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D’Aoust '(Toronto – Gary Smith ''Miami – Michael Langlois ')New York – Karen Greenspan '*Birmingham – David Mead '%Boston – Jeffrey Gantz '+ Le!er to the Editor – Joel Lobenthal Joel Lobenthal 68 ,,A Conversation with Dorothée Gilbert David Vaughan ,&Tanaquil Joseph Houseal )(Ballet West Francis Mason Ballet Review 42.1 )*Robert Cohan on Graham Spring 2014 Editor and Designer: 42 Darrell Wilkins Marvin Hoshino ",New Sacre, Historical Nutcracker Managing Editor: Ian Spencer Bell Roberta Hellman *'Artist Types Senior Editor: Don Daniels David Vaughan Associate Editor: *# L’Allegro at Twenty-Five Joel Lobenthal Daniel Jacobson Associate Editor: #(Ballerinas into Your Lap Larry Kaplan Harris Green Copy Editors: 64 Barbara Palfy #"ABT’s Autumn in New York Naomi Mindlin Susanna Sloat Photographers: #&Fall for Dance X Tom Brazil Costas Horst Koegler Webmaster: %*What Should Ballet Dramaturgy David Weiss Achieve? Associates: &)London Reporter – Clement Crisp Peter Anastos +" Bhutan Online – Karen Greenspan Robert Greskovic 30 George Jackson +% Music on Disc – George Dorris Elizabeth Kendall '(( Check It Out Paul Parish Nancy Reynolds James Su!on David Vaughan Edward Willinger Cover Photograph by Costas: Mark Morris Dance Group Sarah C. Woodcock at Lincoln Center in L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. Artist Types atschool.Iwastheonlywhitekid.Theywould throw snowballs with rocks in them at my head. The studio was by the high school, and the Bockmans lived above it. “It was transporting just to be in that beau- Ian Spencer Bell tiful house. It was like something out of The Red Shoes. There were beautiful gardens and Ruby Aver, former with Het Frenchdoors.Ididn’tevenknowwhataFrench ScapinoBalletintheNetherlands,tellsmewhy door was. Charles would say, ‘Spot the French she gravitated to dance. We’re on the porch of doors.’ The word ‘French’ sounded amazing to her chocolate-colored Victorian in the rolling me. At the studio, there were kids who were hills of Housatonic, Massachusetts, where we cultured because their parents taught at the teach together in the summer. University of Chicago. I started going to their “I was always thinking I was in the wrong houses. It was like, ‘Whoa.’ They had art and family.Thebigdrawofdancewasthatmysoul classical music playing and natural foods I’d life was not at home or in school. We were liv- never seen. Their houses were soulful. We inginHydePark,onChicago’sSouthSide.That were Formica and velvet art. would have been about 1967. I lived where the “My mother, Francis Hogan, a first-gener- Black Stone Rangers and the Black Panthers ation Irish Catholic, was a housewife, and my were having gang warfare. It was Black Rev- father, Max Aver, a first-generation Russian olution. We literally had bullets coming in the Jew, worked in an electrical supplies ware- house while we were eating. My dad would house. They’d met at Aragon Ballroom and say, ‘Get under the table. But finish your din- went ballroom dancing twice a week. My Rus- ner.’” sian grandparents would put a scarf on my Aver is fifty-seven now. She could easily be head and my mother would say, ‘You look like tenyearsyounger.Shewearsafinecottonsun- an immigrant!’ My dad’s family came from dress that shows her muscular arms. Her hair Ukraine, through St. Louis, and ended up in is soft and curly and red. Aver has brought Chicago selling newspapers. And from their some photos and papers to the table, and goes newsstand, they ran horse betting. through them now as she talks. Her chest lifts, “There was some money for dancing, but I her small hands sweep across the table, her helped with cleaning. When I first started ankles cross under her chair, her toes point studying dance, I never saw a ballet. Dance gently. was always on TV, though: the June Taylor “I started dancing because I had a friend Dancers, Ed Sullivan. I would get up and try, whose babysitter took ballet. I went along. I and they would tell me to sit down. I thought, was about ten and a half. I remember her with One day they will pay to see me dance. And her leg on the . She was beautiful. I was they did. atomboy.WhenIsawthemjumping,Ithought, “I got a scholarship to Interlochen [Center I’d like to do all those different jumps. After, for the Arts] for the summer. I was twelve or when the class cleared out, I ran into the stu- thirteen, and John Kriza and Ruth Ann Koe- dio in my gym shoes and pedal pushers and sungavemeascholarshipfortheiryear-round put my leg up on the barre, and it got stuck. I program at home, at the Jane Adams Center. couldn’t get it offbecause I was so tight. The TheyhadleftAmericanBalletTheatreandhad teacher, Charles Bockman, came in and said, cometoChicagotostarttheirownschool.John ‘LittleMonkey,itlookslikeyouwanttodance.’ was one of the original sailors in Jerome Rob- “I studied ballet with Charles Bockman and bins’ Fancy Free. his wife Jane as often as I could for two years. “I don’tknow how they knew Ed Parish, but I could walk from home. I was getting beat up theybroughthiminasaguest.Whenhetaught, ©2014IanSpencerBell 51 I felt like I was going to throw up after the say. ‘I’ll put on a pot of spaghetti.’ And the first forty minutes. I was sheet white. After, thing was, you wished there were more days I told him I wanted to study with him. He in a week. It was dance until you drop. laughedandlaughed.‘ForChristsake,’hesaid, “Atthebeginning,ofcourse,Idropped.We’d ‘you can’t even make it through a class. How repeat exercises until a muscle group was ex- are you going to study with me?’” hausted. My pointe class was two-and-a-half When Aver imitates Parish, she smiles hours. The frappé exercise would have over a broadly. Her voice booms, and she is brighter. hundred relevés. It was a multilevel class, and She shows me a photograph of them in class. we’d get a new boy, and then someone like Parish guides her leg in grand rond de jambe. Karen Kain would drop in. And he had kids “Ed was teaching a couple of boys in Logan comingonSundayfromColumbiaCollegewho Square, which was pretty much a Puerto Ri- later danced with Merce Cunningham. canneighborhoodatthetime.Otherboyswere “He didn’t even correct much, but he called lookingin,breakingwindows,screaming‘fag- out the combinations while we danced. I got.’ Ed would get them in the studio and say, learned to dance from his voice. He would ‘If you take ballet class, I won’ttell your moth- carve you with it. On days when his back was er about the broken window. You think we’re okay, he’d demonstrate. But he had long peri- faggots? Then you do that grand jeté.’ He could ods when he could barely show anything. He’d take kids that no one else could handle. ‘Fine, fallen offa ladder when he was in the navy, you want dinner,’ he’d say. ‘Then take this and I’d heard that he’d fallen into the orches- dancebelt,thesetights,theseballetshoes,and tra pit when he was dancing in Europe with you dance seven days a week.’ Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas. At the end “Ed was working in a factory, feeding all of the day, he’d tell us that he had to get a glass these boys with his factory money. He found of wine because we looked so lousy.But I think out he could give up his day job and get mon- it was because of his back. ey to be the boys’ foster parent. So he con- “He’dsaythingslike,‘Thewayyou’rework- tacted Social Services and went to their moth- ing now,you couldn’tbe a pimple on a dancer’s ers. The mothers were hookers, heroin ad- ass. Go back there and fix it.’ You’d laugh and dicts. They’d say, ‘Keep ’em.’ He had at least work. And after working really seriously, the ten foster kids of his own. They were boys no laughter allows to you release, and that was one else wanted: boys whose knives he’d tak- really good for our training. And he’d say,‘You en, boys who had stolen, boys who had raped. know why I get so angry? Because I goddamn They’d make a studio together and then have love you so much.’ Just like that, right in the to leave because the boys were too rowdy or middle of class. It was tough love. He was con- because of money. nectingwithpeople’ssoullife.He’dsay,‘You’re “He asked my mom if I could deal with it. fearful. What are you so goddamn afraid of?’ And he told her there was a lot of bad lan- “When I was fourteen, David Howard came guage. But I grew up with a lot of bad lan- out to that funky studio. He’d seen the crew guage.Itwasnotaleapformetobewiththem. before us. Here was this young, proper British My mom would drive me, and I had a sleep- gentleman in the Puerto Rican ghetto. He sat ing bag there. She’d throw him a check every there while we worked like racehorses. Af- once and a while, and he got money from the terward, he said we were all absolutely fear- foster kids, and people in the neighborhood less, and that he’d take all the boys and the wouldgivehimsidesofbeefandday-oldbread. girl. “Thestudiowasarathole.Yourpointeshoes “I went to Harkness School of Ballet for the would get caught in the cracks in the floor. We summer on a full scholarship and a stipend, trained seven days a week and at Christmas. because we didn’t have money. David had a ‘Of course we have class on Christmas,’ he’d woman there take me to Estée Lauder – they 52 -.//01 203405 made Harkness Blue eye shadow – because I thought you had rhythm.’ Or to a Jewish boy, had no makeup. I was like a guy. Before I left ‘That’s not kosher.’ for New York, Ed said, ‘You sprouted titties. “When he’d say these things, it was the way You have to get a bra.’ you’d tease someone you were crazy about. It “Thenattheend,Davidaskedustostayyear was intimate. He loved his students. You did- round. And that’s when all hell broke loose. I n’t feel that other teachers loved you. No one called Ed and told him, and he said, ‘Did I ask loved you. No one even cared. One day, hope- fully, you’d make their school look good – if you got into ABT or City Bal- let. “I don’t think I finished my sophomore year. I was fifteen. I skipped a grade and dropped out. On one of the last days of school, I started to slip down the stairs on something wet. It was blood, because, again,therehadbeengang wars in school. I didn’t think, I don’t want to go to school because I could get shot. I thought, I don’t want to go to school be- cause I could sprain my ankle and not be able to dance. The fact is, I could have been killed from all the gunfire and stabbings. “By the time I was not quite seventeen, I had a contractwithChicagoBal- let. And then, after a year, Chicago Ballet folded. I Ruby Aver and Ed Parish, 1971. (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Aver) saw David and he said, you to do anything?’ I said, ‘No, Ed,’ and he told ‘Come, I’ll give you an apprenticeship and me to get my ass back home. money,’because he knew who I was. And I just “Ed had taught at Harkness for a week, but left. And then Harkness folded.” he was not allowed to teach there again. The The phone rings and Aver leaps from the Harkness boys were glam – very androgynous chair to get it. She is expecting a call about an andveryfeminine–andstretchyandallabout injured student. I pause the recording device. line. They couldn’t jump, and he told them to I know what’s next anyway: Aver auditions in stop stretching. ‘I don’t care about your sexu- Europe and with Ballet de Caracas in al preference,’ he said. ‘You’re dancing like Venezuela and then, finally, with Het Scapino goddamn faggots. And you can’t do that. Pony Ballet. it up for dance class. You can be who you want Aver hangs up, leans into the chair beside after class.’ And he’d say to the black kids, ‘I me. “I don’t care if I have the least talented 672489 :;<= 53 dancer,” she says. “If that child is with me, helper, cook’s assistant, ship’s cook, auto me- then I’ll do anything for him or her.” She chanic,jukeboxmaker,fineartstudent.There sounds like Parish. are even the exact days he was in the Navy: That evening, in Aver’s pink wallpapered three years, five months, nine days. But there attic,Ireadthrougheighteenpagesofremem- is no mention of his father. brances about Parish, written by former stu- The sun bursts through the clouds. Then dents and family.The document was compiled there’sasuddendownpour.It’satypicalBerk- a year before he died, when he suffered am- shire summer day. Aver has gone to Great nesiafromanautomobileaccidentin2001.His Barrington to do some shopping. She’s left me life reads like a 1940s musical. a copy of Dance, Remember Dance, a fifteen- He was born Eldon Parish, in rural Em- minute documentary about Parish, shot in metsburg, Iowa, on December 30, 1925. He’s 1978 by filmmaker William Gatewood. It be- still a boy when he tells his mother, Augusta ginswithParishcallingoutanearlyhundred- Maine Sewell, that his name sounds like a dis- year-oldboys’exercise,“Chassé,tombé,coupé, ease, and he wants to be called Ed. His three double tour.” It cuts to three boys walking siblings, brother John and sisters Bing and the streets of Chicago. They cross train tracks. Dawn, admire his high jinks: he brings a frog Bells ring. Guardrails lift. Then we see boys to the Little Red School; gets caught in neigh- eating hungrily around a large kitchen table, bors’ trees; builds a from a wooden re- their plates heaped with food. They talk about frigerator box; ruins his mother’s pans mak- Baryshnikov’s pirouettes. (Aver tells me later ingcandyandburiestheminthegarden;twirls that Parish had taken them to watch Ameri- batons on top of a pickup truck while sup- can Ballet Theatre rehearse at a Chicago the- posedly standing on his head during a home- ater. He often sneaked the boys into perform- coming parade; puts on talent shows for the ances,followinglargefamiliesandgroupsinto neighborhood kids starring his tap-dancing theaters, and finding empty seats when the pet chicken. And every Saturday he rides a ca- lights went down.) boose with his uncle, a worker for the Rock “I had felt at one time,” Parish says in Island Railroad, to ballet class. voiceover, “that I would like very much to Then, in 1939, the family moved to Los An- see artist-type people take kids in. Teach ’em geles. That’s when I realize that there’s been trades. Teach ’em crafts. Art. People that have no mention of his father – not a name or a something to offer the kid other than just a date. I scan the eighteen pages. There are so home, just a roof over their shoulders. A car- many other names and dates. There are the penter take in one, a plumber take in one, a names of the famous people he knew and singer take in one. You know. It doesn’t have danced with when he trained with Irina and to be done big, but I think that’s what they Bronislava Nijinska at their Hollywood stu- should do.” dio: Robert Joffrey, Eugene “Luigi” Louis Fac- We see Parish getting into a white van with cuitos, Mitzi Gaynor, Johnny Weismuller. the kids. The boys smile and laugh, sing with There are the names of the men and women the seventies folk pop on the radio. They ar- he met when he moved to New York to study rive at the large white farmhouse Parish has with Vladimir Dokoudovsky: Billie Holliday, acquired. Alicia Alonso, Jerome Robbins, Paul Sanasar- “Youknow,”Parish says, “the state’s not go- do, Sonja Henning. There are the names of his ing to take care of these kids after they’re two biological sons, Marvin and Steven, by a eighteen.They’regonnahavetobeabletotake MarianRockfordhe“gottogetherwith.”There care of themselves. ’Cause I hope, especially are the names of his many jobs and profes- with the farm, that I’ll have a place where they sional titles: , tap dancer, ice can all come back and they’ll always have a skater, house painter, sign painter, kitchen home.” 54 -.//01 203405 An older boy who was brought up as a girl, staying with the boys who had babies. He’d go Avertellsme,walksclosetoParish.Heisbeau- and help with their families, and then, final- tiful and admiring. The boys ahead of them ly, he went to his sister’s. shout playfully. They gather in a circle in a “The last time we spoke, I’d just had Fay Lee. field to practice a Russian . It looks I pick up the phone and hear, ‘Goddamn son like a cool autumn day. The sky is gray, and of a bitch. Why do I have to hear from Linda the grass is thick and wet and shiny.There are [Reifsnyder Jenkins, former Parish student animal pens offto the side. and administrative director and ballet facul- A boy named Allen cries because he’s being ty member at Florida Ballet] that you had teased. Another, Dago [Dagoberto Nieves], a baby? Well, good for you for having that curses and talks quickly at him. (When Nieves baby at home. What’s with the hospital? It’s is older, Aver tells me, Baryshnikov chooses not an illness. But you didn’t have to pay for him for ABT. Another boy in the circle, Tim those goddamn midwives. I could have deliv- Grensback, has a career at Milwaukee Ballet, eredthatbaby.I’vebirthedcalves.It’sthesame while his older brother, John Grensback, from thing.’ the first crew, dances for NYCB, Joffrey Ballet, “And then he said, ‘I’m not getting better, and becomes a principal at Houston Ballet.) Rube. I walk from the house, and I look for the The boys, laughing, yelling, arms linked, per- first bench to sit down on. I’m not recovering form the Russian dance while Parish looks on from that accident. It’s okay if I don’t teach. I and calls out corrections. never cared if any of you danced. I just loved Dancinghelpedhimgetoutofhisworldand you guys. But if I can’t help take care of your come back to it. It helped him become a father. kids, what good am I? I’m not going to have “The boys,” Aver says, from the doorway by you guys taking care of me.’” theporch,“werestillgettingintoomuchtrou- Aver’s eyes seem to reflect the sky. It’s been ble in the city, so he moved out to the farm.” raining for some time. She’s holding a bowl of strawberries from Taft “I always felt he had my back. It was the Farms, just down the road. She sits in a chair confidence. He gave us all an enormous con- in half lotus, pulls the cap offa strawberry, fidence. How many teachers gave us that? I drops it in the bowl. would go to those big auditions, and he’d say, “One of the boys got a girl pregnant. They ‘Did you stand front and center? What are moved to another rural area and, I don’t know we working for? Someone has to be front and how,buthedecidedthatwouldbehislastcrew center. You have as much chance as any of of kids. And then he left the farm and started them.’”

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