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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproduction Further reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. GLEN TETLEY: CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN
DANCE IN EUROPE 1962-1983
by
Alyson R. Brokenshire
submitted to the
Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences
Of American University
In Partial Fulfillment of
The Requirements for the Degree
Of Masters of Arts
In
Dance
Dr. Naima Prevots
[r. B iwford
t . George Jackson
Dean of the College
Date 2002
American University
Washington, D.C. 20016 S i 5 Oh m e rc m munsnxuum
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1408882
Copyright 2002 by Brokenshire, Alyson R.
All rights reserved.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. © COPYRIGHT
by
Alyson R. Brokenshire
2002
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. GLEN TETLEY: CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN
DANCE IN EUROPE 1962-1983
by
Alyson R. Brokenshire
ABSTRACT
This study focuses on the choreography of Glen Tetley and his contribution to the
development of modem dance in Europe 1962-1983. This study will initially examine
Tetley’s career in America—his training and performance experience, and his
choreography for his own group of dancers. Tetley’s work in Europe will then be
examined focusing specifically on his choreography with the Netherlands Dance Theatre,
Rambert Dance Company, and the Stuttgart Ballet 1962-1983. While these companies
were undergoing a transition period in terms of repertory and policy, Tetley’s work
shaped the new direction of each company. Tetley’s choreography exposed the dancers
to new movement possibilities, and opened up new relationships in movement, music,
and design. A picture of Tetley’s work in Europe is analyzed in the context of his overall
career as a choreographer in both Europe and America, and the recent resurgence of
interest in his choreography is addressed.
ii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DEDICATION ’
This thesis is dedicated in memory of my nan, Marjorie Ellen Brokenshire, who
supported and encouraged me with all aspects of my studies. Her generosity and love
will continue to touch my life forever.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My sincerest thanks to the members of my committee, Dr. Naima Prevots, Dr.
George Jackson, and Dr. Brett Crawford, who guided my thesis with insightful
commentary. A special thanks to Naima whose breadth of knowledge and experience of
the art form of dance is never-ending. Her prompt feedback was invaluable, and her
continual support, encouragement, and inspiration was motivating and challenging.
I would also like to thank Dr. Angela Kane, who stimulated my interest in dance
history and originally inspired my curiosity in Glen Tetley’s work. Her support and
encouragement beyond my undergraduate studies has been unprecedented and much
appreciated.
A special thanks to Glen Tetley, whose choreography forms the basis of this
study. I appreciate his willingness to be interviewed, and his generosity in sharing his
thoughts about his choreography and his place in the history of modem dance.
I would also like to thank Charles L. Reinhart and Carmen de Lavallade for their
enthusiasm in sharing their experiences and insights on Glen Tetley’s work.
Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents for their interest and
support in my course of study. Thank you for your love, and never wanting anything
more than for me to be happy. To all my friends in England and America who have
taught me so much and who keep my feet on the ground, and to Ben Levy who continues
to inspire me as I grow with each new day.
iii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CONTENTS
ABSTRACT...... ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iii
CHAPTER
1. GLEN TETLEY: BACKGROUND, TRAINING, AND PERFORMANCE EXPERIENCE...... 1
2. GLEN TETLEY: CHOREOGRAPHY FOR COMPANY 1962-1969 ...... 13
3. GLEN TETLEY AND NETHERLANDS DANCE THEATRE 1962-1972...28
4. GLEN TETLEY AND RAMBERT DANCE COMPANY 1967-1983...... 47
5. GLEN TETLEY AND STUTTGART BALLET 1973-1976 ...... 67
6. CONCLUSION ...... 85
APPENDICES...... 98
BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 119
iv
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1
GLEN TETLEY: BACKGROUND, TRAINING, AND PERFORMANCE EXPERIENCE
This chapter will address how Glen Tetley became interested in dance. It will
focus on his training in both the classical and modem dance genres, and his diverse career
as a performer that ranges from dancing with classical ballet and modem dance
companies, to performing in Broadway musicals. In terms of choreography, this chapter
will show how Tetley’s training and career as a performer influenced his ideology as a
choreographer.
Glen Tetley (Glenford Andrew Tetley, Jr.) was bom in Cleveland, Ohio, on 3
February 1926. His father was a successful insurance executive for one of the largest
companies in America and his mother was an actress who studied at Carnegie Mellon
University. Tedey’s father wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, however his love of
the arts came at an early age from his mother. Tedey states, “she inspired m e. . . I
remember cueing her in Macbeth and I saw her in performance.”1 He also remembers
seeing a production of The Merchant of Venice which opened his “mind and heart to
theater. . . in those days there was no television. I never knew anything remotely like
1 Jane Vranish, “After 56 Years, Tetley Comes Home for PBT Tribute,” Pittsburgh Post- Gazette, 6 May 2001, G3.
I
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 ballet companies.”2 When his parents separated, Tetley moved with his mother to
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania.
In 1943, American Ballet Theatre (ABT) performed Anthony Tudor’s production
of Romeo and Juliet (1943) in Tetley’s hometown. Tetley recalls that the production was
choreographed with “such subtlety and beauty. It provided the whole essence of
Shakespeare, achieved without words . . . I was overwhelmed by the experience. I said,
‘this is what I love to do, what I’ve been waiting to do.’”3 Inspired by the performance,
Tetley decided that he wanted to become a dancer and he began taking lessons at a local
dance school with teacher Hela Slavinska.
In 1944, Tetley graduated from Wilkinson High School during the midst of World
War n. The same year he enlisted in the Navy, and he was sent for premedical training at
Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. However, Tetley was intent on
becoming a dancer, and decided to continue his dance training while he was a student.
On the rare occasion when he had a free weekend, Tetley traveled to New York to take
dance classes. “They’d give me free lessons if I came. Of course, I had no ballet shoes,
and I would wear my Navy swim trunks and my T-Shirt with G. Tetley on it, but I would
go.”4 Tetley completed his studies at Franklin and Marshall College in two years, and in
1946 graduated with honors.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Marty Munson. “The High-Stakes Life & Illustrious Career of Glen Tetley ’46,” Franklin and Marshall Magazine; available from http://www.collegerelations.fandm.edu/magazine/autumn00/au00_story2; accessed April 18,2001.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The same year, the Navy sent Tetley to Columbia Medical College in New York
City, where he began his medical training. Tetley arrived in New York with very little
money, and decided to borrow some money from a friend who was a singer in
choreographer Jerome Robbins’s On the Town (1945). Waiting at the stage door, Tetley
met Robbins who asked Tetley if he was there for the audition. Tetley auditioned for
Robbins and Robbins recognized Tetley’s talent and his quick movement memory. As a
result, Tetley had his first professional engagement. Robbins immediately cast Tetley in
the role of a sailor in the hit Broadway musical On the Town.
Tetley began serious dance training in 1946 with Hanya Holm in New York. In
Holm’s studio he learned an analytical approach to movement. Tetley states that Holm’s
“analysis of space and physics in dance—the idea that the dancer develops his own body
and refines it for himself, and refines his own personal technique—all appeals to me.”s
Tetley started dancing at a late age and, therefore, Holm’s approach to dance was ideal
for him. “Hanya believed that the end point in all of us is to find ourselves and to find a
means of strengthening everything that one is—physically, mentally, spiritually, and to
go in one’s direction. It was a very concentrated beginning in dance, very important to
me, and one that led to a pattern of thinking; so I came to love all dance.”6 Holm
discussed movement anatomically. For example, she explained how the quadriceps work
and why the underside of the leg is important in lifting it. She could explain the necessity
for turning out in plie and which muscles should be used. This made sense to Tetley
coming from a premedical background.
5 anon, “Pierrot in Two Worlds,” Dance and Dancers 18, no.12 (December 1967): 11.
6 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In 1946, Tetley made his first appearance with the Hanya Holm Company as a
dancer in Holm’s Walt Whitman Suite, Windows (1946) and in two further works, The
Insect Comedy (1947), Ozark Suite (1948). In 1948, Tetley was a dancer and Holm’s
assistant in the original Broadway cast of Cole Porter’s musical Kiss Me Kate (1948).
Holm and Porter collaborated again in 1950 on a new musical titled Out of This World in
which Tetley created the role of Adonis. Tetley performed Holm’s Baroque Concerto
with the Pauline Koner Company in 1949.
After he had been studying with Holm for approximately three years, he began his
training in the Cecchetti ballet technique with Anthony Tudor and Margaret Craske at the
Metropolitan Opera Ballet School. Discussing his training with both Tudor and Craske,
Tetley states:
It was a beautiful combination. Craske explained to me Cecchetti and the entire system, and I was entranced that there should be certain exercises that could be so contained and that everything was so accessible to the dancer. Then to take class with Mr Tudor and to be knocked right off balance! These classes were terribly exciting to me; the emotional tension that suddenly came into this world of Cecchetti and pulled one way and the other.7
Tetley also studied modem dance with Martha Graham. He states that he was
“moved by the whole dark spectrum of Graham’s theatre, world, and technique.”8 Tetley
took his first lesson with Graham when he moved to New York in 1946, but at this time
he did not feel emotionally ready for her technique. While he was performing as a
classical dancer with the Robert Joffrey Company (1951-55), Tetley felt at a “dead end.”9
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., 12
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. He states that he now felt Feady to study with Graham:
. . . I went back and studied with her for two years, and it answered everything I felt about movement. Things began to release within me, I began to become more of what I wanted to be, which is my own dancer. . . I had been so afraid of releasing any emotion and Martha helped me to break through the whole barrier. Working with her formed the most total impression of anyone I have worked with. Once implanted, I find that what I learned then has been growing continuously.10
Graham’s teaching philosophy was very different from Holm’s. When Tetley began
working with Graham, he stopped thinking about muscles, joints, and alignment. The
breathing and spiritual aspect of Graham’s teaching fascinated him. Tetley says that
Graham exposed him to Oriental philosophy, Oriental theater, and Freudian psychology."
‘With Martha, one had to take courage unto oneself and try to achieve the same art she
did.”'2
Tetley was curious about all genres of dance, and when discussing the fact that he
was taking classes in more than one technique, he stated, “I had the feeling I was
breaking the rules, but I was not going to tell anybody. I knew Hanya [Holm] would
disapprove totally of my studying with Martha [Graham], and Martha totally disapproved
of classical.”13 Tedey remembers that Holm and Graham were in competition; they were
jealous of each other, and they refused to speak with one another.14 “Hanya eventually
10 Ibid.
" Joseph Mazo, “Martha Remembered,” Dance Magazine 65, no.7 (July 1991): 44
12 Ibid.
13 Marty Munson, “The High-Stakes Life,” available from http://www.collegerelations.fandm.edu/magazine/autumn00/au00_story2
14 Glen Tetley, interview by author, tape recording of telephone interview, Washington, D.C., 3 October 2001.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 found out that I’d been working with Martha and she said, ‘I’d rather you play piano in a
whore house than work with her.’”15
Tetley was given scholarships to study with Graham, Holm, and Tudor. “I took
every opportunity I could . . . I wanted to be the sort of dancer that every choreographer
would die to have.”16 Tetley soon became a sought-after dancer and he stated:
When I was working with a choreographer I would open myself up completely to them and I would try to become the sort of dancer that they wanted. I was the ideal subject. I was very open, I was very inventive, and I was very creative. I was very tall, I had very strong technique, and I was a big jumper. I was one of the first dancers to cross the barriers. I could equally dance in, not only the style of Martha Graham, but with the technique of Martha Graham. Or I could dance as a classical dancer.”17
Tetley was a principal dancer with the John Butler Dance Company from 1951 to
1955, and he created roles in Butler’s ballets, such as Malocchio, Mask o f the Wild Man,
Three Promenades with the Lord (all 1953), Brass World, Long-Legged Jig, Triad (all
1954) and Carmina Burana and The Sybil (both 1959). He performed with the Joffery
Ballet in Pas des Deesses (1956), the Doris Humphrey Company in Passacaglia (1957),
and in 1958 he danced the role of Iago in the Jose Limon Company’s The Moor’s Pavane
(1949). The same year, he was asked by Martha Graham to join her company. Tetley
created the roles of The Stranger in Embattled Garden and Apollo in Clytemnestra (both
1958).
In 1960, Tetley danced with ABT, where he worked with a wide range of
choreographers. He performed in Anthony Tudor’s Pillar of Fire (1942) and Jardin aux
15 Ibid.
16 Vranish, ‘Tetley Comes Home for PBT Tribute,” G3.
17 Tetley, interview by author, 3 October 2001.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7 Lilas (1936). He danced in Birgit Cullberg’s Miss Julie (1950) and in 1960 he danced the
role of Wangel in the world premiere of Cullberg’s Lady from the Sea at the Metropolitan
Opera House, New York. Tetley also performed the title role in Michel Fokine’s
Bluebeard (1941). In 1961 Tetley toured Europe with Jerome Robbins Ballets: USA and
he danced in Afternoon o f a Faun (1953), The Concert ( 1956), The Cage (1951), Events
(1961), and Moves (1959).18
When Tetley first began studying dance with Holm, as part of the whole concept
of total training, he had to study theory, music, notation, composition, and improvisation.
In 1946, Tetley choreographed his first work, Richard Cory , while studying with Holm.
From 1946 until 1962, when he formed his own company, Tetley choreographed eight
works that were performed at various venues throughout America, such as Colorado
College, Humphrey-Weidman Studio, and Cherry Lane Theater, New York. Tetley states
that at this time he only wanted to be a performer; he did not want to be a choreographer:
I always felt that I was better at being stimulated. I wanted to be a tool, and it was enormous satisfaction that people wanted me to work with them as a dancer. Once given the stimulus, I could then take over in the creative world that a performer exists in. I felt very secure in that.19
However, when Tetley returned from Europe in 1961 after touring with Jerome Robbins
Ballets: USA, he stopped performing for one year. Performing no longer satisfied him,
and he wanted to do more than dance other people’s choreography. He thought that it
would be a challenge to see if he could find his own choreographic voice:
I reached a point when I felt that I was not going forward, just around and around. I had been with Ballet Theatre, with Graham, with Robbins, and I felt I had to go back and find who I am. I stopped dancing for a year, I worked just by myself. It
18 See Appendix A for a complete list of Tetley’s roles as a performer.
19 anon, “Pierrot in Two Worlds,” 12.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is the most,difficult thing to go into a studio where you have been used to someone else guiding, and find it’s up to you now to make the decisions. It’s a very lonely experience.20
It was difficult for Tetley to make the transition from dancer to choreographer.
Tetley started creating on himself, and he states that it was hard having the discipline to
remember what he was creating.21 Furthermore, he felt that he must not “do any
movement that’s dishonest, no movement arbitrarily, no movement that shouldn’t be
there unless I believe that it’s the only way to put it there. Thinking all this, it was almost
impossible to begin.”22 What Tetley had learned from Holm in the studio was very useful
when he initially began choreographing, and Graham and Tudor were both critical
influences in his development as a choreographer. Tetley states that Graham and Tudor
inspired him. “Working closely with them, seeing them have difficulties, seeing them
come to blocks and seeing them work their way out of it, was the biggest lesson. You go
on, you lose your way, certainly, but you go on and find your way.”23
Tetley is essentially a modernist, and his choreography is indicative of the
influence the early American modem dancers had on him. Tetley’s sense of theatricality
has been derived from Graham and Holm. Parallels with Graham are evident within
Tetley’s works. Graham used Americana themes in works such as Frontier (1935),
American Document (1938) and Appalachian Spring (1944) and, when working in the
Netherlands, Tetley used nationalistic themes in order to increase that country’s sense of
20 Ibid.
21 Tetley, interview by author, 3 October 2001.
22 anon, “Pierrot in Two Worlds,” 12.
23 Lee Christofis, “Glen Tetley: Fusing Classical and Modem,” Dance Australia (December 1991/January 1992): 35.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. pride in its history, art, and culture ( The Anatomy Lesson , 1964 and Mutations, 1970).
Nevertheless, Tetley was not attempting to duplicate Graham’s work. The themes of
both Graham’s and Tetley’s works draw upon twentieth-century insights. Graham’s
works are concerned wholly with emotional expression, whereas Tetley adopted current
trends and the emphasis of his work Is on danced events rather than on narrative.24
Although Graham introduced Tetley to the Oriental theater, Tetley does not attempt to
make Oriental works, rather he works with Oriental concepts. This is evident in Embrace
Tiger and Return to Mountain (1968) and Mutations (1970); the runway of the Kabuki
Theatre, the Hanamichi, influenced his approach to the performance area in this work. In
terms of set design, Tetley is innovative—inSphinx (1977), the Sphinx’s wings are
attached to the set, and not the dancer. Like Graham, he uses three-dimensional
structures, and metals, plastics, and cloths. Rouben Ter-Arutunian collaborated in
designing the set for Graham’s Visionary (1961), and the following year Ter-Arutunian
designed the set for Tetley’s Pierrot Lunaire.
Parallels can also be drawn between Tetley and John Butler. As previously
mentioned, Tetley danced with Butler’s company during the years 1951-1955. Butler
also studied with Martha Graham and in the 1940s he danced in Graham’s company
creating such roles as the Revivalist inAppalachian Spring (1944). Butler’s
choreography was heavily influenced by Graham—he incorporated her technique, her use
of props, and her tendency toward allegorical and mystical themes. Butler’s
choreography is renowned for its “expressiveness, inventiveness, theatricality, and
Angela Kane, “Glen Tetley,” in The International Dictionary o f Ballet, ed. Martha Bremser, Vol. 2 (Detroit: St. James Press, 1993), 1413.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. especially its beauty.”23 However, unlike Butler and Graham, Tetley’s choreography is
not concerned wholly with emotional expression. The statements Tetley makes about
emotional and psychological conditions are the undertone of his work (Pierrot Lunaire),
Butler also choreographed for both classical and modem dance companies, such as the
Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, and Salt
Lake City’s American Repertory Dance Theater.
Tetley has never made any division between classical and modem dance.
Previously, the pioneers of modem dance had disregarded everything that was classical
because they believed that it was rigid and devoid of deep emotions. They wanted to find
a way of moving that was basic and that came from the center, where they believed
movement happened naturally. Addressing the modem and classical idioms, Tetley
states that the pioneers of modem dance “felt that either side would contaminate the
other, not enrich it.”26 When Tetley arrived in New York in 1946 there was an entrenched
division between classical dance and modem dance. However, Tetley feels that the two
idioms come from the same center. Classical dancers learn how to escape gravity,
whereas modem dancers give in to gravity—they use the floor and use gravity. “I do not
believe that the two trainings together will deprive a dancer, it can only add to a
dimension if a dancer is intelligent, which he must be to absorb it.”27
Karen Raugust, “John Butler,” in International Dictionary o f Modem Dance, ed. Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgraf (New York: St Janies Press, 1998), 88.
26 Tetley, interview by author, 3 October 2001.
27 anon, “Pierrot in Two Worlds,” 45
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11 In his own words, Tetley became the first “cross dancer” and he became one of
the first choreographers to blend the classical and modem idioms in his choreography.28
In this thesis, the term modem dance refers to a form of dance based on the individual
choreographer’s vocabulary of movement. This is derived from where the movement
impulse originates, and how it is developed logically. Tetley fuses the modem dance
vocabulary he has been trained in, such as the Graham technique, with the classical ballet
vocabulary. This fusion can be seen in the way that ballet steps such as pirouettes, leaps,
and arabesques co-exist with the falls, floor-work, and supple torso movements of
modem dance. Tetley’s precise technique, combined with the sense of emotional
expression he had learned from Graham, allowed him to bridge the gap between classical
and modem dance. Tetley embraced current trends in dance and believed that dance was
in a “state of flux...the roots we hang on to, but that which we are working on from day
to day has to be growing from all the influences around it, and if it is not, then it is
dead.”29 Tetley’s combination of the classical and modem idioms is his personal
movement quality and he did not intentionally set out to combine the two genres.
This chapter has shown that Tetley had extensive training in both the classical and
modem genres, and he had a diverse career as a performer. His performance experience
ranges from classical ballet and modem dance to musical theater. Tetley reached a
turning point in his career in 1961. Performing no longer satisfied him, and he wanted to
find his own choreographic voice. As a choreographer, Tetley was able to draw from his
experiences in the classical and modem genres. His breadth of training and performance
28 Lee Christofis, “Glen Tetley: Fusing Classical and Modern,” Dance Australia (December 1991/January 1992): 33.
29 anon. “Pierrot in Two Worlds,” 45
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. experience came to characterize his choreography. By fusing the classical and modem
idioms Tetley was able to create a unique and individual movement vocabulary, and the
ideology of his choreography draws upon the influences of his training and performance
experience. Subsequently, Tetley became a sought-after choreographer in Europe when
the classically trained dance companies began to experiment by infusing American
modem dance into their repertories.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 2
GLEN TETLEY: CHOREOGRAPHY FOR COMPANY 1962-1969
This chapter will address Tetley’s work as a choreographer with his own group of
dancers in America. Tetley’s important works with the company will be analyzed in
order to show why dance companies in Europe wanted to perform Tetley’s choreography.
This chapter will show how Tetley’s first full-length evening of choreography was the
turning point in his career—it was the transition that shifted the focus of his work to
Europe. This chapter will also highlight why Tetley chose to concentrate his work in
Europe with established dance companies, rather than with his own group of dancers in
America.
Tetley gave his first full-length evening of choreography at the New York Fashion
Institute of Technology Auditorium on 5 May 1962. The program ran for four nights and
consisted of four new works choreographed by Tetley— Gleams in the Bone House, Birds
o f Sorrow, How Many Miles to Babylon? and Pierrot Lunaire. Tetley, Linda Hodes, and
Robert Powell performed all four works and Tetley performed the leading male roles.
Hodes and Powell were both dancers from the Martha Graham Dance Company and
friends of Tetley. Tetley had a live twelve-piece orchestra, a conductor (Robert Cole), a
singer (Jan de Gaetani), and commissioned music by Peter Hartman ( Birds o f Sorrow)
and Carlos Surinach (How Many Miles to Babylon?). Peter Harvey, Willa Kim, Beni
13
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 14 Montiesor, Rouben Ter-Arutunian, and William Ritman designed the scenery, costumes,
and lighting.
The program received mixed reviews. Dance critic Walter Sorrell writing in
Dance Observer described the evening as “ the most pretentious and unimaginative
evening I experienced in a long time.”1 Sorrell compliments the music, the singer, and
the designers, however he believes that Tetley deemed these elements of performance to
be more important than the choreography. Sorrell begins the review as follows:
I have always thought that Glen Tetley was a good dancer with a brilliant modem and ballet technique. Now that I have seen four of his choreographies, there is no doubt in my mind that he is not a good choreographer.
Dance critic Walter Terry writing in the New York Herald Tribune felt that something
was missing from the performance, and like Sorrell, he felt that more importance was laid
on the music and ddcor than on the choreography:
Everything, as I say, promised an exciting evening. Indeed, everything went smoothly—other than incredibly long intermissions—and the three danced beautifully. But an element was missing. Just what was it? Was it that some of Mr. Tetley’s themes were not always easy to follow? No, for choreographers of the avant garde are far more obscure. Was the performance too slick? No. Was it pretentious in theme and treatment? Possibly. Did the music and decor overwhelm the choreography which was not consistently substantial? Probably.2
Going on to discuss the four works, Sorrell states:
The first piece, Gleams in the Bone House, was still acceptable and somewhat promising. Birds of Sorrow showed lack of style and composition, How Many Miles to Babylon was an ill-fated excursion into humor and went nowhere, and his Pierrot Lunaire violated Schoenberg. It all proved how infinitesimal the creative spark must have been to ignite so much fire that left one cold.3
1 Walter Sorell, “Glen Tetley with Linda Hodes and Robert Powell,” Dance Observer ( 1962): 92.
2 Walter Terry. / Was There. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1978,426.
3 Sorell, “Glen Tetley with Linda Hodes,” 92.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 15
John Martin, chief dance critic for The New York Times , had an opinion similar to
that expressed by Sorrell. Martin discussed the fine musical performance, and he praised
the technical artistry of the dancers. However, he felt that Tetley’s choreography
supplied the dancers “with little to communicate beyond a sense of sympathetic
exhaustion.”4 Nevertheless, Martin was not of the same opinion as Sorrell about the last
work in the program—Pierrot Lunaire. Martin states that Tetley:
Came up with an astonishingly beautiful work under the most unlikely circumstances. To begin with, it was a choreographic setting of Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Luniare,” which would seem to be unconquerably resistant to the theatrical presentation. In the second place, it came at the end of a long and discouraging program when only incurable curiosity, a strong sense of duty or perhaps even some sort of physic persuasion could prevent one from departing in a sense of defeat. . . Then around 11 o’clock “Pierrot Lunaire” began and the entire climate changed. We were in the presence of a work of subtle, imaginative and wholly enchanting art. Suddenly what had gone before seemed like a small price to pay, and one would gladly pay it again for another look at the Pierrot.5
Pierrot Lunaire was the turning point of the program and it was the work that
launched Tetley’s choreographic career. The same year, Benjamin Harkarvy, artistic
director of the Netherlands Dance Theatre (NDT), asked Tetley to stage Pierrot Lunaire
for the company.
Tetley based the ballet on Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire which caused a
scandal when it was premiered in Vienna, Austria in 1912. This is because Schoenberg
broke with a system of tonal organization in music that had developed over hundreds of
years and had become a hallmark of Western music. Schoenberg developed a radically
John Martin, “Dance: ‘Lunaire’. Glen Tetley Makes an Intriguing Stage Work on Schoenberg’s Pierrot,” New York Times, May 20 1962, 11.
5 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16 new idea called “Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Related Only to Each Other”
and it was a turning point in twentieth-century music. Unity in Schoenberg’s work was
provided by the use of a determined series, usually consisting of the twelve possible
different semitones, their order also inverted or taken in retrograde form, and in
transposed versions. He also developed theories of atonality and music without a key or
tonal center.
Pierrot Lunaire was composed in a fully atonal style and it is illustrative of the
expressionist music Schoenberg produced during this era. Schoenberg had contact with,
and admiration for, the expressionist painters. He was taught to paint by Austrian
expressionist painter Richard Gerstl and his portrait painted by Austrian expressionist
painters Oskar Kokoschka and Eigon Schiele. Expressionist ideals can be seen in the
dark and dreamlike atmosphere conveyed in Pierrot Lunaire which is based on the
expressionist poetry of Albert Giraud. Schoenberg based Pierrot Lunaire on German
translations of seven poems by Giraud. The poems are set to music for five instruments
and one soprano. Schoenberg used “Sprechstimme” for the vocal part. This is a dramatic
principle in which the words are half spoken and half sung. Pierrot Lunaire is a study of
madness and internal conflicts that are associated with Sigmund Freud and his school of
psychoanalysis.
Tetley had been aware of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire before he began
choreographing to it and he states that emotionally he was very close to it:6
The voice and the quality of the music meant something very personal but I felt that it was too sparse and too long to make a ballet out of it. But when I began to
6 anon, “Pierrot in Two Worlds,” Dance and Dancers 18, no. 12 (December 1967): 12.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 17 look for something to use as a first work I then thought that I would use this, as I felt closest to it, and became very involved with Pierrot and with the history of the Commedia delTarte.7
The verses of Giraud’s poems center on Pierrot and the moon, and they occasionally refer
to Columbine and Pantalone. Schoenberg used many of the elements in Giraud’s poems,
for example, references are made to the Madonna, a Chopin waltz, a red mass, a “barren
strumpet,” Pierrot scraping grotesquely on his viola, and making a tobacco pipe out of
Pantalone’s skull. Tetley did not take the poems literally, and he states that while he was
working on the ballet, “things floated to the surface—memories of situations in my life
that I wanted to work into the fabric of the ballet. There were too many elements in the
poems of Giraud that Schoenberg had used, so I thought that I would take everything
that’s white and give it to Pierrot, and everything that’s black I took from the Commedia
for Brighella.”8 The ballet makes references to Giraud’s poems, for example, Columbine
appears in a red skirt and she is a washerwoman. However, instead of washing towels,
she washes stockings and personal articles that she hangs to dry on a washing line.
Martin states that “whether [Tetley] departs altogether from the surface details or adapts » . them to his own quite different necessities, he never does the slightest violence to the
essential feeling or substance of either verse or music.”9
The structure of Tetley’s Pierrot Lunaire is episodic, and the emphasis is on
danced events rather then narrative, although undertones of conflict, and the individual’s
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Martin, “Glen Tetley Makes an Intriguing Stage Work,” 11.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 18 search for identity are alluded to.10 Pierrot is the central concern of Tetley’s ballet and the
work is his stream-of-ctinsciousness meditations and motivations. Columbine dances the
role of Inamorata, and there is no Pantalone; however there is a Brighella in the role of
the Intriguer. The ballet begins with Pierrot hanging in the shape of a crescent moon
halfway between heaven and earth on a scaffold structure designed by Rouben Ter-
Arutunian. Pierrot has contact and conflicts with Columbine and Brighella and at the end
of the ballet, Brighella strips Pierrot of his clothes and leaves him for dead, without
identity. However, the ballet ends with Pierrot on top of the structure, supported on the
shoulders of Columbine and Brighella, and raised halfway to heaven. Ter-Arutunain’s
scaffold structure is a support and fulcrum for Pierrot Lunaire. It is used by the three
commedia deU’arte characters to represent many different things, such as a bed, gallows,
a playground, and a sanctuary from which the dancers climb and swing. The scaffold
structure is a vital component of the work that provides many possibilities for integrating
movement and structure. For example, Columbine enters with an elastic clothesline that
is attached to the structure and snaps out of sight when it is not needed. The puppet
strings from which Pierrot dangles are also attached to the structure:
When I thought of the work I immediately had a total image. I saw this creature who was soft, vulnerable, defenceless, and I saw him in a kind of cage, a tower; he was suspended in the air. I wanted this palpable human thing who was swinging around to be in a bard structure that he could knock against, hide in and soon."
Angela Kane, “Glen Tetley,” in The International Dictionary o f Ballet, ed. Martha Bremser, Vol. 2 (Detroit: S t James Press, 1993), 1413.
" anon, “Pierrot in Two Worlds,” 12-13.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 19 Martin also praises Tetley’s collaborators for his first concert, who played an
important role in making Pierrot Lunaire a successful work at its premiere:
Assuredly [Tetley’s] approach to the music is completely validated by the performance it received on this occasion by Jan de Gaetani and the instrumentalists. Miss de Gaetani gives him superb support in her song-speech. Never does she force it through the instrumental score; it is lightly touched, delicate, unearthly, full of nuance and variety, the very essence of his reflection. One carries away her voice as an enduring part of the image.
Miss Hodes [Columbine] and Mr. Powell [Brighella] are keenly aware of the atmosphere and the intent of the production. Mr. Ter-Arutunian’s inspired scenic structure, with costumes to match, is admirably lit by William Ritman, and altogether something happens; a beautiful theatrical unity and reality is brought into being for us.12
Like most modem dance companies at the time, Tetley’s company was not a
permanent group of dancers. Tetley had a nucleus of dancers that performed in his
company and that he used to create new works. Many of the dancers were friends and
colleagues that he had worked with in the past, and others he auditioned. Carmen de
Lavallade was a friend and colleague of Tetley’s. She danced with Tetley in John
Butler’s Company, and partnered him in many of Butler’s works such as Carmina
Burana (19S9). Carmen de Lavallade is illustrative of the high quality of technique and
performance that Tetley required from his dancers. She performed with Tetley’s
company in Circles (1968), danced the lead role in the restaging of Mythical Hunters
(1965), and recreated the role of Columbine in Pierrot Lunaire. John Percival writes
about de Lavallade’s interpretation of Columbine during the company’s 1969 European
tour:
And then there was Carmen de Lavallade as Columbine. I had heard so much about her in advance that I was afraid she would prove a disappointment. I just
12 Martin, “Glen Tetley Makes an Intriguing Stage,” 11.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 20 did not see how anyone could live up to the expectations I had been encouraged to form. She did not live up to them, she surpassed them. She is one of those dancers who immerse themselves completely in a role. Every tiny gesture means something, and that something is relevant for the character. Also, the version she performs has an incredible amount of detail in it. I had never seen the different aspects of the role, on her successive entries, so clearly brought out before. Such wit, such passion, such sexiness, such humor, and such womanliness . . . 13
' * * V - There were many other notable dancers in Tetley’s company. Mary Hinkson performed
frequently with the company. Hinkson was a member of the Martha Graham Company
from 1951 until her retirement in the late 1960s, and Graham created roles for her in
works such as Canticle for Innocent Comedians (1952) and Ardent Song ( 1955). In 1956
she partnered Alvin Ailey in Harry Belafonte’s touring revueSing Man Sing; she danced
in Donald McKayle's Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder (1959), and performed with the New
York City Ballet in George Balanchine's Figure in the Carpet (1960). Other well-known
dancers who performed in Tetley’s company include the previously mentioned Linda
Hodes and Robert Powell, as well as Scott Douglas, Mats Ek, and Lar Lubovitch.
After the success of Tetley’s first solo concert in 1962, the following year, Tetley
created Harpsichord Concerto.14 Tetley and his dancers first performed this work at
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts. From 1963 until 1966, Tetley created
four works for NDT, and one work for the Batsheva Company of Israel. Tetley did not
choreograph another work for his company until 1966. He created Chonocromie, which
was also premiered at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, andLovers which was premiered in
New York. The same year, on 1 April 1966 the Glen Tetley Dance Company performed
13 John Percival, “Glen Tetley Dance Company in Paris,”Dance and Dancers 20, no. 12 (September 1969): 21-22.
14 See Appendix B for a chronological list of works choreographed by Tetley
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 21 at Hunter College Playhouse, New York. The company performed three works, all of
which had been seen before, and two of them had been created on other companies. The
company performedMythical Hunters which Tetley originally choreographed for the
Batsheva Dance Company of Israel in 1965. The second work was Ricercare, which
Tetley had choreographed earlier that year for American Ballet Theatre (ABT). Douglas
and Hinkson danced the roles that they had created for ABT. The program closed with
Pierrot Lunaire, this time danced by Tetley (Pierrot), Carmen de Lavallade (Columbine),
and Scott Douglas (Brighella). Marcia Marks wrote in Dance Magazine :
Cramped by the smaller stage, Ricercare was thrown into relief and seemed more superficial and insubstantial than it had when viewed in its aloof untouchableness on the stage at Lincoln Center. Pierrot Lunaire for all its intermittent inventiveness, never quite reached the core of its characters and remains a pallid work.15
Mythical Hunters is a work for twelve dancers, and is performed to a score by
Odeon Partos. The dance has a timeless aspect and it is about a seriously motivated, but
insular group of men and women partaking in a cyclical birth ritual. Four men with long
poles enter in silence. They move towards a woman who is crouched on stage, and as she
rises, the men lift her and carry her limply off stage. A second woman enters and
performs a solo that has the sense of an initiation ceremony. Men enter and leave,
carrying women, leaving the solo woman outside the center of concern. The woman
becomes the object of interest and two men fight over her. A net is thrown over her and
she is trapped into the cycle. As she is carried off stage, a third woman enters the cycle,
Marcia Marks, “Glen Tetley and Company, Hunter College Playhouse,” Dance Magazine 40, no.5 (May 1966): 63.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 22 and begins her solo dance. Reviewing the performance by Tetley’s company at Hunter
College Playhouse, Marcia Marks wrote:
It was often quite exciting, with the hunters’ sticks clashing and the women being lifted aloft in triumph. The dancers, led by Carmen de Lavallade, Mary Hinkson, Lynne Kothera, Scott Douglas and Mr. Tetley, gave a dynamic performance; Odeon Partos’ music supported when needed (much of the work was accompanied only by the pounding of the sticks); and Gilbert V. Hemsley Jr.’s lighting played sensitively with the theme of primitive mystery.'6
In 1967 Tetley choreographed Dithyramb for his company and the work was
premiered in New York. That year he also created The Seven Deadly Sins which was
first performed in Vancouver, Canada. On 29 May 1968 the Glen Tetley Dance
Company performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), New York. The
company performed three works—Freefall (1967), Mythical Hunters, and Pierrot
Lunaire. Writing in Dance Observer six years after Tetley’s first solo concert, Walter
Sorrell still found fault with Tetley’s work:
Pierrot again impressed me as insufficiently delineated in choreographic purpose and consequently, too long. The Mythical Hunters, however, has grown on me because of the poetic motivation of its imagery.17
Freefall was choreographed in 1967 for the Repertory Dance Theatre at the
University of Utah. Following its premiere in Utah, the work was restaged for Rambert
Dance Company in Great Britain. The concert at BAM marked the New York premiere
of Freefall. Five dancers—two men and three women, perform the work. At this
performance in New York, the dancers were Juan Antonio, Wesley Fata, Lynn Kothera,
Ruth Lerman, and Micheline McKnight. Danced to a score by Max Schubel, Tetley’s
"ibid.
17 Walter Sorell. “Glen Tetley Dance Company; Brooklyn Academy of Music,” Dance Magazine 42, no.7 (July 1968): 84.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 23 movement inFreefall explores the physical laws of weight and gravity in an attempt to
address the perplexing problem of human relationships. Tetley manipulates the five
dancers to epitomize the awkwardness of relating to each other, and to explore unity and
conflict. The dancers “move and turn, buoyed up on strong currents or straining against
them, their movements by turns slow languorous or fiercely energetic.”18 Walter Sorrell
receivesFreefall more favorably than Tetley’s previous works:
The movements were precise and eloquent in their clinical purity. The manner in which the characters hid behind and found themselves reflected in the simple, but effective, plexiglass squares stunned for moments. Throughout the work, Glen Tetley’s staging of the entanglements of his characters was impressive.19
13-18 May 1969 marked the first weeklong season of the Glen Tetley Dance
Company at City Center in New York. The repertory consisted of four previously seen
works, Circles, Mythical Hunters, Pierrot Lunaire, and Ricercare. The two New York
premieres were Zigguart (1967) and Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain (1968).
Both of these works were choreographed for Rambert Dance Company and premiered in
London. The title of Ziggurat refers to the massive temple-towers built by the ancient
Assyrians. The towers are a symbolic representation of the means by which the gods
descended from heaven to earth. Nadine Baylis designed the set and the tower was
represented by a large metal structure that alluded to Babel, Jacob’s Ladder, and an
Assyrian temple. The influence of Ter-Arutunian’s designs for Pierrot Lunaire can be
seen in Baylis’s designs for Zigguart. Baylis’s designs for Ziggurat also included slide
Angela Kane, “Rambert Doubling Back to the Sixties,” Dance Theatre Journal 8, no.3 (Autumn 1990): 36.
19 Sorell, “Glen Tetley Dance Company,” 84.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 24 projections which, combined with Stockhausen’s electronic score, created a very
theatrical work:
A huge white square descends, turns round and rises up to form a ceiling. With this comes projections of watchful eyes and sounds of innocent children’s voices...The projections change to yellow and more abstract; they continue to change through the succeeding dances... At one point a wide strip of cellophane is thrown and rolled along the stage making a path (Jacob’s Ladder perhaps?) for the entrance of a girl all glittering who goes into a sliding and slow gyrating pas de deux with one of the men.20
The dance is divided into three sections and the idea of the dance is that man must, in
order to survive, reanimate the God who is dead.21 In the first section, an immobile god
like figure sits at the center of the framework, which at this performance in New York
was Tetley. A row of men assume archaic poses before him. The men move en masse
until the god slowly topples over. In the second section, the god, a son figure, and
several maidens dance before colored slide projections. The final section is a return to
the opening scene. The god stands in command over the back of his worshippers.
Tetley’s first weeklong concert in New York received positive reviews. Jacqueline
Maskey wrote in Dance News:
The entire repertory of the Tetley company was impeccably produced and a number of the dancers were outstanding: Carmen De Lavallade as a calculating and coquettish Columbine in Pierrot Lunaire, Juan Antonio and George Ramos, and particularly Erin Martin’s splendidly athletic and tigerish goddess in Mythical Hunters.22
20 Kane, “Rambert Doubling Back to the Sixties,” 36.
21 Jacqueline Maskey, “Glen Tetley Dance Company, at N.Y. City Center,” Dance News 54, no.6 (June 1969): 13. “ ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 25 Marcia Marks writing in Dance Magazine had a different opinion:
I missed the intensely personal expression, the marked point of view, the determinedly individual statement one associates with the most simon-pure modem dancers. The choreography seemed bloodless; one was impressed but never moved.23
In 1969, the Glen Tetley Dance Company toured Europe. Although Tetley had
been working extensively in Europe with NDT and Rambert Dance Company, Tetley’s
own dancers and his own repertory had not been seen before in Europe. However, the
company of thirteen dancers performed works that had all previously been performed in
Europe. The dancers were Juan Antonio, Roger Briant, Mario Delamo, Scott Douglas,
Mary Jane Eisenberg, Mari Kajiwara, Lynne Kothera, Carmen de Lavallade, Erin Martin,
Micheline McKnight, Antonio Ramos, George Ramos, and Tetley. The company
performed six worksCircles, Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain, Mythical Hunters,
Pierrot Lunaire, Ricercare, and Ziggurat. Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain and
Zigguart were both choreographed for Rambert Dance Company and Circles was
choreographed for NDT.
This tour was the first time that a whole evening of Tetley’s choreography was
presented in Europe. The company had engagements in Denmark, Germany, the
Yugoslavia, and the tour ended in France. John Percival, dance critic forDance and
Dancers, saw the company perform in Paris under the auspices of the Theatre des
Nations season at the Theatre de France (Odeon). The company presented two programs.
The first program consisted ofEmbrace Tiger and Return to Mountain, Pierrot Lunaire,
and Ziggurat. In theory, Rambert Dance Company could have given this program. In
23 Marcia Marks, “Glen Tetley Dance Company; New York City Center,” Dance Magazine 43, no.7 (July 1969): 33.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 26 1969 all three works were in Rambert’s repertory although the company had never
performed an all-Tetley program. The second program consisted ofCircles, Ricercare,
and Mythical Hunters. Tetley remembers that NDT was also performing in Paris at the
same time as his company, and therefore, two different companies were performing his
ballets simultaneously.24 Writing in Dance and Dancers , Percival felt that Tetley’s
ballets had enough variety to make a satisfying program:
It was fascinating to see so many of Tetley’s works given together by a group chosen by him and including some dancers of special quality who have worked with him for years Almost every quality that is most valuable in dancing today is found in the ballets of Tetley. The free style which ranges over different kinds of technique and takes whatever it needs; the supremacy of dance not just as a decoration of translation of literary ideas, but communicating its own meaning direct to the observer; the use of truly contemporary music, art and thought as the springboard of dancing that is itself truly contemporary. And having seen so many of his works recently, I am specially impressed by the way the movement from one is developed into something new and different in another, so that his art constantly renews and refreshes itself.25
After the 1969 European tour, the Glen Tetley Dance Company was disbanded
and this was Tetley’s last appearance as a dancer. He stopped performing at the age of
43. Tetley was offered the position of permanent choreographer and co-artistic director
with Hans van Manen of NDT. Tetley states that he took the position because “it
sounded like financial heaven!”26 As a result, Tetley would be based permanently in
Europe and he would not be able to devote adequate time to his company in America.
Although his company was never a permanent group, after 1967 Tetley did not create
Glen Tetley, interview by author, tape recording of telephone interview, Washington, D.C., 3 October 2001.
25 John Percival, “Glen Tetley Dance Company in Paris,” Dance and Dancers 20, no. 12 (September 1969): 22.
26 Tetley, interview by author, 3 October 2001.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 27 another work for his group of dancers, and after 1969 Tetley’s group of dancers did not
perform his works again.
This chapter has shown that in his first full-length evening of choreography,
Tetley premiered his signature work —Pierrot Lunaire. This dance gave Tetley national
and international recognition as a choreographer. Pierrot Lunaire was the work that
attracted the attention of the classically trained European dance companies who were
interested in experimenting with American modem dance. Tetley’s company had such a
short life-span because his attention was concentrated in Europe. At this time, Tetley had
a permanent contract with NDT, he restaged his works for other companies such as
Batsheva Dance Company, and in 1967 he began working with Rambert Dance Company
in Great Britain. Tetley also chose to focus his work in Europe because he was provided
with the financial resources he needed to create new work. He could concentrate solely
on his choreography rather than the administration of the company. The lack of attention
his company received is highlighted in the fact that toward the end of the company’s
existence, Tetley did not create any new works for his group of dancers—they performed
works that had been created on other groups of dancers. Nevertheless, although Tetley’s
company was short-lived, his work with his group of dancers was vital in his transition to
Europe.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 3
GLEN TETLEY AND NETHERLANDS DANCE THEATRE 1962-1972
This chapter will put into context the history of the Netherlands Dance Theatre
(NDT) before Tetley began working with the company in 1962, and it will address the
state of dance in the Netherlands at this time. This chapter will show why Tetley’s work
with NDT was successful, and how it came to characterize the company’s identity as one
of the most innovative modem dance companies in Europe. This chapter will also
illustrate how Tetley’s work at NDT gained him a reputation throughout Europe and why
other European dance companies were attracted to his work.
NDT was established in 1959 when sixteen dissatisfied company members left the
Netherlands Ballet to form a group of their own. The dancers Willie de la Bije, Rudi van
Dantzig, Jaap Flier, Marianne Hilarides, and Aart Verstegen formed the nucleus of the
new company. The dancers and Caret Bimie, the business manager of the Netherlands
Ballet, were dissatisfied with the director of the company, Sonia Gaskell, and her
emphasis on a repertory that had not been created especially to suit the talents of the
available performers. Furthermore, in 1959 the Ballet der Lage Landen, and the
Netherlands Opera Ballet were due to combine forces as the Amsterdam Ballet. The
dancers and Bimie had very little confidence in the new combined company because it
was to have two directors, one for each of the constituent companies. Furthermore, the
28
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 29 change was enforced by the government of the city of Amsterdam against the wishes of
many of those concerned.
The aim of NDT was to offer dance that was radically different from that which
had developed in the Netherlands in the post-WWII period. The group was interested in,
and shared the desire to experiment with new ideas, dance forms, and techniques. The
dancers and Bimie asked Benjamin Harkarvy to join them in this artistic adventure, and
Harkarvy became one of the inspiring forces behind the company.
Harkarvy trained at the School of American Ballet with George Balanchine and
George Chaffee, and he was also a pupil of Anthony Tudor, and Margaret Craske. From
1949-1950 he was a dancer with the Brooklyn Lyric Opera, and during this time, he also
performed with various concert groups. However, Harkarvy began to focus his career on
teaching and choreography, rather than performing. He was a teacher at the Fokine
School (1951-1955). He founded the Benjamin Harkarvy Ballet School in 1955, and that
year he also choreographed works for his own concert group at Jacob’s Pillow Dance
Festival. From 1957-1958, he was director, teacher, and choreographer at the Royal
Winnipeg Ballet in Canada. From a recommendation by dancer Nora Kaye, Harkarvy
joined the Netherlands Ballet as ballet master and choreographer in 1958 and remained
there for one year. At the time of his arrival, director Sonia Gaskell went to Paris, and
left the company under the direction of Harkarvy. When the company broke up in 1959,
Harkarvy was invited to join the new Amsterdam Ballet as ballet master. However,
Bimie and the breakaway group of dancers, who decided against joining the Amsterdam
Ballet, asked Harkarvy to join them in forming a new group.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 30 Birnie and the dancers asked Harkarvy to join them because they knew about his
artistic ideals. They were willing to take the risk of working in a company without
capital and without subsidy (many of the dancers would be receiving less than a third of
their previous salary), if Harkarvy thought that they could achieve something worthwhile.
Harkarvy was prepared to take the risk, and within his artistic policy, he set himself a
number of goals. He aimed to develop a group in which each member was capable of
solo work. Initially the company only consisted of sixteen dancers, so Harkarvy felt that
he would be able to give a lot of individual coaching, helping with both technique and
interpretation. He decided to build a repertoire that would make use of the dancer’s
talents, avoiding the classics. Harkarvy saw the dancer of the future as a classically
trained dancer who had also been exposed to other training, such as the Graham
technique. He believed dancers would be able to widen their repertoire if they worked
with modem dance choreographers because the emotional motivation behind the
movement was very different to that of the classical technique. Harkarvy also realized
that it was important to develop Dutch choreographers and base the repertory on their
works.
Harkarvy spent the next ten years with NDT, as founder and co-artistic director.
He was responsible for building the company into one of Europe’s most innovative and
respected companies. He brought talented choreographers to work with the company,
and he is most noted for introducing the American schools of choreography, such as the
Graham technique, to Europe. Harkarvy also contributed to the company’s permanent
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 31 repertory by choreographing works such as Septet (1959), Primavera (1960), and Sol y
Sombra (1961).'
In the first year of NDT’s existence, the company struggled to survive. There was
little financial support, the company did not have a permanent home, and there was not a
regular audience—the company toured throughout the Netherlands. However, the
company hoped that if it were an artistic success, it would receive a subsidy from the
government like the other Dutch dance companies. In 1959, NDT gave its first
performance in Utrecht. The company presented four works: Giovinezza (1959)
choreographed by Rudi van Dantzig, The Man in the Trapeze (1959) choreographed by
Hans van Manen, a new version of Harkarvy’sFour Times Six, originally choreographed
in 1956, and van Manen’s Violent Holiday (1957) closed the program.
The first Dutch performance. . . was a triumph, and so were all the other subsequent debuts in Dutch cities and towns. In fact Dutch audiences (and Dutch critics) were being offered something new to them: ballet performances in which every detail was precise and a high consistent level was maintained; and they reacted accordingly.2
The company continued to create new works, and performed throughout the
Netherlands. An individual who helped to shape NDT is the Dutch dancer and
choreographer Hans van Manen. He joined NDT in 1960, one year after its foundation.
Before arriving at NDT, van Manen had performed with the Amersterdam Opera Ballet
(1952-1958), and in 1959 he performed with Roland Petit’s Ballets de Paris. Van Manen
initially arrived at NDT as a dancer (until 1963) and choreographer, and in 1961 he
became co-director of the company with Harkarvy. Harkarvy and van Manen began to
1 See Appendix C for a chronological list of works choreographed by Harkarvy for NDT
2 Femau Hall, “American in Holland ;"Dance Magazine, 36, no.6 (June 1962): 48-50.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 32 set the standard of performance with their own works. They were determined to present
programs of artistic exploration, and to provide variety within a modem framework.
They invited American choreographer Anna Sokolow to stage her works Rooms (19SS)
and Opus ’58 (1960) for NDT, and they were successful.
At the end of the first flourishing year, the government refused NDT a subsidy. - p However, the company, continued to create and perform, in the hope that they would soon
receive a grant. In the spring of 1961, NDT was told that it would definitely not receive
financial support, and therefore, the company decided to disband. The government’s
intention was to create one big national ballet company, and there seemed to be no place
for a small independent company, no matter how creative and popular.3 However, when
the proposal of one big national ballet company was put before the municipal authorities
of The Hague, the municipality decided to refuse any subsidy to create a national ballet
unless NDT could also continue. As a result, the Dutch National Ballet was based in
Amsterdam, and NDT established its home base in The Hague. NDT received funding
from The Hague, and also obtained money from Amsterdam and the national
government. The company was located in the former studios of the Netherlands Ballet,
and it continued to steadily expand. In 1962, NDT consisted of twenty-four dancers, and
among them were Charles Czamy, Han Ebbelaar, Anne Hyde, Martinette Janmaat,
Gerard Lemaitre, Marianne Sarstadt, Alexandra Radius, and Mea Venema.
NDT’s artistic policy aimed to integrate the classical and modem dance
vocabularies, and the company became a platform for modem choreographers. Anna
3 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 33 Sokolow and John Butler were the first choreographers to be invited from America.
After Pierrot Lunaire was successfully premiered in New York in 1962, the same year
Harkarvy invited Tetley to restage the work for NDT. Tetley states that John Martin’s
review in The New York Times contributed to his worldwide recognition, and he believes
this is one of the reasons why Harkarvy was interested in commissioning Pierrot
Lunaire.4 However, Tetley’s connection with Harkarvy and NDT began before he was
asked to restage Pierrot Lunaire for the company. Tetley had previously come into
contact with Harkarvy when they were both young dancers in New York. Tetley had also
taken classes from Harkarvy. In addition, Tetley was a principal dancer in Butler’s
Carmina Burana (1959) which Harkarvy saw in New York, and Harkarvy commissioned
Butler to stage the work for NDT the same year.
Tetley arrived at NDT in 1962 as a choreographer, and also as a teacher.
The aim of the company was to integrate classical and modem dance, however NDT was
primarily a classically trained company, with little or no experience of modem dance.
Tetley’s training with Martha Graham and Hanya Holm meant he had the knowledge and
experience to effectively introduce the dancers to American modem dance. However,
some of the dancers thought that modem technique would jeopardize their classical
technique. Tetley believes that modem technique complements classical technique, and
the more technique a dancer has, the more knowledge they have.3 Tetley recalls one
particular encounter with an NDT dancer:
4 Glen Tetley, interview by author, tape recording of telephone interview, Washington, D.C., 3 October 2001.
5 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 34 I remember one of the leading ballerinas of the company at that time absolutely breaking down in tears and tantrums saying no, no, no. She would not take these classes; she would not be in Pierrot Lunaire. Of course, when the ballet premiered and got fantastic reviews, she was begging to go in.6
NDT performedPierrot Lunaire in October 1962, and the work was an immediate
success.7 Consequently, in 1963 Tetley was asked to sign a permanent contract with the
company as leading dancer and choreographer, with a guarantee of two new ballets a
year. This was a hard decision for Tetley to make because his roots were strongly in
America. However, economic security was one of the major factors that influenced his
decision to stay in the Netherlands. If he signed the contract, unlike in America, Tetley
would not have to contend with finding rehearsal space, constructing sets, or settling
music or theatre contracts. At NDT, this was all taken care of by the company’s
administrative staff. More importantly, there were no financial qualms—The Hague,
where the company was in residence, subsidized the company.
As a result, Tetley was able to concentrate solely on choreography. Artistically,
NDT was intent on giving young choreographers the opportunity to develop and
experiment. NDT allowed Tetley artistic freedom and had no specific expectations of
him. A letter written by Tetley in The Netherlands was published in the February 1963
issue of Dance Magazine :
Are we too spoiled in America to have something like this—a group of choreographers, all from different backgrounds, working together harmoniously; dancers working not to gain parts but to become the whole artist; a government that acknowledges their purposefulness with a subsidy to cover minimal economic
6 Ibid.
7 See Appendix D fora list of Tetley’s works in NDT’s repertory.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 35 necessities. I do not like to think we are, but looking at our resources from the vantage point of my stay here in Holland, we do seem ruthlessly profligate. . . 8
In 1964 Tetley created his first work especially for NDT, The Anatomy Lesson.
The dance is based on the Dutch artist, Rijn van Rembrandt’s painting of the same name
(1632). The painting is considered one of Rembrandt’s masterpieces. It shows members
of the surgeon’s guild examining a corpse during a dissection. The painting is very static,
but it is powerful due to Rembrandt’s handling of light and shadow, and his
psychological insight. The painting inspired Tetley when he saw it at the Mauritshuis
Museum in The Hague. As a result, he created a new work to composer Marcel
Landowski’s Symfonie Jean de la Peur and it was first presented as part of NDT’s fifth
anniversary celebration.
Tetley did very little research into the background of Rembrandt’s painting
because he did not want to make a duplication of the painting. The dancers never assume
the exact positions of the men in the painting. Tetley states that he “was never interested
in doing a tableau vivant.”9 Tetley preferred to trust his own intuitions about the painting.
As an American choreographer, Tetley was searching for a Dutch theme to choreograph.
Tetley noticed that there were very few ballets choreographed specifically about Dutch
life.
When ballet was new in America, public interest was stimulated by ballets with Americana themes. Even an internationalist like Balanchine has created some.
Glen Tetley, “American Dancers Finds “Status” in Holland,” Dance Magazine 37, no.2 (February 1963): 21.
9 Jack Anderson, “Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson,” Dance Magazine 34, no.6 (June 1965): 46.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36 Ballet is a new art in Holland. I thought that ballets with Dutch settings could help increase Dutch interest in dance. Yet no such ballets existed.10
There were also personal reasons why Tetley was attracted to Rembrandt’s
painting. He had been in Holland for two years, but because he did not know the
language and he came from a different country, he felt very excluded from his home and
friends. Tetley states that this feeling of isolation explains why the corpse on the doctors’
table seemed so vulnerable to him. Tetley began to question who the people in the
picture were and what kind of life they led:
It seemed to me that the doctors were trying to anatomize the mystery of life. It seemed to me that while you can anatomize an inert body, life itself is intangible. In my ballet I tried to contrast the grim scene in the medical arena with the quicksilver kaleidoscope of life itself. Love, fear, recognition of the inevitability of death, loneliness, moments of physical contact and comfort—the man has known all of this. And because his knowledge is his, and his alone, the doctors can never really know the man."
As in the painting, the focal point of the ballet is a man’s body. None of the
doctors around the man are looking at the body that they are about to dissect, and Tetley
believes that they are considering the relationship to the figure and to themselves.12 In the
minds of the attendant doctors, the man on the dissecting table relives past experiences.
The theme of the ballet was developed by surrealist flashbacks into moments from the
man’s life. Children with toys are symbols of innocence (inspired by Delft tiles), the
doctors and students are messengers of death, and a mother and a wife represent the
warmth of a family (certain images are inspired by a wooden Madonna).
10 Ibid.
" Ibid.
12 Peter Williams, "A Lesson in Anatomy 1,” Dance Magazine 19, no.6 (June 1968): 16.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 37 There is only one instance when Tetley’s ballet refers directly to Dutch history.
The image comes from the siege of Leyden by the Spanish in 1575. The townspeople
held out until the dikes were opened and the enemy forced back. The king granted the
townspeople a University as a reward for their courage, and at a celebratory pageant
some Dutch matrons impersonated the Greek fates carrying triumphal wreaths. This
incident was used and adapted by Tetley in his ballet because he felt that it had many
levels of irony. ‘The man is presented with a tinsel wreath. But it is not a tinsel wreath
of glory. No wreath, no honor, can stop the flow of life and death.”13 John Percival saw
NDT perform The Anatomy Lesson in Great Britain in 1967, and he stated:
This is a strange and haunting work. Tetley has shown sympathetically both the man, whose hopes and loves are now ended for ever by death, and also the stem men of science, whose work has it’s own bold, impersonal glory...this is another triumph for Tetley, whose works.. .are rapidly moving [sic] him one of the most interesting choreographers of our day; almost always choosing a theme of startling originality and developing it often with staggering originality and clarity.14
In 1968, a television production ofThe Anatomy Lesson was filmed. Peter
Williams states that this production was important for three reasons—the explanatory
introduction before the ballet began, the production was in color, and it was a project
between the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Holland’s NCVR (Hilversum)
television. The Explanatory Introduction shows Tetley in The Hague searching for an
idea, coming upon Rembrandt’s painting, and talking about his ideas and difficulties.
The film also shows Tetley during rehearsals with the dancers, and he talks about the
thematic material he has woven into his version of the Dutch painting.
13 Ibid.
14 John Percival, “American Flavoured Dutch,” Dance and Dancers 18, no.4 (February 1967): 31.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38 Williams states that, “these instances made a fascinating and enlightening introduction to
the work that followed.”13 He believes that this is particularly important because
“contemporary works can often be obscure on first viewing; more explanation is needed
when you realize that a TV audience is unlikely to get a further showing of the work.”16
The production was one of the first performances to be filmed in color in the late
1960s. Williams believes that was a very important development for dance and television
and dance writer Margaret Dale states that “color is an ingredient in the choreography.
Most choreographers think in terms of color, and if the design is any good then it is a part
of the whole choreography.” 17 There is no dramatic use of color in The Anatomy Lesson ;
the ballet takes on the use of monotone like Rambrandt’s painting. However, there is one
particular instance where a boy in orange (the man when he is young) is thrown up
against the dark costumes of the doctors and students. In a black and white production,
this dimension would be missing, and the audience may not understand what is
happening.
As previously stated, the contract that Tetley signed with NDT stated that he must
create two new ballets per year for the company. In 1964, the second ballet Tetley
choreographed for NDT wasSargasso. In 1965, the following year, Tetley created two
new works for the company Fieldmass and the Game o f Noah. The American influence
on NDT became stronger as the works Tetley created helped to define the company’s
identity in its first decade.
15 Williams, “A Lesson in Anatomy 1,” I6.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid, 16-17.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 39 During the first ten years of its existence, NDT toured extensively throughout
Europe and the rest of the world. The company was critically acclaimed:
The Nederlands Dans Theater is one of the youngest, most vibrant and controversial dance companies to emerge on the European dance scene in the last few years. The young company couldn’t be more beautiful, energetic or willing, and of course, they dance superbly. Their repertoire is imaginative and brave, and it will be interesting to see how far they have come—or will go—when they visit the U.S. this year.18
The Dutch government and the city of The Hague subsidized the company’s tours. They
paid for a large amount of the company’s travel expenses, just as they subsidized the
company when they performed in the Netherlands. The Dutch government, and The
Hague thought that subsidizing the company’s tours was a worthy investment because
they wanted to show the world what the Netherlands had to offer culturally.19 In May ■t 1965 the company performed for two nights in Southend-on-Sea in Great Britain.
Such a quick visit is typical of the company, for it tours widely in Europe, often playing dates many miles apart on consecutive nights, and the dancers work as hard as do those in all touring companies. They are an attractive and talented group, immediately likeable and generating a true company spirit on stage.20
In spite of its success at home and abroad, NDT met its first crisis after its tours to
Israel, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States in 1969. That year, Harkarvy left
the company and returned to America. Consequently, it was van Manen’s idea to ask
Tetley to share the direction of the company with him. In 1969, van Manen and Tetley
were appointed co-artistic directors of NDT. As co-directors of the company, the works
Glenn Loney, “Dutch Mutations: Glen Tetley Discusses the Nederlands Dans Theatre,” Dance Magazine 45, no.2 (February 1971): 58.
19 Ibid.
20 Mary Clarke, “Netherlands Dance Theatre in Southend on Sea,” The Dancing Times 55, no.658 (July 1965): 514.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40 created by van Manen and Tetley complemented each other. Their works gave the
company a broad choreographic scope. Van Manen’s work was musical and non
narrative, using pure dance and clarity of design, and Tetley’s work used dramatic
characterization and bold theatrical effects.
The most notorious collaboration between van Manen and Tetley was Mutations,
a work they choreographed together in 1970. This dance was commissioned by the
government of the city of The Hague to celebrate the 25 th anniversary of Holland’s
liberation from Nazi Occupation. Tetley chose the title Mutations because it gives “a
sense of movement, where one thing goes into another, with a new form evolving.” 21
The dance is a study in “motion control and physical freedom, coupled with technical
innovations and sheer theatricality that has seldom been equaled in modem dance.”22 It is
divided into four parts (choreographed by Tetley) interspersed with three filmed
interludes (choreographed by van Manen), and this mixed-media work is performed to
Karlheinz Stockhausen’s compositions Mixtur and Telemusik; an electronic blend of sine
wave generator, ring modulator, and orchestra.
This work was influenced by the Oriental theatre, and in particular the
Hanamichi— the runway of the Japanese Kabuki Theatre.
I love the Oriental theatre, and I’ve always been fascinated by the Hanamichi ... I like the sense of approach to the performance area, before it is actually reached in different degrees and stages.23
21 Loney, “Dutch Mutations,” 58.
22 Ibid., 55.
23 Ibid., 58.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41 In this work, Tetley’s choreographic concept was the progression of movement going
into a special area. This concept comes directly from the Oriental theatre, both the
Hanamichi and the Gagaku, which has an enclosed square. In March 1970 the work was
premiered at the Stadsschouwburg Theatre in Amsterdam. The Stadsschouwburg Theatre
is an incarnation of an nineteenth-century European Court Theatre; however in this work,
Tetley moved away from the traditional proscenium arch stage. The orchestra seating
was divided by a white board running from the back of the auditorium over the seat backs
onto a vast expanse of white onstage. Designer Jean-Paul Vroom defined the space with
angular sections of thin chrome pipe, and gave it height by hanging sheer white cloths at
the back, and at right angles to the wings. This meant that the dancers were performing
in close proximity to the audience, and therefore, the audience had the opportunity to
study the dancers at close range. Tetley stated:
I love the immediate confrontation of the spectators and performer. It’s one of the great joys, working in a rehearsal room with dancers, being right in the middle of it all. Then there’s that moment when you put it on stage—and suddenly it’s far away. As if you had sealed it off, under glass.24
Van Manen’s three sections of film-choreography are intertwined with Tetley’s
live choreography. The two choreographers worked independently of each other when
creating this work. Van Manen and Tetley did not see each other’s work until the first
rehearsals in the theatre. Van Manen knew that Tetley was working in terms of pure
movement, and Tetley knew that van Manen was working exclusively in terms of
movement in the films, and everything was going to be in extreme slow-motion. Van
Manen’s first film features a male dancer exploring his body’s sense and power of
24 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 42 movement in slow-motion. The second sequence shows a nude male, and a slightly
clothed female, and the third section features two male dancers and a female dancing in
slow-motion as in the first section. Finally, all three sections are played simultaneously.
At the same time, Tetley’s movement developed independently onstage, and
complemented van Manen’s choreography. Male dancers performed unselfconsciously
in either jockstraps or completely nude. The dancers moved through various positions
that stress their muscular fluidity. Tetley’s intention was to accent the actual mechanics
of moving. Dance critic Glenn Loney stated:
There is nothing vulgar, nothing suggestive, nothing really erotic in this, despite the close contact of male and male, female and female, male and female. The dancers all seem so intent on their bodies and wills as instruments of movement that it is difficult to impute human elemental passions to their activity. . . 25
The nudity in Mutations went further than anything previously seen in the
Netherlands, however Loney states that “the tolerant, generally conservative Dutch took
it all in their stride.”26 Nevertheless, when NDT performedMutations at the Sadler’s
Wells Theatre in London in 1970, there was a lot of controversy surrounding the nudity.
There was an incident where itching powder was put on the stage in protest against nude
dancing. In an interview van Manen stated:
What they put on the floor was fibre-glass, very thin, like angel-hair on a Christmas tree, or tiny cactus needles. You can’t get it out. The dancers had injections to counteract the itching and went to Turkish baths to sweat the glass out.27
25 Ibid., 56.
“ Ibid.
27 Glenn Loney, “Hans van Manen: Setting the Record Straight on Netherlands Dance Theatre,” Dance Magazine 48, no.3 (February 1974): 74.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 43 Mutations caused controversy within the administration of NDT, and it was the
work that caused Tetley and van Manen to resign as co-artistic directors of the company.
Van Manen resigned in 1970 after the creation ofMutations , and Tetley resigned the
following season. Tetley and van Manen resigned because they felt that the
administration behind NDT was stopping them from developing as choreographers.
Tetley and van Manen initially had very ambitious plans when conceivingMutations.
Besides wanting to expand the area of performance, they wanted the work to be a
collaboration of the five choreographers who were resident at NDT at the time.
However, the company cancelled the work when they realized how much it was going to
cost.
We [van Manen and Tetley] felt we just couldn’t continue to work with the administration of the company. It was so bound up in financial problems, in the demands for touring, and the eternal limitations of the proscenium theatres. We couldn’t develop as choreographers, in directions in which we are interested.2*
Furthermore, in an interview van Manen stated that NDT did not have a lot of trust in
Tetley as an artistic director. Van Manen felt that because it was his idea to invite Tetley
to be co-artistic director that he should also resign.29
The main problem was lack of trust. Of course, this never came to the surface very clearly because the dancers had already known Glen for a long time. He had worked with company since 1962.30
In 1971, NDT dancer and choreographer Jaap Flier was appointed artistic director
of the company. However, Tetley and van Manen both continued to create works for the
28 Loney, “Dutch Mutations," 56.
29 Loney, “Setting the Record Straight,” 74.
30 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 44 company. In 1972, Tetley choreographedSmall Parades for NDT. Small Parades is a
dance for ten performers, five men and five women, and is choreographed to music by
Edgard Varese. The dancers rarely perform as a group; the ballet is comprised of solos,
duets, trios, and quartets.
This was the last work that Tetley created for NDT in his ten-year time span with
the company, and it marked a change in his movement vocabulary. The choreography
was very abstract. The men performed steps from classical ballet, such as entrechats ,
assembles with two turns in the air, and fast pirouettes. However, he used off-balance
poses, deepplies, and long-stretched arms that are typical of Tetley’s movement
vocabulary. Of Tetley’s choreography, John Percival stated:
As always he introduces something new, in this case an out-and-in movement of the foot, travelling sideways across the stage, which makes some of the ensembles in the last section., .look almost like a newly minted 20th century folk dance—or maybe like a small parade.31
The design of the ballet was also very abstract. The dancers are dressed in white
body suits, which have a single strip of color, not more than an inch wide, outlined in two
narrower strips of black run down the sides of the dancers costumes from armpit to ankle.
These stripes oudine the dancers, and emphasize the movement and angles at which they
are placed. The set designed by Nadine Baylis, consists of white hangings with dark
threads running forward, up, and parallel to the floor. They are irregularly grouped to
emphasize the point of convergence. The aim of this set is to identify an area that is open
to the dancers, but defined with a sharp perspective drawn to the scale of the human
body. As the ballet progresses, the white space is colored by John B. Read’s lighting in
31 John Percival, “Small Parades,” Dance and Dancers 23, no.5 (May 1972): 38.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45 unexpected shades. Percival comparesSmall Parades to Frederick Ashton’s Symphonic
Variations (1946):
I am not saying that the two works are choreographically alike, but that each distils the creative style its author had developed over a period of time, and draws from it a dance structure that is both beautiful and satisfying in itself, without any further purpose.. This makes Small Parades a fascinating ballet to watch and a frustrating one to describe, because all that can really be said is ’See it for yourself at the earliest opportunity.’32
After the departure of Tetley and van Manen as co-artistic directors, NDT
underwent a forced change. Jaap Flier began to introduce young and inventive
choreographers to the company, such as Louis Falco and Cliff Keuter. Under the artistic
direction of Flier, in 1973 NDT performed seven new works, and six works that were
already in the company’s repertory in London. Tetley’s Circles opened the season, and
his two ballets Ricercare, Mutations, and Small Parades were also on the program. Peter
Williams criticized the choice of opening with Circles:
I don’t think that Tetley’s Circles to Berio, created five years ago, is really the work upon which to open a season. With its six dancers forming various relationships or breaking away into solos of solitude, it could be thought of as the company’s Les Sylphides, a contemporary ballet blanc of intricate and unquestioned beauty. Although it was danced with all the usual elegance, the impact was rather muted and left one with the feeling of return to a holiday place one enjoyed many years ago—everything pleasantly familiar but the bloom all gone.33
Although Tetley’s work remained in the repertory of NDT, after choreographing Small
Parades for the company in 1972, Tetley did not create another work for NDT until 1980
when he choreographedSummer’s End. This may have been because in 1973, John
32 Ibid.
33 Noel Goodwin, John Percival, and Peter Williams, “The Company that Changed Europe,” Dance and Dancers 24, no.7 (July 1973): 30.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 46 Cranko invited Tetley to work with the Stuttgart Ballet in Germany. After the
unexpected death of Cranko in 1973, Tetley assumed the position of artistic director of
the Stuttgart Ballet from 1974-1976. Therefore, his energy was entirely focused on
directing and creating new works for this company.
This chapter has put into context the state of modem dance in the Netherlands
before Tetley arrived at NDT. It has been illustrated why Tetley’s work appealed to
NDT, and why Tetley worked with the company for ten years. Tetley’s work was
important to the development of NDT as a modem dance company. He exposed the
dancers to new training and techniques and new ideas about choreography. Tetley’s
work gave the company an international reputation. NDT toured extensively and this
meant that other European companies saw Tetley’s work. Tetley helped to successfully
transform NDT from a predominantly classically trained company to a modem-based
dance company, and therefore, other European dance companies wanted to model
themselves on NDT. Dance companies who were interested in experimenting with
American modem dance wanted to work with Tetley, which consequently increased his
reputation as a choreographer throughout Europe.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 4
GLEN TETLEY AND RAMBERT DANCE COMPANY 1967-1983
This chapter will put into context the history of Rambert Dance Company. It will
show why the company made the transition from a classically based dance company to a
predominantly modem dance company. This chapter will address why Tetley was
chosen to lead the company in a new direction, and how his choreography came to
characterize the company’s new identity as a modem based dance company.
Rambert Dance Company is Great Britain’s longest established dance company.
It was founded by Polish-born teacher and dancer Marie Rambert (1888-1982), and was
previously known, first as the Ballet Club, and then as Ballet Rambert. Rambert was
initially inspired to dance when she saw a performance by Isadora Duncan in 1904. From
1909-1912, Rambert studied Eurhythmies with Emile Jacques-Dalcroze, following which
she spent a season as a member of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, serving as Vaslav
Nijinsky’s assistant on Le Scare de Printemps (1913). In 1918, Rambert became a
British citizen; she opened her own school, and began to acquire several talented pupils.
Rambert’s first male student, Frederic Ashton, choreographed a short ballet, A Tragedy o f
Fashion, for a group of Rambert’s pupils. The ballet was first performed on IS June
1926 at London’s Lyric Theatre. From 1926 to 1929 Rambert’s dancers continued to
perform occasional ballets and the group was known as Marie Rambert Dancers.
47
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 48 In 1930, Rambert formed the Ballet Club to give regular performances of new
works that included well-known dancers such as Alicia Markova and Leon Woizikowsky,
and less well known dancers. On 16 February 1931 the Ballet Club gave its first
performance, and the program explained the company’s “twin purposes of tradition and
experiment.” Rambert discovered and nurtured dancers and choreographers, and
throughout the 1930s, her optimism inspired young choreographers such as Walter Gore,
Andr£e Howard, and Frank Staff. Rambert commissioned both British and international
choreographers to stage classical and new cutting-edge works on the company. The
company performed works by Britain’s Gore, Howard, and Tudor, and reproduced ballets
by Mikhail Fokine and Vaslav Nijinksky. hi the 1930s, the then Ballet Club was a
London-based workshop that gave occasional seasons in other cities. In 1935 the
company changed its name to Ballet Rambert.
In 1943, after a year and a half without performances due to World War n, the
company received public funding from the Arts Council of England. For the first time
since its inception, the company received financial support. It was no longer a privately
owned London-based company, but it became a publicly funded repertory company that
toured Britain, and later internationally. As a result of the new funding, the company
expanded in both repertory and personnel. Ballet Rambert had always presented
romantic ballets, and extracts from the Russian classics, however during the post war
years, this side of the company’s work was expanded. This began with a new production
of Giselle (1946), followed by stagings of Coppelia, Don Quixote and La Sylphide.
During the post war years, the company was very stable, but it began to lose its original
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 49 identity—the company’s identity was changed to one of mirroring Great Britain’s Royal
Ballet Company.
The enlarged company, and the emphasis on full-length ballets, meant that Ballet ' •' ' • - v% Rambert outgrevv its'original base at the small Mercury Theatre in London. Without a
permanent home, R a tio n ,was difficult and touring was necessary. Theater managers
outside of Londonwerd Tfot interested in presenting the company’s repertory of specially
created works; they insisted on presenting the classics because these works drew in the
crowds. The company toured for approximately thirty-five weeks of the year, with just a
two-week season at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theater. The constant touring of the corps
de ballet and the orchestra became costly, many dancers became discouraged performing
the same works over and over, and competition from other companies was fierce.
Although Ballet Rambert’s performances were well attended, the company’s existence
came into question. During the early 1960s, a number of schemes were considered to
improve the situation. At this time, David Ellis was the associate director of the
company, and he suggested that the company merge with London Festival Ballet. Ellis
believed that by increasing the size of the company, it could then compete more
successfully with the Royal Ballet in the scale of productions, range of repertory, and
theatre venues.
This proposal was rejected in favor of a proposal put forward in 1966 by company
dancer and choreographer Norman Morrice. Dance historian Angela Kane emphasizes
that in devising the proposal, Morrice had been assisted by fellow Rambert dancer John
Chesworth and the company designer Ralph Koltai. Morrice is acknowledged as the
provocateur of reform, but Chesworth and Koltai played a significant role in devising the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 50 proposal and in the company’s subsequent development.1 Mortice suggested that the
company abandon its classic repertory, and therefore, dispense with its corps de ballet of
dancers. Instead the focus was on a small group of dancers all of soloist standard. As a
result, it was also possible that the company would be able to survive with a chamber
orchestra. The idea was that the savings from these cuts would help the company to
survive. Morrice’s aim was that the company should return to the original emphasis of
creativity that had been thwarted by the constant touring. Rambert summarized the idea:
“We want to create an atmosphere in which creation is possible.”2 Rambert also once
said that “if the Royal Ballet was dance’s equivalent of the National Gallery, displaying
the masterpieces of the past, then Ballet Rambert saw itself at the Tate Gallery, showing
work by modem masters and the rising stars of tomorrow.”3 Morrice also proposed that
schedules should be revised to include rehearsal periods where the dancers would receive
full pay. Previously, they had only received half-pay during rehearsal periods.
The most radical aspect of the 1966 proposal was the introduction of modern
dance alongside the company’s classical training. This marked a break with the past, but
introduced new ideas and techniques. Morrice believed that this would inspire both
dancers and choreographers and would revive the excitement and creative thrust of the
early period.4 The reforms proposed by Morrice were an attempt to re-establish a former
1 Angela Kane, “Rambert Doubling Back to the Sixties,” Dance Theatre Journal 8, no.3, (Autumn 1990): 34-35.
2 John Percival, “Ballet Rambert: The Company that Changed its Mind,” Dance Magazine 47, no.2 (February 1973): 44.
3 Christopher Bowen, “Back to the Future: The Relaunch of Rambert Dance Company,” Dance Magazine 69, no.4 (May 1995): 47-51.
4 Kane, “Doubling Back to the Sixties,” 35.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51 aesthetic, rather than a change of direction. ‘The plan really proved to be a return to the
early days of Rambert. The idea was to get back to being a choreographers’ company
that would make its own repertory.”5 Rambert encouraged Morrice in his development as
a choreographer, and with his proposal for reform, she anticipated his potential for artistic
direction. Rambert stated, “He laid before me a plan so intelligent, practical and in
accordance with our artistic ideals that I forthwith appointed him my artistic director.”6
In May 1966, Ellis resigned as associate director, and the company’s forthcoming season
at Sadler’s Wells was cancelled. Consequently, Morrice’s proposal was accepted, and he
was officially appointed associate director of the company.
Morrice also modeled the company on the Netherlands Dance Theater (NDT). He
had seen the company when they performed in Britain. The company successfully
combined classical and modem dance, and therefore, he thought that it was practical for
dancers to train in both techniques. In addition, Morrice had spent some time in New
York studying American modem dance and this experience made him believe that the
classical and modem dance traditions were destined to come close together. As early as
1958, Morrice showed interest in combining classical and modem dance. His ballet Two
Brothers (1958) also revealed a preference for more contemporary concerns. Dance
critic Mary Clarke wrote:
Mr. Morrice’s vocabulary is limited, but individual. He uses harsh, modem, tumed-in movements to express the restlessness of the young brother who is a misfit even in his own youthful society. For the girl, a gentle and sympathetic character, he arranges movements of lyrical simplicity which are contrasted, later, with the sharp body contractions which express her mental anguish. These two characters are the suffering ones; their tragedy is touched-off
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid. * r’
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 52 by the solid and conventional figure of the elder brother to whom the girl is engaged.7
Consequently, Morrice introduced American modem dance classes, based on the Martha
Graham technique, alongside the company’s daily classical ballet classes.
The new Ballet Rambert began its first season at the Cochrane Theatre in London
on 28 November 1966. In the first program, the company presented two works by the
French choreographer and former pupil of Rambert, Pierre Lacotte. Rambert dancer,
John Chesworth, made his choreographic debut with a new ballet called Time Base, and
the company performedLaiderette (1954) by Kenneth MacMillan. This program
confirmed one of the company’s aims at the time, which was to preserve the best of the
former repertory alongside the new works. In the first season, the company presented the
first showing in Britain of Night Island by the Dutch choreographer Rudi van Dantzig.
The company also performed a trio of ballets by Antony Tudor from the former Rambert
repertory: Judgment of Paris (1938), Jardin aux Lilas (1936), and Dark Elegies (1937).
The first season was not as successful as was hoped. John Percival writes, “It would be
pleasant to record that the first-night program justified at once all the heartburn, the effort
and the month of rehearsal that had gone on. Unfortunately this was not so.”8
Peter William also stated:
The first season at the Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre appeared to be a kind of update workshop—well rehearsed, well presented—but neither as adventurous as the early days of the Ballet Club, nor as stylish as the best period of the enlarged, more classical Ballet Rambert which developed after the war. There was not much to complain of, but the whole enterprise seemed to lack any definite focus.9
7 Ibid.
8 Percival, “The Company that Changed its Mind,” 49.
9 Peter Williams, “Dilemma Solved? Ballet Rambert’s London season posed a problem as
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 53
Before the first season of the reformed Ballet Rambert was over, in 1967 Morrice
and Rambert instigated the arrival of Glen Tetley to work with the company. Morrice
and Rambert had been exposed to Tetley’s work when NDT performed in Britain. One
of the aims of the new Ballet Rambert was to integrate classical and modern dance, and
therefore, Tetley was the ideal choice to put these reforms into action. He had already
successfully transformed NDT from a predominantly classical company to a modem
dance company, which gave him the experience needed to carry out a similar
transformation. Tetley was the most important single factor on the company’s
increasingly modem focus. In an interview in 1968, Morrice talked about the company’s
emphasis on modem dance:
As far as we are concerned, it seems to be wrapped up with the work of Glen Tetley, because his way of working combines the two techniques in something that I feel is theatrically very marvelous. In his work you don’t see where the seam is between classical and modem. I went a short time ago to Holland to see his most recent work— Circles. More than any of his other works, this shows that he has arrived at a point where the two techniques are only a means to an end, and you can never see where one begins and the other begins.. .Tetley is one of those people who has solved the problem, because he respects both techniques but only uses them to get the theatrical effect of the theatrical meaning that he requires.10
Tetley was the first American choreographer to work with the company, and in
his first year at Rambert, he staged three of his existing works for the company— Pierrot
Luniare (1962), Ricercare (1966), and Freefall (1967), and he created his first work for
the company Ziggurat (1967)." These works characterized the company’s new identity
by revealing to them new movement possibilities, and opening up new relationships in
to the way the company should go,” Dance and Dancers 18, no.9 (September 1967): 12.
10 anon, “Direction Change,” Dance and Dancers 19, no.8 (August 1968): 30.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 54 movement, music, and design. On 26 January 1967 the company performed their first
work by Tetley —Pierrot Lunaire. Peter Williams believes that “the new Ballet Rambert
started right here.”12 He goes on to say that, ‘This remarkable work not only brought a
new focus to the company, but it also brought to the fore Christopher Bruce, who might
well become the prototype of the new kind of British male dancer.”13
Tetley had a significant effect on Bruce as both a dancer and choreographer. As a
dancer, Bruce had previously been hardly noticed, but his performance in the title role of
Pierrot is considered one of the great male portrayals in British ballet history.14 As a
choreographer, Tetley recognized Bruce’s potential and encouraged him in his first
choreographic experiments. The starting-point for Bruce’s third creation,Wings (1970),
was movement developed from a section of Tetley’sZiggurat. Tetley’s intuitions of
Bruce as a choreographer were publicly acknowledged when Bruce was awarded the first
Evening Standard Award for Ballet in 1974. Consequently, Bruce became one of
Britain’s leading choreographers with an international reputation.
After the success of Pierrot Lunaire, the company performed Tetley’sRicercare
at the Nottingham Playhouse on 24 February 1967. This pas de deux, performed to
music by Mordecai Seter, is enclosed by a shiny white semi-circular structure designed
by Rouben Ter-Arutuniari. At the original Nottingham performance, the dance was
performed by Sandra Craig with Jonathan Taylor. The other two casts were Gayrie
11 See Appendix E for a complete list of Tetley’s works in Rambert’s repertory.
12 Peter Williams, “The 21 Years that Changed British Ballet,” Dance and Dancers 22, no. 12 (December 1971): 37.
13 Williams, “Dilemma Solved?,” 12.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ' \ 55 » ■' . - .., "J MacSween with Christopljer Bruce and Marilyn Williams with Peter Curtis, hi the dance
the couple search for truth, whether it is about life or themselves, and this is done within
the framework of the classical pas de deux construction—pas de deux, solos, and coda.
However, within this framework, Tetley does not use the academic ballet vocabulary.
Possibly with Tetley, more than with any other contemporary choreographer, the two schools are entwined with a sense of utter rightness. The marvelous compositions into which the two bodies—when together, or apart—form manage to underline, right up to the final group, a sense of unfulfilment. They way in which they look, they lie in Rouben Ter-Arutunian’s white sculpture, has the despair if non-communication.>s
This work had a subsequent effect on the set designing for Ballet Rambert. The
elimination of the painted set, and the integration of structure with movement had been
used my Martha Graham and other American choreographers, but had rarely been used in
Britain. Later that year, the company also performed Tetley’sFreefall which was based
on the physical laws of weight and gravity.
Ballet Rambert premiered Tetley’s Ziggurat on 20 November 1967 at the
Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre in London. By this time, the company had been working
with Tetley for one year, and the dancers had adopted Tetley’s style. Ziggurat was the
first work in which Nadine Baylis worked closely with Tetley. The influence of Ter-
Arutunian over Baylis can be seen in Ziggurat. Like Pierrot Lunaire, the dance was
dominated by a large metal tower, which was used to represent Babel, Jacob’s Tower,
and an Assyrian Temple.
14 Williams, “The 21 Years that Changed British Ballet.” 37.
15 Williams, “Dilemma Solved?,” 13.
r, .i t * • * - ; •
*• • ' h
____ ' V . V : LA Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 56 Baylis also included slide projections, and this work represented a new theatricality for
Rambert:
A huge white square descends, turns round and rises up to form a ceiling. With this comes projections of watchful eyes and sounds of innocent children’s voices .. .The projections change to yellow and more abstract; they continue to change through the succeeding dances . . . At one point a wide strip of cellophane is thrown and rolled along the stage making a path (Jacob’s ladder perhaps?) for the entrance of a girl all glittering who goes into a sliding and slow gyrating pas de deux with one of the men.16
Baylis designed Tetley’s subsequent works for Ballet Rambert. Tetley’s preference for
choreographing to the music of twentieth century composers, such as the electronic
scores of Morton Subotnick, coincided with the appointment of Leonard Salzedo, Ballet
Rambert’s new musical director. Salezdo was responsible for the company’s new
musical emphasis that favored scores by contemporary composers. Tetley also provided
the company with the grounding they needed to perform the work of other
choreographers. In 1967, the company performed Anna Sokolow’sDeserts. Sokolow’s
work had previously been seen in Britain when the Alvin Ailey company performed
Sokolow’s Rooms (19SS). Deserts was the first work that Sokolow staged on a British
dance company. . v An electronic score by Subotnick, Silver Apples o f the Moon (1967), was the
starting point forEmbrace Tiger and Return to Mountain, which Tetley choreographed
for the company the following year.
Tetley stated that:
Morton’s score intrigued me and I lived with it for a while and I loved the texture of it—very slivery, strange and highly contrasted. It has, about two-thirds of the
16 Kane, “Doubling Back to the Sixties,” 36.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 57 way through, a great rhythmic section which is one of the few rhythmic sections I have ever heard in electronic music.17
The inspiration for the movement came when Tetley watched a television documentary
on China. He became fascinated by T’ai Chi, and he found a manual with the thirty-
seven exercises of T’ai Chi that date back to 600 A.D. Tetley and the dancers learned the
thirty-seven exercises, and Tetley took these exercises and developed them into a
choreography. Tetley explains that as the dancers gradually learned the exercises, he
began to get images about ideas for movement development.
I was not taking an image and making movement, I was taking movement in which I was finding other movements, and the entire work was proceeding in that way. It developed entirely from a movement sense.18
Every position in each exercise has a name that can be translated into English. The one
that particularly appealed to Tetley happens in the middle of the exercises, and is called
"Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain.” Tetley named the new work after this
exercise, because he liked the words, he liked the image, and it is integral to the idea of
T’ai Chi and the ballet. He states that this work is not an attempt to do an oriental ballet,
but he his working with an oriental concept.19
Baylis designed the ballet, and the dancers were dressed in orange unitards. The
unitards are characteristic of Tetley because in many of his ballets, such as Circles and
Ziggurat, so that the lines of the dancers can be seen clearly. The lighting is blue, the
floor is reflective silver, and the dance opens with a cast of ten dancers.
17 anon, “T’ai-Chi and the Dance,” Dance and Dancers 19, no.l 1 (November 1968): 21.
18 Ibid., 22.
19 Ibid.
.a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 58 The opening ensemble passage sets a tone of lush stringency. Currents of meditative energy are gathered up, passed among the dancers and dispersed. Subsequent couplings have a precise, calligraphic edge...The machinated formality of Tetley's steps and body configurations render the dancers both less and more than human.20
One woman is en pointe, and performs a provocative duet with a subservient man. The
man is suddenly annoyed, and he leaves her. Four men throw another woman, who then
walks over a bridge made by their cupped hands. The dancers fly through the air with
jetes, and huddle together in clumps. The T’ai-Chi references are clear because the
dancers assume a wide second position plie stance, and their angled arms move slowly
while their whole body is alert. The work requires a lot of control, particularly in the
torso area. Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain is presently in the company’s
repertory. The work was performed in 2000 and also in 2001, for the company’s
seventy-fifth anniversary. Of the 2000 performance, Donald Hutera wrote, “Derivative
or not, Embrace Tiger remains a vivid time piece, danced here with considerable elan.”21
Dance critic Ismene Brown wrote:
Now Bruce is director of Rambert, and these two works [Pierrot Luniare and Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain] (which I saw at the Apollo Theatre, Oxford) are fascinating. Rambert’s dancers have never been better than they are now, and their accomplishment burnishes Tetley’s choreography.22
After Tetley choreographed Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain in 1967,
Tetley had become solely responsible for the evolution of the company’s new distinct
identity. In terms of dance, music, and design, this identity characterized Ballet Rambert
throughout the 1970s. Previously, the company’s policy had been influenced by NDT in
20 Donald Hutera, “Past Perfect,” Times (London), 12 May 2000.
21 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59 combining modem dance and ballet. However, because Ballet Rambert had developed its
own distinctive style, the company began to grow in its own direction. Nevertheless,
there remained a close parallel between NDT and Ballet Rambert. Although both
companies were open to American influences, neither of the companies tried to be an
imitation American company. John Percival stated:
Just as the best new flowers are developed from hybrids, so our modem dance has its roots in two worlds, and the influence of European art, literature, music, society and manners is at least as important as the benefits we have gained from the inspiration of Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, and others.23
In the 1970s, Tetley created three works for the company—Rag Dances (1971),
Praeludium (1978), and The Tempest (1979). In 1976, he also restaged Moveable
Garden (1973) on the company. Tetley dedicatedPraeludium to Marie Rambert. It was
premiered on 31 January 1978 at the Royal Northern College of Music. The dancers
were Lucy Burge, Christopher Bruce, Catherine Becque, Daniela Loretz, Sally Owen,
Derek Hart, Leigh Warren, and Mark Wraith. The dance is performed to Anton van
t V • v * Webern’s Slow Movement and String Quartet (both 1905). The music is quiet and
reflective, and it had a crucial effect on Tetley’s choreographic invention.
The music’s enibtional charge intensifies the feeling and colours the character of every passage‘df dancing, to an extent that the dancers almost seem to ‘speak’ through it; certainly the lush romantic style, unexpected in Webern, expresses moods governed by the recognizable associations of the ^-century tonal idiom derived from the Wagner-Strauss-Mahler mainstream.24
22 Ismene Brown, “Burnished Treasures,” Daily Telegraph (London), 12 May 2000,20.
23 Percival, “The Company that Changed its Mind,” 51.
24 Noel Goodwin and John Percival, “Praeludium,” Dance and Dancers 29, no.3 (March 1978): 23.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. There is a theme implied in the ballet, and Tetley states that it is a conscious theme—
“I’m sure there’s my own personal mythology in the piece.”25 An important factor that
may have influenced Tetley was a quotation from a German mystic and theosophist,
Jakob or Jacobus Bohme, which Webern copied out at the head of his manuscript for the
String Quartet:
I cannot write or tell the sense of triumph that prevailed in my spirit. It can be compared with nothing but the birth of life in the midst of death: the resurrection of the dead. In this light my mind immediately saw God through all things, and recognized Him in all living creatures, even in the weeds and grass, saw who He may be and what His will is.26
The sense of rebirth in the midst of death is the key image that Tetley uses throughout the
ballet. There are images of crucifixion, and of sinking and lifting throughout the work.
The role danced by Bruce appears to be a newly dead spirit arriving in the afterworld, and
comforted by angelic beings. Bruce’s character could also be emotionally dead after a
shock or bad experience, and the role danced by Lucy Burge helps to restore his spirit.
Tetley also draws attention to the connection between the musical style and the Jugendstil
movement in the visual arts. The Jugendstil movement developed in the late nineteenth-
century when there was an artistic Renaissance in southern Germany and Austria. The
artists and designers in the Munich area led the movement. The work was stylistically
original, and focused on Germanic themes and mythology. John Percival explains that
Tetley’s analogies, with the shape and growth of plant life, especially at the beginning
and end of the work, are not coincidental.27
25 Ibid., 21.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid., 22.
. \ • * * * ' ' -k :
■*v- . , - w >
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 61 The first section of the dance is performed to Webern’s Slow Movement. The
dance begins with a female dancer squatting above three men lying on the ground. As
she rises, the men begin to dance. The movements performed by the men are small and
quick, and they skim across the stage. The men are dressed in flesh color tights, and the
female dancer wears a red dress. The second section is performed to Webern’s String
Quartet. A male dancer in red enters wearily. His steps are slow and dragging, and he
appears to be a sad figure. There is a long duet between the two solo dancers in red. The
female appears to be the emotionally dominant character. The male tends to sink down to
the floor, and the female draws him up again—she physically and emotionally supports
him. Another couple enters, and the male from this couple and the male in red, perform a
light and speedy solo in canon. However, the male in red soon returns to the somber
mood, and the three men lift him and carry him off in the direction he arrived. The dance
% ■ \ ends with the beginning image—the three men return and sink to the floor around the
female in red. Praeludium was a success for Tetley and Rambert, and John Percival
stated:
Tetley has said that he still finds the same spirit within the company as when he worked with them frequently, creating three ballets and reviving three others between 1967 and 1971. At that time he helped develop them into a company of exceptional creative and expressive strength, andPraeludium in he seems once again to have inspired them and helped them find fresh strength within themselves.2*
In 1979, Tetley choreographed his first full-length ballet, The Tempest. Tetley
states that for him this process was “a voyage of discovery. Most of the works I have
written previously have mainly been non-narrative, abstract, pure movement, although
28 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 62 the majority of them had an emotional structure.”29 When Tetley was working with the
Stuttgart Ballet (1973-1976), the Schwetzingen Festival in Germany commissioned him
to create a full-length work. The ballet was to be choreographed for the Stuttgart Ballet,
and premiered by the company at the Festival. Tetley began thinking of various plays by
William Shakespeare to base the work upon, and finally he chose The Tempest because it
was the work that intrigued him the most. At the time he was working with composer
Arne Nordheim on his ballet Greening which he choreographed for the Stuttgart Ballet in
1975. Tetley thought that Nordheim would be the ideal composer for The Tempest, and
Tetley immediately began collaborating with him. Due to disagreements between Tetley
and the Stuttgart Ballet’s management, Tetley resigned from his position as artistic
director of the company. Nevertheless, Tetley was informed that the commission from
the Schwetzingen Festival stayed with him wherever he went, and Tetley decided that
Ballet Rambert was the ideal company to choreograph the new ballet on. The company
gave him the rehearsal period that he needed, and organized everything for him. “So, in
thinking in terms of a smaller company and of doing The Tempest in a more
contemporary language, for me the Rambert has been ideal.”30 The ballet was premiered
at the Rokokotheater, Schwetzingen, on 3 May 1979 and the London premiere was at the
Sadler’s Wells Theatre on 3 July 1979.
Tetley and Nordheim worked closely on the score for the ballet. The two men
took Shakespeare’s The Tempest apart, scene-by-scene and speech-by-speech. Tetley did
not want to paraphrase the play, so he instructed Nordheim to write a piece of music
^ anon, “Prospero’s Island,” Dance and Dancers 30, no.5 (May 1979): 38.
. / ^ 30l6rd.,20; ' *
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63 following the structure of the play. Tetley decided that he wanted to do a two-act
ballot—the first act was an exposition of the material, and the second was its resolution. * > Tetley and Nordheim decided that two singers would perform the original songs. The
* t . songs and key Speeches occur in the musical setting, so that there is a tie-in with the play.
Tetley’s ballet is rifrt a literal translation of the play. Tetley stated that, “I feel very close
to the spirit of the play without being a literal translation of it.”31 The focus of the ballet
is on Prospero and his magic powers, on the contrasting figures of Caliban and Ariel as
spirits of earth and air, and on the love of Miranda and Ferdinand. Tetley turned some of
the great soliloquies into solos, but they do not always happen where they occur in the
play, because Tetley believes that dance “can eloquently say things, and a complex of
images, that words cannot say.”32 Peter Williams stated that certain aspects of Tetley’s
ballet tend to be confusing and the structure tends to be rather nebulous.
What Tetley and his composer, Arne Nordheim, have managed to create between them is something that evokes the whole spirit of Shakespeare’s poetic conception in terms of dance theatre. The combination of sound and visual image sustains a gossamer web of mystery and magic that becomes increasingly powerful on each viewing.33
Baylis collaborated with Tetley on the design for the ballet. Tetley wanted to
create a surreal and magical atmosphere. Baylis gives an insight into the collaboration:
Certain props, the sixteen yards square of silk for the sea, for example, were actually used in the studio ready for use on day one; props and costumes were designed and made as they were required by the choreography. In this way, the designs become an integral part of the rehearsal process.34
31 Ibid., 21.
32 Ibid.
33 Noel Goodwin, John Percival and Peter Williams, “The Tempest,”Dance and Dancers 3, no.8 (August 1979): 18.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 64
The design is influenced by the Oriental theater. The critic John Percival believes this
was not successful. ‘The attempt to use trailing costumes and cloaks in a vaguely
Oriental was... seems to have misfired badly.”35 However, the critic Noel Goodwin was
of a different opinion to Percival.
. . . except for Prospero’s marvelous magic cloak, 1 thought the trailing Loie Fuller style of some of the other costumes over-elaborate for their purpose. At the same time this collaboration of choreography, music and design has a style and consistency^ and a poetic imagination, which are becoming increasingly rare in contemporary ballet36
In 1983, Murder Hope o f Women was the last work that Tetley choreographed for
Ballet Rambert. The dance is based on the play Morder Hoffnung der Frauen (1908) by
Oskar Kokoschaka. The work was premiered at the King’s Theatre in Edinburgh on 29
August 1983. Tetley choreographed the work because Ballet Rambert was the recipient
of the 1983 Tennant Caledonian Award, to enable a work to be created at the Edinburgh
Festival. The original dancers were Albert van Nierop as the Man and Lucy Burge as the
Woman. The dancers perform the play—between bursts of speaking, they perform small
sections of movement to the percussion by Andrew Tyrrell. Tetley based some of the
movements and poses on Oskar Kokoschaka’s drawings and paintings. However, this
does not work successfully, because human bodies are not able to assume such grotesque
contorted shapes.
Angela Kane, “Rambert Moving Forward to the Seventies,” Dance Theatre Journal 8, no.4 (Spring 1991): 39.
35 Ibid.
36 Goodwin et al., “The Tempest,” 21.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Tetley's last work for Ballet Rambert was not successful. After the Edinburgh premiere,
Percival stated:
I felt sick and angry at seeing so much effort (and money—thanks to the Tennant Caledonian Award) expended on such a stupidly trivial subject and misguidedly applied too, so that it made the least, not the most o f what opportunities there were.37
Tetley has not choreographed a new work for the company since 1983. During
the 1980s the company was under the direction o f choreographer Richard Alston.
However, as previously mentioned,Pierrot Lunaire and Embrace Tiger and Return to
Mountain have recently returned into the company’s repertory. When dancer and
choreographer Christopher Bruce was appointed director of the company in 1994, he
made many changes to the company. He enlarged the ensemble of eighteen dancers to
twenty-five, and each dancer was capable of performing a wide spectrum of work. His
plan was to foster new talent from within the company and tom aintain works from
Rambert’s rich heritage. He also wanted to “show the British public international work,
rarely seen here, choreographed by high-caliber artists who have already achieved
considerable success abroad.”3* It has been suggested that the new Rambert returned to a
reincarnation of the 1970s model, and that the company has developed in a cyclical
directkm.39 This explains why Tetley’s work was not included in the company’s
repertory for approximately fifteen years, and why there has been a resurgence o f interest
in his ballets.
37 John Percival, “Every Picture Tells a Story: Two Creations for Ballet Rambert at the Edinburgh Festival,” Dance and Dancers, no.407 (November 1983): 28.
31 Christopher Bowen, “Back to the Future: The Relaunch of Rambert Dance Company,” Dance M agazine 69, no.4 (May 1995): 51.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 66 This chapter has shown that based on his experiences at NDT, Tetley was chosen
to lead Rambert Dance Company in a new direction. Tetley implemented Rambert
Dance Company’s 1966 proposal that aimed to combine classical and modem dance, and
he successfully transformed the company from a classically based company to a primarily
modem based company. The first American choreographer to work with the company,
Tetley’s choreography characterized the company’s new identity, and it exposed the
dancers to new movement possibilities and opened up new relationships in movement,
music and design. Tetley encouraged the dancers to explore their creative possibilities as
choreographers which in the long-term would ensure the future creativity of the
company.
39 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 5
GLEN TETLEY AND THE STUTTGART BALLET 1973-1976
This chapter will put into context the history of the Stuttgart Ballet. It will show
why the company was interested in Tetley’s work and why he was chosen to be the
artistic director of the company. This chapter will analyze Tetley’s choreography during
the three-year period he was associated with the company, and it will illustrate how his
work was perceived. This chapter will also address why Tetley’s relationship with the
company ended after such a short period of time, in comparison to the association he had
with the Netherlands Dance Theater and Rambert Dance Company.
The Stuttgart Ballet is still officially known as the Ballet of the Wurttemberg
State Theater Stuttgart, and this German ballet company has its origins in the
Wurttemberg court ballets of the seventeenth century. The ballet tradition dates back to
1609, and from 1684-1709 Jacques Courcelles was the court ballet master. In 1759,
Duke Karl Eugen of Wurttemberg, who was a lavish patron of the arts, appointed the
French choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre court ballet master. For the next seven
years Noverre created a large number of works, such as Renaud et Armide (c. 1760),
Admete etAlceste (1761), Meded et Jason, and Der Sieg des Neptun (both 1763). The
duke’s extravagance created debt problems, and the ballet company was drastically
67
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 68 reduced. In 1767 Noverre left for Vienna, and ballet in Stuttgart returned to its former
inconspicuous state. The next significant date in the development of ballet in Stuttgart is
1824 when Fillipo Taglioni was engaged as court ballet master. Taglioni stayed with the
company until 1828.
After the departure of Taglioni, ballet in Stuttgart returned to its former state of
provincialism. In 1922 choreographer Oskar Schlemmer createdTriadic Ballet for the
company, but this had no long lasting effect on the company’s repertory. It was not until
the 1958 arrival of dancer and choreographer Nicholas Beriozoff, that the company
assumed a stronger identity. Beriozoff strengthened the company’s classical base,
concentrating on repertory classics of the nineteenth-century, as well as works from his
own years with the Ballet Russes. He also improved teaching standards at the attached
ballet school. In 1961, Beriozoff was succeeded by John Cranko, and under his guidance,
which lasted until his death in 1973, the Stuttgart Ballet acquired its present international
reputation.
Cranko was bora in South Africa in 1927, and began his training in Johannesburg
with Nina Runich and Marjorie Sturman. In 1944 he enrolled at the University of Cape
Town Ballet School, where he appeared in some of the company’s performances.
However, Cranko’s interests were in choreography rather than performance, and in 1945
he choreographed his first ballet, The Soldier's Tale , for the Cape Town Ballet Club.
That year he went to London to continue his studies at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School.
He immediately began dancing with the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, and in 1946 he
choreographed a production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel at the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 69 Sadler’s Wells Theatre. Cranko was transferred to the Sadler’s Wells Ballet for the 1947-
1948 season where he worked with choreographers such as Leonide Massine, Frederic
Ashton, and Robert Helpmann. At the beginning of the 1950-1951 season, at the age of • ; I ■ \ <• : 23, Cranko stopped dancing and assumed the position of resident choreographer at the
Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet. In 1951, his first popular success was the ballet Pineapple
» * * * ''' Poll. Throughout-the. 1950s he continued to choreograph ballets for the company, such as A Bonne-Bouche (1952), The Shadow (1953), The Lady and the Fool (1954), and The
Prince o f Pagodas (1957).
In 1960, Cranko was asked to stage the Prince o f Pagodas for the Stuttgart Ballet,
hi January 1961, Cranko was appointed artistic director of the company, and he gradually
began to assemble his own team of collaborators—Peter Wright as ballet master and
second choreographer, and Anne Wooliams as ballet mistress and director of the
company’s school. Most of Beriozoffs dancers left, and Cranko began recruiting new
younger dancers, such as Marcia Haydee, Birgit Keil, Richard Cragun, and Egon
Madsen. Katalyse was the first ballet that he created for the company in 1961, and it
remained in the company’s repertory for several years. In 1962, the company began to
develop an identity of its own. That year Cranko’s Daphnis and Chloe and Romeo and
Juliet were premiered. Cranko continued to create an eclectic repertory of works for the
company1 —from abstract works such as L ’Estro Armonico (1963), to humorous pieces
such as Jeu de Cartes, poetic ballets like Brouillards (1970), to large-scale symphonic
1 See Appendix F for a complete list of works choreographed by Cranko for the Stuttgart Ballet
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 70 works like Initialen R.B.M.E. (1972),2 and newly envisaged versions of classic ballets
such as Swan Lake (1963). Cranko’s versatility was a necessity because the Stuttgart
Ballet could only occasionally afford guest choreographers such as George Balanchine
and Kenneth MacMillan.
Under Cranko, the company’s first appearances abroad was at the Edinburgh
Festival in 1963, and at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto in 1965. The company
achieved international status after its first New York Season in 1969, and the company
performed in Russia in 1971. Cranko developed new choreographers from within the
company, such as Ashley Killar, Gray Veredon, Jirf Kyli£n, and John Neumeier. As
artistic director, choreographer, ballet master, teacher, and educator, by the time of his
death in 1973, Cranko had built the Stuttgart ballet into one of the most important
companies in Europe. He improved the technical level of the company. He had a varied
team of principals, headed by dancer Marcia Haydee, and a repertory that displayed their
individual gifts. Dance critic Horst Koegler states that “he became a kind of * i V * paterfamilias to his dancers, whose group loyalty survived his death was still to be found
among the second generation.”3 Dance writer Michael Maegraith stated that:
Cranko loved his dancers and was loved in return by his devoted company. He always claimed he was very lucky in Stuttgart since his dancers understood him so well. He tried to make each ballet a little bit more difficult for them than the previous one. “I always try to give my dancers something that is a little out of the ordinary, something they can’t quite do yet. But you can’t go too far, otherwise
2 The title of Initialen R.B.M.E. refers to the initials of the names of his quartet of principals:R. for Richard Cragun, B. for Birgit Keil, M. for Marica Haydde, and £. for Egon Madsen.
3 Horst Koegler, “John Cranko,” in The International Encyclopedia o f Dance, ed. Selma Jeanne Cohen, Vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 267.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 71 they get frustrated and then they can’t do anything at all. They must have the feeling that they can almost do it. It’ a teaching process."4
Cranko established the John Cranko Ballet School which is affiliated to the Stuttgart
Ballet, and he added a boarding wing to the school, which was the first of its kind in
Germany. Cranko once stated that “each ballet dancer is as good as the school he was
at,”5 and that explains why he built up the Stuttgart Ballet School to become an important
institution. The students from the school feed into the company which preserves the
tradition of the Stuttgart company. Dance historian Horst Vollmer states that Cranko’s
“influence, not just in Germany but on the international dance scene, cannot be
overestimated; and in that sense his presence continues to be felt today.”6
In 1973, Glen Tetley was invited by Cranko to stage his work Mythical Hunters
(1963) on the Stuttgart Ballet’s second company, the Noverre Ballet. That year Tetley
was invited to return to Stuttgart and stage two more works on the Stuttgart Ballet.7 In
1973 Cranko’s dancers witnessed his tragic death on a flight back from New York. On
22 December 1973, the company performed Tetley’sArena which was originally
choreographed for the Netherlands Dance Theater in 1969, and the company premiered
Tetley’s Voluntaries, which was specially created for this occasion. Voluntaries was
choreographed in memory of Cranko. Tetley wanted to create something positive for the
Michael P. Maegraith, “Cranko, his influence, his succession in Stuttgart,” The Dancing , Times 64, no.765 (July 1974): 572.
5 Ibid., 573
6 Horst Vollmer,“John Cranko,” in The International Dictionary o f Ballet, ed. Martha Bremser, Vol.l (Detroit: S t Janies Press, 1993), 315.
7 See Appendix G for a complete list of Tedey’s works in the Stuttgart Ballet’s repertory.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 72 company. He felt that he could not fail them in any way, creatively or artistically.8 Of
the choreographic process, Tetley stated:
The fact of John’s death was everywhere in the theatre, so you couldn’t mention his name because tears were there all the time. So I started in a very abstract way on this ballet wigithe music, and it just came out. It came out very quickly. I realized, after, I had made the ballet, that so much of the focus is off stage, to someone whojjyip longer there—the repetition of winged movement, of lift and, for the central couple, continual fall, fall into grief, fall into the ground.9
Tetley felt that it was obvious the ballet was dedicated to Cranko. Therefore, he did not
include a program note that stated the purpose of the ballet, because it was not a literary
form. Tetley’s intention was to convey it with a physical and emotional means.
Voluntaries is performed by seventeen dancers, and at the Stuttgart Ballet the
dance was led by the principal dancers that Cranko discovered and nurtured—Marica
Haydee, Richard Cragun, Birgit Keil, Reid Anderson, and Jan Stripling. The dance is
performed to Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani , and the design
is by Rouben Ter-Artunian with lighting by John B. Read. The dancers are dressed in
white leotards and tights with pastel colored sprinkles on the sides, and the same colors
formed a loosely circling pattern on thee backdrop. The projection varies throughout the
dance from bright to pale or dim, and sometimes it is not visible. These changes match
the shifts of emotion in the music and ballet. Voluntaries became more than just a new
work; it was an “emotionally charged tribute that elicited a special atmosphere of both
tenderness and dedication.”10
8 Lee Christofis, “Glen Tetley: Fusing Classical and Modem,” Dance Australia (December 1991/January 1992): 34.
9 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 73 Voluntaries is an abstract ballet that Tetley choreographed in the Stuttgart-Cranko
technique. He fused the classical style so that it echoed Cranko’s movement vocabulary,
yet Tetley stretched the dancers’ individual forms so that they felt like they’d done
something they’d never done before. Voluntaries includes a lot of long drawn-out
carrying lifts, which are characteristic of Cranko’s choreography, and at the same time
Tetley includes his more accustomed sculptural body entwinings. Horst Koegler points
out that Tetley makes a lot of direct quotations from Cranko’s Initials R.B.M.E., which he
believes is Tetley’s act of personal homage to Cranko.1' John Percival also highlights
that Tetley uses many deliberate Cranko quotations in the dance; this is not only in the
big lifts that Cranko used, but also in the characteristic steps for the men. Percival states:
. . . although Tetley uses a lot of deliberate Cranko steps, the result never looks like Cranko choreography. It does in fact suggest a way forward for the company towards a pure-dance form, free of plot but rich in emotion, which, although Cranko adopted it for some of his ballets, was not (at least in such of his repertory as I have seen) the style in which he was happiest.11
The title Voluntaries comes from the free improvisations played by the organist at
the end of a church service, and it also serves to test the instrument and the skill of the
player. Both of these meanings have a parallel within the ballet, which Tetley says was
inspired partly by the music and partly by the dancers. Tetley introduces two different
moods to the dance that match the mood of Poulenc’s organ concerto. A hymnal element
exists in the ballet, however it is not related to religion, it is about love. The music has
10 John Gruen, “Observing Dance: Voluntaries Tetley’s Tribute to Cranko,” Dance Magazine 48, no.l 1 (November 1974): 67.
11 Horst Koegler and John Percival, “Cranko’s Last Guest Choreographer,” Dance and Dancers 25, no.2 (February 1974): 28.
12 Ibid., 29.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 74 passages of fresh lyricism and depth, as well as a light brisk quality. Tetley states that the
music “is full of secrets, also lyrical, often happy, in its entirety very inward looking.”13
He has captured the qualities of the music in the dance, which brought out the individual
traits of the dancers. Marica Haydfe dances alone and in a series of duets with Richard
Cragun. An emotional dancer, Haydde dances with a kind of grief which can be read as a
mourning of Cranko. On the surface Haydde presents tranquility, while simultaneously
suggesting joy. - JT * ** = .. Tetley’s movements search out this ambiguity in both Haydde and Cragun, and he succeeds nobly by inventing a choreography at once terse, lyrical, withheld, soaring, and above all, tinged by a quality of undefinable and fugitive sadness. It is this mysterious, veiled element that gives “Voluntaries” its power and poignancy.’ Perhaps so banal, yet potent, an element of the sense of “giving” lies at the root of this moving work.14
There is a brighter side of the ballet which is seen in the fast and sometimes spectacular
trios performed by Birgit Keil, Jan Stripling, and Reid Anderson. The six supporting
couples, and the explosive leaping entrances of the men, also show the joyous side of the
ballet.
After the success of Voluntaries, Tetley won the confidence and respect of the
Stuttgart dancers. The dancers and management of the Stuttgart Ballet also knew that
after his death, Cranko would not want the company to become a living museum of his
ballets. It would have been important to Cranko that the company continued to create
new work. However, it was going to be difficult for the company not to become a
museum of the Cranko work, because his ballets were an integral part of the company’s
13 Ibid., 46.
14 Gruen, ‘Tetley’s Tribute to Cranko,” 67.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 75 existence, and there was no company in the world that would be able to perform them so
well. In 1974, Tetley was invited to succeed Cranko as director of Stuttgart Ballet. He
officially assumed his position on 1 September 1974. Haydde explains that Tetley was
the perfect choice for the company. “You see, we all knew that John Cranko loved and
admired Glen very much. In fact, John had already given Glen a contract as resident
choreographer. So in a way, he was already a part of us.”15 Tetley’s decision to accept
the position came horn his heart. “I love the Stuttgart dancers, love them as the
individual theatrical personalities into which Cranko formed them, love their work, their
ballets. In short, I feel at home with them.”16
Tetley’s new position at the Stuttgart Ballet proved to be a challenge for him, the
dancers, and the company’s audience. The dancers and the audience were accustomed to
a different type of ballet than that with which Tetley is generally associated, and there
was a danger that Tetley would be compared to Cranko. Tetley intended to preserve the
Cranko repertory because it formed the identity of the company, however Tetley realized
that the ballets he choreographed for the Stuttgart dancers would be more classical than
his previous works—they would be made specifically for the company and the dancers > v. * ■ ■ - • bodies. Tetley hoped that forking with the company would bring about changes in his
choreography. He^thought that his interest in working with dramatic situations would be .’r f v ■ rejuvenated, ancrhe^beganjo consider creating his first full-length ballet. The company
15 “Stuttgart Profiles” Dance Magazine, August 1975,49, no.8,70.
16 Tom Pepys, “Curtain Up!” Dance and Dancers 25, no.4 (April 1974): 19.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 76 was also willing to make new explorations. Tetley stated, “the company wants me to
take them in the direction I wish to go. They’re willing to change, to live dangerously.”17
In 1975, as director of the Stuttgart Ballet, Tetley choreographed three new ballets
for the company—Daphnis and Chloe, Greening and Alegrias. Daphnis and Chloe was
Tetley’s first creation for the Stuttgart Ballet as director of the company, and the ballet
was premiered at the Wurttembergische Staatstheater, Stuttgart, on 17 May 1975. The
cast for premiere of the ballet was as follows:
Daphnis: Richard Cragun Chloe: Marcia Haydde The god Pan, half brother o f Daphnis: Egon Madsen Lykanion: Birgit Keil Dorkon: Reid Anderson Goddesses: Jean Allenby, Melinda Witham, Hilde Koch A Faun: Carl Morrow Shepherds and Shepherdesses, Satyrs, Bacchantes
Daphnis and Chloe is choreographed to Maurice Ravel’s score that Tetley
describes as “perhaps the best ballet score that was ever written.”18 Tetley’s interpretation
of Daphnis and Chloe is very different from the original ballet choreographed by Michel
Fokine in 1912. Fokine based his ballet upon the story of Daphnis and Chloe, a pastoral
romance attributed to the fourth-century Greek sophist, Longus. In Tetley’s
interpretation, Daphnis and Pan are portrayed as half-brothers, and the ballet begins with
them dancing together. When Chloe appears, despite Pan’s encouragement, Daphnis is
shy with her. Unseen by Daphnis, Dorkon enters and dances behind his back. Chloe is
attracted to Dorkon, dances with him, and then leaves with him. Daphnis is left alone,
17 Allen Robertson, ‘Talking with Tetley,” Dance Magazine 48, no. 10 (October 1974): 5.
18 John Percival, “Daphnis and Chloe,”Dance and Dancers 26, no.8 (August 197S): 30.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 77 and Lykanion enters and seduces him. Chloe discovers them lying closely together, and
is upset. However, Pan initiates an orgy with shepherds, shepherdesses, nymphs, and
satyrs, and during this time, Daphnis and Chloe get together. John Percival states that
Tetley’s idea was probably:
. . . to make the plot more interesting by presenting it as an abstract version of a psychological situation, with Lykanion and Dorkon not really characters but simply types who are the exact opposite of Daphnis and Chloe.19
Tetley’s interpretation of the ballet was not deemed to be successful by the critics.
Percival described it as'a “porno-ballet”20 and James Monahan describes the ballet as a
failure:
. . . not because hefiad taken liberties (and why not?) with the Ravel-Fokine scenario but because his dance inventiveness was meager and, again, repetitive. That was the main trouble; but as to the scenario, it was dreadfully silly to turn Pan into Daphnis’s pandering half-brother; awe and strangeness went out the window and in came a sexy romp on a college campus.21
When the Stuttgart Ballet performed Daphnis and Chloe in New York in June 1975,
dance critic Arlene Croce wrote in The New Yorker.
Daphnis and Chloe, by Tetley, with designs by Willa Kim, was pretty as a picture. In fact, it was a picture, as flat and expressionless as one of those Tonight the Ballet ads for perfume in magazines of the forties. Tetley. . . makes dancing look linear in much the same way Cranko did. It’s the opposite of plasticity; the shape and contour of a phrase don’t count, the continuity does. The dancers become animated line drawings who never stop bending and twisting, and the perspective of the stage flattens into a neutral backdrop. Without depth, the images can’t be felt, they can only be seen.22
19 Ibid., 30-31.
20 Ibid., 31.
21 James Monahan, “Stuttgart in London,” The Dancing Times 66, no.790 (July 1976): 524.
22 Arlene Croce, Writing in the Dark. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000,122.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 78 However,Daphnis and Chloe was noted for the remarkable performances by the two
male lead dancers. Tetley successfully cast Richard Cragun as Daphnis and Egon
Madsen as Pan. Cragun danced the role of Daphnis with sheer physicality. He
maintained the same energy throughout the ballet with bounding leaps and turns. Pan has
a large role in Tetley’s ballet which includes a solo, and Madsen’s interpretation of the
role was described as “the combination of amoral sexual joyousness and sad loneliness is
as striking as the quality of his dancing; a performance of unique gifts.”23 However, the
quality of choreography for the women was criticized for not being of the same standard
as the choreography for the men. Percival stated that Haydde had “to work hard to hold
her own with Cragun and Madsen; her dances have some good moments but the
inspiration is not sustained and the role owes more to its performer’s personality and
intelligence than the choreography.”24
Greening, subtitled “Waiting for Rain” at the premiere, was premiered at the
Wurttembergische Staatstheater, Stuttgart on 29 November 1975.25 Arne Nordheim
composed the music for the ballet, and the music was inspired by the composer’s love of
nature. Nordheim used frequencies of sound as they occur in nature. There are wind and
rain sounds, and the piece has a rapid accelerando which is like a small storm swirling
and howling. The music provided the initial inspiration for the dance, and the other
motivations to shape the ballet were Dylan Thomas’s The Force That Through the Green
23 Percival, “Daphnis and Chloe,” 31.
24 Ibid., 32.
25 The subtitle was dropped after the premiere because Tetley felt it was “too poetic.” (Michael Robertson,“The Greening of DTH: Glen Tetley Prepares a New York Season,” Dance Magazine 54, no.l (January 1980): 39.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 79 Fuse Drives the Flower {1934) and T.S. Eliot’s Gerontion (1920). Tetley was also
influenced by Nadine Balyis’s design for the ballet. The set was a metallic leafless tree.
A photograph of a desert in which a leafless tree stood in the middle of the dunes inspired
Baylis’s designs for the set.
Tetley stated:
I began working on Greening shortly after I became director of the Stuttgart ' Ballet. I had a group of wonderful young dancers I’d brought into the company, most of them Americans who had worked in contemporary dance. I wanted to do a work for them which pursued this contemporary way of moving. Also, so much of the Stuttgart repertory was story ballets built around stars, and the corps didn’t have much to dp. I wanted to make a dance that would balance that and give them a lot to do A'
Dance critic James Monahan did not react favorably to Greening:
I found little or no relationship between the choreography and Arne Nordheim’s untuneful score and the pretty choreographic blend (again) of classicism and Tetley-modem did not go anywhere; it was in a repeating groove. Waiting for rain? It certainly seemed to be waiting for something.27
Daphnis and Chloe and Greening were not as successful as Tetley’s previous
works. This may have been due to change in interests and inventions in his
choreography. Tetley states that working with the Stuttgart Ballet increased his
confidence working with a more academic movement vocabulary—he became interested
in creating contemporary works with a more classical direction.28 From 1972, Tetley had
showed an interest in more classically oriented works when he choreographed three new
ballets— Laborintus, Small Parades, and Threshold. These works showed a new
Michael Robertson, “The Greening of DTH: Glen Tetley Prepares a New York Season,” Dance Magazine 54, no.l (January 1980): 38-39.
27 Monahan, “Stuttgart in London,” 524.
28 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 80 emphasis on muscular control, on contour, and on complexity of movement within the
danse d’ecole which began to co-exist with his former preference for torso-focused
choreography.29
Tetley also had to contend with the fact that, under Cranko, the Stuttgart dancers
had developed the skills of dramatic dancing. Most of Tetley’s works do not revolve
around a narrative; most of his ballets are abstract. Furthermore, Cranko choreographed
his ballets to traditional music, and therefore, the opera house audience in Stuttgart
tended to prefer this music. On the other hand, Tetley favored the use of electronic
scores. In Pierrot Lunaire Tetley took inspiration horn the words, rather than Arnold
Schoenberg’s score, and although Tetley choreographed the ballets Gemini (1973) and
Voluntaries to scores by Hans Werner Henze and Poulenc, this marked a new interest in
the use of traditional music to which he was not accustomed. The dancers at the Stuttgart
Ballet were determined to give Tetley the same support that they gave Cranko. In an
interview, dancer Richard Cragun stated:
Look, replacing someone like John isn’t easy. Such things take time—any mutation process takes time. We all of us realize that we can’t disregard what John has built. So Glen is working within a very delicate balance. On the other hand, Glen realizes that we cannot abandon what we’ve all worked so hard for. On the other hand, we all know that Glen has a tremendous creative force all of his owil Right now, it’s Glen Tetley we have to think of. He’s not just coming in to tag a few ballets onto our repertoire. He has to be given a fresh garden to hoe and water exactly as he wants. Glen must have virgin soil to work with. We must look to the broader side of things. We must look to the future.30
In the three years that Tetley was associated with the Stuttgart Ballet, he created
four new works for the company, and he staged five of his existing ballets on the
29 Kane, “Glen Tetley,” 1413.
30 “Stuttgart Profiles” 70.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 81 company—Arena (1969), Gemini (1973), Laborintus (1972), Pierrot Lunaire (1962), and
Le Sacre du Printemps (1973). Tetley maintained the work of Cranko, and the company
performed Cranko’s ballets such as Romeo and Juliet (1962) and Onegin (1965). Tedey
brought works into the repertory by other choreographers—the company performed
Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces (1923) and George Balanchine’s Symphony in C
(1947).3' He gave great encouragement to some of the younger members of the
company—William Forsythe and Jiri Kylidn were dancers in the corps de ballet, and
Tedey gave Kylidn his first commission for the company. Tedey broadened the
company’s horizon’s with his “widely rejected but self-reflecdve style of work and his
modem bent.”32 However, as director of the company, Tedey felt under a lot of pressure.
His posidon carried a lot of responsibility, and he felt that if he continued to act as
director of the company, he would have to stop choreographing. Tedey also stated, “I
wanted to be me, and with all love and respect for John Cranko, I didn’t want to turn into
Cranko.”33
At a press conference on 26 January 1976 it was announced that Tedey asked to
be relieved of his duties as director of the company at the end of the 1975-1976 season in
order to concentrate on his own choreography. However, Tedey was to continue as a
choreographer for the company. As director of the company, Tedey was criticized for
See Appendix H for a complete list of works performed by the Stuttgart Ballet under Tetley’s direction (1973-1976).
32 Malve Gradinger, “Stuttgart Ballet," in The International Dictionary of Ballet, ed. Martha Bremser, Vol. 2 (Detroit: St. James Press, 1993), 1353.
33 Glen Tetley, interview by author, tape recording of telephone interview, Washington, D.C., 3 October 2001.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 82 neglecting the company’s classics repertory, and for introducing too many modem dance
elements to the company too quickly. This became particularly problematic when he
planned to invite choreographers from Ballet Rambert and London Contemporary Dance
Theatre to stage an English evening of dance on the Stuttgart Ballet. The management of
the company overruled this, and Tetley was told that the next ballet he created should be
» ' » *• 3 * ( at least two acts in length, use nineteenth-century music, and the women should wear \ v classical tutus. Tom Pepys reports that ‘Tetley took the line that he had never yet let
other people tell hin>^^t>^lle(s to make and that he had no intention of starting now.
For the sake of his future he felt that he had to be independent again.”34
Marcia Haydde, prima ballerina of the Stuttgart Ballet, was to succeed Tetley as
director of the company. Hayd€e was popular with everyone in the company, and she
was viewed as a woman of determination and intelligence. Horst Koegler wrote in
Dance Magazine that:
A great relief is felt by the Stuttgart company and its many sympathizers all over the world, with whom Miss Haydde possesses an almost inexhaustible quantity of sympathy and confidence. One of her preeminent decisions will be how to improve upon the company’s scandalously neglected classics repertory. Another will be how to restore the company its genuine open-mindedness, from which Tetley, with his solitary ivory tower decisions, had lured it away to non- communicative isolation.35
In March 1976 Haydde announced some of her plans as director of the company. Tetley
was to return the following season to choreograph The Tempest on the company, and this
was to be premiered at the Schwetzingen Festival. Tetley was director of the Stuttgart
34 Tom Pepys, “Curtain Up!” Dance and Dancers 27, no.4 (April 1976): 12.
35 Horst Koegler, “Marcia Haydde to Replace Tetley as Director of Stuttgart Ballet,” Dance Magazine 50, no. 3 (March 1976): 4.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 83 Ballet when he was commissioned to create The Tempest, and he originally planned to
choreograph the new work for the Stuttgart Ballet By the time Tetley had started to
work on the ballet he had resigned from the company. However, the company told him
they were going to go ahead and do the ballet with another choreographer, the music
Tetley had commissioned by Arne Nordheim, and the design by Nadine Baylis.36 hi
response, Tetley stated:
I was outraged. It was my project. The Schwetzingen Festival and Sudwestdeutsch Rundfunk, who had put up the money for this, came to me and they said, “look when we commission a work like this, we commission the artist, we do not commission an institution. This is your commission. Wherever you go, you can take it with you, and create it for whomever you wish. It was not commissioned for the Stuttgart Ballet.” It was such satisfaction. I had the pleasure of telling them that37
This caused friction between Tetley and the company, and consequently, Tetley went
ahead and created The Tempest for Ballet Rambert. The company premiered the ballet at
the Schwetzingen Festival in 1979. There were also plans for Tetley to create a new
ballet for the Stuttgart Ballet based on Jean Cocteau’s La Machine infemale (1934).
However, Tetley did not create this ballet for the Stuttgart Ballet. American Ballet
Theatre premiered the new ballet, which was titled Sphinx, in 1977. At the end of his
inter-regnum at the Stuttgart Ballet in August 1976, there were bad feelings when Tetley
departed from the company. Tetley did not create any new works for the Stuttgart Ballet,
and the company ceased to perform his ballets.
This chapter has shown that Tetley’s association with the Stuttgart Ballet began
because of his artistic relationship with Cranko. Cranko admired Tetley’s work, and he
36 Tetley, interview by author, 3 October 2001.
37 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 84 asked Tetley to create a new work for the company. Tetley created Voluntaries in
memory of Cranko. As artistic director of the company, Tetley’s choreography began to
change. Tetley began to focus on a more classical vocabulary which may have been
because the dancers were classically trained, they had no modem dance training, and they
jt* * had primarily performed Cranko’s ballets for the past twelve years. However, Tetley
exposed the dancers and audiences to a new movement vocabulary which combined the
classical and modem dance genres. However, much of his work with the company was
not successful because the audiences and management wanted to continue presenting
full-length ballets as Cranko had previously done. As a result, Tetley ended his reign as
artistic director of the company because he was not willing to sacrifice his artistic
creativity and take his choreography in a completely new direction in order to satisfy the
management of the company.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the research in this thesis has shown that Glen Tetley had an
immediate and direct impact with long-term significance on the development of modem
dance in some parts of Europe. Overall, it is true to say that Tetley helped pave the way
for the development of modem dance in the Netherlands, Great Britain, and a portion of
Germany’s ballet audience. However, Tetley or American modem dance did not
influence the resurgence of European-based modem dance in Germany by
choreographers such as Pina Bausch.
Tetley’s eclectic training as a dancer, and diverse career as a performer came to
characterize his choreography. His fusion of classical and modem dance made him a
sought after choreographer in Europe, when the classically trained companies began
experimenting by infusing American modem dance into their repertories. American
dance critic Marcia Marks believes that “probably Tetley’s impact on Europe is due to his
obvious link with ballet, making his work more accessible to people with little or no
experience of modem dance.”1 On the other hand, Tetley’s blend of the two styles was
not received as positively in America.
Marcia Marks, “Glen Tetley Dance Company; New York City Center,” Dance Magazine 43, no.7 (July 1969): 33. 85
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 86 Marks further states:
I missed the intensely personal expression, the marked point of view, the determinedly individual statement one associates with the most simon-pure modem dancers. The choreography seemed bloodless: one was impressed but never moved.2
Dance critic Arlene Croce also did not write positive reviews of Tetley’s work. Writing
in The New Yorker, Croce stated:
Not only are Tetley’s products ubiquitous and interchangeable (they have probably contributed more to the homogenization of style than any other influence on world ballet), not only are they long-winded (Dances o f Albion is stretched overtwo scores by Benjamin Britten), choppily constructed, narrow in range, and arduous in expression, but they are always gloomy.3
Critic Allen Robertson highlights the opposing perception of Tetley’s work between
critics in Europe and America:
Tetley’s tendency toward abstruse intellectualisin, coupled with the openly sexual impetus of his movement vocabulary, has sometimes been derided by American critics who find his stylistically distinct work over mannered; in Europe, however where he is regarded as one of the major innovators of the century, his critical and popular reputation is of the highest order.4
Tetley made his reputation as a choreographer for other companies, rather than
with his own group of dancers. When Tetley began working in Europe in 1962, he was
unable to focus on creating works for his own dancers, and he did not have the time,
energy or resources to establish a permanent group. When working with the Netherlands
Dance Theatre (NDT) and his own group of dancers, he created Mythical Hunters (1965)
2 Ibid.
3 Arlene Croce, Sightlines. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987, 113-114.
4 Allen Robertson, “Glen Tetley,” In The International Encyclopedia o f Dance, ed. Selma Jeanne Cohen, Vol. 5, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998): 147.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 87 and Psalms (1966) for the Batsheva Dance Company in Israel. Critic John Percival
believes that Tetley was a versatile choreographer, and in terms of his career choices, this
had many advantages for him. He could either be based in one place and work solely
with his own company, or he could travel and work with many different dance
companies. John Percival reviewed the Glen Tetley Dance Company when they
performed in Paris in 1969 and he wrote: “If Tetley concentrated on making works
exclusively for this company, I should now be eagerly awaiting their next trip to Europe,
just as I do for creators like Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor.”s Percival also
believed that:
Clearly different choreographers work in different ways: some need familiar surroundings or collaborators and could not go, as he [Tetley] does, from place to place finding new inspiration from the people there. We must be grateful that he has this adaptability, since it enables him to spread more widely the fruits of an exceptionally keen and lively intelligence and imagination.6
Tetley was more comfortable creating works, rather than directing a company.
He was co-director of NDT with Hans Van Manen (1969-1971), but after two years, both
Tetley and Van Manen resigned from the position due to artistic disagreements with the
company’s management. Tetley also resigned from his position as director of the
Stuttgart Ballet in 1976 because he felt that if he were to continue as director of the
company, he would have to stop choreographing. There were also disagreements with
the company’s management over the type of ballets that Tetley was choreographing.
This illustrates that at NDT and the Stuttgart Ballet, Tetley placed more importance on
5 John Percival, “Glen Tetley Dance Company in Paris,” Dance and Dancers 20, no. 12 (September 1969): 22.
6 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 88 his creative work, than on the administration of the company. He was not prepared to
make artistic sacrifices to his creative work in order to satisfy the management of the
company. Tetley did not want his creative process to be dictated by anyone. In Stuttgart
there was a conflict of aesthetics between Tetley and the administration. Tetley was
creating contemporary ballets, whereas the administration was more interested in
presenting opera-house ballet. However, after Tetley had resigned from managerial
positions with NDT and the Stuttgart Ballet, the management of both companies wanted
him to continue creating works for their respective companies. This suggests that the
management of the companies admired Tetley’s artistic work, but with Tetley in a
managerial position, they did not want to limit the repertory to modem dance programs.
This thesis has shown that Tetley made a significant contribution to the
development of NDT, Rambert Dance Company, and the Stuttgart Ballet. His most
important work with these companies was when they were undergoing a transition
period. NDT was a young company that was established in protest against the
Netherlands National Ballet and wanted to experiment with modem dance. Rambert
Dance Company had undergone a change in policy, and was introducing modem dance to
the repertory. The Stuttgart Ballet had recently lost their long time director John Cranko,
and was looking for guidance and a new mentor. In his work with these companies,
Tetley helped to mold each company in terms of both policy and repertory. He was
responsible for introducing modem dance to these classically trained companies which
had little experience and exposure to modem dance. His works for them “revealed new
approaches to and initiated new ways of thinking about choreography. In breaking down
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 89 barriers, opening up attitudes to movement, music, and design. Tetley has contributed to
new choreographic consciousness.”7
Tetley’s work shaped the repertory and direction of NDT, Rambert Dance
Company, and the Stuttgart Ballet. However, once each company had established its own
identity, Tetley’s work was no longer in demand. From within each company,
choreographers and directors were being produced. In 1971, NDT dancer and
choreographer Jaap Flier became artistic director of the company. Jaap Flier states that
Tetley’s work with the company influenced his philosophy as a choreographer:
. . . he [Tetley] gave a whole different approach not only as a choreographer, but also as a dancer. I feel very close to him, and so much of what I got from him has been used in many of my works. I can see this even in Nouvelles aventures and suddenly I will say to myself “I know where that came from.” I don’t find it terrible to recognise that.8
At the Stuttgart Ballet, Tetley guided the company until the company’s ballerina
Marica Haydee took over his position as director of the company. This new appointment
appealed to the company because Haydee was popular with the dancers, management,
and audiences of the company. She would also lead them in the direction that they were
interested in following. They wanted to preserve the works of John Cranko, and
concentrate on a more classical vocabulary than Tetley utilized. Since 1976, Haydee has
successfully managed the company. In 1991, her long time dance partner Richard
Cragun described her as “the heart of the company.”9 She encouraged new dancing talent
7 Angela Kane, “Glen Tetley,” in The International Dictionary o f Ballet, ed. Martha Bremser, Vol. 2 (Detroit: St. James Press, 1993): 1413.
8 anon. “Riding high in the Lowlands,” Dance and Dancers 22, no.l (January 1971): 19.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 90 from the John Cranko Ballet School, and she promoted choreographic promise. Dance
historian Malve Gradinger noted that in her role as ballet director, Haydee:
. . . brings from her South American home asenseof family, community, loyalty to her colleagues, and understanding. She will surely rank alongside the English pioneers Marie Rambert nad Ninette de Valois, the Swede Birgit Cullberg, the Cuban Alicia Alonso, and the Germans Yvonne Georgi and Tatiana Gsovsky as an outstanding female ballet director and promoter of young choreographers.10
At Rambert Dance Company, Tetley’s works created an image that identified the
company as a predominantly modem dance company. However, between 1973 and
1978, Tetley did not create any new works for the company. This may be because during
this time his work was focused on the Stuttgart Ballet, and furthermore, modem dance
became firmly established in Great Britain in the 1970s. At this time, the first generation
of Britain’s modem dance choreographers began to emerge—Richard Alston,
Christopher Bruce, Siobhan Davies, and Robert North. British modem dance became
established, and Tetley’s work was no longer in such great demand as it previously had
been. Tetley encouraged Rambert dancer Christopher Bruce in his first choreographic
experiments, and since 1994, Bruce has been director of the company. The direct impact
and success of Tetley’s work during his career with Rambert can be seen in the circular
development of the company. Presently, after a period of financial and directorial
problems, the company has returned to many of the ideas that were instigated in the
1960s—a return to an emphasis on the classical and Graham styles, and the restaging of
Tetley’s Pierrot Lunaire and Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain.
9 Malve Gradinger, “Marcia Haydee,” in The International Dictionary of Ballet, ed. Martha Bremser, Vol. I, (Detroit: St. James Press, 1993), 648.
10 Ibid.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 91 Through an analysis of Tetley’s work, it is possible to identify three distinct
phases of his career. The three phases overlap slightly which illustrates that the
transitions in Tetley’s ideas and interests as a choreographer developed gradually. The
first phase is Tetley’s career as a performer and the choreography for his own group of
dancers in America from 1944 to 1969. The second phase is Tetley’s work as a
choreographer in Europe from 1962 until 1983. Within the second phase, there are two
trends in Tetley’s choreography. First, Tetley was interested in introducing new ideas
about the relationship of movement, music, and design to modem dance companies.
Second, he showed an interest in introducing these new ideas to classical ballet
companies. In 1970, he choreographedField Figures for the Royal Ballet, and this was
the first purely classical company that he worked with. Following that he began to work
with more classically trained companies, and from 197S onwards the majority of
companies he worked with were classical companies."
The third phase of Tetley’s career began in 1977. Previously, Tetley’s works had
either been abstract or followed a narrative. From 1977, his works now began to favor a
narrative content based upon pre-existing texts.Sphinx (1977) was based on Jean
Cocteau’s play La Machine Infemale (1934), and followed the narrative of the play
closely. Tetley’s Alice (1986) was based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland , and
the work addressed the relationship of the author and Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the girl
who inspired the story. La Ronde (1987) was based on Vienese writer Arthur
Schnitzler’s play about sexual relationships. Tetley was attracted to the play because of
11 See Appendix I for a complete list of companies for which Tetley has worked.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 92 its formal structure that he believes is very much like a ballet.12 He followed the structure
of the play following each of the ten couplings, and therefore, he choreographed the
ballet as a series of ten pas de deux. The ten characters represent a cross-section of
Viennese society who:
. . . engage in a linked cycle of self-serving, hypocritical sexual encounters. Behind the forced protestations of affectionate devotion there is a pitiful emotional void, circumscribed by the rigid social conventions of fin-de-siecle Austria.13
During the third phase of his career, Tetley concentrated his work predominantly
in North America. This may be because Tetley’s new choreographic interests appealed to
the companies in North America, and not to the European companies. As previously
stated, the European companies had established their own identity, and were nurturing
talent within the company. In the third phase of his career, Tetley was particularly
associated with the National Ballet of Canada (NBC). In 1983, at the invitation of its
then director Alexander Grant, Tetley stagedSphinx on the company. Due to the success
of Sphinx, Tetley created Alice for the company. This ballet was critically acclaimed in
North America, and therefore, Erik Bruhn, the company’s artistic director, was planning
another Tetley commission for the company. Bruhn died in 1986, but Tetley continued to
work with NBC, and he created La Ronde. Tetley was appointed artistic associate of
NBC in 1987, and he stayed with the company until 1989.
Glen Tetley, interview by author, 3 October 2001, Washington, DC. Tape recording of telephone interview.
13 Michael Crabb, “Reviews: Toronto,” Dance Magazine 62, no.3 (March 1988): 29.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 93 The associate artistic directors, Valerie Wilder and Lynn Wallis, stated that:
Glen’s appointment came about because of the close working relationship he established with us when he mounted Sphinx for the company in 1984 The success of Alice last year convinced us that Glen could inspire both us and the dancers We were not looking for an artistic associate, but Glen became one of the family, much like Erik Bruhn had been Valerie and I invited Glen to join us because he believes in this company. The dancers are very positive about the association.14
Tetley wanted to work with the company because he had total freedom to work with the
dancers. With the company Tetley was given time to create in isolation, unlike some of
the other companies with which he had previously worked. The dancers and the
commitment they gave to his work also inspired him. As artistic associate of the
company, Tetley had many ideas in which direction he wanted the company to go:
I’m anxious that the National Ballet be a truly creative company not just a successful box-office company. It must be able to afford to take risks and I’d like to see the repertoire enlarged with more experimental works I don’t want the National Ballet to be the best company in Canada. I want it to be the best company in the world.15
As he had done with NDT, Rambert Dance Company, and the Stuttgart Ballet in
Europe, Tedey led NBC through a transition period. He revitalized the company, and he
helped earn the company a new level of artistic credibility on the intemadonal dance
scene. When the company performedAlice in London in 1986, critic Lina Fattah stated:
The ballet has been of tremendous benefit to the company—and not just in terms of box office! Tedey has awakened sleeping talents in the dancers. Dancing child
Paula Citron, ‘Tetley Joins Canada’s National Ballet,” Dance Magazine 61, no.4 (April 1987): 18.
15 Michael Crabb, ‘Tetley makes La Ronde Go ‘Round.” Dance Magazine (July 1988): 40.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 94 Alice will mark a turning point in [Kimberly] Glasco’s career, always a lovely mover, she is finally learning to be expressive as well.16
In 1986 Alice also won the company a return invitation to New York’s Metropolitan
Opera House where it had not performed since the 1970s, and the company returned to
the Opera House in 1988 withLa Ronde. After the premiere ofLa Ronde, critic Michael
Crabb stated ‘Together Glen Tetley and the National Ballet of Canada are on a roll,
producing some of the most artistically vital and exciting periods in the company’s recent
history.”17
Tetley has not choreographed a new work since 1999 when he created Lux in
Tenebris for the Houston Ballet, and in the past decade he has only choreographed four
ballets. However, there has been a recent resurgence of interest in Tetley’s work, and
dance companies have been performing his early ballets. In June 2001, Rambert Dance
Company performedPierrot Lunaire as part of the company’s seventy-fifth Anniversary
Celebration in June 2001. As part of the second program, Pierrot Lunaire was performed
alongside British choreographer Wayne McGregor’s detritus (2001), former Rambert
director Richard Alston’s Unrest, and Siobhan Davies’ Sounding (1989). Pierrot
Lunaire, the historical landmark of the program, was the most critically acclaimed work
in an evening of works dominated by three British choreographers. British critic Ismene
Lina Fattah, “A Delicious Madness: Glen Tetley’s Alice for the National Ballet of Canada,” Dance and Dancers , no.437 (May 1986): 21.
17 Crabb, “Reviews: Toronto,” 34.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 95 Brown wrote that Tetley’s milestone dance “was given an uncommon performance that
blasted itself into the mind.”18
Alongside the superb London Musici, Linda Hirst was magnetising, her voluptuous voice baiting Martin Lindinger's Pierrot with his desires to leave his childish climbing frame. Lindinger, tail and gangly, was a touching Pierrot, adolescent, raw and eager for life. His initiation by the scorching Deirdre Chapman as Columbine and Branden Faulls's enigmatic bruiser of a Brighella made you want to cheer and hide your eyes at the same time.19
Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) recently restaged Tetley’s Sphinx, which was
originally choreographed in 1977 for American Ballet Theatre. The company performed
the ballet for the first time at City Center, New York in September 2001. Critic Anna
Kisselgoff wrote in the New York Times that the ballet “... is downright splendid. With a
fantastic set (huge wings flanking a platform), a turbulent score and its distilled drama,
the work has grown in theatrical impact.”20 A ballet for three dancers, it was performed
by DTH dancers Caroline Rocher (Sphinx), Ramon Thielen (Anubis), and Duncan
Cooper (Oedipus). Tetley’s sphinx assumes human form, and she is tired of passing
judgment on the men who fail to guess her riddle. She wants love, and normally kills the
travelers who cannot solve the riddle she asks, but she sacrifices her power for Oedipus's
heart. Anubis tries to stop her, but it is too late, and the Sphinx expires on her throne.
When DTH performed the work at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in
Washington, D.C., critic Sarah Kaufman wrote in the Washington Post.
18 Ismene Brown, “Moonstruck Pierrot sees off young pretenders,” Daily Telegraph (London), June 22 2001,27.
19 Ibid.
20 Anna Kisselfgoff, “Now That’s a Riddle: A Dancing Sphinx,”New York Times, October 4,2001,22.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 96 Tetley's tendency to overdo the melodrama is nicely checked; his ballet is tight and clear. Mostly, it was handsomely served by the dancers, particularly Rocher, the company's leading stylist. Her Sphinx had a prowling, catlike quality; this was clearly a woman of purpose, and you knew it from her first slow, predatory steps and the light in her eyes.21
Through the analysis of Tetley’s work, and the recent restaging of two of his
ballets, many questions arise: Why is there a sudden resurgence of interest in Tetley’s
work? Why are his ballets being restaged? Of his 68 ballets, why were Pierrot Lunaire
and Sphinx restaged? Is there a lack of good, new ballet choreography? Does Tetley’s
work still present a challenge to dancers? Are dance company’s using Tetley’s name as a
safe way of bringing in audiences? Presently, of what value is Tetley’s work to NDT,
Rambert Dance Company, and the Stuttgart Ballet? What makes his work of interest to
present dance audiences? Is his work looked at differently today than it was twenty to
thirty years ago? Is there still a different perception of his work in Europe than in
America? Are there going to be any more restagings of his work? Will he create any new
ballets? Which companies will he choose to work with in the future? What steps are
being taken to ensure the preservation of Tetley’s ballets? How will Tetley’s
choreographic legacy survive beyond his lifetime?
In conclusion, it has been illustrated that Tetley was responsible for leading each
company through a transition period in terms of policy and repertory. Tetley led the three
companies in a new direction, and through his work he helped to establish their new
identity. When his work with these companies was no longer in demand, choreographers
and leaders from within the each company had developed and they had the knowledge to
21 Sarah Kaufman, “With Part 2, Harlem Gets Down and Deep,” Washington Post, December 17 2001, C5.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 97 ensure the future creativity of their respective company. Tetley helped pave the way for
the development of modem dance in each of the three companies, and once his work was
no longer in demand, he returned to America where he has concentrated the latter part of
his career. He led NBC through a similar transition period as he did with the three
companies addressed in this thesis. The recent resurgence of interest in Tetley’s work
provokes many interesting questions as to the value and importance of his work in the
twenty-first century.
It is the hope of the author that this thesis will be of value to those interested in
the work of Glen Tetley. This thesis is an important documentation of Tetley’s role in
the history of the development of modem dance in Europe, and the research for this thesis
will be vital to scholars wishing to pursue further research on Tetley’s career as a
choreographer. This thesis is also important when studying the overall evolution of
dance during the twentieth-century. It addresses the development of ballet and modem
dance in both Europe and America. It also reflects cultural history in both continents,
and the influences behind the changing trends and techniques in dance.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX A
ROLES DANCED BY GLEN TETLEY
1946 A Sailor in On the Town (musical; mus. Bernstein, chor. Robbins), Aldelphi Theatre, New York Dancer (cr) in Walt Whitman Suite, Windows (chor. Holm), Hanya Holm Company, Colorado Springs, Colorado 1947 Barber (cr) in The Great Campaign (musical; chor. Sokolow), Princess Theatre, New York Dancer (cr) in The Insect Comedy (Holm), Hanya Holm Company, Colorado Springs, Colorado 1948 Xochi PiLi (cr) in Ozark Suite (Holm), Hanya Holm Company, Colorado Springs, Colorado Harlequin (cr) in Kiss Me Kate (musical; mus. Cole Porter, chor. Holm), Century Theater, New York 1949 Principal dancer (cr) inBaroque Concerto (Holm), Pauline Koner Company Principal dancer inAtavisms (Weidman), Charles Weidman Company, New York 1950 Adonis (cr) in Out of this World (musical; mus. Porter, chor. Holm), Century Theater, New York 1951 Dancer in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (musical; mus. Styne, Robbin, chor. de Mille), Ziegfield Theater, New York Dancer in (cr) Amahal and the Night Visitors (opera; mus. Menotti), New York City Opera, U.S. television (NBC) 1952 Principal dancer (cr) in Rites (Lang), Pearl Lang Company, New York Principal dancer (cr) inAnd Joy Is My Witness (Lang), Pearl Lang Company, New York 1953 Principal dancer (cr) in Malocchio (Butler), John Butler Dance Company, New York Principal dancer (cr) inMasque o f the Wild Man (Butler), John Butler Dance Company, New York Principal dancer (cr) in Three Promenades with the Lord (Butler), John Butler Dance Company, New York 1954 Principal dancer (cr) in Brass World (Butler), John Butler Dance Company, New York Principal dancer in Long-Legged Jig (Butler), John Butler Dance Company, New York Principal dancer in Triad (Butler), John Butler Dance Company, New York
98
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 99 1956 Principal dancer in Pas des Deesses (Joffrey), Robert Joffrey Ballet, New York 1957 Principal dancer in Passacaglia (Humphrey), Doris Humphrey Company, New London, Connecticut 1958 Iago in The Moor's Pavane (Lim6n), Jos6 Limon Company, New York The Stranger in Embattled Garden (Graham), Martha Graham Dance Company Apollo (cr) in Clytymnestra (Graham), Martha Graham Company, New York 1959 Slip-Jig in Juno (musical; mus. Blitzstein, chor. de Mille), Zeigfeld Theater, New York Principal dancer (cr) in Carmina Burana (opera; mus. Orff, chor. Butler), New York City Opera, New York Principal dancer in Serenade fo r Seven Dancers (H. Ross), Spoleto Festival, Charleston, South Carolina Principal dancer (cr) in The Sybil (Butler), Spoleto Festival, Charleston, South Carolina 1960 The Friend in Pillar of Fire (Tudor), American Ballet Theatre, New York The Lover inJardin aux Lilas (Tudor), American Ballet Theatre, New York Jean in Miss Julie (Cullberg), American Ballet Theatre, New York Title role in Bluebeard (Fokine), American Ballet Theatre, New York Wangel in Lady from the Sea (Cullberg), American Ballet Theatre, New York The Sailor in Lady from the Sea (Cullberg), American Ballet Theatre, New York Alias in Billy the Kid (Loring), American Ballet Theatre, New York 1961 Principal dancer in Afternoon o f a Faun (Robbins), Ballets: USA, European tour Husband in The Concert (Robbins), Ballets: USA, European tour The Intruder in The Cage (Robbins), Ballets: USA, European tour Principal dancer (cr) in Events (Robbins), Ballets: USA, Spoleto Festival, Italy Pas de Deux inMoves (Robbins), Ballets: USA, European tour 1962 Title role (cr) in Pierrot Lunaire (also chor.), Glen Tetley and Dancers, New York
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX B
A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS CHOREOGRAPHED BY GLEN TETLEY 1946-1999
1946 Richard Cory (text Edward Arlington) 1948 The Canary (mus. Alban Berg) Triptych (mus. Joseph Wilson), Humphrey-Wiedman Studio Theater, New York 1951 Daylight’s Dauphin (mus. Claude Debussy), Brooklyn Conceit High School Series, Brooklyn, New York Hootin’ Blues (mus. Sonny Reilly), Brooklyn High School Concert Series, Brooklyn, New York Western Wall (mus. Maurice Ravel), Brooklyn High School Concert Series, Brooklyn, New York 1959 Mountain Way Chant (mus. Carlos Chavez), Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, New York 1961 Ballet Ballads: The Eccentrics of Davy Crockett (mus. David Moss), East 74lh Street Theatre, New York 1962 Birds of Sorrow (mus. Peter Hartman), Glen Tetley Dance Company, New York Gleams in the Bone House (mus. Harold Shapero), Glen Tetley Dance Company, New York How Many Miles to Babylon? (mus. Carlos Surinach), Glen Tetley Dance Company, New York Pierrot Lunaire (mus. Arnold Schoenberg), Glen Tedey Dance Company, New York 1963 Harpsichord Concerto (mus. Manuel de Falla), Glen Tedey Dance Company, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Lee, Massachusetts 1964 The Anatomy Lesson (mus. Marcel Landowski), Netherlands Dance Theatre, The Hague Sargasso (mus. Emst Kneck), Netherlands Dance Theatre, The Hague 1965 Fieldmass (mus. Bohuslav Martinu), Netherlands Dance Theatre, Amsterdam The Game o f Noah (mus. Igor Stravinsky), Netherlands Dance Theatre, The Hague Mythical Hunters (mus. Oedon Partos), Batsheva Dance Company, Tel-Aviv 1966 Chonochromie (mus. Olivier Messiaen), Glen Tedey Dance Company, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Lee, Massachusetts Lovers (Ned Rorem), Glen Tedey Dance Company, New York Psalms (mus. Partos-Tehilim), Batsheva Dance Company, Tel-Aviv
100
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 101 Ricercare (mus. Mordecai Seter), American Ballet Theatre, New Yodc 1967 Dithyramb (mus. Hans Wemer Henze), Glen Tetley Dance Company, New York Freefall (Max Schubel), Repertory Dance Theatre, University of Utah, Salt Lake City The Seven Deadly Sins (mus. Kurt Weill), Glen Tetley Dance Company, Vancouver Ziggurat (mus. Karlheinz Stockhausen), Rambert Dance Company, London 1968 Circles (mus. Luciano Berio), Netherlands Dance Theatre, The Hague Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain (mus. Morton Subotnick), Rambert Dance Company, London 1969 Arena (mus. Morton Subotnick), Netherlands Dance Theatre, The Hague 1970 Field Figures (Karlheinz Stockhausen), Royal Ballet, Nottingham Imaginary Film (mus. Arnold Schoenberg), Netherlands Dance Theatre, Scheveningen Mutations (mus. Karlheinz Stockhausen), Netherlands Dance Theatre, Scheveningen 1971 Rag Dances (mus. Antony Hymas), Rambert Dance Company, London 1972 Laborintus (mus. Luciano Berio), Royal Ballet, London Small Parades (mus. Edgard VarSse), Netherlands Dance Theatre, The Hague Strophe-Antistrophe (mus. Sylvano Bussotti), Batsheva Dance Company, Tel- Aviv Threshold (mus. Alban Berg), Hamburg State Opera Ballet, Hamburg 1973 Gemini (mus. Hans Wemer Henze), Australian Ballet, Sydney Moveable Garden (mus. Lukas Foss), Tanz Forum, Cologne Rite of Spring (mus. Igor Stravinsky), Bavarian State Opera Ballet, Munich Stationary Flying (mus. George Crumb), Utah Repertory Dance Theater, University of Utah, Salt Lake City Voluntaries (mus. Francis Poulenc), Stuttgart Ballet, Stuttgart 1975 Alegrias (mus. Carlos Chavez), Stuttgart Ballet, Stuttgart Daphnis and Chloe (mus. Maurice Ravel), Stuttgart Ballet, Stuttgart Greening (Ame Nordheim), Stuttgart Ballet, Stuttgart Strender (mus. Ame Nordheim), Norwegian National Ballet, Oslo Tristan (mus. Hans Wemer Henze), Paris Opera Ballet, Paris 1977 Poeme Nocturne (mus. Alexander Scriabin), Spoleto Fetival, Charleston, South Carolina Sphinx (mus. Bohuslav Martinu), American Ballet Theatre, Washington, D.C. 1978 Praeludium (mus. Anton Webern), Rambert Dance Company, Manchester 1979 Contredances (mus. Anton Webern), American Ballet Theatre, New York The Tempest (mus. Ame Nordheim), Rambert Dance Company, Schwetzingen 1980 Dances of Albion (mus. Benjamin Britten), Royal Ballet, London Summer’s End (mus. Henri Dutilleux), Netherlands Dance Theatre, The Hague 1981 The Firebird (mus. Igor Stravinsky), Royal Danish Ballet, Copenhagen 1983 Murderer Hope o f Women (mus. Oskar Kokoschka (text) and Andrew Tyrrell), Rambert Dance Company, Edinburgh
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 102 Odalisque (mus. Erik Satie), National Ballet School Gala, Toronto 1984 Pulcinella (mus. Igor Stravinsky), English National Ballet, London Revelation and Fall (mus. Peter Maxwell Davies), Australian Dance Theatre, Adelaide 1985 Dream Walk of the Shaman (mus. Ernst Kienek), Aterballetto, Reggio Emilia, Italy 1986 Alice (mus. David del Tredici), National Ballet of Canada, Toronto 1987 Orpheus (mus. Igor Stravinsky), Australian Ballet, Melbourne La Ronde (mus. Erich Komgold), National Ballet of Canada, Toronto 1989 Tagore (mus. Alexander Zemlinsky), National Ballet of Canada, Toronto 1991 Dialogues (with Scott Douglas, mus. Ginastera), /Dance Theatre of Harlem, Washington, D.C. 1994 Oracle (mus. Carl Vine), National Ballet of Canada, Toronto 1997 Amores (mus. Michael Torke), Royal Ballet, London 1999 Lux in Tenebris (mus. Sofia Gubaidulina), Houston Ballet, Houston
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 103
APPENDIX C
A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS CHOREOGRAPHED BY BENJAMIN HARKARVY FOR NETHERLANDS DANCE THEATRE 1959-1968
1959 Septet (mus. Camille Saint-Saens), Amsterdam 1960 Primerva (mus. Domenico Cimarosa), The Hague 1961 Sol y Sombra (mus. Maurice Ohana), The Hague Blues (mus. Aaron Copland), The Hague 1962 Ballade (mus. Gabriel Faure), The Hague 1963 Madrigalesco (mus. Antonio Vivaldi), The Hague Grand Pas espagnol (mus. Moritz Moszkowski), The Hague 1964 Recitalfor Cello and Three Dancers (mus. Johann Sebastian Bach), The Hague Kwartet (mus. Lex Van Delden), The Hague 1965 Partita (mus. Johann Sebastian Bach), The Hague 1966 I Gelosi (mus. Igor Stravinsky), The Hague 1967 Visage (mus. Luciano Berio), The Hague Le Diable a Quatre (mus. Adolphe Adam), The Hague 1968 Double Duet (mus. Bela Bartok), The Hague Aswingto (mus. Paul Hindemith; 1969 version mus. Gaetano Donizetti)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 104
APPENDIX D
WORKS CHOREOGRPAHED BY GLEN TETLEY IN NETHERLANDS DANCE THEATRE’S REPERTORY
* Denotes a ballet created for Netherlands Dance Theatre
First performance indicates when the work was first performed to a paying audience, not when it was created.
Pierrot Luniare (1962)
Music-Amold Schoenberg Design-Rouben Ter-Arutunian
Date of First Performance-10/23/1962
Birds of Sorrow (1962)
Music-Peter Hartman Design-Willa Kim
Date of First Performance-5/25/1963
The Anatomy Lesson* (1964)
Music-Marcel Landowsky Design-Nicolaas Wijnberg
Date of First Performance-1/28/1964
Sargasso* (1964)
Music-Emst Krenek Design-Rouben Ter-Arutunian Lighting-Jean Rosenthal
Date of First Performance-7/7/1964
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Fleldmass* (1965)
Music- Bohuslav Martini
Date of First Performance-6/22/1965
The CSamc of Noah* (1965)
Music- Igor Stravinsky Design-Willa Kim
Date of First Performance-6/29/1965
Mythical Hunters (1965)
Music-Oedon Partos
Date of First Performance-1/10/1968
Ricercarel 19661
Music-Mordecai Seter Design-Nadine Baylis Lighting by Jean Rosenthal
Date of First Performance-3/17/1970
Circles* (1968)
Music-Luciano Berio Design-Nadine Baylis
Date of First Performance-3/5/1968
Fmhrace Tiger andReturn to Mountain (1968)
Music-Morton Subotnick Design-Nadine Baylis Lighting-John B. Read Date of First Performance-12/1/1969
105
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Music-Morton Subotnick Design-Frans Molenaar
Date of First Performance-2/4/1969
Imaginary Film* (1970)
Music-Amold Schoenberg Design-Nadine Baylis
First Performance-5/5/1970
Mutations* (1970)
Choreographed in collaboration with Hans van Manen Music-Karlheinz Stockhausen Design-Jean-Paul Vroom
Date of First Perfonnance-7/3/1970
Small Parades* (1972)
Music-Edgard Varese Design-Nadine Baylis Lighting-John B. Read
First Perfonnance-3/13/1972
Threshold (19721
Music-Alban Berg Design-Joop Stokvis
Date of First Performance-7/2/1973
Summer’s End* (1980)
Music-Henry Dutilleux Design-John McFarlane
Date of First Performance-3/13/1980
106
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Revelation and Fall (1984)
Music-Peter Maxwell Davies Design-Michael Pearce
Date of First Performance-5/29/1986
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 108
APPENDIX E
WORKS CHOREOGRAPHED BY GLEN TETLEY IN RAMBERT DANCE COMPANY’S REPERTORY
* Denotes a ballet created for Rambert Dance Company
First performance indicates when the work was first performed to a paying audience, not when it was created.
Pierrot Lunaire (1962)
Music-Amold Schoenberg Design-Rouben Ter-Arutunian Lighting-John B. Read
First Performance-1/26/1967 Last Year-2001
Ricercare (1966)
Music-Mordecai Seter Design-Rouben Ter-Aruntian Lighting-Caswell/Brill/Read
First Performance-2/24/1967 Last Year-1986
FreefaU (1967)
Music-Max Schubel Design-Glen Tetley (197S re-designed by Nadine Baylis) Lighting-John B. Read
First Performance-11/13/1967 Last Year-1975
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Zieeurat* (1967)
Music-Karlheinz Stockhausen Design-Nadine Bayhs Lighting-John B. Read
First Performance-11/20/1967 Last Year-1980
Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain* (1968)
Music-Morton Subotnick Design-Nadine Baylis Lighting-John B. Read
First Performance-11/21/1968 Last Year-2000
Rag Dances* (1971)
Music-Antony Hymas and music commissioned by Rambert Dance Company Design-Nadine Baylis Lighting-John B. Read
First Performance-9/16/1971 Last Year-1980
Moveable Garden (1973)
Music-Lukas Foss Design-Nadine Baylis Lighting-John B. Read
First Performance-5/10/1976 Last Year-1977
Praeladlum* (1978)
Music-Anton Webem Design-Nadine Baylis Lighting-John B. Read
First Performance-1/31/1978 Last Year-1979
109
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Tempest* (1979)
Music-Ame Nordheim Design-Nadine Baylis Lighting-John B. Read
First Performance-5/3/1979 Last Year-1980
Murderer Hone of Women* (1983)
Music-Oskar Kokoschka (text) and Andrew Tyrrell Design-Nadine Baylis Lighting-John B. Read
First Performance-8/29/1983 Last Year-1984
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ill
APPENDIX F
BALLETS CHOREOGRAPHED BY JOHN CRANKO FOR THE STUTTGART BALLET 1961-1973
1961 Divertimento (mus. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) Familienalbum (mus. William Walton) Intermezzo (mus. George Shearing, Lee) The Catalyst (mus. Dmitri Shostakovich) 1962 Scenes de Ballet (mus. Igor Stravinsky) The Seasons (mus. Alexander Glazunov) Daphnis and Chloe (mus. Maurice Ravel) Romeo and Juliet (new version; mus. Sergei Prokofiev) 1963 L ’Estro armonico (mus. Antonio Vivaldi) Die Reise nach Jerusalem (mus. Gerhard Stolze) Variations (mus. Gerhard Trede) 1964 La Source (mus. Leo Delibes) Hommage a Bolschoi (mus. Alexander Glazunov) 1965 Bouquet Garni (mus. Rossini, Benjamin Britten) Jeu de Cartes (mus. Igor Stravinsky) Onegin (mus. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Gerhard Stolze) Raymonda (mus. Alexander Glazunov) Jeux de vagues (mus. Claude Debussy) Dances in Carmina burana (mus. Carl Orff) Opus 1(mus. Anton Webern) 1966 Concerto for Flute and Harp (also known as Mozart Concerto ; mus. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) Pas de Quatre (mus. Mikhail Glinka) The Nutcracker (mus. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky) 1967 The Interrogation (mus. Zimmerman) Oiseaxtx Exotiques (mus. Olivier Messiaen) Quatre Images (mus. Maurice Ravel) Onegin (revised version; mus. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, arranged Gerhard Stolze) Holberg Suite (mus. Edvard Grieg) 1968 Fragmente (mus. Hans Wemer Henze) Presence (mus. Zimmerman) Kyrie Elesion (mus. Johann Sebastian Bach, Gerhard Stolze) Salade (mus. Darius Milhaud)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1969 The Taming o f the Shrew (mus. Gerhard Stolze after Scarlatti) 1970 Brouillards (mus. Claude Debussy) Poeme de I ’extase (mus. Alexander Scriabin, Wolfgang Fortner) Orpheus (mus. Igor Stravinsky) Com, coudes, corps, coeurs (new version; mus. Igor Stravinsky) Ballade (mus. Gabriel Faure) 1971 Carmen (mus. Wolfgang Fortner, George Steinbrenner) 1972 Initials R.B.M.E. (mus. Johannes Brahms) Legende (mus. Henri Wieniawsky) -1+6 (mus. Joseph Haydn) Ariel (mus. Emmanuel Chabrier) 1973 Green (mus. Claude Debussy) Traces (mus. Gustav Mahler)
Also staged:
1962 Coppelia (after Marius Petipa, Enrico Cecchetti; mus. Leo Delibes) 1963 Swan Lake (after Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov; mus. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky) (restaged and revised 1970; 1972)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 113
APPENDIX G
WORKS CHOREOGRAPHED BY GLEN TETLEY IN THE STUTTGART BALLET’S REPERTORY
* Denotes a ballet created for Stuttgart Ballet
First performance indicates when the work was first performed to a paying audience, not when it was created.
Arena (1969)
Music-Morton Subotnick Design-Frans Molenaar
Date of First Performance-12/22/1973
Voluntaries* (1973)
Music-Francis Poulenc’s Design-Rouben Ter-Artunian
Date of First Performance-12/22/1973
Gemini 09731
Music- Hans Wemer Henze Design- Nadine Baylis Lighting-John B. Read
Date of First Performance-1974
Laborintus (1972)
Music- Luciano Berio Design- Nadine Baylis
Date of First Performance-1975
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Danhnis and ChloS* (1975)
Music- Maurice Ravel Design-Willa Kim
Date of First Performance-5/17/1975
Greening* (1975)
Music-Ame Nordheim Design-Nadine Baylis
Date of First Performance-11/29/1975
Pierrot Lunaire (1962)
Music-Amold Schoenberg Design- Rouben Ter-Arutunian Lighting-John B. Read
Date of First Performance-1975
Aleerias*(1975)
Music- Carlos Chavez Design-Nadine Baylis
Date of First Performance-1975
Le Sacre du Printemps (1973)
Music- Igor Stravinsky Design- Nadine Baylis Lighting-John B. Read
Date of First Performance-1976
114
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 115
APPENDIX H
WORKS PERFOMRED BY THE STUTTGART BALLET 1973-1976
1973
L ’Estro Armonico (John Cranko) Green (John Cranko) Spuren (John Cranko) Crescendo (Dieter Ammann) Les Patineurs (Frederic Ashton) Concerto (Kenneth MacMillan) Arena (Glen Tetley) Voluntaries (Glen Tetley)
1974
DieBefragung (John Cranko) BlaueHaut (JuriKylian) Ritual Album (Elton Berg) Pineapple Poll (John Cranko) LesNoces (Bronislava Nijinska) Gemini (Glen Tetley) The Lady and the Fool (John Cranko) Riickkehr ins fremde Land (Juri Kylian) Nacht (John Neumeier)
1925
Mythical Hunters (Glen Tetley) Laborintus (Glen Tetley) Lied von derErde (Kenneth MacMillan) Intermezzo (Elliot Feld) Riickkehr ins fremde Land (Juri KyliAn) Daphnis und Chloe (Glen Tetley) Greening (Glen Tetley) Pierrot Lunaire (Glen Tetley) Alegrias (Glen Tetley)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Sinfonie in C (George Balanchine) Anastasia (Kenneth MacMillan) Le Sacre du Printemps (Glen Tetley) Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Maurice Bejart) Salade (John Cranko) Pas de Deux (Alexander Ursuliak) Pavane (Kenneth MacMillan) Nuages (JuriKylian) La Valse (George Balanchine) Der Fall Hamlet (John Neumeier) Requiem (Kenneth MacMillan)
116
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 117
APPENDIX I
DANCE COMPANIES WITH WHICH GLEN TETELY HAS WORKED
1960-1969 Director of Glen Tetley Dance Company 1960-1970 Co-director Netherlands Dance Theatre, The Netherlands 1960-1971 Director Stuttgart Ballet, Germany 1960-1972 Choreographer and Artistic Associate for National Ballet of Canada
ACTED AS GUEST CHOREOGRAPHER FOR:
Aterballeto Australian Ballet Austrian Dance Theatre American Ballet Theatre Batsheva Dance Company Bavarian State Opera Ballet Dance Theatre of Harlem Deutsche Oper Am Rhein English National Ballet Hamburg Ballet National Ballet of Canada Netherlands Dance Theatre The Houston Ballet The Norwegian National Ballet Rambert Dance Company Royal Ballet Royal Danish Ballet Royal Swedish Ballet Stuttgart Ballet
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 118
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dale, Margaret and Peter Williams. “A Lesson in Anatomy.” Dance and Dancers 19, no.6 (June 1968): 15-19.
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Goodwin, Noel. “Character Comedy: Glen Tetley’s New Pulcinella for London Festival Ballet.” Dance and Dancers, no.416 (August 1984): 14-15.
. “Britten and the Ballet: Some recently staged ballets with music by Benjamin Britten.” Dance and Dancers, no.386 (February 1982): 12-13
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. . “Justified Expenditure.”Dance and Dancers 20, no.7 (July 1969): 42-43,48.
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Goodwin, Noel and Peter Williams. “Accent on novelty in the fifth season of Netherlands Dance Theatre at Sadler’s Wells.” Dance and Dancers 26, no.8 (August 1975): 16-22,41.
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. “Marcia Haydee to Replace Tetley as Director of Stuttgart Ballet.” Dance Magazine 50, no.3 (March 1976): 4.
. ‘Tetley-Stuttgart Union Imminent.” Dance Magazine 48, no.3 (May 1974): 3.
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Lee, Christofis. “Glen Tetley: Fusing Classical and Modem.” Dance Australia, no.57 (December 1991/January 1992): 33-36.
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. “Glen Tetley and Company, Hunter College Playhouse.” Dance Magazine 40, no.5 (May 1966): 63.
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. “Holland-America Line.” Dance and Dancers 22, no.6 (June 1971): 39-41.
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. “American Flavoured Dutch.” Dance and Dancers 18, no.4 (February 1967): 28- 31.
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Vranish, Jane. “After 56 Years, Tetley Comes Home for PBT Tribute.” Pittsburgh Post- Gazette, 6 May 2001, G3.
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129
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Videotapes
Tetley, Glen. Pierrot Lunaire. Directed by Colin Near. BBC and RM Production, 1978. Videocassette.
. Choreographer at Work. Produced by Kenneth Corden. 50 min. RM Productions, 1979. Videocassette.
. lama Dancer. Produced by Evdoros Demetriou and directed by Pierre Jourdan. 90 min. EMI Film Productions, 1991. Videocassette.
Interviews
de Lavallade, Carmen. Interview by author, 19 June 2001, Durham, NC. Tape recording.
Reinhart, Charles. Interview by author, 12 July 2001, Durham, NC. Tape recording.
Tetley, Glen. Interview by author, 3 October 2001, Washington, DC. Tape recording of telephone interview.
Electronic Documents
anon. “Citation in Honor of Glen Tetley ’46,” Franklin &Marshall College Commencement 200T, available from http://www.fandm.edu/departments/collegerelations/commencement/tetleycitation .html; accessed January 27,2002.
anon. “Glen Tetley,” American Ballet Theatre ; available from http://www.abt.org/library/archive/choreographers/tetley_g; accessed May 22, 2001.
Charlton, David. “Glen Tetley,” Classical Net; available from http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/articels/torice/tetley.html; accessed May 22, 2001.
Munson, Marty. “The High-Stakes Life & Illustrious Career of Glen Tetley ’46,” Franklin and Marshall Magazine ; available from http://www.collegerelations.fandm.edu/magazine/autumn00/au00_story2; accessed April 18,2001.
130
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Electronic Resources
American Ballet Theatre, www.abt.org, November 15,2001.
Dance Theatre of Harlem, www.dancetheatreofharlem.com, accessed October 21,2001.
English National Ballet, www.ballet.org.uk, accessed December 28,2001.
Netherlands Dance Theatre, www.ndtl.nl, November 15,2001. Rambert Dance Company, www.rambert.co.uk, December 28,2001.
Royal Ballet, www.royalopera.org/ballet, December 28,2001.
Stuttgart Ballet, www.stuttgart-ballet.de, January 20,2002.
The National Ballet of Canada, www.national.ballet.ca, accessed October 21,2001.
131
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