premiered as part of Jennifer Muller/The Works’ 25th anniversary season at the Joyce Theater in New York. With original music by composer James Sasser, Lullabye Lane marked their seventh collaboration. They recently completed the full evening work Small Talk At The Volcano. In Spring 2000 she co-created a cabaret style piece entitled All About Angels and Eggs, with Michael Jahoda and Maria Naidu at Dansatelier in Rotterdam. Other choreographic credits include works for Malaparte Theatre Company, the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York, Dixon Place, Peridance International, the Hatch Saturday Series, First Fridays at Five, and the Arts on the Hudson Festival.
She is a returning guest instructor for the Henny Jurriens Stichting in Amsterdam, Western Washington University; and Dance Loft in Rorschach, Switzerland. Leda is currently on faculty with Ballet Academy East. She has taught as part of the 1996 Iles de Danse in France, and for the Artist’s Trusts International Course in England. In December, 1999 she was guest instructor for Carolyn Carlson’s Atelier de Paris. Other dance programs she has taught for include the California State University at Los Angeles, and Brigham Young University in Hawaii.

How Often Do You Get It?

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by Leda Meredith

photo by Tom Caravaglia

What if you were to walk down the street and randomly interview passersby with the question, “How often do you buy tickets for dance performances?” Now imagine asking the people who sometimes do, what would motivate them to buy tickets more often. Then imagine asking the ones who never do, “Why not?”

Tickets for dance are generally less expensive than for a Broadway show. Some downtown dance venues are cheaper than a movie-plus-popcorn. So why aren’t the houses packed?

Dance is a performing art. This sounds obvious, yet is often ignored. Why perform for an audience? Why not simply practice in our living rooms because we love exploring movement? Why not choreograph and rehearse a piece (and pay our dancers for their time) without making any attempt to get it onstage?

I’m asking many questions here, and I don’t have as many answers. But I do strongly believe that those of us who work in the field of dance need to take a long, hard look at why we do what we do, and at our responsibilities to the audience.

Communication is the heart of any performing art. No audience, no performing art form.

I have been to many performances lately in which I felt as if I was watching choreographic warm up exercises. There was really no reason for me to be there. The choreographer and performers didn’t seem to care whether or not their ideas were communicated clearly. Eventually I gave up trying to “get it” and just felt bored. I will not pay money again to go see works by those artists.

So why doesn’t your average passerby go to see dance more often? Maybe she or he got tired of “just not getting it”. Maybe they took boredom as a sign that dance just wasn’t for them, rather than realizing that the artists were not communicating anything in particular.

On the bright side, I once had a man come up to me after a performance whose wife had dragged him protesting to the show. He explained that he’d really wanted to stay home and watch football, “…but that dance you did with the tall guy, that was really something. It was over too soon, though. Are there more dances like that?” I wonder if he did give dance another try? If so, I deeply hope that there was something to delight him on the program.

I believe that the arts provide an essential service. Yes, we need to keep ourselves clothed and fed. We also need to laugh and cry, to be inspired or sometimes disturbed, to shake up our old ideas and see things from a new point of view. The arts do that, and more.

Do that for whom?

To the Audience: the next time you go to see a dance concert, please invite someone whom has never been to one. I will cross my fingers and hope that the work you see is something which might inspire your companion to come again.

To the Choreographers and Performers: please remember that creating and fine tuning movement is only the first draft. First drafts by writers don’t usually get published. Why should an audience pay to see yours? What is it for? Who is it for? What is it that you care about so much that you need to share it? I hope it means enough to you that you will do whatever it takes to communicate as clearly as possible.

Leda can also be found at ledameredith.net

About the writer:
Leda Meredith’s biography deserves to be reprinted in full. the-vu proudly welcomes her exceptional talent to our pages.
As a performer, Leda Meredith’s career spans contemporary dance, classical ballet, and theatre. Her performances have taken her to twenty-five countries on four continents. She has been a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre II, Edward Villella, Manhattan Ballet, Dances Patrelle, and others. She was a company member of Jennifer Muller/The Works for over seven years, and originated numerous roles in the repertory. She returned as Artistic Associate Director for the company’s 25th anniversary season in 1999-2000.
Her piece Lullabye Lane, premiered as part of Jennifer Muller/The Works’ 25th anniversary season at the Joyce Theater in New York. With original music by composer James Sasser, Lullabye Lane marked their seventh collaboration. They recently completed the full evening work Small Talk At The Volcano. In Spring 2000 she co-created a cabaret style piece entitled All About Angels and Eggs, with Michael Jahoda and Maria Naidu at Dansatelier in Rotterdam. Other choreographic credits include works for Malaparte Theatre Company, the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York, Dixon Place, Peridance International, the Hatch Saturday Series, First Fridays at Five, and the Arts on the Hudson Festival.
She is a returning guest instructor for the Henny Jurriens Stichting in Amsterdam, Western Washington University; and Dance Loft in Rorschach, Switzerland. Leda is currently on faculty with Ballet Academy East. She has taught as part of the 1996 Iles de Danse in France, and for the Artist’s Trusts International Course in England. In December, 1999 she was guest instructor for Carolyn Carlson’s Atelier de Paris. Other dance programs she has taught for include the California State University at Los Angeles, and Brigham Young University in Hawaii.

Lynne Taylor-Corbett – the-vu from the top of the castle

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A July 2000 Interview with SWING Choreographer/Director, Lynne Taylor-Corbett
By Kim Knode

Seated among the rows of celebrity caricature portraits at the renowned Sardis Restaurant in New York City, two-time Tony nominated, SWING Choreographer/Director, Lynne Taylor-Corbett explains, “like a baseball player getting out of the ghetto, dance was my way out.” She began her journey to Broadway with jetes and plies in a neighborhood ballet school and “dreamed that I would be here someday.” With a smile of contentment she continues, “As a screenwriter friend of mine said to me, ‘You’ve stepped into a small room at the top of the castle.’”

Talking to Taylor-Corbett, I see that the climb up the castle stairwell was not always easy. But there were signposts along the way signaling a close approach to a chamber reserved only for entrance by the royal, privileged and extremely talented.

One such indication came with acceptance into the Alvin Ailey Dance Company as the only Caucasian in the troupe. Taylor-Corbett says of her experience, “I learned so much about movement and about honesty and acting.”

I comment that her love of dance is very apparent. “I have a tremendous sense of texture of movement. My heart came from dance. I was a dancer first.”

Then why did she trade in roses from the audience to receiving flowers from the cast? The renowned choreographer chuckles as she recalls that, “I was at the School of the American Ballet for one summer with the heir apparent, Colleen Neary, of the New York City Ballet, I wanted terribly much to be a ballet dancer and was not suited.”

The solstice of that summer awakened Taylor-Corbett to the startling fact that, “I was not New York City Ballet material! I figured I could see myself on either side of her (Neary.) And that I can (still) make a contribution to this form.” She lifts her white china coffee cup off the starched Sardi’s linen and takes a sip, and then says, “Later on, at the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Colleen was in a ballet of mine. I had the pleasure of telling her that story.”

The choreographer continues, “You know, I’ve worked with some very well known dancers. These folks are just amazing.” Along with directing the elite of the dance world – American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet – Taylor-Corbett’s resume boasts of creating choreography for super stars in the music scene like Natalie Cole and George Michael. Her choice of profession has also allowed her to “travel the world” from Asia (with jazz maestro, Pat Methany) to Africa (with the Alvin Ailey Company.)

Thanks to the reputation Taylor-Corbett has established for herself over the years, telephone calls come in from coast to coast, asking for her dance expertise for Broadway musicals and Hollywood movies. Her credits from the Great White Way include SWING, TITANIC and CHESS. Films made by the masters of tinsel town such as FOOTLOOSE and BLUE HEAVEN crown her with the title of choreographer.

Taylor-Corbett looks down for a moment into her coffee cup and confesses that there are, “stresses” in each of the mediums “that wear you down after a while.” The choreographer/director sites the “huge economic pressures of Broadway.” She continues, “Choreographers have no royalties. Sometimes it’s so thankless because we don’t have a union…My colleagues who created FOOTLOOSE are very wealthy from that movie.”

So is choreography still her great joy and passion? “I think my great joy has morphed. Dancing was my great joy. And then being a choreographer was my great joy. And now creating projects like SWING – sort of total use of body and mind as it were – is my great joy and the next place to go…My father was a writer. And I think that for me to work with the song and the dance and the music and the acting at the same time is just wonderful.”

Taylor-Corbett’s dramaturgical skills are evident in SWING. For example, “Boogie Woogie Country” spotlights the West Coast Swing champions in her cast. “I took chunks of their four-minute competition routine. And I built a context for their number since it is a Broadway show and people need threads of stories and characters-Robert (Royston) arrives overdressed like urban cowboy, feels self-conscious, and puts on this magic hat, which then enables him to be this boffo dancer!”

Along with the thrills of riding the roller coaster on the Great White Way, Taylor-Corbett admits that at times SWING proved to be a “rocky ride because the show was so complex in terms of the human dynamics. In trying to amalgam people from different, disparate backgrounds into a family I learned a lot about leadership and endurance.” Despite the difficulties of staging a show with many specialty numbers, the choreographer/director describes SWING as a “Giant party with a wonderful plethora of styles and joy including a bungee number with Swing in the air!”

I ask her about the road tour of SWING. Taylor-Corbett grimaces and says, “Well, that is indeed the problem I’m grappling with right now. I can’t cannibalize the Broadway Company. So I look for extraordinarily diverse dancers because the right kind of trained dancer can assimilate the style with the right teachers.” She admits that, “It is a four week learning curve and then another four weeks to become really comfortable in its style.” However, Taylor-Corbett remains optimistic. “We’ll be just fine,” she says. “Rod McCune (SWING’s Dance Captain) has literally assimilated all the styles and can teach them.” She also credits the champions who have shared their secrets of executing their specialties with fellow cast members.

Now that two Tony nominations are attached to her name for directing and choreographing SWING, I ask Taylor-Corbett if she has forsaken her traditional ballet training and converted to the ways of Swing? She laughs a hearty laugh and replies, “I’m going to tell a funny story because Ryan Francois (U.S. Open Swing Champion, Assistant Choreographer to the film, SWING KIDS) is in the room. When I was in London, I wanted to meet Ryan and (his wife and dance partner) Jenny Thomas. I’d never seen them in person, only on film. So we went out to a club and Ryan invited me to dance.” Taylor-Corbett laughs again at the memory and recalls, “I’m sure I was just the funniest thing that anyone ever saw. I’m sure it was just like an apache.” She sobers up and earnestly states, “To do a real lead-follow is a great art form that I respect very much but cannot personally do.” She pauses and grins again. “But that was really, quite a wild five minutes. And very exhilarating, I must say.”

Anxious to stomp their feet on the boards of Broadway, aspiring choreographers often approach Taylor-Corbett for advice. “I say I will tell you what I did, but I will promise you it’s a different world than the one that you are competing in…I always encourage people to diversify. I really made it my business to learn about the whole industry. When I was a young choreographer because I could do commercials and I could do concert work, I was able to hang in there.” Taylor-Corbett falls silent for a moment and then continues. “I think everything teaches you. A hamburger commercial teaches you something about the way a shot is set-up or an effective way to make something go across the screen,”

When Manhattan investors were not banking on Taylor-Corbett for their Broadway success, she turned to television. Commercials with the likes of Dana Carvey advertising American Express cards and Ray Charles singing the praises of Suntory beverages feature Taylor-Corbett’s fancy footwork. Even SESAME STREET has been honored by a visit and routine worked out especially for the resident Muppets by Taylor-Corbett.

With the exception of jobs like hatcheck girl for a Mafia club (“they were very nice to me”) as a newcomer to New York, Taylor-Corbett has never had to escape the clutches of corporate life like one of the characters in SWING who runs around trying to discard his briefcase for a little dance fun. Her dance card is always penciled in with choreography and directing work. In a field that promotes a Darwinian survival of the fittest, Taylor-Corbett sites her greatest accomplishment (besides rearing her International Relations Honor student son) as creative continuity. “Working in the field all these years…I can’t think of one moment on an opera house stage that I could say exceeded the knowledge that I was going to be able to be what I wanted to be in this field.”

I thank Lynne Taylor-Corbett for her time and she rises to go to her next appointment – an audition for dancers for the road show of SWING. With her dancer’s posture accentuated by a deep burgundy tunic that reaches to the ground, the wonderful choreographer/director makes a regal exit from Sardis. As I watch her go through the door, I scribble in my notes: Lynne Taylor-Corbett really has danced her way to a very special room at the top of the castle.
All Rights Reserved Copyright Kim Knode July 2000
Kim Knode’s interview articles focusing on artists, celebrities and dance champions have been published in various print and on-line publications.

Solo Tango in Buenos Aires

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By Cherie Magnus

It’s just before dawn, and our small group of Argentines and Americans are tired and filled with reverie after a night of tango. We’re drooped over cafes con leche on an old wooden table in a run-down nineteenth-century coffee shop. The large party over by the dark windows also look like they’ve been up all night having a good time. The men are wearing jackets, the women decolletage,all somewhat portly and of a certain age.

Suddenly one of the men stands up and begins to sing, loudly, proudly, passionately. Heads nod with approval. A woman in gold beads joins in.

Several others, our table included, brighten with the music and begin to clap along. I don’t understand the words, but I know it is Tango–love, life, disappointment, desire, joy and sadness.

Marcello can not resist the siren call of the emotional song, even after dancing all night. He’s an Argentine. He looks at me purposefully, and we tango on the cracked black and white marble floor around the men having breakfast with their newspapers on their way to work.

It’s a normal morning in Buenos Aires.
What is tango, anyway? I had danced other dances all my life, both social and theatrical, but I really didn’t know the answer to that question. I knew Tango meant more than a dance, certainly more than a (slow slow quick quick slow) ballroom exhibition, a campy movie moment, or a Broadway show. Because I wanted to experience the legendary dancers’ dance and all that Tango meant, I made a pilgrimage to Buenos Aires.

Knowing no one in Argentina and no Spanish, I was lucky enough to hook up with a tour of dancers who I found on the Internet. But it didn’t matter, I would have gone anyway. Tango is addictive and I already was a junkie after only three months of tango dance classes in L.A.

Tango permeates the air of BuenosAires–tango art and history, the dance of politics, the music of extinct German bandoneons, a 24 hour Tango TV channel, tango dancers on the streets, tango clubs two per block, curios and postcards, altars to Carlos Gardel. The city could just as easily be called Tango Aires. For a tanguera wanna-be like me and the other American women I met on the trip, it was paradise.

Buenos Aires is often called the Paris of South America, perhaps because a lot of the city’s architecture emulates La Belle Epoque and if you squint your eyes it is possible you could be in Paris: the French windows, balconies, wrought iron, sculptures of large buxom women over doorways. Elegant cupolas pop up on rooftops all over the city’s skyline, stamping the city as somewhat European and indefinably Buenos Aires.

But the Argentines are not sitting for hours in sidewalk cafes discussing and arguing and philosophizing like the French so love. Despite the city’s mild and sunny weather, Buenos Aires has few sidewalk cafes in which to have a cafe con leche and people-watch, to observe that the Argentines are slim, stunningly beautiful, well-dressed, and have perfect posture (due perhaps to their dance-charged culture.)

Instead of sitting and talking, the people of Buenos Aires are dancing. They go to practicas and even milongas (tango clubs) by day, and fill the dance halls from midnight till dawn every night of the week.

During my stay, I didn’t shop, sightsee or sleep more than an occasional nap. I lived on caf?s con leche, little croissants called medialunas, chicken empanadas, and vino tinto, all on the run. At midnight I would wrap my feet and pad my toes before stuffing them into spike-heeled pointy-toed tango shoes, and then hobble down the hall to the elevator. I suffered until blessed numbness set in an hour later. Then once the music began, I would float on air across the hard cement and tile floors of the tango halls. After one milonga closed, I went to another one, and when it closed, I had breakfast. Then I soaked my bloody feet in the huge lavender bathtub of my room at the Hotel Continental, throwing in as much salt as I could beg from the kitchen. I fell into bed each day at 6:00 a.m., smelling of men’s cologne. I was deliriously happy.

Why is this city dancing? Tango was born a hundred years ago in Buenos Aires, its direct lineage a bit mysterious. The name may be derived from “tangle,” as the couples’ legs seem to indeed. Tango, by its nature of leading and following, could only have originated in a country of overtly macho, strong men and responsive women.

There are no real “steps” in Argentine tango, but a walk forward, back and side. It is improvised. The man leads with his mind and body, and the woman follows with hers. She does have the choice of adding adornments and embellishments, but the control and responsibility are the man’s. The couple dance as one in a tight embrace, cheek to cheek, chest to chest, but their legs do different things.

I had to learn not to avert my eyes from a man’s direct gaze if I wanted to dance at the Buenos Aires milongas. It wasn’t easy for me at first to stare at a man from across the room, too forward for women here in the U.S. But it is considered rude in Argentina for a man to approach a woman’s table without permission, and so a woman gives her permission silently with her eyes. Often that’s all that passes between a man and a woman before meeting on the dance floor, simply a look that says, let’s dance together.

Then after the man opens his arms and the woman walks into them, they hold each other wordlessly for a moment before beginning to dance. One of my teachers there said, “The way a woman walks to me when I ask her to dance tells me if it will be a good tango or not. And at the moment when I first embrace her, I know all I need to know.”

Argentine Eduardo Arquimbau confided, “I decided when I was young that I had to be a good dancer so that women would dance with me.” The pioneering dancer, choreographer and international stage star who gave our American group a Master class, continued, “I look at a woman in the street and compliment her and she won’t even return my gaze, but at a milonga I can ask her to dance with my eyes. Then I can hold her in a deep embrace, our breath mingling, our faces touching.”

American women, myself included, flock in droves to the romantic allure of the tango and the macho men who dance it in milongas all over the world. The deep embrace, which is the norm in Buenos Aires, both seduces and frightens us.

We are so thrilled to be held in a close embrace and led strongly around the dance floor in a dance of beauty and passion, that sometimes we confuse the dancer with the dance. It is easy for many of us to fall in love with the dancer. However the sensuous communication and intimacy of the Tango is traditionally over once you leave the floor. Argentines know this, but
Americans can be disoriented and befuddled after a sexually-charged dance.

I saw how attractive are strong men who know where they are going and what they want and who never doubt themselves–even if they are old with missing teeth (often due to dance hall brawls in their youth), or are young and skinny boys just out of their teens.

American men are different, unsure of their place in the world and with women. It’s a cultural thing. Perhaps we American women have brought it on ourselves with our race to equality.

All of this naturally in both cultures, translates to the dance floor–and perhaps the bedroom.

It’s possible that American women don’t really want a romantic relationship with a macho man, but many are starving to give up control, at least for the time it takes to dance two or three tangos. And to be held so close that your breath combines and your legs tangle and you dance as one… well, some of us lust for that in our lives, not just for ten minutes. On my trip there were a lot of tears shed by my American traveling companions in the Ladies’ Rooms of the tango halls. And I admit, even though I knew better, to having a crush on one of the teaching assistants and being disappointed that all he did was dance with me.

It’s more comfortable to have our personal space, to keep a lack of commitment that prevents our being hurt, to not press our breasts against the chest of a stranger who we may never see again and whose name is unknown.

It takes courage for Americans to be close physically, and to embrace a stranger with no expectations.

Holding someone “at arm’s length” is a lot easier, after all.

It’s just not Tango.

Juan Bruno, another Master teacher I studied with, described the physiology of Tango as “the brain sending a message to your feet through your heart.” And el corazon, the dominant phrase of tango song lyrics, is also the soul of Tango as well as the heart of its dancers.

I learned that Tango is music, a mystique, a way of life, a people, not only a dance. My dancing improved after dancing twelve hours a day with strong leaders, and now that I’m back home again, I’m haunting the milongas of Los Angeles looking for the perfect dance experience as I found it in Buenos Aires. And if I also find tremendous pleasure from a man’s deep embrace with no strings attached, well, who can blame me?

However, along with all of its other qualities, a tango can also be just a dance. At a milonga I remind myself of that each time a man takes me in his arms to dance, and before I go home, alone.

(c) Copyright 2000 Cherie Magnus

With degrees in English, Dance, and Library Science from UCLA, Cherie has published many articles in professional journals and magazines. Her solo travels to Europe and Latin America have inspired several pieces published in Skirt!, PassionFruit, Moxie, JourneyWoman, Dancing USA, GoNomad, Open Spaces, Porthole, The Cusco Weekly, the-vu, and various online magazines. She was the dance critic for the Cerritos News in Orange County, California before moving to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She is currently at work on a novel situated in France, when she’s not out dancing. Follow her blog at http://tangocherie.blogspot.com/

Gail Arias, The Dancing Queen: Mrs. California International 2000

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By Kim Knode

Mrs. California International 2000, Gail Arias, one of the final ten in the Mrs. U.S. International Pageant is ready to hold court in her living room. She sits with perfect posture on the edge of her easy chair. Her thick dark hair minus a tiara is combed to silky smoothness. Not a stray hair or split end is in sight. What’s her secret? “I’ve got virgin hair. I’ve never dyed it.”

The red polish on her fingers reveals not a single chip. Manicured hands rest on top of long muscular legs, which are crossed in lady like fashion. I scan her resume and ask about her athletic prowess. The pageant queen speaks in even tones but her blue eyes betray a hint of rebellion. “I was a tomboy for a long time. In junior high, I beat all the boys and girls in Track.”

Jamie Arias, her husband laughs, “That’s why it took me ten years to catch her!” In marriage, evidently he expresses the same ardent dedication to his wife as he did in the chase. Mrs. U.S. International Pageant judges chose him for the honored title of, “Most Devoted Husband.”

At age thirteen, pageants were the farthest thing from the current Mrs. California’s thoughts. As an adolescent she longed to compete in the Olympics and receive a subscription to Prevention Magazine.  She got her subscription. At about the same time, the precocious girl discovered dancing. What about her Olympian dream? “My parents finally convinced me that it was a hard life.”

And dancing? “Well, I looked at what dance champions were getting paid. So I chose aerobics as my vocation and dancing as my avocation.” As a young adult, in addition to owning and operating an aerobics studio, the athlete created and promoted her own line of vitamins and protein powder. “I have a practical mind, a very practical mind,” declares Mrs. California International.

Her aerobic students actually pushed her into the professional world of dance. Mothers of Miss Teenage USA and Miss Junior Olympics singled out Gail Knowlton (later Gail Arias) as the right person to choreograph routines and coach their children. She designed a winning ice skating dance routine for Miss Junior Olympics. Miss Teenage USA took first place with her floor exercise and artistic gymnastics. The reigning Mrs. California International reflects on her experiences with the girls and says, “It was more than choreographing the dance routine. I think the extra time I took to go over make-up, hair and wardrobe added extra touches of confidence.”

Succeeding in all her endeavors, including marriage, seems to be as easy as breathing in and out for Gail Arias. Her resume foxtrots through accomplishments ranging from winning Crystal Light Aerobic Championships to dancing Tango with her husband for an American Airlines ad to performing with the Beach Boys at the Shrine Auditorium.

As part of a husband and wife dance team, the pageant blue blood continues to accumulate trophies. The lady of the house leads me to the twosome’s private dance studio. The beauty queen is dressed in black jeans. But the 5’8″ Gail Arias almost glides when she walks. She gives the illusion of still showing off the sequined gold evening gown to the judges of Mrs. International. Her hand majestically waves across the couple’s collection of first place trophies, which stand like chorus members in uniforms on the shelves of their exclusive practice area. Her newest additions include her Mrs. Thousand Oaks statuette and her three-foot Mrs. California International trophy.

Ten years ago, Gail Arias spoke to her coach of her desire to collaborate and choreograph routines within the confines of a platonic relationship. “I was running a very successful business and I had a boyfriend.” The coach made no promises.

Mrs. California International recalls that first meeting with Jamie Arias by saying, “Oh my God, oh my God! He was tall, dark and handsome and he was a great dancer! There was just too much chemistry!” She told her coach to call Jamie Arias and excuse her from the partnership. According to the couple, the message was never delivered.

Dancing in Duran Duran videos, illustrating Tai Chi with Morgan Fairchild and winning the Lambada championships along with running her high-end Pasadena work-out studio were just a few of the activities which kept Gail Knowlton from seeing the scintillating Jamie Arias on the dance floor on a regular basis.

Inevitably, the dance world brought them into body contact with a few dances here and there. At one sticky point, the future beauty queen was asked by her date to dance with his teacher. Remembering the incident. Gail laughs, “My boyfriend said, ‘You’re so good. I want to see you dance with my teacher.’ Who is your teacher I asked? My boyfriend replied, Jamie Arias.’”

A pivotal point for the couple was at the U.S. Open Swing Championships. One of the professional photographers admonished the future pageant queen for choosing an inappropriate dance partner. Revealing her pearly whites, the regal lady lets a vulnerable little girl emerge for an instant. She softly recalls, “He said, ‘You should be dancing with that man.’” The royalty puts the bass back in her voice and confidently continues the story. “He pointed way across the room. I said, you mean Jamie Arias?” The photographer asked her to dance with Arias as a favor to him. She asserts, “I never ask men to dance.”

Fortunately, Jamie Arias says, “I saw that look in her eye.” The devoted husband displays a big grin and states, “She had a look I hadn’t seen before.” The photographer saw the couple dance.

Dances later, telephone numbers were exchanged. Jamie Arias called his bride-to-be on Mother’s Day. Mrs. Arias explains, “Every two years my birthday falls on Mother’s Day. I was feeling sad about my last boyfriend.”

Her husband interjects, “I didn’t even know it was her birthday! I was just thinking about her, as usual, and I decided to call.”

Three weeks later Jamie and Gail Arias were married. Gail smiles lovingly at her partner, “I just knew he was the right one.”   Her heart hijacked her practical mind when Jamie Arias got down on one knee and proposed to her in the middle of a Good Earth Restaurant salad. They eloped to Las Vegas. Like church bells, they chime in harmony, “We didn’t tell anyone.” Jamie Arias chose the wedding date of July fourth. The day represented his ability to love freely for the first time in his life.

Married for almost a decade, the twosome still look like newlyweds. Not long after the interview is underway, Gail Arias moves to the more comfortable seat of her husband’s lap. She boasts of the telephone calls that come from Hollywood producers begging him to choreograph dance routines and salsa with divas like Nia Peeples.

I congratulate him on his recent inauguration into the Swing Hall of Fame? He replies with a simple yes. But ask him about Mrs. California International 2000 and a big boyish burst of energy erupts with a fountain of praises for his wife and her work with Kids at Heart. The pageant queen explains that the program encourages and educates children from low-income families. She smiles and says, “Choosing Kids at Heart as my platform was natural for me. I’ve been mentoring all my life. From childhood, when somebody needed advice they’d come to me, about everything! My parents used to tease me that I should charge. ”

So what are her words of wisdom for mothers of daughters who want to enter pageants and dance competitions? “I would advise moms to enforce the idea that competitions are to be used as a stepping stone, to learn new skills and to enhance self-esteem. Mothers need to keep their antenna out to see if their daughters are displaying negative behavior or poor sportsmanship… If the girls are not having fun in competitions, move on to something else!”

As for advice on food and nutrition, “I’ve never had a weight problem. I’ve been the same weight since I was eighteen. But I do eat as close as I can to God’s table, mostly fruits and vegetables.”

Is she ever naughty? Her husband offers, “She likes ice cream.” He quickly adds, “But we rarely eat that kind of stuff.”

Mrs. Arias nods. “I don’t use food to comfort myself. But that doesn’t mean I won’t take a piece of cake at a birthday party.” Protocol and protecting the feelings of the hostess is important to her. “My intention is always to make people feel good about themselves.”

With so much love between them, when are they going to celebrate birthdays for their own children? The beauty queen energetically retorts, “Actually we’re working on it right now. We’ve just been so busy. And Jamie and I have really felt so fulfilled with each other.”

I ask what her secrets are to keeping a decade of marriage alive. Without hesitation, Mrs. California International 2000 replies, ” Respect, we respect each other. And we practice forgiveness.” They also take midnight walks and go star gazing. “We really live in the moment.”

Perhaps that is the key to living like royalty.

Kim Knode’s interview articles focusing on artists, celebrities and dance champions have been published in various print and on-line publications.
See more of Kim’s work at www.kimknode.com