Michael Langlois

Winter 2 017-2018 B allet Review From the Winter 2017-1 8 issue of Ballet Review A Conversation with Heather Watts by Michael Langlois © 2017 Dance Research Foundation, Inc. 4 New York – Elizabeth McPherson 6 Washington, D.C. – Jay Rogoff 7 Miami – Michael Langlois 8 Toronto – Gary Smith 9 New York – Karen Greenspan 11 Paris – Vincent Le Baron 12 New York – Susanna Sloat 13 San Francisco – Rachel Howard 15 Hong Kong – Kevin Ng 17 New York – Karen Greenspan 19 Havana – Susanna Sloat 46 20 Paris – Vincent Le Baron 22 Jacob’s Pillow – Jay Rogoff 24 Letter to the Editor Ballet Review 45.4 Winter 2017-2018 Lauren Grant 25 Mark Morris: Student Editor and Designer: Marvin Hoshino and Teacher Managing Editor: Joel Lobenthal Roberta Hellman 28 Baranovsky’s Opus Senior Editor: Don Daniels 41 Karen Greenspan Associate Editors: 34 Two English Operas Joel Lobenthal Larry Kaplan Claudia Roth Pierpont Alice Helpern 39 Agon at Sixty Webmaster: Joseph Houseal David S. Weiss 41 Hong Kong Identity Crisis Copy Editor: Naomi Mindlin Michael Langlois Photographers: 46 A Conversation with Tom Brazil 25 Heather Watts Costas Associates: Joseph Houseal Peter Anastos 58 Merce Cunningham: Robert Gres kovic Common Time George Jackson Elizabeth Kendall Daniel Jacobson Paul Parish 70 At New York City Ballet Nancy Reynolds James Sutton Francis Mason David Vaughan Edward Willinger 22 86 Jane Dudley on Graham Sarah C. Woodcock 89 London Reporter – Clement Crisp 94 Music on Disc – George Dorris Cover photograph by Tom Brazil: Merce Cunningham in Grand Central Dances, Dancing in the Streets, Grand Central Terminal, NYC, October 9-10, 1987. Heather Watts in “The Waltz of the Flowers” during NYCB’s Tchaikovsky Festival in 1981. (Photo: Costas) 46 ballet review A Conversation with The Four Temperaments was originally costumed and then they were taken away. Baroc- Heather Watts co was also costumed and then they were taken away. But Agon was intended to be in prac- tice clothes. It fit what was going on in design Michael Langlois and architecture at the time: mid-century modern, stripped down, clean lines. It’s the Heather Watts: I’ve been doing some work re- same month that Jerry and Lenny did West Side cently with Robbie LaFosse at DEL, Dance Ed- Story. You have snapping and other allusions ucation Laboratory. We teach teachers and fa- to things, beatniks and slouching. You don’t cilitators, public school teachers, Lincoln Cen- need to know any of this to love Agon but it’s ter teaching artists. People come to the semi- how I break down ballets so people can be nar over a weekend. I usually teach a barre. caught up in the thenness of it. Sometimes I’ll do Balanchine and sometimes BR: What were Balanchine’s views on ra ce I’ll do Jerry Robbins. and the intent behind casting Arthur in that Then I start teaching repertory. How the role? ballet relates to the time of its creation. What Watts: Well, if you look back to Lincoln year it was done. What was going on in the Kirstein’s 1933 letter to Chick Austin describ- choreographer’s life. The music. What was going the new School of American Ballet as he ing on in the composer’s life. With Jerry’s Faun, and Balanchine envisioned it, it clearly states I like to show the famous photo of Nijin sky in eight young, white girls and boys, and eight his version so they can see the Art Deco side- young, Black girls and boys. It was going to be ways movements that Jerry obvious ly looked Balanchine’s idea of a utopian America as he at, show similarities and differences. saw it. How do we know what Balanchine felt With Balanchine I mostly just do context. about race? We know that when parents com- What was going on in Balanchine’s life and plained about Arthur’s being at the school Mr. what was going on culturally. With Agon I talk B told them to go ahead and leave. about civil rights. It was 1957. Arthur Mitchell BR: What was the reaction to seeing Arthur is dancing the lead. That season Balanchine in Agon? choreographed Stars and Stripes and Agon and Watts: It was nothing, and everything. No Gounod Symphony and Square Dance. It was also discussion. This is New York. We’re not in the during the Cold War and toward the end of South. Everybody who was anybody was there. McCarthyism. Balanchine is a Russian work- I think it’s been said that Duchamp was there. ing with another Russian, Stravinsky, and he’s And it was an overnight sensation. But the doing Stars and Stripes to Sousa, and he puts racial aspects of the ballet weren’t spoken Arthur out there and doesn’t say anything. It’s about. [John Martin’s review of Agon in 1957 right after Tanny had polio, and you’re seeing from the New York Times merely states that all the manipulation of the female body by the the ballet is certain to be “controversial.” Noth- man. You see black and white. ing was mentioned about the racial aspects of It’s Stravinsky’s first twelve-tone score, so the work.] Yet it’s so politically charged. It’s a you’re seeing black and white like piano keys, very erotic pas de deux. It’s got gender equal- like ballet clothes, like skin tones. You’re see- ity. It’s got a lot of moments where the man ing all the modernist aesthetic in Agon, the and woman are the same. And yet, “It’s just a stripping away of everything – of costumes, ballet.” Balanchine, as an artist, was of that of scenery, of everything – which people think generation and of that mind that nothing of now as very common but at that time, for meant anything – supposedly. Balanchine, he hadn’t done a lot of these kinds I’ve met painters who are like this: nothing of ballets. means anything. They don’t want to be pinned ©2017 Heather Watts, Michael Langlois 47 down into being defined – that they meant a re establish whatever it was he’d done. Those certain work to be interpreted in a specific images are something that never leaves you. way. It’s more of an alchemy. It just comes out Because it tells you better than right or wrong, of them. It’s delicate. good or bad, or just: no. Balanchine had that attitude that nothing But in the image, it’s sort of unattainable meant anything, but then when you would be so you can give that to your kids today. You rehearsing with him, say Agon, he said to me, can share that image and they can interpret “No, dear. It’s Sleeping Beauty.” He was teach- it. And now it’s even more exaggerated, but it ing the role to Victor Castelli, in Saratoga. can’t look easy. Because it’s like The Sleeping Every body was out. I’d already been doing Agon Beauty. If you know what the tension of the for a couple of years and he said, “No, dear Rose Adagio is, then you are able to tell your . .” You know the part where you take your students how to do it within the abilities of leg, he said, “No, no, it’s Sleeping Beauty.” And today. It’s not, “Oh, it’s right,” or, “It’s wrong.” I went, “What?” It’s that it’s supposed to be [she imitates a drum It was a Saturday morning before the mati- roll] a high-wire act. nee and he said, “It’s the Rose Adagio.” And, BR: What are your feelings about what has you know, the man holds me, then he flips me happened with Misty Copeland and do you be- and lies down on the ground. What he meant lieve she has subtly or not so subtly made the was it’s that tension, the circus, and everyone assertion that the ballet world is racist? is still. Now it’s different. Maria Kowroski is Watts: Well, I’m a fan and a friend of Misty’s past a split, it’s crazy. But, it has as big an ef- and I don’t think that’s what she’s saying, ex- fect now as it did then. People still hold their actly. I think without Misty, ballet would be breath at that moment. dead, in a sense, because she has been able to The Rose Adagio – its virtuoso, right? So, identify the problem that’s in classical music, what’s the intention with Balanchine? I nev- in ballet. There’s a grossly understated prob- er speak for him, but I remember saying to lem that has been unimaginatively dealt with. him once about Agon, “How did you make this It’s an almost all-white world. ballet?” He looked at me and I could see he was There’s no pipeline. There’s no gracious a little put off, and then he said, “Well, I had pipe line for a Black community to relate to the music. And where did Stravinsky get the ballet. Why would you go watch a hundred music? From the air.” white people do something if you were Black? So in his rehearsals that’s the extent of the If you went to Broadway during the time of In clues we might get as to what things were the Heights, the first Lin-Manuel Miranda mu- about, what they were references to. He nev- sical, you just walked in and you were, “Oh, er would tell you that that section of Agon was My God! This is New York.” meant to indicate a beatnik, but if you weren’t This is my New York.

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