A Conversation with Robert Weiss

Winter 2009/10 Ballet Review

From the Winter 2009 issue of Ballet Review A Conversation with Robert Weiss

On the cover: Balanchine’s Orpheus with Maria Tallchief and Nicholas Magallanes 4 Francis Mason – Spencer Mason 6 Chicago – Joseph Houseal 8 Toronto – Gary Smith 9 Antwerp – Leigh Witchel 10 London – Clement Crisp 11 Chicago – Joseph Houseal 12 London – Leigh Witchel 15 New York – Marvin Hoshino 18 Toronto – Gary Smith 21 Boston – Jeffrey Gantz 53 24 London – Leigh Witchel

Francis Mason 26 A Conversation with Robert Weiss

Robert Johnson 34 Go Russes, Young Man

Edited by Nina Alovert Francis Mason 43 A Conversation with Yuri Burlaka Ballet Review 37.4 63 Winter 2009/10 Joseph Houseal Associate Editor 46 A Day of Buddhist Dances and Designer: Marvin Hoshino 53 Balanchine’s Ballets for Diaghilev: Associate Editor: A Portfolio of Photographs Don Daniels Associate Editor: Don Daniels Joel Lobenthal 63 No Ali: The Bolshoi’s Le Corsaire Associate Editor: Larry Kaplan Darrell Wilkins Photographers: 34 70 Blood in the Snow Tom Brazil Costas Patrizia Veroli Subscriptions: 81 Diaghilev in Monte Carlo Roberta Hellman Copy Editor: 85 London Reporter – Clement Crisp Barbara Palfy 94 Music on Disc – George Dorris Associates: 100 Check It Out Peter Anastos Robert Greskovic George Jackson Elizabeth Kendall 26 Paul Parish Nancy Reynolds James Sutton David Vaughan Edward Willinger Cover photo by Roger Wood, NYPL: Balanchine’s Orpheus Sarah C. Woodcock with Maria Tallchief and Nicholas Magallanes. Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s Carmina Burana: Melissa Podcasy and Timour Bourtasenkov. (Photo by Russ Howe, Carolina Ballet)

26 ballet review A Conversation with But yes, I knew right from the very begin- ning. I grew up as a child at SAB, and Balan- Robert Weiss chine would have rehearsals there. I watched him choreograph and it was always very in- teresting to me and I thought, Well, I’d like Francis Mason to try that. I mean, at that time I didn’t know why. Then little by little, of course, working RobertWeiss:IdancedmywholecareeratNew with Robbins and Balanchine all the time and York City Ballet, but I started my training at with other people, Todd Bolender – and even AmericanBalletTheatre’sschool.Myfirstreal Ashton came. I was in the revival of Illumina- teacherwasLudmilaSchollar,whohaddanced tions (1967) coached by Ashton and then by for Diaghilev. She was married to Anatole Vil- Tudor when he came to do Dim Lustre. So I was zak. At age nine I went to the School of Amer- aroundchoreographersallthetime.Itseemed ican Ballet because I wanted to be in The Nut- like a natural thing that you danced and then cracker. I was in it right away because there you choreographed. wereonlythreeyoungboysattheschool.Iwas Myfirstbigprofessionalbreakcamein1975 little Fritz and then I did the first cast of the when Maurice Béjart asked me to go to Brus- Prince for two years. sels and make a new piece for him. I had al- At SAB I had all of the teachers: André Eg- ready done Awakening, a pas de deux at ABT for levsky, Alexandra Danilova, Antonina Tum- Gelsey and Misha. Then Fred Koch commis- kovsky,Muriel Stuart, Pierre Vladimiroff, and, sioned me to do a ballet for the Caramoor Fes- of course, Stanley Williams who was my big- tivalupinKatonah,NewYork.IdidRespighi’s gest influence. Later on, as a young profes- The Birds and used City Ballet dancers. This sional, David Howard was important in shap- was in 1978 between the spring season at Lin- ing my approach to dancing. coln Center and Saratoga. Peter Martins and Just before my seventeenth birthday Balan- Kay Mazzo did the bird and the tree in that. chine asked me to join the company, and I was Then I did another little pas de deux for Gelsey with New York City Ballet until I was thirty- and Ivan Nagy for an ABT gala. three, almost seventeen years. When I retired After that I didn’t choreograph for a while I became the director of Pennsylvania Ballet, because nobody asked, and I was busy danc- from 1982 to 1990. ing. In 1979 Balanchine made Ballo della Regina BR:Wasitcleartoyouearlyonthatyouwant- forMerrillAshleyandmeand,youknow,Iwas ed to direct a ballet company? really into performing. Then I tore an Achilles Weiss: Oh yes, at seventeen years old. I used tendon. I came back the year after, in 1981, and to take students, contemporaries from SAB, I danced another year or so, but I was really into the little studio at the old location on thinking more and more about becoming a Broadway. If nothing was going on in there I company director. choreographed on them, just to see what I In 1982 I got the job at Pennsylvania Ballet. could do. I had some Sarasate piano pieces I did about fifteen ballets and took the com- andsomeBachinventions.Iusedtoworkwith pany from a $2 million budget to $8.6 million. a few girls who would help me out. For two of those years we were The Pennsyl- I always locked the door because I did not vania/Milwaukee Ballet. With the combined want anyone to know I was doing it. One time cities we had the only fifty-two-week contract Balanchine came and tried the door and it in the history of ballet in America. Unfortu- would not open. He knocked saying, “What nately,allthatunraveledbecauseof misplaced are you doing in here?” I replied, “I’m just try- civic pride. Milwaukee wanted more control, ing a little bit of making some dances.” He then Philadelphia wanted more. I couldn’t get said, “Okay,” and left. them to understand that they both had some-

©2010 Robert Weiss, Estate of Francis Mason 27 Robert Weiss’s Messiah: Gabor Kapin and Company. (Photo: Curtis Brown, CB) thing really fantastic by working together. I Weiss: Well, there was a man named Ward was in Philadelphia for two more years, then Purrington who just thought that Raleigh in 1990 they fired me, over money basically. should have a ballet company. He put an ad in BR: You hadn’t raised enough? Dance Magazine and eighty people applied. It Weiss: They thought I had spent too much was about the fourteenth job as artistic direc- eventhoughtheyhadapprovedmybudgetand torIhadappliedforsinceleavingPhiladelphia, then couldn’t raise the money. They had no and I got it. professional development staff at the time. I had made the short list at about five other Now they do. So that was the end of that. For companies and even came in second for sev- six years I just freelanced – teaching, choreog- eral major positions including those at Birm- raphy – whatever I could do. ingham Royal Ballet and Het National Ballet I did an opera for New York City Opera, in Amsterdam, but Raleigh was unique. I real- Kinkaku-ji or The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, ly wanted it because it was a chance to start based on the famous Yukio Mishima novel. from scratch. No one else’s preconceived Toshiro Mayuzumi, who had done Mr. B’s Bu- ideas. gaku, was the composer. Then I did a dance for BR: You came aboard as? a girl in a wheelchair, I did a couple of pieces Weiss:Foundingchoreographer/artisticdi- forNewJerseyBallet,andPennsylvaniarevived rector. a few of my ballets, but it was tough getting a BR: And began to make ballets right away? job. Then I was lucky enough to be asked to Weiss:Yes.Istartedwithapasdedeuxcalled start a company in Raleigh, North Carolina. Dancers in a Gypsy Style. Then I choreographed BR: What led to that? part 1 of “Messiah” for Christmas. We didn’t

28 ballet review haveaNutcrackeruntilthefourthyear.Ifinished ed to rest it. However, Roy Kaiser asked me to thefirstseasonwithProkofiev’sRomeoandJuli- do it for Pennsylvania Ballet in the spring of et. Then the next year I did Carmen, and I cho- 2008, and it was very gratifying to see it so well reographedTheKreutzerSonata.Itwasn’tafull- received there. The Philadelphia Inquirer said, length ballet, but it was a seventy-five-minute “Messiahrisesindancedivine.”WerevivedMes- piece based on the Tolstoy novella with actors siah in Raleigh last Thanksgiving (2008). and dancers. WefinallystartedtoperformNutcrackerdur- ThatsameyearIhiredLynneTaylor-Corbett ing the fourth season, once the North Caroli- to be the company’s principal guest choreog- na Symphony no longer had it tied up. They rapher.Shehaschoreographedanewballeton had been bringing in the North Carolina Carolina Ballet every year since – Carmina Bu- School of the Arts, but after three years that rana, Cabaret with Andrea Marcovicci, Carolina contract was up. Jamboree accompanied by the Red Clay Ram- IdidaNutcracker,aSwan Lake, my version of blers,LostandFound,andCodeofSilence,among Coppélia, Firebird, The Symposium using Bern- others. Also during that second season I did stein’s “Serenade,” a ballet to music by Ravel parts 2 and 3 of “Messiah,” which made it a based on Degas’ paintings, and several years full-length ballet. agoafull-eveningworkbasedonMonetpaint- BR: So, Messiah has become a tradition? ings called Monet Impressions. Part one was Weiss: We did it for five years in a row and Lynne’s “Picnic on the Grass,” and the second then it started to drop off a little so we decid- part was my “The Gardens of Giverny.” I cho-

Agon: Lara O'Brien and Alain Molina. (Photo: Russ Howe, CB) winter 2009/10 29 reographed a full-length Cinderella, to com- work, but I’ve introduced Raleigh to Limón’s missionedmusicbecauseIhaveneverthought The Moor’s Pavane and Tudor’s Lilac Garden, as that the Prokofiev works. wellasmanyworksof Balanchine,ConcertoBa- Whatelse?Oh,yes,Petrouchka.WedidaStra- rocco,ProdigalSon,Apollo,Rubies,Agon,andRay- vinsky evening, Petruouchka, Jeu de Cartes, and monda Variations, to name a few. Pulcinella. I commissioned a Hans Christian BR:EverytimeI’vebeentoRaleightherehas Andersen evening, three ballets by three cho- never been any doubt that everyone in the au- reographers. Damian Woetzel did the Nightin- dience is there because they like the idea and gale, Lynne did The Ugly Duckling, and I did The they respond very well to the new pieces. But Shadow. youarenotinamajormetropolitanarea.Isthat Recently we did a new Sleeping Beauty. Oth- a problem? er ballets include Time Gallery and Tempest Fan- Weiss: Well, no. There is good enough sup- tasy to the music of Paul Moravec, A Classical port for a small company like ours, with lim- Ballet to selections of music by Prokofiev, Petit itedsceneryandcostumes,andlivemusiconly BalletRomantiquetoDelibes,ObliqueDreamscape forNutcracker.ButIwanttotourmoreandhave to Stravinsky, Grosse Fuge to Beethoven, and audiencesoutsidetheareaseeourdancers.We several pas de deux: Adagio to Albinoni, Endy- did a three-week, seven-city tour of China, mion’s Sleep to J. Mark Scearce, and The Visita- which the local private producers paid for. We tion to Mozart. took Messiah to Hungary, where it was a huge It sounds as though we have done only new success. We only went to one place, Budapest,

Robert Weiss’s Swan Lake: Lilyan Vigo and Timour Bourtasenkov. (Photo: Russ Howe, CB)

30 ballet review Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s Code ofSilence: Attila Bongar, Gabor Kapin, Nicholas Hagelin. (Photo: Nigel Armes, CB) but the government paid for the whole thing. how great the company is and how great the WegotgreatreviewsinEurope.Ihopedthat new choreography is. Not just mine but would be something that would spur other Lynne’s and Damian’s, too. presenters to ask us, but it hasn’t really hap- Dicks has been reviewing the company pened. When you try to tour in the United since the beginning. But it is the paper’s Lin- States the cost is prohibitive and to go other da Belans who wrote most of our reviews in places in Europe, unless you have someone the first several years. She’s covered the Amer- whoisreallywillingtoproduceyouorpromote ican Dance Festival for years, was in a modern you, is equally difficult. We don’t have the rep- dance company herself, and hosted the critics utationyet,eventhoughIthinkweshould.Just conferenceinDurham,sowehaveknowledge- now we are in negotiations with a producer in able critics here. John Rockwell was some- Spain who is interested in taking the compa- what critical of the one production he saw, ny there next summer. Swan Lake, but he said a lot of good things as BR: You have a twelve-year record now. well, both about the dancers and the choreog- Weiss: And only good reviews. We’ve had raphy. some criticism, but just a little, and in the BR: You have done, what, seventy ballets in criticism they always had something good eleven years? to say, too. Most of the reviews have been Weiss:Yes,seventy-twonow.Allnewworks, raves from both the people who came down to some only pas de deux, some are fifteen min- see us, like you and Terry Teachout, as well as utes or half an hour or sixty minutes or full local people. We’ve been covered in Raleigh length. by seven or eight reviewers on the News & Ob- BR: The support you’ve gotten is mainly server staff. The music critic, Roy Dicks, is very locally? knowledgeable. He never stops talking about Weiss: Yes, the majority of the money is lo- winter 2009/10 31 Robert Weiss’s Don Quixote: Melissa Podcasy and Timour Bourtasenkov. (Photo: Nigel Armes, CB) cal. We are raising about $2 million a year, city.Sowe’retakinginalittlemorethan$2mil- which in a community this size is pretty amaz- lion a year in ticket sales and another $2 mil- ing. lion in contributions. It’s not enough for live BR: What size is that? music, or enough to pay the dancers the sala- Weiss:Thereareabout800,000people,with ries I would like, not enough to have as many 400,000 people in Raleigh, and then in Wake weeksof workforthecompanyasIwouldlike. County and other counties, Durham and It’s not enough to tour. Chapel Hill, what is called the Triangle area. Stillwe’reverysuccessful.Seventy-fourper- Some of those communities are pretty far cent the people who subscribed last year re- away. What’s doable, what’s within about subscribed this year. During the past two sea- twenty minutes driving time of us, is about sons we have increased the number of pro- 600,000 people. Which is not that large. grams on our subscription series. Because of We are taking in about between $800,000 theeconomy,however,we,likealotof people, and $1 million a year with Nutcracker. That’s have had to trim our budget. We’ve taken the about 25-30,000 people. We have five thou- time to do more revivals than new work. For sand subscribers who come to six, seven, or our tenth anniversary season and during this eight performances a year, plus single ticket past season we performed a variety of ballets sales. We have about 70,000 seats to sell every fromourrep,someof ourmostsuccessfuland year. It’s a very good number for such a small popular story ballets.

32 ballet review We are still presenting new work, for exam- della Regina, and he did “Melancholic” in The ple, I created a new Don Quixote, Time Gallery to Four Temperaments on the same program. Now, Paul Moravec’s wonderful score, and a new fortunately for us, he has returned to Carolina Beauty and the Beast to a commissioned score BalletasaprincipalandismarriedtoMargaret by Karl Moraski. Severin-Hansen. BR: Let’s talk about your dancers. We now have a whole new crop of young Weiss:EventhoughRaleighisasmallplace, people coming up as well. We’ve had people I’ve managed toentice a lot of really good peo- come and go. We had Mikhail Nikitine from ple,someformanyyears.MelissaPodcasy,my Miami City Ballet, Isanusi Garcia from the Na- wife,wasaprincipaldancerwithPennsylvania tional Ballet of Cuba, and Cyrille de la Barre Ballet and Basel Ballet. Timour Bourtasenkov fromtheParisOperaBallet.Mostof theyoung is originally from the Bolshoi Ballet and was dancers I have can compete both artistically a principal with Pennsylvania Ballet. Marin and technically with anyone in a major com- Boieru, who has been ballet master from the pany. very beginning, although he was at the end of BR: Are both Melissa Podcasy and Timour his dancing career. He won the gold medal at Bourtasenkov still dancing with you? Varna and was a principal with Pennsylvania Weiss: Yes, and it is incredible to have two Ballet and Miami City Ballet. such seasoned artists not only for the public I was lucky to have these seasoned principal but for the younger dancers to emulate. When dancers but the rest of the company in the be- I think about choreographing a ballet, I still ginning were seventeen, eighteen, and nine- get inspired by working with Timour and teen year-olds. Now eleven years later they’re Melissa. Melissa even had a hip replacement all in their prime. They’re twenty-eight, twen- four years ago and she has come back to dance ty-nine, and thirty years-old and they’re really in all the major productions. I can’t imagine come into their own, in part, I think, because the company without them. I know she is my I’ve picked very talented people. You can’t wife, but as you said to me when viewing her make people talented, only God can do that, as Juliet, she is really one of the major balleri- but if you have a good eye, you can pick good nas of her generation. people and work with them over a period of BR: What is in store for this year, as you time. I think it takes about ten years to make move through your second decade? an artist – turn a dancer into an artist from age Weiss:AsIsaidtheeconomyhasputacrimp eighteen to twenty-eight. Lilyan Vigo, Mar- in most arts organizations’ plans. We need to garet Severin-Hansen, Pablo Perez, Margot guarantee ticket sales so we are bringing back Martin,andAlainMolina–allof thesedancers Swan Lake, Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, and came up with us. Messiah. But we are staging Bournonville’s La I was lucky to get some other very talented Sylphide for the first time in the Triangle, and young people over the years, Lara O’Brien, Lynne is doing a new work for that program as Hong Yang from China, Attila Bongar from well. We will have an evening based on a Picas- Hungary,andIhadanotherverytalentedHun- soshowatDuke’sNasherMuseumof Art.Cre- garian boy for a long time, Gabor Kapin, who atively we are still on track, although I can’t do lefttogotoBostonBallet.Idevelopedhimover everything I want to just now. a seven-year period before he left. I was really BR: I really can’t wait to see your company disappointed by that, but he did great there. I again. You know I’ve always said that Carolina went to Boston to see him do my part in Ballo Ballet is one of my favorite companies.

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