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R-89-0026
RESOLUTION NO, 89."2re A RESOLUTION ALLOCATING AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $50000 FROM SPECIAL PROGRAMS AND ACCOUNTS, CONTINGENT FUND, IN SUPPORT OF THE MIAMI CITY BALLETS THEREBY RECOMMENDING THAT THE GREATER MIAMI HOST COMMITTEE MAKE $15,000 AVAILABLE TO SAID ORGANIZATION; SAID ALLOCATION BEING CONDITIONED UPON SUBSTANTIAL COMPLIANCE WITH ADMINISTRATIVE POLICY NO. APM 1-84, DATED JANUARY 24, 1984. BE IT RESOLVED BY THE COMMISSION OF THE CITY OF NIA14111 " PLORIDA: Section 1. An amount not to exceed $5,000 is hereby r allocated from Special Programs and Accounts, Contingent Fund, in ;2 support of the Miami City Ballet. Section 2. it is hereby recommended that the Greater Miami Host Committee make $15,000 available to said organization. Section 3. The herein allocation is hereby conditioned upon 'substantial compliance with City of Miami Administrative Policy No. 1-84, dated January 24, 1984. Section 4. This Resolution shall become effective immediately upon its adoption pursuant,,to law. PASSED AND ADOPTED this 12th _ day of January' 1989. ZMAYOR ATTES - MA HIRAI, C CLERK PREPARED AND APPROVED BY: APPROVED AS TO FORM AND}p CORRECTNESS:,' F : 00 • ' IE 4 f J�R I L ERNANDEZ r�t�r�� ROBERT F. CLARK JOR E 3 CHIEF DEPUTY CITY ATTORNEY CIT ATTO Y a crrY corwssro�t ov JAN 12 1980 soumON no. K8.a 7 7, i �t r � r G moo dilk t .:i 4•. 1 6 „Jp. December 6, 198$ ( tY _ Mgt • Cesar Odio City Manager - City of Miami 3500 Pan American Drive Miami, Florida 33133 Dear Mr. . odi o : Edward Villello Artistic Mfector Please consider this letter a request to place Miami City Ballet on the City of Miami Commission agenda for 9�! Vmco;r. Robd January 12, 1989. At that meeting, we would like to Wari84bchft23110 ' make a personal appearance in order to request $50#000 in funding from the City of Miami for Miami City Ballet's operation support. s K City Ballet has become an As you know, Miami international success in the less than three years than rtt. it has been performing. we have not only appearedYr?F,, also toured to Israel, throughout the U . S. , but have t Ecuador and Guatemala, and have been invited to Monte Carlo and Spain. Glowing articles about Miami City U �F{ Ballet have been published in national and international ,ss ,y,��tH media', including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Jerusalem Post, Ho a, People Magazine, The At Constitution, The- CTica o Times, and The Boston G o an we have een the subject of national an_;��� ll (who can forget the international television as we, Wh visit by Her Serene Highness, Princess Caroline ofxk Monaco to Miami?) . Most importantly, everything we do reflects positively on the City of Miami, for we carry -.•fytx 5-x "" its name everywhere.moll our budget is $3.7 million; we have 30 dancers on 49 ,r :r5,q� week contracts, and a total payroll, including staff and =x Everything we do is artistic personnel of $1,400,000.�� =_ made here in Miami, and all of our artists are residents'.k '+� =� of the community. Truly, w have developed a hometown gg $� industry of which we can all be proud.£ To assist us in our efforts, we will receive t is year s - f Florida, (as well as $400,000 $511500 from the State oy ■ - s , ::. t , , ::1 t..... "' ... .., ,.., ... -• .. .... :: . .. .. 't .. ... .. , t,.r: , ..... k -r.: 7 '..'i.0 .wGnE���a"vw�ti4�K'.Y?:tl-'s . w'si'?ai1.iT#�-%a. . _"ruses.. uau 1 Ft �•jni ri, �. al YSs r � 1 a1 Gil. 'x- +t z t Anna t '}E,." f 'Lt `TXI ..? °•E.y *e+' -a'h `Ax I� '�-TVi i �,•� ",i� .M{ Yt z� 1F,d k r�+'�i^3:- `^ x} Page 2' for our million, dollir rojeo "The �iutcrt�okr�'� ; a $34#660 from Dade County. 'i4i95-V=fr6m Hreward County,= * , and $55.098 from the City` of Miami. Seaeh. From the City of Miami, we are scheduled .to receive $16,00t�. fiAe are asking the City to` bell its namesake appropriate funding, so that we; ropy continue ' to service"ys the City well. p Sincerely, z 1 • ,, % . ! .. , � 4,� p'+� -, Y� r i ,� to ;�Y , * t yn �' Vex t st 1', t „" ,try ' 'iE,` ,'t�'*p'" } y �•o,�a`1.'$�4: Mark S. Stenberp President of the Board''#�t`�� , :y t'aa 3.-. ,�4. 4 �`,_��'`i!•"�t.�`�K�+�vay� �."�. � 4 "�.,r?':'�j{i CC: Aurelio Perez Lugones Mayor Xavier Suarez Commissioner Rosario Kennedy ,fr gr��� , M< x k Commissioner victor De-:Yurrev rwa. yy- mmp Coissioner Larry- Plummer _ Commissioner Miller Dawkins� t��ir tip ...E �Y t` r � '.� �` .:< 1 J,s •r'd��'� `�;�'�i`�°'. � _��'� r � 4 A -• ..< `.. ,,,�?: +,h /r $ �.��' �'L i i fp '• 4r'� �'+'�}P?*'�i 4 * �f `, ..rK�i .v �� �� i-c ... �� •; '� ��. . ..� .' ..., i'K:. .��:e'....,e +ulel SHY .'%k.4 ,��rF'v�.�E�+4.t':f-i�ii ...i _.`f��SS. y�l^`.���.- ,.i2��� :.aY :.. fig.".j. - - a _. A D. I [i THE BOSTON GLOBE THURSDAY. JULY 2b. 198t{ ARTS--- FILMS Home city flavor of Miami Ballet THE A11AA11 CITY BALLET - At the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festi- val, Becket. Tuesday night. Program repeats through Satur- day. By Christine Temin Globe Staff BECKET - it's rare for a ballet company to reflect anything spe- cific about its home city: The Pennsylayia Ballet. }aim to give but one ex- ample review ample, doesn't sny "Philad( 1phia" an% more than the Pa- cific Northwest Ballet der. s. The Miami City Ballet is an exception. The several Hispanic company members and the Latin -flavored dances of resident choreographer Jimmv Gamori(t ill• Los flcros make for a troupe t he c ity's cham- ber of commerce caul i ust• in ads. In her curtain Tursdi '. Ja- cob's Pf1)ow exec-un%-t director Li;. Thompson said the Miami com- pany is "what I've IK-en looking for for a eery long time: a color- blind ballet company." She re- ferred to the sad last That hallet in the United States. ",fill the excep- tion of the Dance Theater of Har- lem. has never done much to con- tradict Balanchine's infamous comment. "A ballerina's skin should be the color of a peeled ap- ple." One of Balanchine's greatest danseurs. Edward Villella, is ar- tistic director of the Miami com- pany. Balanchine alumni tend to stay close to the New York City Ballet model when they take over other troupes, and the musicality and no-nonsense sleekness of the Miami dancers in Balanchine's "Apollo" on Tuesdav were eery much in the 0tv Ballet vein. But the other works were more overtly emotional. with an almost show- biz feel. Villella has already glven the company, which is not yet two years old, a distinct personality. Except for the company's two stars. Marielena Mencia and Yanis Plkieris, the young dancers have yet to reach beyond this com- pany persona to individuallty. And except for "Apollo," the com- pany didn't present any top-notch choreography at the Pillow. Yet this was an enjoyable evening. De Los Heros' works are already live- ly entertainment: they may well grow into something more. Liz Thompson commissioned rx Los Herne new "Cuntropical" in memory of tier mother. Jacque- Yanis Pikieris and Marielena Mencia of Miami City Ballet. lin Lauter, who spent her sum- mers acting as unofficial grand- mother to the Pillow until her death this year. "Contropical," a group dance set to music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, offers all manner of Latin stereotypes. from senoritas sporting red petticoats to mock bullfight gestures. The sheer force of the performers com- pensates for the as yet unorga- nized choreography: "Contropt- cal" is a lot of fun. but still looks like a work In progress. Lynne Taylor-Corbett's "Sur- facing" is a memorial of another sort. a dance of isolation and de- spair, dedicated to "those of my colleagues who have been swept away early in life." it's hard not to see the piece as being about AIDS. Taylor -Corbett taps every extant dance cliche about suffering: flail- Ing, clutching, groveling. purpose- less rushing around, soulful looks into space and women who bour- ree mechanically across stage wearing stunned expressions. There is no sense of phrasing, nor does Jean -Michel Jarre's snort - gurgle -drip score help to shape the choreography. De Los Heros' "Transtangos." set to a sizzling score by Astor Piazzolla, starts off like a balleti- cized "Tango Argentino" and ac- quires the debonair duality of Twyla Tharp's "Sinatra Songs" along the way. With Deco decor and flapperish costumes. sha.kfnt shoulders and stalking walk$. plays on ballroom dancing and suggestive poses - a woman's legs wrapped around a man's waist - it is ostentatiously sexy. There is even a whiff of violence to the way the men grab the "omen's shoul- ders. A macho quality flavors much of the Miami company's dancing. This Is not only a Latino influence: it's also the influence of Villella, the former boxing cham- pion who became the most red- blooded. all-American male danc- er of his generation. Miami's "Apollo" is a clean and conscientious reading of Br:- lanchine's 192E mastcrp;e;c iThe company has resfored thr birth cf the god scene that Rail r,•_hine cut from City Ballet's yersv,n of the ballet.) The three mugs - Eliza- beth Dretzin. Ilians Lopcz and Kathleen Smith - sail serenely through the devilishly difficult steps. Franklin Gamero's Apollo is correct but tentative. Villella. of course, was a great Apollo - see the pictures of him In this and other ballets in a fine photogra- phy show in the Pillow's Studio One - and it's not hard to inia[lne him coaching the gifted Gam, ro ? into a powerful reading r-f ine ruic J of young god. 89-26 Pr 1 ejlip, ��e�r �ar�c ............. WEDNESDAys MARCH A J988 W.'eme jjU"* two Veft U K ;.3 view ft 111 Off dward Ville& OWS M ore ers � � 4 NewMimiD� less excellent dancers in a traditional By ANNA KISSELGOFF mold. Clearly. the Miami city Ballet U al- C The Miami city BOK directed by than a cut above most ,&..Presented more of ready more Edward Ville' older regional troupes as far as tech j Ito: dancers In New York debuts with Caner in an .New York City Sunday afternoon 9 At n'Que is concer""r- Villeills own mm ny Ballet Whitman Mail at Brooklyn Colleges was always synonymous With excitO• some of the troupe- 9 9 members am lity emanates from,, ment and this qua miliar: David Palmer. for Insmaice.. ling and his dancers., 'Vilse bit the outstanding 6 every In, CAOrge Balanchine's FanUUs*," Sally Ann ISUCKS andersatile dancer he was with the i0f. rhik Dominique Angel. trey, Ballet. I Kathleen Smith were the newcomers ISOa former Joffrey member has nint Elizabeth Dreudn mod-Timo- oil f acquired 4.a w confident presence. Melody). and Ong moved with new ��,she moved with a sleekly beautlow -y nd atLack. my Gamo- welcome energy a '% . ....... - kflxKFy line, the ballerina in Jima of - ArMher POMUY6. feature involves e 'S plotless less Bach in the cafe and detail in, every. stating QM Three Movements." Fay making a local rwt Thus Dawn -Plivoligel Son.`wss The high SWA&rd of dancing In in Balanchine'S W. counting clear in certain estures the i mind-boagling entire company 8 her 16% after sooi4 Mr. Pi - surprise. consiftriflit that the Miami kieri$. Min Fay*& interpretSiloom was lintler Mr. Cot Ballet was established interestingly apt.. She made the siren V ILII&-& direction only In 1911L 7114 a haughty pr&UtM. 9 - Wles core of soloists he Us at - grow swbcuon of the - am Was whose j& Yams Plklerls tradedInch eada from Venezuela: a merely in the, lineofwort marWe" M Mr. paimer's athletic and supple former New York City Ballet dancer- Tayior -COrtwu's %t stlk made Lynn, Ur -4 Gerard Ebju: Mr. Palmer all Miss of Ud&Cft" loon intern 10 ftrw Its as young talent in= Angel, as well choreog deserved Mr me, A COMPOLINLtoo Okla- G&amono I Oklahoma. r Salle tv Las me Mr. V1 homa, city where s like choreographer. has a . . . . . . . . . . . . served as director. Newcomer it is worth developft� tie may be Ilil" 14* and Franklin G&MOM UN oerfic:W in "TrAust,11141106" but be quite styli l"RAlly car although B whch seen In 050. at the T%ht,moments, ,1o_4,1,W7- .4o Sylvia Pas de ftu&" art x1cally'very'soca '44a, i dis lk dwok VA aaawd�. he... .ar1 �a�nd ■ �.�' teial • �C'T-'-" ideDt -.,04"A< N'.. L Vtllella , akes Balancnine leg aev south 8y aAtark IWltt Wky Mba teas- ftMD 1s�e of iIft wit is w P" Bomb saw and "rla a w�it *AawM 014 is nch mod 6ero. hd 1ri a io s� i 1oM • so lore Spyw qo Ov40M r 00 tumom AkWo lie Uret Mwd to l0 yeas, m a +ova �prryax d tle sum � G.seidds �WLlrr�i�e & Now YO& - I r>3Yv��.eS _ y'h in �50.' SNOW" Mrodtatat otaacrm Mw atarm� a n"c Ik or Oos aYa r We Rase Mad 9411MIsMiose IO yaen Mat bit torw{ Swu orer de qt d � 1a1 Nes' Yak Ctty adm !M ae poews . ' r �� taoerc r be wy at Yn do "la oai?• Labe tilaao and *MOW Vim awe aom"- i i 11 2)21 ed --love rut Msai as aK adtrt IaeR .'..a. -16 tr eri.rwtleYYi far lb1 my. tm Edwwd.-m--- -1'm not ! - I—d to lour t>esa d'sr+astuaw: IYn notry �''rd tlr J M M • lra1M Mi0 9N lrovps ' Ialta.• Moo Illaly bom NO you on Orr1 so pd •� aPWAM6 ads r d 0°Im rota w `ice : '�_ m W wMh tYe aagrY /�AOK do I to MdM b s akat aam ta0dal to Vd1tJIa art Le loaloed i «w a do Dale t1rM tatvive is Miami. � �" oeidfot awaa. de Miami City 800 i Y�P�f Ik wm 10 make a as importing MMW to do SO 'lire ompoay I and aopsd far ' p. Ik is trnMttd dwm uride work ad ta$af for", am woos ad add "O a0110aMra on de Mrmt eanpa 1. tied pubkMIb 7V00. i1e dwtd wtt so ptr art 'iyt Mows a Oka dad a titrnoM "lea dal dd 0+�7. tker W a add Osfantsaas and dtngea i IoroM ! as a000nrpin drioy' s Who So Aopa to aoatrrepat I over lore Malt 10. arc lift a dedra new 6Mee am- 1r «rtk its oa tMe ud is o.� 6tNen h e ardet'ss ao aev od igro+�are M N Ida'opoed� pillly. ptrrta►. hKosm. Nk.';" wove t6aa "� get dem in dic tAww: ie fdift b id rod' � -. iM tae repo MMaM acltd t1e !'iALiaioo of feint de aoy Aneeim as asked w drioe:e _, w� � mi W /Mi B%v dr1 Kinw `, z i..Naer rloty dwc �t or view. I adq ait t1 b_ wee IMn.r..L . e do t4 �� taiatdatm .I • ,.. Mar% Watt ViYdIs wamt Wig a -- a mML f'M M 1M r latatdra � � M r Ytt >•r. ae mrpwy Mdr M aoae�pAy d f o, aoa dee stoat l�aa� MipNni. of apk lawk Nord said d an is gala w s t�WL assort - kial tsota.8 I lI ... r RAW and Wet tAteMaMn i 01 "MOM"la[ an co 3 d VAM wort. P—' ........� . • •� ' tl�lt MOr+, at.ayt 1K lts what ae wars. pa�My. ..117ea Myt N t11as r ks pow vm M and ac s w JMsrnr a say ae lals Ile. aYo IS" Gem !12 miim Jrrrmry GnMorel lot bt FiaoU' 7yii1 !"a1 ION to abaK f 1.0 MM7ir w —* -V Vt7ki1 OfaMt to add 1) I is Ate, fMY rdr alldttioat !oM► Oaf "Mc M w elw+aiaat • rk t r -0•hs� roM�1 all Dore iw let ga0«otar ad Yirdlt ik � �1► ride kb`i.fena come eam sRoeM1 uamliois lrartae ` as wt d roteY wlna do ad mw � � ad 0 is so do'' deY •i eael n'oe btaMa ae tiMe ie daae gaaa "dtA. eer aooeu•' dw d*,P wr. rll a detiat at f100A00. • , why 11 dat.'No aas for Yla oat pre he solo. -oat.- s at00Row' llwM 1 tma 'Msmi k • e1/a+ a 1pDr • Ae tsttuaotdY actor dt0it Iar a fiat urao lid are 11W- iak Taal iolifis iM .Mr f r Y F S nt >�- d & aL,�f'tK+e4 t`'e,J '#�7e.^' r ,f��.'�.v A t~.+,{'e'� y�$,{�,,,.'tuskrtq. °Rs �% F'S"'l aFA d'"`'3 I i sFi actH t)Yf -z'3x :Z �.aei���dtaYc_ �-�+�*��� 4,t• � _ t:-....�, a,1vR ac :, as .:r�_tz:�'-:'. y �;�.. •k d a faBOArap f mme P Ys .-e_ d �� � SOL' >f1Ytl 1be doer d tr sdbktethe dlaians d � j aer. be beanie kaewa r on of dw Went — { sxo.dmssinl b" domm CMC Atbss !1 C1oae of the New yo" AraN its as geed. tY."wo Vig.W ,*' ys'J .. _., .. _-�_ .�_c-a•;�:as. .,,.asa"i..>:,,""�'s i ,_. ..... `.�'_.r w�`" .. `.`..., e_.k .,"�'.�a`�v�'iv'.�k ` .4�,, � vtl.i.ln ttw loll a'��, H 1N'� ealaa M+sttra tis ptwa, tyrtwm. man: ,. s... . � wig *gm i ttie fleece • !ie .lie r clip e s more 10 a r�lasd sm. � *AjAj !a a new bk tleR he • ai0 a. some tpse led awraome wAW the fm - 20 Yana man Nm soais/ 0w tie mtsalt d zr t - '- AMbotph he Ire the dbgnwise otle is t! the 0* American ever a" to datoe am hoc 4 . 1,04 iw ACo y le da P�� oat gy, I ' iK mum as IWdet oddxrad DONhoi !alert He 22 florin raft f0r'Doairm Ysrirfom' ' One - titm0n and ..Miami vile hne soatept• ,. # Y 1967I he it eYsrseeaisties�Y Jerevalmne ° s •IbaOie e0 a ad 7l—is amok he leave �s f OO for Out In form am of l m [aim * siboat the Raring vm and ti- 2 d a moose mom d W own oo0tp . Mbssi Cih Ugee. dalidt iq is tntatto . faw" VItMs: TM Irm kaafaalad Math Alcove aA • N m an tb ON in 0 low and go sm—gte iVao adieal •Frog aA aetiaie point dvow.1 aoUY ' lr �'*Ank *AM UMM wads am war0-- loo RT ar>b n be eb dabs w as wa0. From a eaedo I a dam: i tantr of tleir dooms doi ff •IY adwiK l!rigdh Y 0at to efatre I: Heir tmnds IGaad has art er w a aw with maaY ao0 noatie� eapa� studio �aoe 7ls Ono6er ore o0.�p+aY Heir for m e. I veer to foe ioae 4anoua� ` yyaapo dew ssridae Ion eaaepnl beft- Is MOM tAe 0aY rr stawae 0 wsiat , ftnm SmM wi opat vrsh 27 dartoaa k s dear hom talldtq to Y>iida Thai 1a : d m is Muni `losiat/.at s mr astbde l o see ? 1°a clear[ VAIAII }ho tm • i>r0i�0d In the dsaade mm, vadia onip d daaaema. be his GNW ■ reptemoe fm drape cant. on Muni MY ft" is �a�ania� Tr o mom w AoAd her 2.700 asd tblt aroaon ad eadad w wou to do male sssvise He wave to aria it oat Yapmam pawl ay. He is mraiat don awfde work ale dw leres�i to do in � to do in M o 8 atiseie nw or "Tm as t bolting far aoeaetkst n tams of Amk 0 veal d beies� m perms ta1�. tsr t at N ea point p sodas�rd pe�ib�i��a�c aevipas fa tpse 7.f00. re donned was ao Oar dot dnsmeea q m -Twe Ism- b a t� qd a a�wbere oils � my � wMt Owfa 10 tlwk 'Der television pmOrmnSwrit as his d'Nnr e they w a lee prfamamor lad Ilse eds pow fto it ID 22 dneeeta'. but "rig- i bow 1 tJsm s000rspba+ WAa he hopm 10 nommplsb 0rsr do doaeaw• mloll mer 71s s0r, s lea s0r, dle oompoaY.O . wa Aaewe We d 111eruvre kti �IHKOa laanin' oe r351:"Proms fa pdasioaal dials: and WrOM am eel lda. Mrmw• �MsaO aaK lanes Ham ten drt.tbe is's mold bolft aaq 10• VUn s a paey wtu is 0mu axle sad ke 0n boom 0a aa:. and ItiIn MiMni J Do" Q _ MO Of Am veer to the New 30M. putaaa �st W rs�Y ) bled is net 1Wr Eleridle, of fAe Muni News. aeose fa chit oowr T1e anpbris a is Aloe sewn, at mmommY. del tl balehounwom S d tkm "WM Fm w0d Oamoeo'fus Oaerinl s l Res/y doraoptspby . i t posl hr gwt am k nY► het vrlr he wart. and le s is Miaaa a St",1710 msaAport s k�,M1� Wn ; s dw andawad Ile �a�q d o s m% ham $1.2 mom � woes de los HeaaJ . yma lsmeut G+enaaet. �'t�dM W� a ede i t Wan V � says it liras Iry *m years 1st a develop tht aeac 0f OomPanY tMM 00 e -yyyyooao7uau1as epet bee eatsaoedmaty' /Deed. d dad wet r 1db+ce eR" p lk law a abor 6 A malion and cola! !O � Me 0omc m bom sosPMOM Mel a sddO+oW aat world staniass Ye7kla hops w veal W eh be ateds+eoe atalys aKh fl� Da+�• �e OOatt Ass t�aadaliOnL H Wss' . —, w, woo man. as" nr roe em of nammq' «ln the of �. ptt0er. aatelem to Irrwaaat ape0die/ Ave• mer *A Year. maw tart daga mead its 90 k demo tea an hs tsken an sae Bm n WpauM haee titan! I Minmi s •te�aome alms to yppsa,• be Ala loran web p ttefios d f 100A00, • *4 Nee i o* Twain in Jffi. M my -: YO�Y wo dahit for a *0 salon � Z. t a a� than w p stetyi e 1;' tell a -. rd y. t p R]] ' r�'3 F -• +b .Yt 4 �Ys'�` yy41" S n 1 .�tF ,�• i Id YST i F •�Rr`p Sfr-'}t�%f F � EFY ryq i�. �> j!, � � iY f �i'.;+.V�t y . fiii%s�r w•t'+$rysk �Si i 5, .7✓A GRr� f , 7f` A ar ��, t'3 q Jt;ifiai �w"ir° THE ATLANTA 00N5n1r1rn0N' Mandsy. September 2k 1"7 ..... Arts The Miami City Ballet, directed by former New York City Ballet star Edward Villella, opened the dance portion of the Arts Festival. Miami City Ballet makes Atlanta debut By Susan F. Htmter special to The Journal-e:onrtitutlon The dance portion of the Arts Festival of Atlanta got off to an auspicious beginning Sat- urday evening with the Atlanta debut of the Miami City Ballet, a year -old company direct- ed by -Edward Vil)ella. The former New York City Ballet superstar has undertaken the formi- dable task of developing a new ballet company that honors the neoclassic Balanchine tradition while forging a distinctive style of its own. Of the four works on Saturday's program, three were New York City Ballet WYCB) im- ports. One, "Transtangos," was by the Miami company's resident choreographer, Jimmy Ga- monet de Los Hermanos. In some ways, the home-grown product was the most successful. The program offered two works by Ville). Ws mentor at N`YCB, the late George Balan- chine. Marielena Mencia and Kathleen Smith were a joy to watch in the neoclassic master- piece, "Concerto Barocco," and Gregory Alan Amato's firm. confident partnering displayed the lithe his Mencia at her best. Dance Review Dancers train for years to develop the ex- acting speed and clarity of line required by Balanchine'¢ meticulous, pristine choreography. The Miamii, dancers occasionally lacked crisp- ness, but, for so new an ensemble, the techni- cal level with which they handled the demand- Ing material was a tribute to Villelia's artistic leadership. Iliana Lopez and Franklin Gamero, a Vene- zuelan couple, sparkled in the Tchaikovsky pas de deux, choreographed by Balanchine to a piece of music originally composed for "Swan Lake" — and presumed lost until he rediscov- ered it in the Bolshoi archives, nearly 75 years later. Ms. Lopez, who is delightfully lyrical, manages to be simultaneously saucy and sweet, and Gamero's pyrotechnics elicited bravos from the enthusiastic audience. In the ambiguous "Fantasies" by Nina• York City Ballet alumnus John Clifford, one wo dered whether the uncouplings and regroupin of the four dancers represented different i pects of a single relationship or whether t couples had merely switched partners. "Transtangos," which closed the prograi seemed to give the company a life of its ovi Choreographed by the resident choreograph( Gamonet, a Peruvian, "Transtangos" is a bit strut -your -stuff dance -halt flash that is all f and frolic. The entire cast was excellent, b Marielena Mencia was particularly provocati and sultry in her role. Yanis Pikieris brought feral quality to his feisty solo with three whi chairs. In their jaunty trio, Paulo Manso . Sousa, as the man in red, and Jennifer Bro% and Marcia Sussman danced with wit ai panache. The dance, which seems destined to t come the company's signature piece, establi- es a distinctive style that reflects the multi tional roster of dancers and the Hispanic H: of the revitabred Miami Beach. Fla.. area c enniliany calls ht.•mc ` R The Jeruse lem Post Magazine 01.3 ffZ' le OWkvw)A miPm*GWUbV4wd gh an mw*k*rd 7. A 201� 13 Nov.21,1988 THE' NEW YO 11 ARLENE CROCE Pjo BILL BARICH On Belfast n 13112"I'l 111 •.• PROF1 LES •.` --SlO'01'ER IS FASTER in the population; it is now - ALLET is a big -city lest migrant, more stable, art form-�-a cola! -big• more a�uent, huge (just city an form. It tends under two million), and to flourish in northern lati- nearly half Hispanic. Yet the tudes, where people can wear city hasn't outgrown its re - furs in winter. If a city has sort -town frivolity, and it lush scenery, palm trees, and still presents a visitor with a climate that keeps the certain nomenclatural dif- population out in the sun, ficulties. In the midst of ris- chances are it hasn't got a ing cultural awareness, the ballet company, or else the Miami Beach Theatre of the ballet company it has got is Performing Arts (which is a toy --a diversion in the not far from Arthur Godfrey Drive chose to char its recreational rather than the ) cultural sense. Resort cities name to the Jackie Gleason were given a false reputation Theatre of the Performing , in this regard by the com- 1 Arts. When A.B.T. played panies that named them- . ' _ there, in the pit would be j selves Monte Carlo, after something calling itself Diaghilev's Ballets Russo, ( PooF—the Philharmonic Or- j which holed up in Mona chestra of Florida, actually a Carlo for part of the year. fully qualified professional Dlsghi�ev's creations were. ensemble. When A.B.T. left aimed at Paris and London, town, though, there. would. be no 80M or FLAB —no Bal- not at the Riviera. Histor- c ically, European and then let of Miami or Florida Bal- Russian ballet was shaped by let —to .take over. The local , the pressure of-tbe artificial Edward Vslldlle holler schools fed a handful : urban environment on the of sporadically. active > sew human spirit. Citizens of bustling nine- ago it would..00t have appeared on a professional : companies, chief among teenth-century ballet. capitals from ballet map of the U.S.A. Miami, Flor- them the Mimi- Ballet, which staged Paris and HUM to St. Petersburg and ids, was a place that big companies the annual "Nutcracker" and mustered Moscow craved indoor entertainment. passed through on tour when they did support groups for. itinerant artists, �: s They also craved a kind of hothouse not choose to Pam: Palm Beach and Ballet Coagerto, which appealed spectacle: nature and artifice blending ittatead. Accorditeg• tor; Judy Drucker, primarily to the Latin-American com , in the lovely facture of human bodies. the president of'tNo'Coneert Associa- munity. Though the city could boast In our own more densely urbanized don of Greater Mfmi ' and the city's an oaompaq and several concert , time, ballet remains one of the most vigorous and knowledgeab)e pre- music organizations, it had never had a of the big city, , and one of its .utntw of music and dance, hJigd full-time ballet company, it had mover privileges special compensations, too, for the began developing a substantial dance even presented an annual music-and',i4 more natural beauty a city possesses, public in the mid -seventies. By�dte dance season to compare with those t>- the less will it need ballet. Latitudi- eighties, the city's two largest theatres, held in other resort:, such as Aspen, nally speaking, Seattle and San Fran- the three -thousand -seat Miami Beach Saratoga, and Charleston. cisco, where ballet thrives, are superior Theatre of the Performing Ara andthe- And then anew company of nineteen } to Los Angeles, when it doesn't. But twenty -five -hundred -sort Dads Cam dancers, directed by Edward Vitt" in tams of need neither Seattle not San ty-Aad3mdum, wsra regalarlye boosted - opened in the fall of I986, in L the �} Francisco, those naturally spectacular .for dance setraedoms. Mrs. Drt>cLer- busman Cwtec for the Performing 4y1• coastal cities, can compete with the was even able to. organins4da Miami 'Ara. The Gusman held onlytavetiteen ; unappeasable- appstite, the compansa- Premiiss Soeiety, through whicfi= hundred, and it wm% in dow cml" r . ` !.' tort' greed, of the taan-mods catossua Miamisas uoderwrou the coon of Miami, hidden among die Soodlit tau►• r , ; New York..- odgiQ4 _bs�llsn for American Ballet en of the new .lob .that F „ . Although' Miami's chmgWg foss.. Thsaa�s. The gaadon was; Would the s<ridt of the dghdes.:The open x r. �,k Y tunes am the. yaws have m & it i n t4W warvnderwdws ballet company sag -night Program, chosen by- rlrilt�,;��� neW ardfcLl anti ualowlye so nay of their own? The biggest change that 1e11a, consisted' of two . Beltutei porch nmmopoiis; up anda two years 1w come over Miami in th*aghties is Tchai 0T$ky balletq '`Alle$roc �cA�� t r';r e ��ia� L fir fh . r � -7 ° a � ` t � 4 az �2 �fii����i�•`�'Aq�i `5 w�"'„t'.�'.�';� •t - + 60 Herman Melville Wonders 1 f His Int Has Oversold Spinoff from `Moby Vice) j iante" and "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deus;" a new version of de Falla's "El _ Amor Brujo" by an old New York City Ballet colleague of VillelWs, Richard Tanner, and the world premifre of "Transtangos," by one of VBlella's discoveries, the young Peruvian -born choreographer Jimmy Gamonet de Los Heros. Most of the seats had been sold months before —nearly five thousand subscribers in Miami and Fort Lauder- dale held tickets for the inaugural on - son —and the cheering a the end, when Villella took a bow with his I dancers, was long and loud. It was Vnl- -� lella'a first appearance of the evening. He had not danced, he hat} not choreo- graphed, but his was the "me that stood behind everything, and there are few more gilded names in the business. To Miami it was money in the bank. By the end of that first season, the subscriptions stood at seventy-five hundred. In less than two years, the nineteen dancers on a thirty -nix -week conttacc had become thirty on a forty- _two•�week contract; the company's operating expenses had risen from $1.5 million to $3.6 million, and the number To appreciate this amazing growth, one has only to compare the new com- pany with other companies the same size. Last season, Miami spent about as much as the Dallas or the Cincinnati/ New Orleans Ballet, but it danced more performances. than those two companies put together, plus the Washington Ballet, and it had as many subscribers. Furthermore, all those companies have been in business for a decade or more; Dallas (before it folded, this past summer), Washing- ton, and Cincinnati (before it merged with New Orleans) go back to the fifties. It took Pacific Northwest Bal- let, a bigger company, with a six - million -dollar budget, ten years to go from thirteen hundred subscribers to ten thousand. Villella's company, which is called Miami City Ballet, is often cited as a prime exhibit of the "new" Miami —a dealing consequence of the economic prosperity that has made the city fash- ionable once more. But prosperity in Miami is cyclical; the city —and the state —has gone through boost times before without ever giving birth to a of subscribers topped eleven thousand. fuU-time, major-league profenional 1r 77 S ,s ballet company. The Cuban immi- grants who so changed the tone of the city in recent years have cer- tainly helped to create a hospitable cli- mate for a dance company, but though nearly a third of the Miami City Bal- let dancers are Latin Americans, th*e is not as yet a proportionate number of Latin Americans on the fifty-seven member board, and most of the costs- piny's earliest backers were Anglos and Jews. Demographics and a surg- ing economy are not alone accountable _ for the company's swift rise; there are other factors. The two that stand out in my mind are the state of ballet in America and the availability' of Villella. ' The growth of regional ballet has seen four distinct phases. The found ers-and-pioneers phase dawned at the beginning of the thirties, gained impe- tus after the Second World War, and continued into the fifties. Atlanta, Dayton, and San Francisco were among the first cities to have their own companies. By 1959, two dozen cities had followed suit. In the sixties' a period of broad -scale subvention be gan, with a duster of Ford Foundation grants to six regional companies in addition to New York City Ballet. - Doris Hering, the former executive director of the Regional Dance Associ- r ation, wrote an article earlier this year 4 crediting. these grants —which Ford awarded on the advice of George Baisnchine and Lincoln Kirstein. with having had "from an economic point of view probably the greatest single effect on regionalism." Later in the sixties, the National Endow- ment for the Arts inaugurated federal subsidies, and the outcome of this Was Phase III —institutional consolidation. Service organizations, sponsor east - works, choreography projects prolif- erated throughout the seventies: In s 1983, the death of Balanchine had tine x: immediate effect of reducing the saws of New York as the magnetic power center of world dance and raising pa- sibilities everywhere else. The decen• h y tralization of American ballet, a pit pt ' hopeuntil now, became an And Balanchine—his dancers, hie rep* ertory—became a comnaakty;, This was something new oA ;i - regional scene._ "Under his ditty ship," Min Hering wrote (in thslour+�A nal published by one of the main bene4i I ciaries of Phan III-•D,wO US)ls :a service or anization for nonprofit pro* x'T n N0VEMbKK 21119" THE NEV YOKKEK = "New City Boll the rithertt ferrional dance), t1► period that regional bal- let toured sparingly in this eonetry, let has ever knownl and thus audiences had little awareness e of the BaLnchine aesthetic. Until rela- tively recently, the only Balanchina THz Pass: How many of your da►cen are ns> disciples wdve in the regions were WARD Fred Daniell, who founded the Garden EDwARD V[LLELLA: All of them —now. State Ballet in 1950, and Robert Bar —LIFELONG New Yorker from nett, who Dorothy Alezan- A Bayside, Queers, Villella lived der sr director of the Atlanta Ballet in for years in a brownstone on West 1%2. Other Balanchine offing now Sixty-ninth Street. He bought it at the Include Todd Bolender (State Ballet of peak of his dancing career, after New MiesouriNRobertWela(Pennslvaniz York City Ballet became the resident and Mi1e Ballet), Helgi Tomes- company at Lincoln Center. When he ' son (Ban Francisco met)' Patricia began working full time in Miami, he Wilde (Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre), put the brownstone on the market and Franda Russell and Kent Stowell (Pa- moved, with his wife and their two ; eific Northwest Ballet), Maria Tall- daughters, into a comfortable one-story chief and Daniel Duell (Chicago City brick house in Miami Beach. The fact - igns Balkh Edward VMella (Miami City that Villella was willing to buy a house Ballet), and Paul Moist (Fort Worth there almost a year before his company Ballet). Thew peoplehave opened impressed Miamians; it beto- ns, �y at seem to the Balanchine repertory, kened a serious commitment to the therefore the country b seeing a great �gghaot, $175. c, $175. venture he was asking them to back. deal of Balanchime, lovingly staged and To New Yorkers who knew Villella competently danced.,' In addition to casually, the move looked like a gam - the names on this list, one might men- ble. But Villella does not act precfpi- don John Clifford (Ballet of Los An- JO. galesthe successor to the defunct Los tately. He had spent years preparing STA MESA DALLAS -0649 OT&CO. 1986 , himself for the Miami offer. It came at Angeles Ballet) and Roman Jasinski the right moment his life. and Mowdyne Larkin (Tuba Ballet Not long after his company's dbbut, i Theatre), whose revival of a "lost" Villella was in New York to attend to Balanchinework, Street property. "MozartVioUnCon- arto," had its premiere last year. Ar- some basins:: Involving his .Sixty- thur whell's famed Dance Theatre ninth property.We met for din - of Harlem isnot a "regional" company, ner in the neighborhood. The last time but it was one of the first companies I had seen him in New York, he was to show hog► .s classicism recovering from walking pneumonu could be used es a base for ezonsion and looked "drawn and underweight. On opening.night in Miami, after a and Innovation. The Balanehine diespors gives rise year of round-the-clock fund-raising, to the prapeet of regional ballet's re- auditioning, rehearsing, and adminis- verting to the spirit of itsinitial vision- trative pump -priming, he was still pate ary campaigns. Can "the Balanchinre (dancers are always pale, even in Flor- " aerthede," for fifty bears fosters I -ex- ida), but it was clear, that Miami had cluskdy in New York, tab root and restored him. The dbbut occurred mi prosper in all these otter cidesi Win,the same month —October —as his fif Beth birthday, malting a neit parallel the rest of the country embrace the with his twenty-first birthday, des great ballets or, having givatt them: the ty y y . once-over, write them off, the way part on which, in 1957, he had joined New ■ ; of New York did for years, as "special" York City Ballet. In the excitement of j and "difficult"? Balanchine's death the opening is Miami, I had forgotten ass catapulted the regional movement into to ask him how he had celebrated the ll be its most aucial, most second pair of -milestones. When I ask what may we dkzAnglyoppoctwwphn&Eva:Pdting him now, he says, "I danced the -night seams@ to be on fast forward now; the away." quick wore@@ of Mind City Ballet is To all appearance@, VilleUa b pki- i part of a geusral accelerated traod. (So, caUy the same VMdk who par- -i alas, is the quielt demise ci the Chicago formed oa the:�.aga of the 8tste'T Cley.Ballet.)isthe. 1011 aa7ju@tanoth- atre o;iA4y 25 1979 (3a "Wac@r¢ti11"). j er 'Miami babbler Or doge. it to fact . Ks is athltdcally fit and youthfyl*look= nand a fair chance ` of becial the ` . it g, .with leis thicket, Rg)as@t'e. spearhead of what could turn out to be and shouldsra, his full x 64 hair, and his broodingly handsome by now. The response has been ter• face, which creases into a Roman mask rific, overwhelming. There's a certain of comedy when he smiles, which is of- temptation to try and top our biggest ten. When he talks about dancing the success, which was 'Transtangos,' or night away, he throws back his head to do something spectacular and box - and laughs. Six years ago, he could officey: 'Swan Lake,' 'Romeo and barely walk, let alone dance. He. Juliet.' That's not what we're about. doesn't allude to the hip -replacement Our second program is very spare and operation or to any of the other ordeals, linear. Jimmy Gamonet, who is now both physical and emotional, that have our resident choreographer, will make plagued his Job -like life in dance —all a Bach piece, and we will add another that is in the past. Tonight at the res- Balanchine ballet, 'Square Dance.' I taurant, he is the youngest fifty in New thought about 'Concerto Barocco,' but York. He orders a beer and talks about we're not ready yet. You must build the Miami: "What attracted me was the audience along with the dancers. You people. They came to me with the idea have to persuade people that quality is of starting a company. I outlined a the only acceptable product and that it three-year plan, and to my great takes time to develop. That is the mes- wonder -nd pleasure they didn't ques- sage of the second program. We are tion it. They went away and raised the running a risk with a bone -pun pre. money. Lots of cities want a ballet sentation. But in the long run you get company as long as it is a hit, but you where you want to go faster if you don't cannot have a hit mentality. It takes cut corners. Slower is faster. I learned ten years to build a ballet company. that from Stanley Williams." You must do it in stages. And there The name of Stanley Williams, the were a number of people in Miami who man whom Villella regards as the understood that. This is the most Intel- greatest teacher of classical ballet in Ugent board of directors in the world. the world, crops up in his conversation But, with all the planning, we're still as often as the name Balanchine— ahead of where 1 thought we'd be indeed, more often. Villella commonly NOAMMA !1, it)" refers to Balanchine as "that ran," while Williatnt is almost invariably "Stanley." t1Balanchine was the ever," he will say. "Everything came from that man. He changed the face of the art, created our repertory, taught us our style. And I never met a more personally generous man. But without Stanley I would never have understood the choreography well enough to dance it correctly. Yes, I could do the move- ment. But what that man was after, the clarity, the detail —those things were illuminated for me by Stanley. In fact, if it hadn't been for Stanley I probably wouldn't have had it career at all." The story of how Villella, one of the most promising students ever to study at the School of American Ballet, was forced to give up dancing at the age of sixteen is part of the folklore of Ameri- can ballet. Like most boys who start young, he had a sister who took lessons and a mother who dragged him along. When his sister quit, his mother was heartbroken, and he was made to quit, too, even though he had fallen in love with dancing and was progressing spectacularly. He had even been invited .to join New York CIty Ballet. All of a Jam' usfira aacagon.next to none HU21 erm lM "rles of W/* booth. Play a mwd . Playa►umd fie pad aw km* a .,Try yotr hadat sailorgar uxnd �►& G6 d i►l>esh- UWWJ Siang. T 3ien rear to . lea Or►none redammis to dwwfrom An a Soacim a rooms. "a most I r4E NEW YORKER st,dden, it was over. The day young E ldie Villella failed to show up for classes was a black day at the School of American Ballet. According to an ac- count written by Tanaquil I eClercq, "all along the corridors of the school the cry was raised, 'Where's the little Italian boys' " His parents wanted him to get an education and forget about ballet. To please them, he attended the Rhodes School, then enrolled in the New York Maritime College, a divi- sion of the State University of New York, in Fort Schuyler, the Bronx. Eventually, he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in marine transporta- tion. (He also won his letter in baseball and held the college title in welter- weight boxing for three straight years.) But Villella didn't forget about ballet. As a young cadet on a cruise, he would push everybody out of his cabin, lock the door, put on a record of Alex- andra Danilova teaching a class, and work out in private. Back in New York, he secretly attended classes at Ballet Arts, in the Carnegie Hall building. If he was in pain, that was to be expected, he- thought —he hadn't danced in four years. But then, on Christmas Night, 1955, he got into a brawl with some paratroopers in a bar and suffered a cerebral concussion. To make matters worse, just before he joined New York City Ballet he took a bad fall in a rehearsal studio, landing on his back on a cement floor. The effects of the concussion cleared up in due course (though Villella today says he has "the world's worst memory" because of- it), -but. the back injury turned out to be- permsnenr, he would spend his career compensating for it in. one way or another, as well as for the rash, unsound methods he had resorted to in a desperate attempt to make up for lost time. `- "I was in such a hurry to catch up that I did everything wrong," he once told me. "I concentrated on the big spectacular steps. Pd do s-million en- trechats six a day —that kind of thing. How much better if Ind gone carefully and patiently through a few basic exer- cises first —some swimming and pan of a barre. Then. class with a full barre for six weeks, working up to pirouettes. Half a yeai liter, I'd have been ready for jumps, Instead, I jest thrashed around. I didn't have the technical understanding to do those sizes prop- erly. I was still thrashing around when I joined the company. I was twenty- For our 90th Anniversary, the Commemorative Bear. And you can getta Gund at all fine department. toy, gift and infants' stores. Gund, Inc.. P.O: Box H, Edison, New Jersey 08818 65 /3 89-26. 66 NOVEMbER 21. 1488 one, and twenty-one isn't young for a cause besides gaining strength he was Miami, we have certain priorities. Ev. dancer. Balanchine's classes were be- gaining knowledge, and that gave him eryone told us not to open at the Gus- yond me. I wasn't ready for that level a new momentum. man Center. They said if we opened of sophistication. I needed to build "Eddie came to my clan a raw tal. there we would never be a success in myself up, and so I forced my muscles ent," William: has said. "He was al- Miami. But the Guzman Center has to work, and got cramps, really gro- ready a principal dancer, and he could great acoustics and an orchestra pit tesque cramps —they rose right out of have been satisfied with that. He had that holds fifty. We had already de - my leg. If I'd gone on like that, I the guts to start over at twenty-four. tided on having a live orchestra -- would have been finished inside of two To concentrate, to shut out all distrac- nothing gives off a scent of provincial - years." The thought of Villella's ca- tions and just work. He knew exactly ism like taped music. For the opening, reer ending so soon after it began what he was doing." we had fifty Philharmonic musicians in would never have occurred to anyone "Slower is faster," Villella's guide to that pit. Our conductor was Ottavio de watching him at that time. First of all, technical perfection as a dancer, is also Rosa, who was conducting for New he looked sixteen, not twenty-one, and his personal philosophical credo, appli- York City Ballet when I joined the he seemed to have fiendish energy— cable to any number of situations out- company. The Gusman has intimacy s endless reserves of it —plus superb ath- side dance. Where did the idea come and charm. You can hear perfectly, s letic skill. Az if that weren't enough, fromi Is it a Zen paradoxl I put the and you can see. I owed it to the he was always sunny, happy, and are. question to Villella. dancers that they be seen in a decent The audience thought him a marvel, "Well, it is a paradox," he answers. theatre. The fact that it was in the and he was cast in role after role. "I learned it literally in Stanley's class- wrong part of town and that it wasn't Villella himself had no sense of immi- as. The whole art form is based on where Ballet Theatre played turned vent collapse. As he tells it, he was paradoxes. Your landing is your take- out not to matter at all. What matters revelling in success, and not until off. You go down to go up. The fastest is that it really is too small. But there Balanchins brought Williams to New preparation is the fullest, through the are new performing -arts centers going York from Copenhagen did the truth whole foot. And you can't rush the up all over the state --Fort Lauderdale, dawn. What Williams' classes taught training process. This technique really Naples, Palm Beach County. Tampa Villella was that gradual progress with requires from eight to ten years, there's already has one. By the end of our third fulfillment every sap of the way was no getting around it. It would have year, we should have achieved solid not only better than rushing ahead been fatter for me, afar four years of statewide impact. I hope that after five without fulfillment, it was faster, be- not dancing, to go slower. And now, in years we'll have established ourselves ■aaaaaaaaaaaaa�s■ AFTER EIGHT ■ VOGUE ENTERTAINING GUIDE OFFER c9Nur 5 00 ...wan s poot. a ■ wog• is WKh S i not 'W mo� lot � A� ■ Or urq. Aft ems. s«m . M« Kati. PQ sac I= ■ wni«4 er osaa ww w+�«. aa�ewa ■ ■ ■aaaaaaaaaaaaas,s� oil E.500 ; • OSMgY 74 OS. OR LAWORA BODE OR • no�vKrnset AFM WGW MMREl1 n w min ■ un ut'PP! 1101 Uwe rw.Mw� a.w«�«rwra�i: h OIM�IyMWA.C�MIIMgVa1�M:R'MQMw�IMIM M, '.• P: A M r�MMI'/Mr w 1«M pO�p�our ML.RQ MII�WLM'~CWIIM4ew/MYII MF�M�MY1KMnI111MpMy1X .� :. �a96y yoy�3a 1 t THE NEV YORKER regionally and after ten years nation- ally. Of course, it could all happen a lot sooner, but we aren't pushing for national visibility. We are a Floridian company. We have our sets built lo- cally —an outfit called Miami Stage- craft does it, not some shop in Con- necticut. We have our own costume designer, HaydEe Morales, who trained with Barbara Matera in Karinska's workshop; HaydEe herself cuts and sews everything we wear. Jimmy Gamonet has had offers to choreo- graph all over the country, but he's willing to stay here and develop with us. Our goal is to be self-sufficient, not a frame for content to be filled in from the outside." Since this conversation, Miami City Ballet has had engagements through- out Florida, in the Carolinas, and in Atlanta. It has made its New York d6- but (at Brooklyn College) and has danced at Artpark and Jacob's Pillow. It has toured Israel and Ecuador. But at the time Villella spoke he was not sure how things would go, and his mood was alternately elated and appre- hensive. He had directed ballet com- panies before, but he had never had the experience of building one from scratch. Being able to lay the founda- tion, set priorities, shape long-term policy —this had been denied him, both at the Eglevsky Ballet, the Long Island company that he took over in 1979, after Andr6 Eglevsky's death, and at Ballet Oklahoma, where he was called in, in 1983, to juice up operations, until a downturn in the oil business forced cutb;scks that he found unac- ceptable. In Miami, he is still at the mercy of the economy, but the com- pany's financial base is much broader, encompassing a variety of funding sources. (Forty-five per cent of the contributed income comes from indi- viduals, thirty-nine per cent from cor- porations, nine per cent from gov- ernment arts councils and civic author- ities, and seven per cent from trusts and foundations.) The growth of the city's investment-banking industry and the rise of a new managerial class un- doubtedly counted for much in the decision to launch a ballet company — and in Villella's decision to take up the challenge of directing it. That Miami —frivolous, fashionable Miami —has so far been willing to accept the austerity of Villella's vision may be surprising; it may also reflect the confidence that. sober, entrepreneurial "CHRISTMAS TIME." Time is CODiUred in ,r!gi �UaaSawCs ='ism Jf SCU D'e 7 Cr`/s.01 me-c-Mnism avadOGie,nsilverorge,a :: !-i H 5250'Dneot -ore " on 30 precious t:meeteces n •re eriraoramary i�:va Cr isial Crock •: c� .ection rorging trpm ,155 *o �c_5 -or ire I+Cva Co+cca :err, Please coil 2121223 -3--5 C,ursice�i&N+t.rk8CC/h54-CC1'1 The Hovo ;�C9k JT 57rh/rvv NY 'CO22 7.16 HOVA 01rwaha Steaks Do your ,gift shoppinal the free & easy way! �� r With one TOLL FREE phone call. send the perfect. most impressive tfts — tender. juicy Omaha Steaks. nconditlonallj Guaranteed to thrall Theyll be delivered. in your name. in an attractive gift box — carefully SAVE $20.00 rem roar (a oa.l nw Itlgawa. 3 Ow (4 oa.) 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I'll have made my own mistakes --I won't have inherited someone else's, along with someone elm's board and someone else's debts." (The allusion, I think, is to the Eglev- sky Ballet, where Villella's struggles n with the board's chairman ended bit- terly, in litigation that is still pending.) "On the other hand," he goes on, "it's not easy, building an organization from ground zero. Raising start-up money is the most humiliating work _ you can do. You're in a weak position. You have no product. You have no influence. People who habitually give money to cultural institutions have cer- tain set expectations. So we didn't go to the people who sponsor culture in this city. Ballet is not a priority with old money anyway. We went to the junior executives. These are the people who like good restaurants, a nice glass of wine. They're beginning to take an interest in something called a civic image. Miami is not all crime; it's not just beaches and tourists. We —the board and I—de►eloped what we call our yuppie strategy. The ballet offered these younger, lower -echelon people something of *their own to support. They came flocking around us like— ;i like nineteenth-century hussars." His f face breaks into the mask of mirth. "We had a budget of a million and a half before we ever act foot on a stage." Villells's hussad sling abed -up amusing old prints of ballet girls and their ravenous male admirers. Going hone that night, I seemed to we a different picture, of a phenomenal young dances on television twenty and thirty years ago —the "Bell Telephone Hour," the "Ed Sullivan ;$how," _ "Kraft Music Hall" —being watched by children for whom the name Villella would forever be synonymous with bal- let. In later years, they would see We as the host who introduced Balunchins ballets on "Dance in America." (Two - of those ballets were on the premibre program in Miami.) 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'" For a healthy Vacation that will change your life for years to come call toll4ree:14M00-292-2440 or mail the coupon below. ---- I P.Q eox 7138 N1l I I I I 1 HiNan��eadIieakhIe I 4blsn�o Rood, Sh X N r' a w'Nlon I I I HOW Hsod blond, aC 2MB I N" I 1AM I I Slap 110 I 1 Anane< ) 1 1 f1C NEV r OKUR ballet dancer except on television or in the hies. They would know Nu q w, they would know $aryyshnilwr. But Villella they knew first and watched lonngesc. And they are still watching him, in reruns of the "Carol Burnett S Show" and "The Odd Couple," in which he played Edward Villella teach- ing the comics to dance. I see this generation of TV watchers forming Miami's burgeoning power 61ite; I see them and their children at the ballet re- sponding with excited applause when Villdla walks out onto the stage to make one of his sales pitches and read out a last-minute list of sponsors' names. Mismi might well have been - ripe for a company of its own, and it might have rallied to the presence of any dancer with a big enough name or to anyone at all who came knocking on the right doors. But, in fact, the man at the door was Mr. Ballet. That's how Villella impressed Toby Lerner Ansin, a dance activist, whose efforts until then had been pretty much concen- trated in modern and ethnic dance. Inspired by Villella, she bwAme one of the founders of Miami City Ballet, and is the bubbliest member of its board. our "He came here with a lecture pro- gram called -An Evening with George ..._.''; Balanchine,' 11 Mrs. Ansin recalled re- }' cently. "I was on the Dade County Council of Arts and Sciences and was involved with the Dance Umbrella,; helping it promote local dance groups and dance events. David Eden, the president of the Dance Umbrella, was bringing Villella down, but long before . that happened I was hearing. from David about how Miami should have a professional ballet company and _ hoe Villella should be hired to run it.. And he would say to me, `You can do it, Toby.' Well, I was always crazy about ballet, and I'd read how George Balanchine used to come to Phnladel phis to help get the Pennsylvania Bat let earned. I got together with David and my friend Barbara Singer, and we ?= formed a committee to meet with this great artist and ask him to be our consultant. I'll never forget ,the date May 14, 1985..I nearly fainted when! Edward VMdu .at m Y door. He sat at my, dining -ropers tabhn r for three hours, and he told . &lrblurl►. and me what we could expect to `.- ` .'.. yearn and in five year: sad in pen yeaerl,a; He had ►, he t►ad vision, ,his, u made a lot of sense. Above ail, jte rep- resented quaUty..Thers was n�sver c, Y tithe! p�sot► in out m1ftds. From the patticular--a and does. ® moment he started telling► we took the Ftograet No. 1s which began. with attitude that it was to h n Tchalkovsky and ended with "Try K� going aPpe Pro - and that if he didn't do it it wouldn't tangos," implied a certain r t6' • No. , with its emphasis an Ba+ happen. We promised him a board. A: es and classical purity, he went out the door, he said, `Before, £ .' we were talking ideas. Now we're Wit- established a certain depth. For Pro• 1 am often asked If pe funm ing business.' The first thing 1 did was ggr�am No. 3, built around the music of call six friends and ask them for a Slink. and Glazunov, VMella united , can be considered Wr0' thousand dollars apiece that they might all Balanchine's extant GUnks ballets, dialers. There is no evidence that never see again just sD we could keep including "Divertimento Hrillante," a �: they are. But tat rot perfume is inviting Edward back. The thing pas de deer that had not been danced g '• Weyer a mbtaks in an intimate snowballed. I called Rose Ellen since he last performed it, with Pstruu Nthec Smelling good b a Greene, who u now a vice-president of McBride, in the late sixties. Original- the board, and her mother was there, ly, it was part of : Glinkca evening gae, It can can be an sstr moon, or a and before Rose Ellen could say a word devised by BaLnchine for his star per- ` reprdion. Perfwne Is a strategy to her mother, who had heard Edward former. ViIle1L's production, given in N lecture at Goucher College, urged her the spring of 1987, twenty years af- m W oneself Imore appealing, of a un" I proPY u»d. vyorks to pledge a thousand dollars. I got ter the premiere, was also part i together with Robin Reiter, of the fled program. Conceived >: homage r because communism in Southeast Banking Corporation Foun- to BaLnchine, alancha-Glazdea o The dation, and Charles Cinnamon, who dramatized the Balanchtnean idea of (. a Corp end powerful IanpwOe. rung on a theme. a y b; ry has apublic-relations firm. I wanted repertory changes `} Robin to set up our infrastructure and At the last minute, I had to cancel am hoW..Then it Continues:— I am to tied our presentations. It my trip m Miami. V�71ella gave me a � Charles 6n P hone of how the whole . @Wg&W, or 9 am daring'. Or'I loge was Robin who gave us the idea for the description by p - th cutdoots' or -1 am sexy', or'The yuppie strategy.. She said the top brass thing r o know that Balanchine ' night . it is a wouldn't have time for us, and she was Y':' had Glinka's `Vales Fan-, dkmat Is more eon tight. By October, we were incorpo- rho rsogreP rated. Edward flew in a number of tune' three timesi Two versions exirt. ii th gran mists the noFMWWW a times. We held six or eight dinner After the success of our second pro- se. . a for people to meet him, and I gram, I felt that I had the confidence j Stimulate a part of the brain which P of the audience, a I decided to show scheduled meeting charpos moods. transmits avers- air Wig — with the chamber of commercep with both versions together—Balanchuu : mils of loser dpnper, desire and the retat�-stores aMdxdon, � limb ow e. And, we would anti rekindle off oars. Edward wonLd go from, morn= with the `Pas de. Dix' from `RgMoa- } x pieewra. Fragrances c�'- Da nwhine on PedW We only, the peat. matoeou hour. WV- Ying . till des Wight. Everybody wee higW for one set, so we made F bestir martnories both happy �d not lust with his ideas or hadhe garden ne9 salon of a seat ;house. eMeot his practicality but ere fi+kY it bfing There e, man three arched windows . sad. Pwfumri'a most important There was nothing u ° 4 is its impact on tie memory. about him. He called himsdf. i bar in the back wall through which • ya drinker in a champagne world. I Toyed saw as exterior with plants. ,`.Vales tr iWo Of diifsrsnt that. For his fiftieth birthday, I gave Fantai:ie' was the fist ballet. To Wu it 1 are prmvided by CAL ANDRE (OPPO" him a crystal beer mug, and a matching is an outdoor ballet, - AM a Ww the ; champagne glass for opening night." light. We lit the:eehes and bled up . page) and 1 ITT {tlt�do*Wdng lights in the garden. Then, efau —i page)• ln.FrancJ%jrALMDRETrAMM �''j'�HE tide Miami City Ballet was Fanaisie,' the light/ came up, ode the grill of a eaG Una veded4 �4 1 chosen to avoid confusion with the house, and we did the `Glinka Pas . _ gut can you f+drdc o}a� better symbol other Miami companies and to invoke de Troia.' After see inpermia New York City Haller, Viilella's home did `Divertimento BrM=te,' thaiol n p s — yp IlluWft the niobWgl d the vyornan Q .His cur- .crass -faded back m the garden and of today? LAC NUIT is rwrything the for careeralmost alets hue put into practice `Vales F..,itie,' the 1953 venaon. +; is aokln�bi the lessons be learned from his two Wally, `Pas de Dls': the >aroe:':it y 1 oflM say tyro, z mentors. As artistic director, he models with two enormous CALIUeDRE is a'vettkM' haprnrw hiantelf on Balaachias. M:bailst null - himself so that it }lookgi. lijce a a rfdle 1J1 NUIT'ia'hort>ra+tar ensw ballroom. Jw.,cheR'! ' the both are s ter, he b a conscious disciple of W-gnad: sad iil#mtWOv,', aAother : she:Wle Rr¢►graets, 8 frur .By w Hams. Llke Bdaachhw. ia-: Ws y bru dressy this time +�Pd= . yearsin Amer ca. �- � ' iWsanu:doW disguiMd ai sitar- Wineteeath-oamyrK taiW:aent. The hs;dedgtted'` was oahov► B'e Y` for, the Miami ohs fuse and, at the year to that c:ardidoa rft>tr lo.Al •oa of , his depsrtste bob... : ware astep-by-step esPlaasa , d1AR/1N11t PI11MtIMe this ballet uInc3dentallT, I does t 60' s�� t Madison ANenua, NY t{k021 what a Ira W company 90' x tt yA t r F Lit_ r £.A t ' `°J t +� e tst`Str��y�'�.mx y ''•�� a, ,gym -y� 5 .:yl�`�•;,t c„.. . 2#�. '`, y .� s%J ✓:itrn'�.,ffi4.R" "' .sy _wu�`u • _ ___ proclaiming this to be a Balanchine persed. Nevertheless, at the session I company. First.of all, there's no point attended a hundred and twenty dancers in competing with New York City showed up; seven were ultimately eho- Ballet. We perform other contemporary sen. The audition, which was held on choreography besides Balanchine's. We the eighth Boor of the Carnegie Hall commission new work. Pretty soon building, resembled a cross between an we'll be getting into the nineteenth ordinary daily ballet class and a mara- century, starting with Bournonville. thon dance contest. The dancers wore But if you are trained to dance only the numbers. While Villella wandered nineteenth-century repertory there is about the crowded room with a clip - no way that you can dance Balanchine. board, Borne conducted the class. Peri- Whereas there is nothing in the nine- odically, she would call a halt, confer teenth century that a Balanchinean with Villells, then read out a list of can't dance, because Balanchine is numbers, and those dancers would be based in the nineteenth century." . eliminated. Whenever this happened, The company, though clear and cor- Villella would make a speech, explain- rect in matters of style, does not ye+: ing that he was basing his choices on show a Balanchinean punetili- qualities of physique, style, and ousnew. As one might expect of temperament which were nec- a company directed by Edward essary to the formation of a Villella, the men are monger balanced ensemble, and that the than the women. Yanis Pilderis, eliminated dancers were not to Franklin Gamero, and David Palmer consider themselves professionally dis- are outstanding. Pikieris, who has been qualified just because they didn't fit into with the company since the beginning, the company he had in mind. (Still, dances most of the Villella role. Wick several of the rejected ones, some of his wife, Marielena Mencia, he has whom had travelled from other cities to danced "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux" attend the audition, came to Villella and "Tarantella." Like Gamero and demanding to know why they didn't fit h' --if Iliatta a e, Lopez, Ptkterts ns from Venezuela. All three, along with the un, and Villella told them pnvately.) Villells himself gave the combina- Cuban-born Mencia, were principals tions for the men's sections, at one in the International Ballet of Caracas point executing a perfect double air ; and in various other companies abroad. turn by way of demonstration. Borne They represent a level of experience and the dancers applauded, but he _ useful to the company, half of whose tossed it off, saying, "I almost landed core members are recent graduates of facing front." As a teacher, though, he the School of American Ballet or the is concerned not so much with techni- North Carolina School of the Ants. cal excellence as with the elucidation of Largely because of the strength of movement. His combinations aren't these two institutions, and of four or tricky; rather, they are musical and five good local schools, there is no need require a good ear. Dancing, he likes to for Villella to establish a company- say, is about freedom, not discipline. adMated school. Then, too, Miami He likes to tell that to his dancers; and City Ballet has an exceptionally able to the public that attends the lecture- ._ ballet mistress in Elyse Bose, the demonstrations he gives in Miami he former N.Y.C.B. soloist. Like Villella, will often describe classical technique she has decided views about teaching, a"natural, simple, and human" —a '■ but hers stem more from Sukd Schorer set of adjectives that may well sound than from Stanley WMisms. (Schorer, unconvincing coming from one of bal- a colleague of Williams at the School let's greatest stars. Yes, technique is of American Ballet, is pure School of simple —for hire. And Villella's per- Balanchine.) Villells, and Borne run sonal legend has its contradictions. their classes and rehearsals on compad- Doesn't he bear scars inflicted on him ble systems; as Borne says, "we teach as by this so simple technique of hiss we to It's true: if dancers wore medals, The pool of well -trained dancers in VMdk would be covered with -Purple the United States is a surprisingly large Hears. He has a bad back, a bum knee. — one. When VMella was forming his a plastic hip, nine broken toes, and a company, he held an open audition in stress fracture in each shin. But he" New York on Easter weekend. The doesn't think of himself as a typical. School of American Haller was closed product of classical tr:inIng--ha re. for the holiday and Its studonts dis- gards himself as a maverick, someone. } t Z k 4 ICI6: f� s, � r 0 74 who Eomd his way into the citadel of classier ballet after four crucial mis- spent years had all but destroyed his chances of over getting past the gate. He thinks the broken toes and the stress fractures came from dancing on the cement doors of TV studios, which he did in order to supplement his meagre salary from the ballet and to prove to his skeptical lower -middle-class Italian family that dancers could command respectable incomes. Musicals were another of his lucrative sidelines. The disastrous pre-N.Y.C.B. back injury occurred while he was rehearsing for an industrial show. Villella still has, for a dancer, an inordinate regard for money. When, in 1984, WNET was preparing an ar- chival documentary on Balanchine, he was the only one of BalanchineIs danc- ers who refused to sign a release al- lowing the use of old film and TV - performance footage. V'tllella insisted on being paid; the producers had not budgeted fees for the dancers Villella had to be cut out of the show. He defends his position by saying that he took It on behalf of all underpaid danc- ers. Of the many tents for which he is celebrated, Villella prides himself most on having been the first American to make money as a dancer. He regards it as a victory for the entire profession --a historic breakthrough. It was that; it was also compelled by personal circumstance. For a young man of Villella's background to even think of himself as a dancer, he had to commit himulf to becoming a star — the kind of star w1m commands wealth as well as prestige. From the beginning of his tenure with New York City Ballet, this ambition of his got him into trouble with BaLnekioe. Balanchine permitted the TV performances, the shows, and the guest shots with other companies --he even choreographed some of them —but he did not approve. He did not like the idea of Villella's participation in a 1958 Gene Kelly special called "Dancing L a Man's Game" --the TV appearance that set off all the others. "There are only three men that you should work for," he told Villella at the tune (he meant besides himself, of course). "Stravin- sky, Picasa, and —and Cocteau." Vil- lella was mystified. Cocteau was not planning a TV special that year. When Villona made the down Payment, on his town house --he remembers it as a great day in his life--Balanchine tried to dissuade him, saying, "It will own you." I once asked Lincoln Kir- stein about Villella's stubborn quest for respectability, thinking Kirstein, too, might have taken a dire view of it. I was wrong. All Kirstein would say -- and he said it forcefully several times — was "Eddie was a martyr." To himself Villella has always been a businessman, shrewdly marketing his talents and investing his earnings. For a time in the sixties, he was pan owner of a popular East Side disco called Arthur. Until three years ago, he had an interest in a motel on Cape Cod. But his N.Y.C.B. career was the most pre- cious thing in his life; to have lost it would have been to lose all. He main- tained it as loyally as he could, but it paid peanuts —no more than about a hundred dollars a performance at best. Balanchine did not begrudge Vil- lella his need of money, much as he may have resented it. He made Villella the center of some of his most marvel- lour ballets: "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Tarantella," "Harlequin-`' 0 �rt waRth i i THE NEW YCfiUc R ade," "Rubies." He awarded hits '= nut ly all the principal male roles in the repertory, and the ballerina to go with them —Diana Adams, Allegro Kent, Violette Verdy, Melissa Hayden, Gelsey Kirkland. With Patricia Mc- Bride, Villella forged one of the moat memorable partnerships in the history =h of the company. It is difficult, as one looks back on all that, to we how Villella could have been more artistically or commercially successful than he was in the sixties. The public had made him the com- pany's No. 1 box-office attraction; he had a six -figure income and more out- side offers than he could accept, and he regularly appeared, the sole American, on every critic's shordist of the world's best male dancers, numbered among e such men as Andre Eglevsky, Igor Yousitevitch, Erik Bruhn, Jean Babilee, and Vladimir Vasiliev in the first half of the decade and Rudolf Nureyev, Yuri Soloviev, and Anthony Dowell in the second half. To Villelle., how- ever, his career was in eternal jeopardy. He was still the outsider, the black j sheep, the semi -crippled boy who had appeared on Balanchine's doorstep demanding a place. He venerated the A purity of style that comes of sound h classical training and that was exem- plified by such men as Eglevsky and Bruhn. (Youskevitch, who retrained himself late in life to be a classical dancer, was an exemplar of a different kind.) In Copenhagen, where Villella studied further with William in 1%2, he admired the noble bearing of Bruhn's cogtemporary Henning Kron- stam. What these men had —pedigree, credentials—Villella sought to acquire' by working himself into the danseur- noble roles, for which he wasn't consti- tuted by physical type. "His small atat- ure (5 feet, 8 inches) rules him out of the romantic repertoire," Tmse an- nounced in its issue of December 13, 1963. At N.Y.C.B., "romantic" bal- lets tended to be the province of Jacques d'Amboise, two years Vt'llella's senior and tall enough to partner the tallest ballerinas Balutchine could find. Vil- lella worked hard to be worthy of "Swan Lake," "Scotch Symphony," "Raymonda Variations." (Barysh- nikov, who is the same height as Vil- lella, had to wage a similar battle at the Kirov against the system known — as empki—typecasting.) But it wasn't just his physical limitations that Vil- lalk sought tp overcome —it was the is i icw yertrdkm a MW rm mp A gift arfiJka* to tat Brost spawwlar raMX1Vat ism At worm. And what a memorable night: one hundred and gem stories high in the cioudL international cuisine and a fifty five mile views Gift certificates can be made for $21$54 $100—or any amount you choose. They can be used for dinner in The Restaurant or The CAW in the Sky. fa the Grand Buffet on Saturday or Sunday in The Bestsurmor Sunday Branch in the Hon d'Oeavrerie. A wecacular idea for a spectacular gift for al your clients. Order nos¢ Can (212) 938.1100. 107th Floor: One Wald Trade CM= New Yak Let's fax it. appearance counts and no two ways about it, a misspelled word - like a spa on your shirt - can make a lasting bad impression. 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The public had made him the com- pany's No. 1 box-office attraction; he had a six -figure income and more out- side offers than he could accept, and he regularly appeared, the sole American, on every critic's shortlist of the world's beat male dancers, numbered among such man as Andr6 Eglevsky, Igor Youskevitch, Erik Bruhn, Jean Babil6e, and Vladimir Vast'liev In the first half of the decade and Rudolf Nureyev, Yuri Soloviev, and Anthony Dowell in the second half. To Villella, how- ever, his career was in eternal jeopardy. He was still the outsider, the black sheep, the semi -crippled boy who had appeared on Balanchine's doorstep demanding a place. He venerated the purity of style that comes of sound classical training and that was exem- plified by such men as Eglevsky and Bruhn. (Youskevitch, who retrained himself late in life to be a classical dancer, was an exemplar of a different kind.) In Copenhagen, where Vt'llella studied further with Williams in 1962, he admired the noble bearing of Bruhn's contemporary Henning Kron- scam. What these men had —pedigree, credentials—Vt'llella sought to acquire by working himself into the danseur- noble roles, for which he wasn't consti- tuted by physical type. "His small stat- ure (5 feet, 8 inches) rules him out of the romantic repertoire," Z tine an- nounced in its issue of December 13, 1963. At N.Y.C.B., "romantic" bal- lets tended to be the province of Jacques d'Amboise, two years Villella's senior and tall enough to partner the tallest ballerinas Balanchine could find. Vil- lella worked hard to be worthy of "Swan Lake," "Scotch Symphony," "Raymonda Variations." (Barysh- nikov, who is the same height as Vil- lolls, had to wage a similar battle at the Kirov against the system known as afW--typecasting.) 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YOM CO coca Mt) 461-WO gaps in his training. He was like the upstart who envies not the gold -placed bathrooms of the rich but the gentle upbringing; he wanted class. It's de- batable whether he ever got more of it than he already had by nature. For many who watched his career take shape, Villella's greatness lay in his instinctive virtuosity --the "explosive animal force," as Robert Garis charac- terized his performance in "Rubies," which Balanchine captured again and again. VilleIIa did refine his technique, and he did become stronger. The dif- ference between his Prince of Lorraine, in the pre -Williams ballet "The Fig- ure in the Carpet," and his Oberon, in the post -Williams "A Midsummer Night's Dream," was like the differ- ence between the prewar and the post- war Olivier in Shakespeare. By the end of the sixties, the mature Villella stood in relation to the paragon Bruhn much as Olivier stood in relation to Gielgud. Villells's elegance was neither glacial like Bruhn's nor exotic like Nureyev's. And his love affair with academic clas- sicism had deepened into obsession. VMella genuinely believes in the hu- manity of classical training; it is not too much to say that he passionately believes in it. Every great dancer writes in his mind his own book of technique. VMeUa's is unusually com- pendious and analytical, probably be- cause his career was prefaced with so many physical setbacks that he was forced to go through it considering closely the implications oL his every move. And VMeRa is unusual in being able to communicate his passion. Ex- cept among themselves, most dancers disliite discussing dance matters, but Mills, enjoys finding the words that will• convey complex dance ideas to a lay audience. Though by nature he is a silent man, he is also an articulate one. From our conversations, which began about ten years ago, I have the impres- sion that the subject of technique b something he is continually turning over in his mind. The book isn't dosed just because the dancing career has ended. Not long ago, I asked him to enlarge upon his statement that danc- ing is about freedom, not discipline. "Well, of course, the discipline earns the freedom," he replied. "You don't learn discipline for its own sake. The instructor trains the dancer in rhythm and movement with technique as a guide. Our technique is designed to meet the needs of a particular form — IC NOVEMbER 21,1966 MISSING A PIECE OF YOUR PATTERN? Now you can replace picas or add to your sterling saver collec- tion to E soff prat i ces. pecial- de in new and used ' flatware and 1lollowaM with over i350 patterns in stock. Call or write floor & tree irnentory of width also;1 buy for careful appraisal for i maximum value.) lam- '.. tem shown: Chantilly by Gorham. Be. a t1J t " Plwnet� THE VIDEO GUIDE TO STAMP COLLECTING f "o?;'•` Host GAAY BUAGHOFF (M•A•S•H's c Radar O'Reilly) coven all aspects of the W dh mat ptpdt W* is this Mv. taime{, i0 90r 1 W a i A14 the hnsdreds of dattfiq SMW auk is it set ` fotetpetieeoadcolomn"o. 1�EB STAMP! t M1PPlh�lZtI1IJDfD "01; w�`a. �' 414IM& as „eA,, narWQKaaiadstarnaa�wYtM tN asw A —," arts w t. tN,GuiL aaVHLlta` W. 0 U 9 E I i 1'WE NEV YOM&K we don't more arbitrarily. We are aboon farm in relation to time, which is untie, and In rotation to space, which ii the stage. It's a three-dimensional in form. To teach the technique, you've got to get inside the form, get the dancer inside it, and illuminate it. from within. That is, if you really mean to teach dancing as opposed to positions. As opposed to an alphabet of steps. That's not dancing. Too many teachers stay on the outside. There you are in space, and they ask you to move, but only intermittently. Turnout is not a position. It's the constant rotation of the body outward from center. Turn- out initiates movement, turnout ex- tends movement. We rotate out and up. Our line is circles, circles, parts of circles. And it doesn't break, it contin- ua. You don't do tendu and wait, tendu and wait. Once you are inside this system, once you grasp the real nature and function of first position, you are on your way to understanding the entire technique. And that under - sanding frees you. It's human and simple, and it's yours forever. Isn't that wonderful?" it all•Amerieaniboy image. In Ville&'* case, biographical heft conspired with image to produce instant legend. It ryas as a native-born American ballet star from Queens whose father ran a truck- ing business in the garment district *a who had been a chd'apion boxer that Villella was lionized by the press, which soon found out that he talked A good game, too. He quickly developed another sideline, as a lecturer, and his lectures invariably drew analogies be- tween ballet and sports. He was criti- cized for this by the very people he meant to help —the ballet establish- ment. Balanchine, neither a member of the establishment nor a snob, saw the value of sending Villella with his macho message into city schools and of having him pose for countless publicity photos punching a bag, or doing grands jetes in Yankee Stadium. To someone who cared nothing for sports, Villella's analogies could sound defen- sive. Today, they sound a bit corny. But Villella isn't putting on a front. The sports emphasis comes naturally to one who aught well have been a professional athlete. Besides, Villella First position —heels together, toes cese with the public wall based on an uses his'lustradons to make the point turned out in opposite direction$- - human and simpler Villella grinned. "I didn't say it was normal," he said. "It isn't normal. It isn't easy. It it simple. But simplicity is the single most difficult thing to come by." Youskevitch had been a gymnast, a fact widely noted in the years (roughly 1938 to 1958) when he shared Eglev- sky's crown as king of American ballet. But Villella's athleticism brought him to the feverish attention of copywriters, sports columnists, film and TV pro- ducers. In every era of the century, a star has come along to prove to Ameri- cans that dancing is a man's game: Mordkin, then Youskevitch, then Vil- l" the most popular of them all. (Youskevitch would not have been rec- ognized in Toots Shor's; Villella would have been.) Then had been virile native-born American dancers before Villella appeared on the scene; Kirstein had featured most of them in "Billy the Kid" (1938), and in the fifties he and Balanchine would launch one other outstanding caner —that of Jacques d'Amboise. D'Amboise's suc- V* Bound of Music subscription to TOMM Oum1 w wolin newslet . .'.. ' ..-..- Van: swings with jazz greats After 25 yews, the songs You in Doe Sowrinson. Dow Sivboch. R love now resound an all new paAofmance. The only digital Cab Calloway. Buddy Morrow € ,� gcordinQ maturing all the music �srry Mulligan. Eddie Danis BhwOhneasY from the :stage and film. With flay Brown and Ed r An NI•mw release of ihe." �. Frederica von Steds as Maria. Sand era's greatest nib. 41 4 Tl11 "Rlrre-adfhplt Nbllda � e r s World nnownW Mastro t.orin MaazN and the Berlin Allhor• ' 4 �� manic perform a now. original r 4 symOh� is synthesis of Wagnera 7t) LN Al ndnuga of . mgesrpNa most r uninterrupted orchoWN splendor - S i 1 � . t �, -_- J, , ;Ltc J that ballet Is not like baseball or basket- the theatre, a renovated moue palarr ball; a layup shot is not like grand with Arabian Nights diets, the audt- aseembll. He doesn't take a fun -and• ence was sipping champagne. For a games approach to dance. Today, New Yorker raised in the compara- HANDCRAM QUALM plhppttlCTS many coaches and- sports -medicine ex- lively ascedc social atmosphere that auaaMsstt pert$ believe that ballet conditioning until recently surrounded New York _ improves a player's efficiency and helps City Ballet, it was all more than +'► -f��- prevent injuries, a view Villella has gala enough. What could "Concerto `�""ad held for years and has advanced in the Barocco" mean in a place like this. watvm aK sw ass. nasverssa�e t especially -for -athletes dance seminars Who was Villella, really, to all these � that he teaches from time to time. But handsome, fun -loving peoples The he stops short of putting athletes on the new Miami seemed to me pretty much ,m stage, as ballet companies have done the same as the old one; it was full of now and then in the hope of attracting women and men who looked like New 3 ! to a sports fans to the arc. Just as Villella Yorkers, only with more beads and doem't take a fun -and -games approach brocades and metallic threads in their Motu to dance, he doesn't believe in aes- wardrobes. But the question of identity Room u a thedcizing sports. was molved on the stage. As Villella !y had said, the program was designed to Miami City Ballet poster is show "who we are." In "Allegro Bril- satntattuoMas>IMBoaraKMor sea ...� .Nwsaa O VIa THE almost the first thing one sees on lante," the curtain rose on a stageful of = ou�enawasn"+ MA.Mu�M onsasc■r landing at the Miami airport. It depicts dancers already in motion. (It is the uauos trot r•see•ssr tea endless blue sea with, in closeup, a pair only Balanchine ballet that begins that of stretched feet in satin toeshoes way.) The sight seemed to mirror the WNW" �� standing on point in the surf. Open a unreal pace of the events that had led- ""' Miami Croy Bassist program and out up to it, and so did the tempo of the drops a flurry of brochures bearing ballet. "Allegro Brillante" was fol- the names of corporate subscribers— lowed --a one-two punch —by the show- °4 wasoaeiateh American Savings & Loan, Burger piece `�Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux." ' race""`se.sur~wtsw re esters King, Cigna Dental Health, Florida The evening was half over before the Beverage, Freizenst, Joe's Stone Crab audience could catch its breath. The s Restaurant, and on and on. There is a two new ballets were both Latin - special Corporate Series subscription. inspired, but "El Amor Brujo" was The yuppies have their own subscrip- murky and comparatively uneventful. ar•;— ,. don and their owes organization— It remained for "TranstangW1 to ad - Ton (Team of Enthusiastic Support- minister the definitive shock of $elf- { ers). A Saturday-madnEe series for recognition. The biggest hit to, play ; children is supported in part by the Miami in recent years had been "Tan-.k ' Barre -an aswciadom of young bal- go Argentiam" Gamonees choreogr: `7 —} let -struck attorneys. Spend an hour at raphy for "Transtangos," as his title:,#t ; i company headquarters —a madrover suggested, translated the voluptuous* } { l storefront studio on the Lincoln Road tango duets into semiclassical pas de mall, in. Miami. Beach• -and iasaaes dews, with the women on point.: His a — that half of Miamt' %Vving money to touch was light, his emphasis was on - the ballet while the -odw half is out nnstral,:ooasisceudy well -focussed. L _ looki for uaiqu a way* to raies.mon. .a rhythmic eandstuity .rs�:� . One easily gets the impression, in fact, presumed analogy between Which it that * - that ballet in America 6JWng Ameri- another way of: saying, - : The Ads"' Frilly-$ canized in ways Balaubbw and Kir- Gamoaet is a musical choreographer ++ Cartwright ht motel s� � a:� of-duat,;:aftec no maatir whatthe context, in this apse _- �,drtWi�l g fifty yeas of earnest cuitivadan by a the mom -sump of . Astor • Piaswllai s i• — San Ftescitoo cultural1 minoriq, It hoe worked itself And the ballotweWt hurt by the ace-, y i deep emugghr into the fabric of -Ameri- eery : (designed by Carla Ardld - t�n, trawhr ow ors can idsure-dine aaWdes to be able to which suggested the Art Deco hotels Of NO road law a bum � '� ask for real money iG The gals op.rtlog t of Miami: ColllestAvenue. The .dancing .all evening luid bean � tiralu Gowns 4 ere "i�, G■�! City Ballet's premike season west Bias A. on ,a high levelt :1S.aarie abas�a. use. tee Msdc night in Old Hollywood. A searchlight dsatos crit k -ef :the Miami Ski, brew vase squm played do air 0u War tilt E"swmar wtrra[1fk'rnoet�i.!'Nobod�y p �> �,} _- :70 tee ale0. Center. Stretch limos lined the streets. call Miami hOW., apt evas,.danaed: ilas 'x wo) =27-sm CenTrust, the new building by I. M. this in Miami befort.",. Bpt s #aAts ? yr'. Pei was lie up in turquoise and purple, tangos" gave the suydi'somefhittg� °- sa A wr ai 1rwM. Sw Fn.eYew a twat the official colors of. the ballet. Inside special to celebrate ab0uc, paratu4iarly ` • 0 f F f N Y r& 4 82 HOST APPAREL. Whors better than the night before Chasttnkss7 Vkddng up to Club Mickey nightshirt. Peft& for snoozing, lotutpinp or gift giving, everyone should own o bk7ck fleece "Yawning Mickey" V-neck lounger or a bright nFel "Santa Mickey" Jersey knit nightshirt In 50% Kociel . polyeater150% cotton fabric from iot>Ftsbwn "#fttg. . ^CWotZ* In SIM and Un of fine stores IncWc" L AWDon. Now Yak ON; BMW IIIk"; 90$kn Stotts. Wisconsin: Uuorus. Mldwet and Polois RO�Oc. Houston. Or Cadbk; Host A POM Ct 1359 &oadway. Now York. W 10 S (212) 695.5460, Ovywow0WWCOffV M O roes cowman Ka" COMM (awwmon cr4mm Moaucm +le a MgYOOy W Fownvn go** cafra v w wu » dww M MCaa tow v n W "H np0/ -I E0~ 6 P00► Kn wwr.a GOO M MM bowma__ I wo row aew.w NOVEMBER 21. 1988 the Miami Hispanic Heritage Festival Committee, which had commissioned it. At the party afterward, a very boom -boom affair held in the pink marble Inter -Continental Hotel, cor- porate Miami erupted, boogying on the dance door and clapping in rhythm when Villella led in his dancers to the tune of "When the Saints Go March- ing In." A year later, the company celebrated its first anniversary in much the same fashion, with a parry in the same hotel. But the celebrants had got younger and more closely knit, and they all knew each other. There was a lea purposeful edge to the gaiety. Or so it seemed. Probably nothing had changed except that Miami had be- come, in its own way, a ballet town. The ballet was part of it, not just a bit of color hauled in to liven up a segment of "Dynasty" or "Falcon Crest." For the first time, the fact that the city had canals, like Leningrad and Copenha- gen, seemed significant. VILLELLA'S Miami Beach home is on La Gorce Island, where the long palm -lined vistas and the baby yachts lie side by side. A circular drive leads up to the house; thick, fragrant vegetation surrounds it. There is a large living room, not used for much besides storing Villella's collection of antiques and Early American art. The family gathers in the glassed -in porch off the patio, which Linda Villella has turned into a cozy den, with plump couches, rattan chairs, and stereo and hhouse: :quip .em..In contrast to the house on S`*-ninth Street, almost no ballet memorabilia ate ,on view; the only mementos of TMalla's dancing days are some official White House Photographs, showing him with vari- ous Presidents and First Ladies. The one with the Fords is poignant. It was after performing for them and their guests one evening in 1975 that Vil- lella underwent the most physically excruciating and terrifying experience of his life. For the previous few years, he had been under.-Sttreme pressure, staving of total surrender to what the ated%al specialists believed were the inevitably disabling effects of the old back injury. In 1973, Dr. William Hamilton, the orthopedic surgeon who acts a a 'consultm to New York City Ballet, told VMella he was through. VUlella put together a new program of therapy, diet, and massage, and thus self -medicated he continued perform- u's wM t 0 4 THE NEV YORKER ing, with very few the wiser. At the known, nothing he could have done White House, he danced the then would have saved it. "Because of my popular "Corsaire" pas de deux, with back pain," he says, "I had been un- Violette Verdy, and felt well enough consciously putting more pressure on afterward to attend the party; he even my right hip than my left. My cartilage danced with Betty Ford. Then, after would have worn away even if I had he had gone back to his hotel and taken retired when they told me to. The a shower, he found that he could barely trouble was, I was only thirty-seven. crawl into bed. His right leg was It's become the thing for dancers to locked at the hip. Some dancers' careers have hip implants, but they weren't end abruptly, with a snapped Achilles intended for dancers. They're for old tendon. Villella's had hung on for people who lead sedentary lives. I had more than a decade, defying all medical Yet final figured on having five more years. Actually, I only had two, and I stole prognostications. when the blow came it came in a them. I'll never forget way for which he was Bill Hamilton coming not prepared. He lay bukstage one night awake all night, not jt+st before `Rubies.' daring to move. Each There I was in cos - time he tried to change tume and makeup. He his position, red-hot looked as if he'd seen a pain seared his hip w`i'a' ghost. He said, `What socket. The next day, the hell are you doing he managed to drag himself aboard here?' I think that if I'd known the the first shuttle flight to New York, true condition of my hip I'd have gone where X-ray photo@ revealed that the on performing anyway." cartilage cushioning the femur had There's no question that the saddest worn away, leaving him with the loss Villella suffered when he finally equivalent of a broken bone in his hip did quit was that of the Balanchine socket. He would never regain rotation repertory. I have vivid memories of in the socket. The head of the femur him in his last season dancing "Ru- had been bone grinding against bone; bies" and "The Prodigal Son" and now it was frozen in place. "Pulcinella." After 1975, Villella kept Villella's feelings about having to. working —his identity as a dancer de - stop dancing can only be guessed at. " pended on it. He learned to compensate When he discusses the subject, it's usu- for the lack of rotation in his hip by ally in terms of financial lost. "It was rotating his body. But he worked out of just like being bankrupt," he has said.: financial need more than anything else. "One day I was a dancer, the next I He travelled around the country, stag - was wiped out. I would wake up in -the.. ing ballets, lecturing, and teaching morning and wonder, What do. E do-- master classes. He directed and/or cho- todayt My engagements went ua5lkd. reographed dance shows for television. There was no way of making up that = ("Harlequin: A Patchwork of Love" income, because I used to have to talon-. won him an Emmy in 1975.) He tried five or six jobs just to pay alimony to =. Broadway, contracting for a revival of my ex-wife. I was dead broke why "Pal Joey," in which he would play I met Linda —in fact, I was thirty-- a song -and -dance man. Both Baian- five thousand dollars in debt to my-- chine and Jerome Robbins jumped in business manager. Then my car was and helped compose his routines, but be - stolen —a Shelby GT-350—and with fore the show .opened he withdrew. the insurance money I financed my "Broadway," he told me with a sigh, hip operation." But thar wastin un-4"is not the world we know." One of rs til five yeaafter the White Hous@- his great accomplishments in this pe- catamophe—five years ("and thret riod was as a much needed, much months," in Villella's reckoning) dur- quoted ballet spokesman and general ing which he endured what must have arts advocate before Congress. As an been agonizing hip pain. If he some- early member of the National Council times gives the impression that his suf- on the Arts, appointed by Lyndon feeings were more financial than physi- Johnson, he had been one of the cal, that's only because when it comes strongest links between Phase II and to pain, Vill" like mat dancers, is a • Phase III of the regional -ballet move - stoic. He didn't know in 1973 that his .. ment. He served a full term on the hip was deteriersting; even if he had National Endowment's dance panel 83 as and a term chairman of New York Cp Vas1 Commission for Cultural Affairs. Hat this life wu--•well, seders- tart'. He had entered the speeW limbo reserved for the star who, no loner able to perform, remains valuable, in some ambiguous way. In Los Angeles to film a TV show with the skater Dorothy Hamill, he got acquainted with the young woman who had been hired to assist him, the former Ice Capades star Linda Carbonetto. She told him he was not commercial enough for the work he was trying to do, though she didn't go so far as to say he should be working for Jean Coc- tesu. (Balanchine, in suggesting Coc- teau to Villella, may have had in mind Coctesu's work with Babilbe--in par- 11 titular, "Le Jeune Homme et It Mort.") In 1980, she and Well& were 1 married, each for the second time. 1 1 Their daughter, Crista Francesca, was born the following year, and Viillella t 11 unof5cia11y adopted Lauren, Linda's 1 five -year -old daughter. Linda Viillella t i had new seen her husband dance, and until that final performance, in 1979, 1 of "Watermill," a Robbins ballet in 1 which VMella was required to move • still for long very slowly or remain periods, she had had no idea what ha looked like on the stage. He kept a film - and -video library • of his performance but was relnct I to show it. As a pioneer of dance on television, VMella is painfully aware of the shortcomings of these performance, and he is in no hurry, he says, for his family to get a distorted impresdon of what his danc- ing was really like. Beddes, much of the collection is on three-q°aroer-inch videotape, incompatible with a lodern VCRs. Gradually, it is being con- verted, and Linda and the girls are getting bit -by -bit glimpse of the TV appearance that made VElella famous throughout Aaurica. Depending on which. day of the week you enconnt"I& -hint+. V311&& d this period was either a•con- ,and i;vely symbol of his an or a fallen angel. who could not find .his place. His old repertory was i danced by Hirysha'ilwv and other men. The "ballet boom" was still on; dance journalists aeemed to forget that he had ever been part of it. His physical COW- tion weakened to the point where he was forced to walk with a cane. Janet Roberts, thW.VillaUe# afia&f+callf; visit to her house on Cape Cod when LJ Villells cut himself a came from a stick i NCvEMak 21,1988 to by to•3�. p� LWARPM0$. +3p! 31uitt{n1 pn �tbtnr ,se w„r a�sae a" . eouAUM o m oft %aties:s rrws+,sebrw►sw.resraeuaa.�� � "—sum air cop PVVW CIN se.00.. br ne�eprR otie �•�. see s,e+<.r..,a �_ •_ Here _air vzwg.n pre OA re se.00..-- OPwa a 140 c e ❑vre aM►E+a t Caere. ae or._.-- renr � C _... i view— eeteteew -- r reeeaftwe, a Cade Imh e1&W l26E DELIVERY car or wm for FREE 16 pa COW Oeod" t.app.*�16Q6 . Frerar eaaet � Farm -fresh &Tender.. . DELIVERED to your DOORI ^Enjoy a FMW IF a PWM to EsmMaIr . COME+LKMY COOKED a sHUCM . MOP" MCLucto qWAMW-r UTATee 2015 21 at amen aavArWAK CA 9=1 L k (80 327411ee a.o.A pee° pvw► ---------------- NiE"N' YM he found on the beach. Mrs. Roberts, who had known him from his corpe- de-ballet days, was shocked at the sight, and was moved to think Villella would let himself be seen that way, even among friends. Soon afterward, ' — he Sew to London for his hip4mplant operatiotl, a"% things started looking �- up. His old sift came back. He took on more duties, more interests. He even appeared in public on crutches, with Linda at his side. I ran into them one 1 evening as he was hobbling into the T State heats --our first meeting since the operation. He caught sight of me and called out, "No more painl" For thtfirst time in yearn, it seemed th t he had a future as well as a Peet. In his elation, Villella at first tried to do more work than he could handle, just as he had on returning from col- lege to the ballet. His critics com- plained that he was spreading himself too thin. But I noticed a difference in the interviews he was giving on his lecture tours. he had finally begun referring to himself as "a retired dancer.,' Whenever I visited the house on Sissy -ninth Street, the mood would be up. The Vfilellas would discussthe good news of the day and the bad with the same equanimity. The latest set back —their failure, for example, to win full custody of Roddy. Villells-s'-" son by his first marriage, to the dater. Janet Grechler—was merely the pte- tu& to a new attack on the problsa� Probably, Vfilella's outlook could hntt!s: been understood even then in his movement L philosophy. One doe'wi truth go down Ito go up. One goers backward, but with a forward impetust^£ as in Oberon's great solo. Though VMella couldn't dance, he hadnft goo"" thinking like. a dancer' over your balance, rotate out, out 4 up. He was recentedng his life aria of small upward turns* hfarryimg Linda was an upward turn —a big use... �fi Linda Carbone= is the daughter a career office: in the Canadian dipW� 7 madc service. As a little girl,.she too Cap figure skating for ezercia ; pursued it in various : world :cep#As%: j When her father was posted back;_ Ottawa, she b"% In: and miscipued in in Grenoble, Sho became en's hstiornal skating "cam o� ads in 1%9. Wham faatily ; r pro ve out, she went and with her ut fi amwtl bloom head, .mod hs►e - r- and a partial term as chairman of New York Cities Commission for Cultural Assim But this life was --well, aden- tary. He had entered the special limbo reserved for the star who, no longer able to perform, remains visible, even valuable, in some ambiguous way. In Los Angeles to film a TV show with the skater Dorothy Hamill, he got acquainted with the young woman who had been hired to amia hint, the former Ice Capades star Linda Carbonetto. She told him he was not commercial enough for the work he was trying to do, though she didn't go so far as to say he should be working for Jean Coc- teaw (Balanchine, in suggesting Coc. teau to Villella, may have had in mind Cocteau's work with Babiilde—in par- ticular, "Le Jeune Homme et la Mort.") In 1980, site and VMella were married, each for the second time. Their daughter, Crists Francesca, was born the following year, and Melia unofficially adopted Lauren, Linda's five -year -old daughter. Linda Vnllells had new seen her husband dance, and until that final performance, in 1979, of "Watered%" a Robbins ballet in which Villells was required to move very slowly or remain still for long periods, she had had no idea what he'. looked like on the stage. He kept a film - and -video Hbru7.of his performances but was reluctant to show it. As a pioneer of dance on television, VMella is painfully aware of the shortcomings of these performances, and he is in no hurry, he says, for his family to get a distorted impression of what his dar- ing was really like. Betide, much of the collection is on three -quarter -inch videoape, incompatible with modem VCRs. Gradually, it is being con- verted, and Linda and the girls are getting bit -by -bit glimpses of the TV appearances that made Vnllella famous throughout America. Depending on which• day of the week you encountered- dean,. Y11M during this period was either a -con- stant and lively symbol of his art or A fallen angel.who coold not find ids place. His old repertory was being danced by Harythnilwv and other men. The "ballet boom" was still on, dance journalists seemed to forget that he had ear bean part of it. His physical condi- tion wakened to the point when he was forced to walk with a carte. JAM Roberts„ thsn•VillWWs`sgart, roWlsa visit to her house on Caps Cod when Villella cut himself a cane from a Ida ,e N OAMbER M.19" T* NEW YOWMK ftf Ah � lft to M- We & $45. PlapWots. !at •31P �r ...sea... rwM. arofr�, bras eirwaw�a owr�iwi+aari aosG~ aon aaa~wwnoalr +era aria gar srawr� MrrMrra ours N us,� 3fltmtingtttr �indtfers"" u it an PUNcat aws • couJlyln orMo anon 1 MIN us two swsnera r Fl�,a11l�Yrr��YianOa•Moa*An*AN � r sroorterrnrropwprowo erriM71MMWL r ava,r i yw«errs erw,rrw� or j r1aoow 00 oaA a 1490 r► _— ❑wan CVoRCod 0VYa ❑ Aft ro � i CON OIL �Adam— coy l ,��--------- swM.rw*rMrrN� IsMaWe 4i� boa daiyr*' FREE DZL1VEQY a! or w for FREE 18 pa Color t)rorJraa 14M* 44 tf" ""c r nt�owrt•urs- oases he found on the bush, huts. Raba% who had known him froot hie corps. de -ballet days, wan thotlocd at the sight, and was moved to think VWs& ; would let himself be seen that ter• even friends. Soar , he dew to for hie blo- om Hob olderthings started looking , ewft came back. He took on more dudes, more interaft He even appeue in public on crutches, with Linda st hie side. I ran into them one as he was hobbling into the State eetre--our first meeting since the opersdonm He caught sight of me and called out, "No more paini" For - thefirst time in years, it seamed that he had a future as well as a past, In his elation, Melia at first tried to do more work than he could handle, — just as he had on returning from col• legs to the ballet, His critics com- plained that he was spreading himself too thin. But I noticed a difference in the interviews he was giving on his lecture tours. he had finally begun referring to himself as "a retired dancer." Whenever I visited the house on Study -ninth Street, the mood would be up. The VMellae would discusi:the good now of the day and the bad with the same equanimity. The lariat set-. back —their failure, foreasmple,..::co; win fall custody of Roddy, V111e11a'a_ son by his first marriage, to the dancer: Janet Greschler--was merely.the pre lude to a new attack on the problem;;: Probably, Villella's outlook could hstr�s . z been understood even then in terms' his moveumt phulosophy. Ora does ilia` truth go down .to go up. One goes r' backward, but with a forward. intpetu r as in Oberon's great solo.. Thoqf q Villella couldn't dance, he.. hada,"ft` stopped thinking like a - dancer. - over your balance, rotate out., � up. He was receneeering his series of small upward turns, Msrrying 4 Linda was an upward turn,e bi4. • Linda Carbonemo is the daughter o ` s Farm -fresh &Tondsr.. a career officer in the Csnaddan;dfplo- DE NEREO to Your OWRI matic service. As a little girl; aloe rock '9fts FMWI -$1, 1 toEXWVW' up figure skating for L esercise, - MM UMMY oo�o�'yca°YiLaw�aS�HuMM pursued it in various world cap r Ifl{M IAYZY W1.W LY father esCAR00T deTAfae so+a t�K awrc • ' jai( (iKli. pQd,`b � Ottawa, she began, ut an> *w in the Ol tfia �psrti renflbde. She bec'00 s.ne tita60; ass ao�s �+t Pw,n c& anus nation-' skstin,p�pn� Do— O wo,rr Cucpvm aria -in 1%9. Whea t"_ �ae - - - - - gars out she.watt pry md'JIT or._-- Ice Capsdss. With.- her ,lithe r«arw saaail bf tad and .4# , } • - �. , '^.,'� i� `j. �):yes t .. A Linda Villella could be taken for one of her husband's dancers, In fact, a skater's regimen is nearly as hard as a dancer's, and the touring life is harder. But when Linda Carbonetto met Ed- ward Villella they didn't spend much time commiserating; they were too busy giggling together in TV studios, in restaurants, on beaches, in airports. Linda has described their courtship as "six months of foolishness." Villella would take any engagement that got him back to the vicinity of Los Ange- les, where she was living. He accepted lecture fees as low as a hundred and fifty dollars. Then he would go off with Linda and spend his fee. "Sometimes I would attend the lec- ture," Linda told me, in her soh, con- fiding voice. "I got so tired of Ed- ward's life story. I'd sit there limning to all the blood and guts, and think, Wow, they're really sorry for him. When I met Edward, he had this terrible, really frightening hip pain, he walked with a limp, and he slept about two hours a night. It was tragic. But all he talked about was having to retire from dancing early. He was practically forty years old. Is that early? I had to give up championship skating at twenty-one, and I couldn't understand what was so upsetting about having to give up dancing at forty. I didn't feel a bit sorry for him." Linda's attitude, Villella says, was a dash of ice water in the face, and it helped him get his bearings. Bal- anchine had once told him that it was better to go out in glory than in de- cline, a piece of advice dancers often give themselves and seldom follow. Villella knew that he had been spared the indignity of decline; he told a re- porter in 1981, "It was a painful thing to leave what was the love and passion of my life, but it would be far more painful to be hanging around onstage trying to be what I was ten or fifteen Yew ago." But he really felt that he hadn't been given a choice. His injury had made the choice for him, and, as he now admits, he resented that bitterly: "I didn't want it to retire me, I wanted me to retire me." And so, at forty-four, with a plastic lining in his hip, he set about devising a proper farewell to dance. He went back to class. Eventually, he got back onstage for { two performances of the pas de If - from Balanehine's `?Apollo," followed by Robbins' "Afternoon of a Faun." I missed this event, which took place NOVEM BER 21.1968 We've got ""- one of the nicest weekends in New York all tucked away. $1'40�°fam.P.dw It's nestled on a charming, tree -lined street in Murray Hill at the luxurious, intimate Doral'[Lscany. And includes deluxe accommodations, an in -room rcfrigentor stocked with soft drinks and es, a N.Y. Times and N.Y. Sun- day rmes, an exercise cycle. access to Zr private Gwen center and parking. l at an incredibly low rate. just arou IARAYMMW ?the corner from everything. Nerr York', blg�jeew dale hotel. we're a eke wla.e hone for. 120 East 39th Street. East of Park Avenue, New York 10016, 212-686.1600. Toll -free: 800.847-4078 Frida, or s.w,aa, arrival. 7ka additioeaL sauce oe availabilk,- THE ART OF EATING EDWARD BEHR - QUARTERLY LETTER "I think it is wry good indeed." M.F.K. FISHER "Should be on your sheaf." FRED FERRETTI GOURMET Join JULIA CHILD and other noteworthy subscribm. 1 yea, $22. THE ARr Of EATNe HO 30. sal 3 ►EACHAM,Vr05M + MCMMA. 800•451-Asks IBAM-9FMl IN VERMIOW. ?12 3N1 Blazer Buttons Dwincdyejewch,qu l4yohmElanom from Ameria's oeyant and axemost ge�eaooa�asymmdndMg vibe oe,W iat a�ot sod.�r',= � W** UNSIL W CKANAM me" st 2901 14OW221.4671 THE NEV YO1l K in the Rancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa, on 'November 13 and 14,1981, but not long afterward I saw Villella during a lecture per. forth Apollo's second solo and a bit of the first pas de trois from "Agora." Though the performance was reduced in scale and intensity—Villella an- nounced that he would only "pass through" the steps, not dance them full out —it was obvious to me from the steadiness and security with which he moved that he had found the transition he was looking for. Even among danc- ers, Villella has always stood out as a physically supercharged creature. Long years of pain and then weeks of recuperation had put him out of touch with what he calls "my physicalities." And there was now something new going on in his right hip joint, which he needed to know about. How great this need was can be measured by a story Linda Villella told me. Only four months after Villella got off his crutches, he tested himself physically by siding —and he had never skied before. The two of them happened to be at a winter resort. Villella spied the Bid slopes, and the doctrine that slower is faster got tossed to the winter winds. Before his wife could stop him, he was on his way up the mountain in a chair lift. She watched in horror as he came back down, weirdly bent over, elbows flapping up to his ears, all but out of control. Villella looks back- on madness with characteristic aplomb. "h just had to do it,"- he says. He never skied again. Normally, the way a dancer gets a grip on reality is br performing —going altraight through a; role from beginning to end, on a stage, in front of an audience. When Su: UM Farrell underwent a hip operation aim-' y alai to Villella':, he counselled her In a I general way on what to expect. Both of.. them knew that Farrell would have to; find out the particulars for. herself: Villella's 1981 stage performances weren't comebacks, like Farrell':1988 , ones. Specifically, they told hint that hi'- could function professionally as :.' dancer —that he needn't brush up hits: maritime skills or start selling; taara�,. insurance. ,F performing, he of physical self-knowledge no amount of clawwork or ph'' spy could have prodded. he itaportant . of»11, ,vas ��y'r `a • prycltologicill—►the feelisig disc' he v►i1 } � back in charge of his destiny. The two "Faun"s (with Feather.. ' 4t ?; r X�a J �h; $� NOVEMUR 21.19" Wa -M replacing the scheduled Gelsq ence's indulgence while he "revisits old and movement together onto the Kirkland) brought his performing es- friends." The effect is like a great printed page. Later, I realized this reer full circle. The Faun had been his operatic tenor singing falsetto —in ex- could be better done on videotape, with first principal role: he danced it two perience complete in its own term:. Villella visibly demonstrating steps to tr b h dsn Th book 'eel weeks after joining New York City Ballet. In a sere, Villella it the Faun. YY nue rllella was usy preparing his farewell to the stage, his N.Y.C.B. ¬ er ceg . a prof got going during the "bankrupt" yeat's, _ Robbins says that he based his choreog- life was rapidly becoming a thing of when it seemed that Villella would not raphy on a memory of Villella as a boy the past. His last link with it had been move expansively again, but much of taking class one afternoon in a shah of coaching Baryshnikov in his old roles. Oberon was recorded —more or less — sunlight. On May 20, 1982, Villella (When Baryshnikov danced for the with him bouncing around his living was reunited with his first Nymph, Carters at the White House, Villella room. Were I a camera, I would have Allegra Kent, in an all-star gala bene- was there to introduce the program, captured the felicity of Villell& demon- _ fit program at the Metropolitan in which included "Tarantella," the mating. All I got was a soundtrack. New York. They came on together to "Rubies" pas de deux, and parts of Here is the round of the moment that dance VillelWs pas de deux "Shenan- "Harlequinade." During rehearsals in begins Oberon's variation: doah," and were greeted with the big- the East Room, Baryshnikov's man- E.V.: I think I take three or four Best ovation of the evening. Villella ager, Edgar Vincent, whose other cli- steps, and then I stop and pose, but I the dancer has been in gradual retreat ents are mostly singers and musicians, don't stop. My hand is going up, up — from the public gaze all through the watched in wonderment as the two and as my hand hits the top of the pose eighties: Bit by bit, the curtain comes dancers ran through "Tarantella" to- I'm moving into something else. What down. In 1984, he appeared in Ann gether. "This is amazing," he said. I tried to do was put one phrasing Arbor and Albany, dancing in "The "Nowhere in the music world would against another, so that you saw some - Waltz P{olect," a ballet choreographed to his mEasute by Richard Tanner and you ever e a thing like this —one star se coaching another.") Those roles were thing like slow motion and an elon- gated stretch, and then —suddenly an including a special waltz composed still alive to Villella; they were his attack, where the whole body turned, "for E.V." by Morton Gould. Villella other selves, and he would spend hours but turned in one [count]. And this is continues to present the "Apollo" and talking about them into my tape re- something that I talk about in class: "Alton" excerpts in his lectures. They corder. We thought of a book in which you don't turn around, but you turn out r. are not billed as performances —his he would discuss his repertory in detail to turn around. So your whole body is contract forbids it. He asks the audi- and I would somehow transcribe words turning around. It is all in one, and the 1SZ&369d,oeyorr�nYrwladen�lRArr�pgna"�rUt�Z9S��tf60iR ; .. ' 1 �z r • ` sit NtV YORKEK ' l to ."'dam;t change, It ` tatatet. today. They prepare themselves for starring role, would net►et be per. A �: VV'hips, tort of, power and they don't deal with speed. formed again. I suppose it is M. great -t-YiIt " whipt around or snaps See, the big problem when you dance loss; ettcept for the namlty of see` t6 d in one. It is, Arstt posing but quickly with power is that you bunch ing Villella In a role unlike any he 6t not etopplttg. The pose is in motion. and tense. You an not purely classical, had done before, "Pulcinella" hadn't And then It is that slow, elongated and Oberon cannot be other than amosmted to much, and Balanehine's of stretch, and then the quickness of going purely classical. That's where this failure to include it in the Stravinsky r of `evfiimmtl and taking off. business of slower being faster coaxes Centennial Celebration the previous A.C.: Well, it was one of the most in. You can't be abrupt. It has to be spring was tantamount to declaring it iJg thrilling openings. The attack of it with speed, but you can't be abrupt defunct. With some further revision to • .was like this big, wide exciting d6gage- within the speed. When you are going (Balanchine had revised the piece be- h= soutenu swoop, and you knew fire- down through the PH6, you have to do fore), Villella could probably have got k. ;works weft about to explode: the whole plib. You can't shorten it in through it. But, by the time of the At EX.: It was all juxtaposition. any way. If anything, you have to Stravinsky Centennial, Balanchine was From specific description Villella elongate it and still not be late. But too ill to do more than a few token bits Ar would often veer off into rumina- what a pleasure to do a variation like of choreography. I tion: that! Look at all the stuff there is to :, '.'*Look at (Balanchine's) variations. play withl" WE still thought we had a book to Al se rhey're all dances; they're not trick, Our taping sessions were mesmeriz- do, so when Villella drove to At trici,'tick, run. They're full of these bubbling. Uttle delicacies. In Oberon, I- ing, and we talked about many thinggss Saratoga that same summer for a tg e- Blot that he besides dance. By the summer of 1483, Villella speaking engagement, taking Linda to L think was thinking told me that he was flying and the baby, I went along, too. We =� n- 'scherso' and'powee at the same time. around in clan, doing sixes and eights, checked into one of the duplex dorms at in 'That G to me the big challenge of that and even turning better than he could Skidmore College. The Villeilas had d, variation. It's to have the power to when he was performing, "because left Crises': nurse at home. This was ii jump lt.andL also the speed, to do it without pain I can feel the turn." It done, I now realize, to accommodate — ss: musically' and play with it . musically. was impossible not to feel a pang as me in the Ford Tempo they had rented at L That really was the most difficult thing VMeila said this. Balanchine had died for the weekend. It wasn't a good idea, is =to do,: and it's Probably why '' people that spring. "Pulcinella," the ballet in because. Crista, who had slept all the '' he have so much trouble, with Oberon which he had given Villella his last way up in the car, suddenlq.goc.rest-` j ,•:� T ;.. � .�s.-� ... :�,+�i� ....;t :..:4, 2 ihd s��.L�si��SJ_c��'w"���U � �i b4e �,i. .i less. It turned out that she had a high fever. After dinner, Villella changed into a light -blue pin -cord suit and, leaving Linda to put the baby to bed, drove to the Filene Music Building, where a crowd of about three hundred awaited him. This was one of his more informal talks, with no dancing. His subject was Balanchine, and he spoke off the cuff. Here are some of the things he said: On "Rubies": "He took an Ameri- can jam style and put it on a classical plane. He gave that to us and said, `What are you going to do with it?' Now, when he showed you steps, his whale body spoke. And I am look- ing at what he is doing in front of me, and it is all about dignity, it is about in- tegrity, it is about economy. And I am trying to imitate that, because that is what we dancers Bo— we imitate. But I am not just imitating, I am referring. I am referring to the days when I was in high school and college, and dancing to `Sing, Sing, Sing' and all those old Benny Good- man records. And he never said,'Don't do.' I think he liked it." On Balanchine the man: "There was an aura about that man, no matter where he was, whether it was in a restaurant, a rehearsal studio, at a per- formance, or standing in the wings. An aura that not only attracted you — you couldn't get your eyes or your mind off him. There was instant au- thority coming from this man —that's what I saw. When I think of Mr. B., I we a profile —a very sharp, clear, al- most hatchedike profile. It's a very clean linear image. And to me as a kid he was definitely the man I wanted to please. He walked into the studio, and he was coming from somewhere and he was going somewhere. And he knew all about it —that was the wonderful thing. He knew, he knew." On dancing: "The best part of it was going through space at an angle, with the wind past your ears. The feel of the wind, the sound of it." Question from the audience: "Why did Balanchine pick Peter Martins?" Answer: "He was concerned not only about the survival of his work but that the premise, the ideas, the style should go on. Peter Martins has Bournonville in his background. He has Pedpa. He has Balanchine. And he has been willing to work at being a NOVEMBER 21.1988 choreographer. I put steps together, but that's different." Question from the audience: "Was George Balanchine loved,' Answer: "Everybody loved him. The thing was to have him love and F respect us —that's what we all wanted. Some of us got that love and some of us didn't." Villella didn't elaborate. The truth of his relations with Balanchine wouldn't have borne telling. But in private he lets the worst be known: that ! he passed most of his N.Y.C.B. career on the outs with Balanchine; that there even was a time when he and Stanley Wil- liams both believed he would have been fired if Balanchine had had anyone to replace ,f.,g;,X him. Yet Villella can go about the country singing Balanchine's praises, and there's no hypocrisy in it. He's still doing his ut- most to please that man. When Villella got back to the dorm, Crista was still up. She was up most of the night, and so was Linda. In the morning, the temperature was gone, and the baby was fine. Villella said that she was the same kind of hyperactive child he had been. "I couldn't take piano lessons because I couldn't sit still, I was so antsy," he said. "Maybe,, Crista should dance your roles," Linda suggested. "She could, too, with those thighs and that temper. I put her down for the last time last night —it was daybreak —and I remem- ber thinking, If she goes, she goes, I've done all I can." Then, without having slept a wink since she left New York, Linda spent the day gamely chasing Crista around the Saratoga pool house while Villella and I did some taping. We went to a performance of New York City Ballet at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center and saw "Who Caress" Villella had little to say about it. The leading male role, cre- ated for d'Amboise, "takes American jazz and- puts it on a classical plane." Was it a role he mi ht once have en- visioned himself f Probably. Offi- cially, there were no regrets. Among the remarks he had recorded that afternoon were "I've had my hits, from now on it's all dessert" and "There's no place I'd rather be right now than in the studio with my dancers.' (He was running three schools in New Jersey at the time and working reg- ululy with the New Jersey Ballet as - .c v Q �z r THE NEV YORKER At the Ambassador Grill, enjoy savory French country cuisine without having to know the language or the maitre d. Enjoft freadt agate isa't a onset of will or On you km boa rli teC where yw dine. The AmIlmador Grills AaOubve Gum dishes, as ardsliy P"aw by ntai m d*h hattds Drillin and hsW fordwX live vp to their Gallic mpilutics for flair asd amileam DWw a prig fin $27.tsadt a S21. Piano ni fbdy. Ilelervatisas rt"ested. (212) IO2•S011. AMBASSADOR GRILL /N1 sate >w fiat At�w aw Ntk aw tittt IIMI e ■sstnan,a�as.oa go--"*wv«+ome100aawuantWeW*? o.ao ore of vows seems` 060 taar,sopr mean rev Cnro arrary tau raw soot to run inn nuo taraooan pnw a wM ,v Oan�arna,ea aw tobrr,N r-yr OMaa up oaMtroeury 9Wn o cower was.- a rr,orao wen as norwao Doer rwm ono RXXW ne.ti0 na orw "M of avaoar v-a t o .Ks ro ro awran •a renoar star aw .n tug ono cart vbu CIrO WO 08 ray anw at tell uyrwan000 nary rarwaow Ncn+owv moor a.ear rw-, MOae volt! .y Coww C00 sm :'wo :T •r.or +bras ,gar -Wes t,ea ;,. 3,2 ram as ua ...+wos"Mo .a. Qsl u '.•ti :N 17MM. ^V.0"" skMC C400 '_,..ao.,m. .Oao star UMUoeta• I well as with the Eglevsky company.) Balanchine was much on our minds. 91 "`—'— Indulge love The Villellas had been to see him in your the hospital. He had met Linda before for music and flirted innocently with her. Sick as he now was, he did so again. "You" — he poin .ed to Linda —"sit here." Roguishly, he patted the bed. "And you" —he pointed to Villella—"sit over there." He indicated a chair by the foot of the bed. They'd all three had a little chat, just as if everything were absolutely normal; then, not wishing to tire Balanchine, the VWellas had left. Balanchine's bedside had become something of a shrine in the last weeks of his life. Some people, thinking to right old wrongs, went to him and poured their hearts out. Villella couldn't do this. Throughout his life, it was the cool and correct Balanchine whom he idolized; no dancer —no Eglevslty or Bruhn —had been a more THE NEW GROVE impressive model of deportment. On- stage and off, Villella's manners area DICTIONARY OF mixture of Old World Italian propri- ety and Balanchinean reserve. How MUSIC AND much his visit meant to the dying man MUSICIANS he will never know. If he had hopedat long last to soften Balanchine's fixed view of him as an outsider, he hadn't 20 succeeded. That summer, when he dis- Sam by 51. -a.y uwls cussed -his roles with me it was with an -- underlying sense of what might have the Smatest musical been. Once I asked him point-blank dictionary s pu Uetwks what he had lost by quarrelling with Rosen.ewes VY Balanchine. Were there roles unmade with a purchase of The New Grove you that would have been more brilliant will be enrolled in the Grove Music Society. Membership in the Society entities you to a than Oberon, than "Rubies"? Were quarterly newsletter, discount races for record - such things conceivable even by Bal- ings, booms music mapzines, and concert opera subscriptions. anchine? Villella sensibly did not at- t an Gnawer. He metal replied, tempt Y P , Groves Dictionaries of Music 15eau 26th Street. New York. NY loolo "I was not in his thoughts." It sound- (am) 221.2123 (ta New York. can ed mild enough, yet not to be in (212) 4s1-1332) Balanchine's thoughts was for a dancer T�"�"�"" 1 e Ordet The fYwe Grow directly rtos the 1 of VMella's stature to be cast into outer a pubUsbw and mlte tan oaymew to rims too e on isle rase prim or $21291 darkness. rrSome of us got that love and some i i i CHere's 11925 as full payment. Please ship me the ( c plese Nets Grow at axe e of us didn't." In and around the eom- 1 Or choose one of these convenient payment plans: Y party, Villella's reputation always was uui e e volume a m106.25 onth for 20 month. j C bill my charge unt :payment slightly shady. I never understood C Here's 12 as acdow n PShip me the why,and since no one seemed to think , e � 100 p once and orbilmy charge e per month for 20 months. i it extraordinary, I never asked. "He ; O Please send me a free 29-page itiustrated e has no friends," I once remarked to a broehure Edwin Denby. "He doesn't need e Ovisa OlNasier ❑AmE: CDinen 1 e eCard them," Denby shot back. That was i No. `=p that. Such was the Byzantine atmo- e Name sphere of Balanchine's court: And- ll "idle" I Balanchine opinion in the dance world city 5t71C — rap 1 . held that Balanchine was "punishing" y $rae sn'saas. pew am we tea. NaNY6 ; oemslltsot VMella. When VWella had to stop dancing his Balanchine roles, the pun- a• NWdko *be& Dwemaer is e t and aawiae tbee lsulieerrr 9/e.raawia 1. a ea sr sperAmormm 3 Ais. *posed. a iishment theory went into overdrive. I Z�p�a�"� ,<• het WhOlUR gi,19" was authoritatively informed that the choreographer had deliberately broken • i 6 ' the dancer, in body to well ae in spirit. • e i "s If those had been anything to this, we may be certain that we would have • heard about it 6-MGetuy Kirkland, in • 80L • {{{ the and-Batanchine chapters of • OEUCIM her recent memoir, "Dancing on My • OIFT NEN► • -! Grave." VMdk was a childhood hero 0 IDEA � i of hers, but though she 6dimly aware • • of Balanchine'e displeasure with him, • she certainly doesn't see him se a fal- low -victim. To Kirkland, VMella is • • iomeone who successfully defied Balsnchine. He is also one of the few • • SHIPPED ANTWHEHE 1N THE U.S.• ballet figures to emerge from her book with any sort of commendation, and • tn„ a sue gas so -mint New York owneYaas • �'' ' 41Aft eftess, heuewhmem� -aithough Kirkland III o rangely imper- Oar am we VONW �nnaeAry r rvw ..m, --1 —1— uc n a"T—%AW —..I (she doan't mention Viileila's • ,.M. Iaereaov ve • tuns Mexico. to be exact --I ham a love' • s•, m Cal awn • letter from Devs Hsxtue efforts to help her salvage her career or • �; u tots oaeoM. • totes of the lauachft a his importance as one of her Brat part- • A-: ss!' Cheon angea� « • fi INY4AW W. San Ds non), the dance world barely took • Mane • new tt-putt was to bat notice when she accepted an award • • but after Marge from the National Rehabilitation • ; Tear, we f s�i++�" ' • So soother 3a40 feet. Ss dHospital for ha overcame • :34.95 • wkola plan. and now it's ! ar'un and Villa& was the otroilp • sIIV, * IZIIo*`. .« • stern. fitted out with ereq dantxr who would consent to intro- • '""""" ""` "' • vd known to man. and • Meer TdW m 14MM-1111 • Suloues hamni I feel lime i duce her. His speech, at a Kennedy • ns ass a oat—t One a ON • toy, and so does Martel T Center ceremony, appealed to dancers • ,.e,eaa...e..w.ra«e,..as.4r • we Q into the ownees It to forgive Kirkland on behalf of the • nesri+:�s.M'r:'n:.`.'�,a� ow a.tra • s done in white-ot" art, and it fell on deaf ears. "There's a ••••••••••••••••• M me bed. and Y. webeirm e of di that we do o new Lh on board, we'm -� asking dignity usage, new chef on board, and v and I think we've got to do that off- /-�a� hair and the Cate d'Aas as watt." he told the audience. ran somcwhm '43-ere who spot w in one ssggee that ne' borhood are lm i'haws a grant deal of dignity in inft come. aboard for drink forgiveness► especially for troubled col- Andre's sourmes chow..-. g^. » Spend a weekend at the PubGda your Sftretsry4oafixsdir�a'a emu of dignity is off house end enjoy the warmth of oor Noreenba when he kilo bythstaeEtsiottodetfgcasipwhiehhtu. AvailebkJmwiryb to Mardl7. In mat b e* pervaded the dattceworld. "The Send for nor five brodwre today.', '*"�� � a son-in-G of ban In the eighties is Annapueaa Bale! spec," b Disma* eoruid M of P:wu man ha saTs ginomifT, Ted { 1$t�) f;�,bt tbe �' acasdalmoingedng of the Kirk- wrth"(aartY"Veixuter: 17 land lwests b�tiouibt to repair the YankavistaWeekend checkahm.ndher het ad.ia dump �y a � ges- at the pa id HOW mon s was generoas'bncna T Mem,KlraCa.arhkwt..ase rinse Vaughn at the Cho Batas hiusein of him U-1- chiue, as B=JWLSasbida.AlAoliMti tS0ai347.3iti' ISeODO fvet, the highest po i 1r:na*_ rn t. _ veer h_ OW Mute. Wo campe i' era n to ■J 42 0 0 * P R O F I L E S •, EDWAltD VILLELLA'S life, mythi- cally understood, contains two parallel scenes that play in alter- nation, as if in a movie. One is of a ten- year -old boy wearing a baseball uni- form over his tights, reluctantly climb- ing the stairs of the Anne Garrison School of Dance, in Bayside, Queens, where his sister takes lessons. (Villel- la says he used to go up the stairs backward, so that anyone who saw him would think he was leaving.) Then it is ten years later, and a young man in a white naval cadet's uniform is going up the stairs of the School of American Ballet's new studio, on Broadway at Eighty-second Street. He comes to the top. He approaches the desk. VILLELLA: Do you remember me? RECEPTIONIST: Of course I remember you. Villella immediately starts taking class. A week or so later, he runs into George Balanchine sitting in the foyer talking with two of his ballerinas. BALA`CHISM Well, look who's here. How do you like our new school? A nice place to work, no? II --THE PRODIGAL. VILLELLA: It's the only place for me. from now on. BALANCHINE: Good. In any real movie version of that scene, of course, Villella walks up the stairs in his white uniform and into the foyer and runs into Balanchine right away. Balanchine gets up slowly but shows no surprise. VILLELLA: Remember me? BALANCHINE (slowly): Well, look who's here. Villella had realized at fifteen that his value to Balanchine was the key to his future. At his father's bidding, he threw away the key, never guessing that his fate would be decided in those four years when he did not dance. The reunion with Balanchine took place, and by the season of 1959-60 Villella was a principal dancer of New York City Ballet. But before long, in- stead of the close and happy collab- oration he had expected, a strug- gle began that it still pains him to think about. Once more, mythic paral- lels appear. It would be the natural thing for a movie producer to connect Balanchine with Villella's own father and to identify both with the father in "The Prodigal Son." Then scenes of defiance and reconciliation could be played out on the broadest scale. One even imagines how a film might cut from one to the other of these father figures in the midst of a performance -- as in "The Red Shoes," when the her- oine sees in the place of the conductor the two men who are tearing her life apart. But the script would lack some- thing in symmetry. There was no definite reconciliation in life with Balanchine. And there would be no way of explaining what alienated him from Villella. It wasn't just "art" versus "money" —a movie could han- dle that. (Thank heaven it hasn't,) It was the presence of a third father — Stanley Williams. When Villella start- ed taking Williams' classes, which he says saved his life as a dancer, he dropped Balanchine's class. For thir- teen years, the issue grew and festered between them. Balanchine felt that Villella no longer belonged to him as an artist. Villella felt that he needed Williams' lessons in order to belong to Balanchine. 3 q 89-26 .. -- - 1 77 j "I tried to make Balanchine under. in Williams' teachings in the sixties Mozart you can't practice his scales?" r stand why I needed Stanley's classes," proved to be the prelude to the great in- Villella was appalled by the situa- Villellt told ate not long ago. "But I duction of Danish male talent that en- tion, not least because it was so hard on was afraid that if he knew how badly niched the company in the seventies. Williams. It was said that Balanchine a off I was physically he might not want Erik Bruhn, a guest artist in 1959-60 was jealous of Williams. The more to invest creative energy in me. The and 1963-64, hadn't really been as- charitable believed that Balanchine thought terrified me. I went back. I did similated; he had functioned mainly as simply preferred to teach Villella and try to take his class again. I found that a partner to Maria Tallchief. Then, in everybody else himself. As the "giver r I had to warm up a half hour early to 1969, came Peter Martins, originally of laws," he was entitled to do so. prepare myself for the speed and attack to do the same for Farrell. He was In a long-established institution with that he brought to barrework. Bal- followed by Peter Schaufuss and strong traditions, like the Maryinsky anchine never gave a warmup. He Adam Luders and Ib Andersen. Helgi or the Paris Opera, a ballet master need a expected you to be warmed up and Tomasson was Danish -trained. In a feel no threat from what is taught in ready. He gave a twenty -minute barre sense, Williams and Villella were vin- the classrooms. But in New York, if at mast. I needed forty minutes. I was dicated. There uwsr consanguinity be- you were a believer, the sole tradition achy and sore from rehearsing every tween the Danish and the Balanchine was Balanchine, there had never been day and dancing two or three times a schools of classicism —hadn't Balan- another, and it could brook no rivals. night. It was just so utterly impractical chine himself been the first to notice it? When I suggested this to Villella, he for me to take his class. One time, I Hadn't he confirmed it by importing said desperately, "I understood all that. approached him and apologized for not so many Danes? And hadn't Villella I wanted to please the Bose. But to ` coming to company class. He got a himself become a better, more useful please him I had to understand him, little flustered, which was unusual for dancer? Balanchine never complained and only Stanley could explain him to him, then waved his hand. 'For you, of Williams' influence on Villella's me. We'd sit night after night in the it's all right. You can do tendus batte- technique. But the breach between Carnegie Tavern having our sand-: meats.' He meant that I knew how to Balanchine and Villella was never wiches and drinking our beers and work and didn't need him. But I felt healed. It was at its widest during talking Balanchine, nothing but Bal- r that he was offended." Farrell's ascension, when a flock of anchine. Then we'd go the next day When Suzanne Farrell entered ballerinas defected to Williams. Vil- and try out a theory, and it worked. Balanchine's life and he began or- lelWs problems now included a com- It all worked! But because we were ' ganizing his class around her and the pany crisis. "I'm sure he thought I was doing this apart from Mr. B.'s supiervi- ` dancers who physically resembled her, leading a boycott," Villella told me. lion, because we were not being dic Villella knew that he was right to stay "There was no way I could explain . tated to, we were branded at disloyal = away. Balanchine's class was all about what was going on. How do you tell We were non grata, both of . us.: And, . tightening up loose-limbed r girls. Villella needed elon- gation, extension, line— precisely the things he was getting from Williams.; ' At the same time that he 1kTM was "flouting" Balsnchine, he was holding long, B- luminaring post;perfor- mance discussions with ,' s r rre Williams on the subject of t 4 - Balanchine's choreography and technique. Williams, more an elder brother thanJv a father to Villella, had on rt coming to New York im- mersed himself in the Bal- anchine style and had to a great extent realigned € his thinking with Balau- � .fit' wit _Srs K1 1yW '3 � iAh aj�`F chines. The principle of f-A active left -right turnout, of "rotating outover a" ' front -of -the -foot balance, st4, is one taught by Balan f► % chine. "Slower is faster" if - a Balanchinean idea if not 1 an aC:ual Bal::►Chine , pre- cept. Vmella's sb/O*OQ 041. x� - }Wx WIR d*+, , Wi 'i Sri E . t - i w I hated to be ast��� complete ?44 � N n � befit Balanchine as sot a POP � M 'N,_ 3 n W 7i ; -hbt only for roles, for every- When plans were announced to tear do+eet � g the garages behind the main street and pert aP�� thi ft, I just couldn't fall In line. 'You twelve units of condos, there was a Protest+ { had to do everything he said, or he just the board of aldermen narrowly overrode. wouldn't trust YOU. Now, as I stroll from behind the convenience stores; Regret, anguish, mortification, exas- the moon like a tasteful round billboard' >l j peration-�Villeng passes through an hall wheat -field ow over the far fake turret emotional cycle every time he talks !h about his conflict with Balanchine. It of the condos' maned neo-shingle-style bulk. n seems to me that in his mind he stands The moon makes no protest. It rolls what it sees5':. j soused of some great crime -of hay - afloat the scene it �lumines, and lends ibold weight-- } { 11 Ing behaved disobligingly toward the afloat and paper -thin and mottled with merit--- as to what men have thrown up as it once beamed benign. , Masser, And the pun of it is that Y i z Balanchine's attitude is completely un� on Crusader castles, fern swamps turning into coal: . detstandable. It is easy to forget how and the black ocean when no microbe marred it. Y '� controversial his teachings were is -Jorsx 1JPb= Y b ley; thogs, days and how precarious his • • whole aesthetic was as a result. Ameri- the 'Cho to 'cli�idsm was in the process of mutt first obtain the permission of one had gaished reproducing rang formation; it needed all the help it of fourteen people, all close friends raphy, Villells, assisted by the tin could get. Was it just ViIIdWs moral and associates of Balanchine's, to pan., ballet mistress►: Elyse orrte, support Balanchine wanted? I've some whom he consigned the various copy- combed .It through,. adjusting maskal accents:. Then times wondered whether Vr�lella's ab- rights in his will. (Tanaquil LeClercq, count; and resetting_.. _ .. staining from Balanchine's classes de- who was married to Balanchine from Villella worked it over stylraticaUy prived Balanchine of a source of infor- 1953 to 1%9, holds the American from start to finish. Not that then 'was mation he needed in order to become a performing rights to the majority of anything wrong with Tstiaa'srork; more effective teacher of male dancers. the bailee, including "The Prodigal it's just extremely doubtful whether If, as is often said, BaLnchine's classes Son.") Then what generally happens is he or any other Npfiateue, no sharer . were his laboratory, where he carried that the head of the Balanchine Trust, how qualified, would -hare made the out experiments, made new rules, etc., Barbara Horgan, assigns s rtpEtiteur to careful study of "Prodigal" that Vil might not Villella have participated in reconstruct Melia the choreography is the lens has. I watched: the same kind of reciprocal process that proper style. The r4"teur may be a "Prodigal" for the Boston Ballet in ty, like John T Balanchine engaged in with Farrell Balanchine authoriares, 1984, ,and although the company had f nd'other' ballerinas, where the teacher who staged "Ballet Imperial" recently danced the ballet .before, then, too, learns and the pupa teaches? I haven't' for American Ballet Theatre, or Rose- Villella had to begin by correcting pater mentioned this possibility to Vill" mary Dunleavy, the ballet mistress of. of the counts. He Feels deeply re�pQnu �. because,' from his ' other of view, it N.Y.C.B., who has staged Balanchine ' ble for any production of "prodigal" ". would be idle speculation; he was un the world ova. Often it is a dancer with which he is connected• Ids able to deal with Balanchine's classy who has been in the ballet, like Richard thing he does, because it is one of the. r on any terns.- But it might explain why Tanner, who was one of the Drinking worst -kept billets in the repersory Balurchine's 'rigid disapproval contin- Companions in "They Prodigal Son." With music b�+ Prokofuv, a boob by v doeea t happen nest is Boris Kochno, and dfcor by fiaorges ued erect after Villella beams a great What "Th ul R d d someone who has danced a ouat; e P Son""isFthe t dancer in the great roles B"Whins coaching by rodigal. file custom-built for him. When Bal- principal role under Balancltine's sn- second -oldest Bvanchine ballet'iUva; anchine brought In the Danes, It petrision. In Miami, when Tanner. only. "Apollo" is. older." was pro- , may have been as admission'that he duced by Diaghr�ev in' 1929, may turned out to be his last, was unable to raise male dancers as sew• FIe good' as his female ones. By then, all atoll afar, his compaayrdisianded, the Villelli experiments were over; the billet.was seat no mote uadl'195Q, 3 Balanchine had carried them out to the whey the .newly formed New Xotk ; limit' of his perceptions. But, with a City .Ballet term it, is an under h. dressed yersroq at the City hale ' and cooperative ' Villells before ,1939 production by rs him every' day,' who knows? Science de Bw1's f7dgwl'r ht well have been different. Ballet Ruse had had„Fche b "� mig Rowcult scenery sal resew '< choreo hy, 1?y 'And` ' OR MLmi City Ballet's first anni•: $P x •Y verssry, Villells decided to revive �►+P "The Prodigal 8on," he ballet with 7 you% Yore which' he rs `most closely. idsnti" only to , ;� „ ► f t n Baler 'hine's ballets'r�n°not owned by�, it:>a }s :N�r j Yoirk 'C/if�e�y/.��Htillsc. v►ishing to produce a Bal 0"ballet ,n 'K�1.. P ♦op zz r 1 11 � �• t j � 4 - don dbbest dawn The Prodigal Son" twenty nsisiuta: He taught me the pas . Balanchine ;had said to me "You Sire was: tpratised -more than: myl other de deUX with Diana Adims in half an not a par -recta dancer, you ale en s'atr Balanchine : ballet, - as.: if > he ,;had" done hour. It was only a eviv*4 and he was But after that first' ieheai�al he a�ay nothing half so good since. (Theother' busy with s lot of new thsngL I'm ssiye gone, and I never saw hue gash iuitsi Balanchine ballets presented that sea- he thought this was something others the performance; which' war chaos,' son;'included "S er e n a d e, " "Concerto could help me with, and he would come - "Well, 'we got thrbngh the fist k. Bsrocco," "The Four ' Tempers- in later and clean it up. Well, the ballet season •somehow," Vs�lella' wait}'on: ments,". and "Symphony ,in C,": and mistress who'd known`the precious "Then, the second season, the wi�s "Ballet Imperial" had just been staged Production had retired: Most of our staging % he said to me, `I never want for; the $adler's Wells company.) In rehearsal me was spent. with ale to this`again:From uow'on, yyoouu're the original New York can of " Prodi- standing around while everyone else : going to do it., He disliked the` liailet, 9811" Jerome Robbins and Maria tried to remember the ballet. Finally, and e►eryone knew` it: `Quin -a while. Tailchief had danced the roles created they got the ballet mistress back. Ina later, the `Nadond ;Ballet wanted' to'. r by Serge Lifar and Fella Doubrovska. matter of days, she put this thing to- produce' `it in Waslitngton andy'wu London saw and' applauded Francisco gether. But now the rehearsals were all` afraid to ask him: t went to hint alioat` Moncion and Yvonne Mounaey. I saw about structure, and `I was just thrown it. He sighed' and grumbled, #Oh, ft' the,ballet for the first `time in January into the middle of that: All the details so old-fashioned,"sod soon.. Bur he of 1%0, when it came back into reper- —how I should be- looking this way thought about it and"fs"U he , tory.,after, a lapse of several pests. The rather than that —I had to find for' `Look: It's not such a good 1uUe% Butte stirs were Edward ViIIella and Diana myself. I'd never even seen the ballet' I lend sc to you like an old cnatfietarssis r' Adams. No=,British critic: could haver before. Jerry Robbins was on a leave of: friends: " been .more impressed than I was,, but, absence. Frank Moncion, who'd done "Prodigal" depict: the 8ilile at4 from what-VilleUa has told me, it seems it, Ian, was still is the company; but no three stern. In the the production was in far from perfect one asked him to come to a rehearsal agii n t hislitfiei11100ii rY shape. I -'guess to spare hls fealin�s: How the , he returns jO '!When Balsnchiue aught :`Prods:. different�st all wo from what`he had middle#ease a ;'i�assta gal! --,to she,;: in 1959,_ he, was "alr ady: done -or _swhi Robbins had ds►ne or urinate sec sff ` Fltolt► . bored. with tt,"° Vihella a" "He,: whatl1far had'done it►�1929 I hano '�► h4 � tl " " to ht me the - in twee coin- idea. I belier+s that the bI um sea she " ui 6 cy B M6•, Here Soc►ts r,� utee. Fk aught au the doting in ppenitig �srisdon want Insexoed Err acre. of Aalatschsnq's � s . . 7 t R 46 Z F i r i • i _ behind his indifi'erence to the fate bf _ The prodigal Son, the indif%rtnc F was more than made up for, in the sixties and seventies, by Villella's ri jfi- lance. Today, the New York City dal-- !j let production of "Prodigal" is taste- F a ! ! fully indirect, almost abstract. To use Villella's word, were he rude enouggh 1' i to apply it, it is sanitized. The 19 Ballet Theatre production when last seen was looser and more histrionic, ' but it wasn't right, either. How can -• such a Brest ballet be so quickly lost ; sight ofi f l "The Prodigal Son" is a dramatic ! ballet, but its drama contains no psy-, �., chology. It's an example of the rough- hewn theatrical expressionism of the : twenties, of feeling enclosed in form. 1 = In rehearsal, Villella constantly em- phasizes structure and Bow. He may ., say to Yanis Pikieris, who dances the j •- Prodigal in Miami, "You're a mer- chant prince," or he may repeat Bat r anchine's description of the goons:. "blobs, protoplasm." But he doesn't go in for psychological interpretation- it's against the self-evident grain of.the � ' `'Sorry, but I do not grant interviews. 's choreography. As in any Balanchine . . ballet, the more musical the :caging, ' • • the more dramatic the story. The truth of this can be illustrated by one incident the ballet reaches its peat in their pas through the Despoilment, the most that occurs as .the Son crawls away. de 'deux, ` which VMeUa calls "the squalid scene in the ballet, where they Eroin the scene : of . his degradation. e u strangest seduction in all ballet." Ex- strip and rob the Prodigal and exit in Prokofier scored. the passage for .low.. ` ' cept for these two roles, the ballet does pairs, scuttling back to bade across the horns. As the Son drags himself, across : not contain much that is gratifying to floor and away. The first half of the the stage, he tries to rise (at No. 165)11 dance. The Drinking Companions are scene, beginning with the rows of fin- and falls back. He 'visa and falls: back, . A an anonymous male ensemble, all ideas- gers skittering down the Son's inert three times. I mentioned the sgmbolisRt dcally bald. They are also brutal and body, seemed to be the hard part. After of this to Vidlella: "The Son falls three, moronic, stomping around the stage, the fourth or fifth repeat, details began times, just as Christ did -on Calvary." ' egging each other on in stupid games to appear, as in developing fluid, and Was this Bslanchine's intentioni and stunts, and manipulating the bod- take on color. In performance, the lella's answer, "It's in the music," is ies of the two leads. Their performance scene would -have the iridescence of the only possible answer. In. perfor- easily grows careless. (And easily fades scarabs swarming in the dark. mane, though, the Son seldom exe- . from their memories.) But in Boston It is astonishing how a clarified cotes three falls or slumps. He does two and: Miami Villella told them, "You performance of the choreography or two and a half. And then, as the F are the spine of the piece," and drilled pulls the whole ballet together as a ebbing horns. dle away, he drop.. them incessantly. In Miami, he pushed Garamtkunstwcrk. Balanchine's colon self into.the wings. Villella explained : the boys to be cruder, more "primi- and his modelling of forms match the this: "He's late. He.has to get off, and' Live." He wanted them hunched and vibrancy of Rouauies paintings and it's easy to get late at that.pount."..But. t; squatty and slobbering and right on the Prokofiev's music. The ballet is a clan- the accuracy of, the performance lies H mark, too, neither musically nor archi- sic example of the unity that Diaghilev precisely is details such at.this. fi ' acturally vague. "Let's count," he stood for —more so than "Apollo"— In most. Balanchiae ballets, the sho- 1 would say. "Let's not hope." He would but it was cast in an . expressionisdc reography : ls made •. up of ydu �► stop them as they formed a group pose style thu Balanchine outgrew. Fur- phrased• units of: clatdcal �k and males them study the look of it in thermore, oru gathers these the.: Dies- then less no story in the B w the mirror. Another thirty bars and he ghtley prod ucdon'(Prokofiev's behav- "Prodigal": the ynuthfisl would stop cheat again: "Too rani- for in pa ticuLr) was not a -pleasant used tho riban}:hued ��ti ` tined." He took them over and over memory for him. If these things were allsb",;. ' r ! 1 n�i5 F � r n, �'daY ■ iN {I 1 t P 1 y ern Q.r' 0. w n� nit," and stylleed geiturey he used "66 UP" d6"t so that it 10AB like I Irays now that, in irlbesque. (.*th6 $Wqw, he used itr6boAt mha, PICket fence. Now everyone fades from wild excitement of it mom to say Pont od all In the service of a story every- the scene except the Prodigal and his Lifil Adventure!) He races in a tar" one knew from St. Luke. (Compare Father and two Sisters, all of whom around the door, one foot truing and "Apollo," where one loam the story position themselves "off" in the upper retracing circles low to the UfHL only from watching the ballet.) The corner. The two men who play the Villella claps his hands.0 hilt, IF temptation of most interpreters is to Son's Servants take up their posts by stops. He shows Pilderni how the floot,16 overinterpret. Villella says, speaking of the props. (Why jugs and trumpets? SO sweeping rondo de jambe should be the dancers he has coached, "There's that when the Son has his orgy he will done —with An accent out, like kicking always the duqa that they'll run also have wine and music. The point a ball. "There's amp like that in away with the material dramatically that the orgy is a regulation opera- 'Apollo,'too," Villella, adds, and grinlo and make it their own without first house -style bacchanale hadn't occurred "That was Mr. B.'s soccer period." understanding the music, the style, the to me before. That's what rehearsals Pikieris's strong technique, which steps, the counts. The point is to maim are for.) won him a gold medal in Moscow in a network of all those elements and Elyse Borne puts the tape on. The 1981, makes him one of the best male then to try and make a character out of music begins with a great surge of dancers now performing in.regional that. With Balanchine, the character is energy and bustles importantly for sev- ballet. About Villella's size but more already therein the choreography and eral measures, as if champing at the bit. slightly built, he is shy, proud, a sincere its relation to the music. The danger is The Prodigal cannot wait to be off. actor —altogether a good choice for in putting too much of your own inter- And in another second he bursa onto the Prodigal. I saw fib high leap in pretationon top of that." the scene. A moment to check out the my mind's eye; actually, he barely, left pots and parts, another to confer eacit- the ground. He is marking his put AHOT, humid morning last Oc- edly with the Servant:. The The Sisterstoday, having pulled a muscle in re- tober. VMeU& is standing, his come up behind him and, each taking hearsal yesterday. But after Villella back to a mirror, in one of the large an arm, pull him gently backward. He has demonstrated the ronds de jambe rehearsal rooms of the company's shakes them off. Gently remonstrating, Pilderis does them full out. He also: headquarterz, In a converted storefront they repeat the movement. Angry now, gives full value to the upper -body ploa.!.: , building on the Lincoln Road shop- he shoves them away. Then the colt tique that was integral to the role in p.ng plazz, in Miami Beach. An un- breaks from the stable. To a pelting Villellays performance. Balanchine had. used grand piano stands at the far end rhythm, the Son bends his knees, cautioned Villella against too much of the room; the company is as yet pounds his thigh, whips off his (imagi- naturalism: "Don't be a movie actor.y! unable to afford a - rehearsal pianist. nary) yarmulke and dashes it to the Then, when Villella remained. atL: a Nine or ten male dancers are sitting or ground. Another deep p116, and he is loss, Balanchim had.said, "You know, lounging about on a long black wooden off into space, soiling high over the low like icons.". Hoy icons. It was the key table. Elyse Borne, in practice clothes gate. Like a party favor, the Son's role to the hieratic strain of gesture :. that .,.:, . and a pair of dangling diamond ear- has been burst upon burst from the runs through a U the roles of the ballelt rings, sits by a tape machine, a sheaf of moment of his entrance. With oudung —not only the Son but the Father and',-.., papers in her lap. Villella has on a pair arms, he launches himself now this the Simn, too. of Soppy black stretch pants, a black Balanchines: sacerdotal huggeryis at: jersey, and white jazz shoes, unlaced its wittiest in the Siren's dances. Some- .L bemuse his arch is too high. On one: how, he converts the angled wrists and wrist he wean a Rolex watch, which arms of the destroyer god Shiva into., , _ he removes during the rehearsal when- the insouciant poses of a1sablan model. -,',-,, ever he demonstrates strenuous move. -.4\4 •But the ballet is fall of Stna=ff"'con meat. On the other wrist he wan a versions. I watch PUderis rehearse"thc turquoise bracelet, much like the one pas de deuz with Kay Preston,.- 4"tall Bab=hine used to wear, which he slim, loosely angular dmcer.L As, she never removes. stands invincible in one OU her: Shiva He claps his hands for order. "Lees positions, == cocked and, .legs apart, start with the opening," he say:. Some he approaches, kay and SaLn" due UpL_ dancers who have been sitting un- under her..crotch, lifting her off. --the..' der the barre along the wall scramble ground. Without changing her, az=� to their feet "From pots and pawl" or 60 haughty a.pression, on ha-foce# they A& "Pots and pans, the works," she now brings her kV forward:. Villella answers. The tall amphora. crosses them, so.that she..SiaL.OL`Ibis� shaped jugs and long trumpets that neck. It. is. a terriiyingy,pereh, Ecom represent the ProdigalSon'I Lpenonal whch SheAC60A treasure are brought from a coma and her 901 A"4 $Mug 40" placed on one sW* of the room, SOMIs al's b" Atti the others up. The block is A -Mom* U �w 44m 0*� w "Odin table i$'pl*Md1,,on the otherthere — :11, f so Indulge your lore for music THE NEW GROVE DICTIONARY OF Music AND MUSICIANS In"Msl� MW by tt W" $Me the neatest musical dictionary ever published-" Charles Rosen, NY Rmew of Books With a purchase of 7be New Crone you will be enrolled in the Grove Musk Society. Membership in die Society entitles you to a quarterly newsletter: discount rates for record- ings. books. musk magazines, and concert and open subscriptions. Gravies Dlcdonarks of Music 1i Banc 26th Street, New York. NY 10010 (900) 221-2123 (In New York. call (212) 4111-1332) order 73w two coom shady bm srs pawiaser add asairs fto aass sroe orr tr,s tiaa peiea at s:uf+ `a` C news S1925 as full payment. 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At acting -style answer is completely out of another point, as the Son sits on the kee* with Vrilella's approach to the ground, legs together, knees drawn ballet, Vt it is not out of keeping with up, the Siren calmly straddles his head his own performance of the role. iVhetl and sits on it. Then she places her feet he talks about performing the Prodi- atop his kneecaps and slowly stands, gal, his involvement is palpable; he and remains standing as he lowers isn't just discussing a role, he's reliving his knees. In both of these perilous a part of his life. It is not unusual for a passages Villella instructs Preston not performer to feel this close to a part, to try to balance herself. "Let him do especially a part like the Prodigal. it," he tells her. "And, no matter what (Serge Lifar believed that he had cre- happens, go with it. Don't stop and ated the ballet.) What is unusual is Adjust." When the Siren wraps herself that Villella can both we and be it. He around the Prodigal's waist like a belt can direct other dancers in the role and starts to slide without saddling them down, Villella asks with his own emo- Pikieris to keep his 00 tions. He remembers legs wide apart. "She how he felt when he has to have some re- danced the role, but he sistance sliding down. "' also remembers how It's easier that way, .. '' « he looked. Among the too, funnily enough." strangest physiological When the pas de �i phenomena experi- deux is over, Villella enced by dancers in per - calls a break. He sits down on a fold- formance is total recall —and not all ing chair and starts to reminisce about dancers experience it. Often they speak some of the Sirens he has danced with: of being unable to remember a thing Adams, who was "passionate yet ut- until the applause. Villella speaks of terly ice -cold —she froze my blood;" having had not only total recall of a Farrell, "more girlish, petulant, a bit performance but second sight during it. vulnerable;" the magnificently outsized "Some part of me would detach itself Gloria Govrin, who "nearly broke my and go to a point above the stage and neck." look down from there," he says. "I Balanchine has created many could see myself while I was perform- femmes fatales, but never one so impla- ing, and I could see it all again later— cably destructive. Who is the Siren? the whole stage, not just myself. The I ask, expecting an answer about strange thing is that I have the world's Balanchine and women. worst memory. I used to have a very Villella surprises me. "Some men vivid*memory, especially for visual de - end up sleeping with or marrying tail, but that got knocked out of me, women who are just like their quite literally, before I ever became a mothers," he says after a moment's professional dancer, when I got into pause. "The Siren is a strong, control- that fight with the paratroopers and ling, dominating woman; or, more suffered a concussion. My memory was than a woman, she's a force. When I new really very good after that, ex - went into the role, I was in my own lift cept onstage. Somehow, it would coati a rebel escaping from the control of my back to me then, in color and in all the mother. I used to look to her for direc- detail, exactly the way it used to be don. Even though my sister was the when I was a kid. My memory lived buffer between us and absorbed most of onstage." my mother's attention, I was still being Villella also has "muscle memory" moved around by her. I think I may —the thing most dancers rely on to have unconsciously used all that in the remember a role. Muscle memory fade pas de deux, when everything I did with inactivity. Villella says, that the t, was motivated by this enormously tall, Prodigal is still in his body but he can commanding woman. She Sings a leg feel the moment approaching.;whea, it this way or that way, and I go this way will start to fade. He uses his objective' or that way. She plays me as if I were and his subjective memory as checks on on a leash. I never from the role, so as each other, just as he did when -he was to remain open to this power of hers, performing, but from the look of. however various dancers chose to eft- things I would say that his_ &bility tea prow it." objw4 ls the real factor hurt ?Celt_ Ii© 4 C r� T . t� THE NEW YORIMR more a talent than a faculty, and it's related to the intuitive grasp of form, which was among his greatest gifts as a dancer. I think of "Prodigal" as Villellsl ballet, and not just because he per- formed it longer than anyone else. When he first danced it, he dominated it through physical force, precisely the quality he needed less and less of as it went on. That opening variation be- came a problem: how to gratify the audience yet keep it from wanting more physical excitement. Villella's solution was not to modify the leaps and spins but to make you feel their force as an image. He did nothing to cool down the excited audience. Instead, he linked the pyrotechnics to a thread of imagery that ran through the ballet. He located the tension in pla dque between the upper and the lower body, and used it to animate the ballet's small, remark- ably arse vocabulary of steps. No one performs the ballet this way anymore —no one outside Miami. One reason may be that the choreography was not notated until 1984, long after Villella's time, and never filmed, not even in the rudimentary form (one camera, one take) that has served over the years to provide New York City Ballet with a makeshift archive. Balanchine's stag- ing for "Dance in America," starring Mikhatn Baryshnikov, is unreliable on several counts: the ballet has been cur, it has been arranged for television, which means that spatial relationships and, occasionally, steps are different; it is a performance in which Baryshnikov does things that Villella and other Prodigals didn't do, thus raising the question of textual accuracy. Does this version represent a "definitive" text or is it merely another instance of Bal- anchine's well-known willingness to make changes when changes were jus- tified by particular performers? Vd- lella's last performance of "Prodigal" took place in 1975, in Houston. Baryshnikov's dfbut came two years later, and he was coached briefly by Villella. Yet his performance, a very strong, deeply felt one, is impressive in a way completely different from VB- lella's. Baryahnikov uses a modern-day Soviet heroic style with naturalistic postures and gestures. Villella was a dynamo of forms, emphasizing struc- ture and design in every pose, leap, and turn. When you we the Villella pro- duction in Miami, the sharply differen- tiated plaadc contrasts in the leading 1 Mtdatnt Al a amd sL 1 118111W All a 34M sL Mellor i °a"twe "urns oo 2In r88 Orders (12) 7564= Outsize NY l4MD.Ml2N 1 COrperaftOW Llir.1212) OW2M til PATEK PHILIPPE Elegant. classic 'Ellipse' completely hand-crafted 18K gold bracelet watches. 18K gold... S9.500. With diamond bezel and diamond dial.. S23.500. NEW YORK-MMAROOUR-WNEVAI When buying a fine watch... go buy the book! Send for our catalogue, featuring hundreds of exciting new styles and dozens of famous brands. Include S5 to cover postage and handling to: Toumeau Inc.. Dept. T. 440 Park Avenue. Kew York. Y.Y.10022. 1 M20111 tl Ara A sine aL I sawtpr Arai 3Nh sL logo IMrmur r1M'""° lb'n' Wilor treat cards NYOrden 31�756 M 1 Captu 49 Oft (212) US-2938 i l2 ,: kovEMllgft 26.1"a ' role have a consistency and a connect. HaydEe shows me the Prodigal's cos-' edness that refute the current notion of tusk, which she made herself. (she p the Son standing somehow outside the also made a colored sketch of the Prod - ballet, looking into its bizarre idea- igal en fair, which is to appear on the = ° tional world. In ViUella's own semi- cover of the season's PltybiU.) Haydie stylized performance, the degree to is a small, compact woman with a } X which the Son was in but not of that large, pretty face and a big smile. She is U world was the central issue of the bal- a former dancer; her sister Hilda wrs a �� F L�� N n �► �. let. Those curious two-dimensional soloist with American Ballet Theatre. poser with wide elbows and Bat palms Her production of "Prodigal" is a u facing outward ("like icons") --how faithful copy of New York City Bal- clearly we saw them, the palms flash- let's, which is a reasonable facsimile of ing, closing into fists as the rebel ham- the original, 1929 one. The backcloths mers on his thigh, then flashing again for the Miami production were copied f as he leaps skyward. Moments later, directly from the ones that had beer • in the raucous dance with the goons, hung at the City Center. These had those same open palms maintain their been acquired by Todd Bolender for two-dimensional innocence as the body the State Ballet of Missouri and were in crois6 devant twists and swivels, and lent by him to VtUella. Hayd6e holds one knee keeps crossing furtively over up the Siren's tunic that she has the other. It is the beginning of the been copying. Inside, it says "Darci Prodigal's labyrinthine descent into the Kistler." New York City Ballet lent depths. the tunic, along with other sample cos - This same step recurs in slow w s- tumes and a selection of its own scenic don at the start of the pas de deux w. ih and costume designs. As a present to _ the Siren —which is where we resume V illella, it also sent the costume that rehearsing. Work proceeds in an atmo- he had worn for fifteen years as the sphere of intense absorption. For the Prodigal. Designed in the fifties by next hour, there is no sound or sight, Esteban Francis, it consists of a cut - no time or place, but that of "The out leather vest studded with colored Prodigal Son." Along one wall of the stones, meant to represent jewels,,and studio is a plate -glass store window. a short white cWton. Some of. the _ Vtllella asked that it be left intact, so stones were missing, and the vest that people could see what goes on was a maze of rips and patches, but it inside this mysterious world of ballet. was such an interesting wreck of a gar- The dancers have grown impervious to meat that Haydbe took it for the origi- being looked at while they work. After nal design, and until Villella noticed a while, a visitor gets used to it, too. whatshe was doing she. spent days _ n Today, only a few passersby press their duplicating the intricately mismatched# noses against the window. It's hot, and pieces of leather with which,,,season' Theaccent the plaza is deserted, most of its shops closed. It is Yom Kippur in Miami. after season, New York City ' Ballet seamstresses had: reconstituted the f� 1S For Miami City Ballet, it is twelve costume. The relic cams to a hippy — English days to opening night. Upstairs, the end. Encased in aslab of Lucite, it was company's offices are strangely quiet. presented to Villella at the opening - Double breasted The season has been sold out. A tele- night party, a gift from Wardrobe.- town and country phone rings plaintively. Downstairs, everything is in readiness. Haydke T twilight, we buckle ourselves overcoat in finest Morales shows me her costume shop. 1 1 into VMelWs' B.M.W.. for the British tweed, . Two assistants am still at work with drive to his home. It's the end of a long - in needle and thread, but most of the day, and VMella has just espended shades of costumes are finished and hung in enough energy for:five Prodigal'Som black and white. $750. places the thick velvets of "The Prodi- He must be tired, I:remark. "Not a Son," in deep honey, white, bit," he replfa cheerfully. gal green, and black; the elegant long Spanish- work, not labor.' What's labors WVell, — a, Aq style tulles of "Concerto for La driving is labor. It to his hip :end r uascutu%%z Donna," Jimmy Gamonees new bal- makes it feel seta. I'm struck b ►the let, to Bruch's First Violin Concerto. curious role a a: cars )sire �Jjn 680 Rfth Avenue, New York. Haydbe Morales has designed these Vnllella s kaSEe..1e: httre his b #s- NY 10019. Telephone 1212) 975 025Q 900 North Michigsa Avenue. drglE! cobalt, magenta, and silver- �e h for as i„ thaw Ae- $ �' � t Chicago, Utinois 60611. gray tape, with smoky -black tulle emit•, the product Wag s° w,ts S kphone (312) 787 022S. overskirts i1 Is Karinska. The svelte cut , '4 cars were al! acts hied. that - f t of the tunes' - is Karin—sh style, OR.? skint sage: The scolett $h+tl ' T. ttr Y � Y 4 � _ as•+ ... _ _..�..."._.—._._._._.�`__...._ I.* THE NEW YORKER his hip operation and reminds him of the fact every time he drives. Yet he still likes driving, because he likes tars, sports can in particular. And boats? Linda, his wife, would love a boat. Boats are either work o-. labor, depend- ing on the time you have for them. He is a sailor, after all, and he knows. Villella's friends call him a work- aholic, which means he works hard even for a dancer. He has always liked to spread himself around. As we drive along, he lists some of his other ac- tivities: member, board of directors, School of American Ballet, member, Dance Overview Panel, National En- dowment for the Arts; artistic adviser, New jersey Ballet, director, Madison Festival of the Lakes, Madison, Wis- consin. Before he moved from New York to Miami, he was forever travel- ling, flying in and out on his various jobs, and, during his Ballet Oklahoma period (1983-85), spending months at a time away from home. The only way to follow his professional life was by sticking pins in a map. He was the first ballet tycoon. Not only can he talk to dancers and to other people about dance; his oddly mixed background makes him multilingual —he could talk to Lee Iacocca, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Muhammad Ali in their own languages. Villella is the only ballet star I've ever heard of who has been through four years of college. The experience, for all its sacrificial consequences, is one that he is grateful for, it put him in a class apart from other dancers, able to fend for himself and choose what he would be. Besides, he says half jokingly, having been at military school helped him to danm "Stars and Stripes." He has long been reconciled to the father whose idea the Maritime College was. In fact, he says, Joseph VMella is here with him right now in Miami, probably hungrily awaiting dinner. Villella moved his parents to Florida twenty years ago. Not long after they were settled, his mother died, and his father then lived alone near Orlando. Seeing his father used to be an induce- ment for Villella to take engagements in Florida. Now they are together, but they can't really be together anymore. The elder Villelh needs looking after, he can't be left by himself in an empty house all day. He's a guest in his son's home until he can be checked into Villa Biscaya, a residence for retired people. It's one of the very best places that can a S3 g6rold genta r .• Often called "The watchmakers watchmaker The Picasso of timep#eces." The Genta aesthetic is an incomparable fusion of technical achievements and the impeccable touch of the creative artist. Toumeau proudly presents New York's most outstanding collection of these unioue masterpieces in the art of fine watchmaking, SPIRIT:IBK gold. water-resistant Perpetual Calendar watch... SI1.000. Also available in 18K gold and atainless steel. 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The palms stream by us on one side till we come to the security gate at La Gorce Island; then they stream by on both sides. But Villells still has his mind on work. As soon as we get to the house, he excuses himself and heads for the phone. From what he has told me, I have the impression that starting Miami City Ballet was Libor for Villells. Only his evangelical zeal and the help of some new friends, like the board presi- dent, Mark Steinberg, him through days that started at 4:3U A.m. and ended after midnight. Villella is one of a number of former premiers danseurs who are now artistic directors of ballet companies. Besides Martins, at New York City Ballet; Baryshnikov, at American Ballet Theatre; Tomasson, at San Francisco Ballet and Schaufuss, at London Festival Ballet, the list in- cludes Bruce Marks, at the Boston Ballet; Ivan Nagy, at Cincinnati/New Orleans; Rudolf Nureyev, at the Paris Opera; and Anthony Dowell, at the Royal Ballet. The position is not nec- essarily a natural one for a first dancer, ballet -company boards may bid high for a star and learn that it is like hitching a racehorse to a plow. Villella and his board are in love. Villells de- scribes Mark Steinberg as "the kind of guy who turns up at eight o'clock in the morning, says, 'Give me your prob- lem file,' and spends the day on the phone handling complaints." For his part, Steinberg views Villella as a de- mon of energy who enslaved him al- most against his will. A m mild-man- nered bachelor in his forties, Steinberg was one of six people in a support group formed by Toby Lerner Ansin to bring Villella to Miami. Since Vil- lella's arrival, Steinberg's life has been virtually transformed, and no one is more surprised at this than he. "I was never even that much of a ballet fan," he confessed when I talked to him about his involvement with the company. "Toby Ansin called and told me Edward Villella was coming to town and would I help sponsor him. I said, 'Sure.' I thought it would be good for the community. Then there were meetings, and then we started electing oMcers, and I thought, Well, vice- presidents never do anything, IT be a NOAMMR l8.19" MALACHITE WRAPPING PAPER $12es r=r"a, (see ,zoo oe.uR) The avftw of pawns and F" 8"M law 4f"N eels ero[ Set 4r4 • k with st20" x28' Awa Oe►wA so FKWX=90 EMs�.ana Use Vas. UIC. AMEX or smd check to: The Ndrrr �� Dqt NY -Ella. P.O. Box 2310 BorMleJt Ci1911n2. CA, WA. MA. N Y. MN a d d A m SE" eras ~ OUR LArESrGrALOG ORDER TOLL -FREE 800.227-M4 004 fitow Ca. COM 8tdis�tit ifs 4t�• • �T 70-7= f` 'T'Wg NEVI YOflKE1t vice-president. Then the president had ' to resign for business reasons, and Ed. ward Called and asked ere to take over, and I said I would do it for a week. After a week had gone by, he said, `You can't resign until October' --this was March --'but don't worry, you k won't have to make any speeches, or anything.' Then, in October, he asked me to stay for one more year. Little by little, he kept dragging me in. I finally got so involved that my business part- ner suggested I take a year's leave of _ absence. He said, 'I'd love to be doing what you're doing for an arts organ - cation.' The crazy part of it was that I didn't know what I was doing —none of us did. We had never done anything like it before. Innocence played a large part in the making of this company. And fate. If Edward hadn't been avail- able, if my partner hadn't been so gen- erous ..." He paused. "If Edward hadn't been available ..." Villella's availability was crucial not only to Miami but to his own well- being and that of his family. He had grown weary of a life on the road. Three years earlier, in Boston, I had seen him courteously conclude his last "Prodigal" rehearsal at precisely four o'clock, then race like a Keystone Cop to catch the five-o'clock shuttle to New York. He had promised to be home for dinner. Life in Miami moves at a more comfortable pace. Linda Villella sums - up the difference: "New York wasn't home, New York was a command posts This is home." She played a big part in her husband's decision to pick up and move to Miami. When they got there,. she put in long hours helping him get the new enterprise on its feet. Today,' as on most days, she did volunteer work at the ballet guild, then cane home and _ cooked dinner. Most nights, Edward gets home early, too, and tosses a bail. in the back yard with Lauren and'' Crista. The two girls go to different — schools, which means two car pooh. Then, there are the skating classes, which Linda teaches twice a week at the Miami Beach Youth Center. Criss, a forma pupil, has won four- 1 teen medals in Ice Skating Institute — competitions. She is also serious about the piano, and last year she began balled`: r� with Martha Mahr, who taught the N.Y.C.B. ballerina Lourdes Iopez. A precocious child, with her facher'sy bright -daft ayes sad engaging grutk '— Cristo at six shows the same drive _:i►e,. , ,` had at two. "tier thigh: have slimaQed'' down," her mother informs tree. "And her der and feet are very strong. When she was horn, the first thing Edward said to me was 'Great feet.' She's not supposed to go up on point, but the don anyway. Edward went wild when he saw that. He thought we had given her permission." Villella does not attempt to teach Crista him- self; he says he has no idea how to train children. And he doesn't urge danc- ing on the girls. Thirteen -year -old Lauren, an S.A.B. dropout and "Nut- cracker" veteran, Prefers being captain of the school basketball team to taking ballet. Melia's son, Roddy, lives in New York with his mother. He is eighteen and is a student at Union College, in Schenectady, majoring in economics, but when he was younger he was interested in being a dancer. Villells offered to provide lessons, but Roddes mother objected. If Vtllella's career is a movie, his home life is Polaroids. I have a stack from New York, L,ng Island, Sara- toga. Now I add Miami. Joseph Vil- lella, whom I have met twice before, is sitting with his newspaper in the den when I walk in. He doesn't remember me. Linda whispers that he is angry, because Edward tried to move him into Villa Biscay& today and will try again tomorrow. Mr. Villella doesn't see the point. He likes it right where he is, with his newspaper and his smokes. Joseph Villella at nearly ninety is still a good-looking man, small, thin, skarp- featured, and with amazing hair, a thick and black as his eon's. Since he won't talk to me —or to anyone else, by the look of things —I append here a Polaroid from the spring of 1980. The occasion is a party celebrating Edward and Linda's wedding. Mr. Vi11e1L is standing in the garden of the house In New York, telling the stories a father tells at such a time. "I used to try and give my children anything they wanted —all kinds of lemons, the best teachers. Pierre Brunet taught them figure skating. In those days, Italians were looked down on, but we always had the best. One thing Eddie never took to was the piano —he hated it. And I had an orchestra, a jazz orchestra, for fourteen yearal . Eddie had an excellent rating in his senior year at the Maritime College-3.7, That mean three -tenths of . a point more'a" he would have been at the top of the class. Everybpdy had to sluts him. He used to despise that. And he 1 oar .{W.1 /W was tight; we should salute no one except Christ. All the time, at night he was going to Halanchine. The com- pany went to Japan and Australia for five month,. After the five months on tour, he danced six months at the City Center. The box office rose forty per cent because of him. When he came to dance in Florida, there were signs all the way from the airport, 'Edward Villells with the Orlando Ballet.' The people who ran the restaurant where I used to eat dinner made me take the best table every night. I love him as a son and I love him a a man." Mr. Villella eats with us but still doesn't speak. Plainly, he does not love his son tonight. I have a mental picture of Viillella's mother, but it is not very clear. I tell him how he surprised me with his view of the Siren that after - noon. "Thinking of the Siren that way was something that came to me when I was in analysis," he says. "My first marriage had been a disaster. When it finally broke up, I wanted to know why I had married my wife. Gradually, it came clear to me that I had married my mother —I had wanted, or thought I had wanted, a controlling woman in my life. My mother was indeed power- ful, and she was a very remarkable person, very advanced in her thinking. She followed the ideas of Adele Davis, the nutritionist. She gave us eight or nine vegetables a day. She would put wheat berry in hamburger. Nobody in our neighborhood had eves heard of wheat berry before, or yogurt or black - strap molasses. My mother also be- lieved in chiropractors. A chiropractor had once effected a cure on her that she thought was miraculous. She was a frustrated dancer. She lived vicariously through my sister. How she learned about Balanchiae and the School of American Ballet I don't know —she may have read somewhere that this was the wave of the futon. So we were promptly enrolled. After my sister dropped out, my mother was very bit- ter. She was more against my dancing than my father was. He just thought the whole thing was frivolous." We all smile at Joseph. He does not smile back. THE t day, Villetla has to de- liver nexhis father to Villa Bbcsya. Linda picks me cep at my hotel. She tells me dot. Edward wrenched hie .knee yesterday but didn't mention it until this morning. He'll be late to rehjw%kL-- When I get to the stud16,1110 Borne IS putting the boy* through their h* pets pica. Her manner is more cum* than Villella's. She says, "Am I talking to the wall?" and "Watch my lips." Kay Preston, off in a corner by herself, rehearses with her cape. She tell me' she is uncertain how to "play" the Siren. I repeat to her what Doubrovsha told me Diaghilev had told her: "You are not coquette. You are cold-blooded, like snake." Villella arrives, glum but ready for. work. He takes over the rehearsal but does not participate a much a yester- day. It upsets him more than he admits, 1 think, not to be able to dance out his instructions to Pikieris. To us who watch, it seems that he has repossessed his roles by teaching them. His class- room Prodigal is a burning reminder of his stage performance. When Ville& taught the Boston company, he danced nearly every step full out —plastic hip and all. At the end of those rehearsals, he would be charged up but relaxed, in a good mood to talk. To make mat- ters more exciting, Colleen Neary, a Balanchine alumna, was in the studio' nest door rehearsing "Rubies." When she consulted Villella about a difficult- passage, he was able to show her the - answer immediately. Afterward, he told me, "These roles are with me Mwherever P go. I feel the glow, on -. Today, I felt the glow on my This week, VIIlella has got close'' enough to "Prodigal" to feel the glow"I on his face again. But it isa't as if he were actually performing. He talks about how perforating meant follow- ing the "line of inspiration" in the" role: "If you could get inside that one thing followed another. The line': continued or it disappeared and CAnm". bsck. And the seeking of that line,' the`: search for the secret of whatever else it then in the part —that's what I ?vein` about performing. It's not just inn 'Prodigal., In every Balanchine ballet,' there's a line right to the gold. Once'; you're on the right track, you revers stop Hiding it —it's endless. The riches an endless. Performing; forme, is'the opportunity to keep sesrching.F Preparing other people to daux parts, Pm ' really only, telling t What I've dread y fob, Bur a lasso prodigal $ones ri07 Si . s] . . u.� • ...,.•.�,..�,.,.�--_' ...._.._....�..� ..mom n A 4v x 1 � i:• -- s '�r� l N 0VtMii K to, 1 1 11iS NEV Yibi8lEfit ; Mime. The go wfiu% dtgging him=_ dot. The Sign, who help the Prod- which, while it slightly W tied the s self aleng on hb knes with the aid of a gal over the thresholds attest give him IMP Of a stern Biblical psetietch, did seat. Vi11et1h tlwllu kiel�ls dtmgh tM space and tIM to recognize theta, mm not alter the se" m ity and bft" 6f the name, walking beside hies, now and not block him from view, and above all suit. Not until the San ham tpleted then getting down and tucking hire as Must not hinder hies in the awkwtrd his penitential journey is he received in he trawls across the Amt. Prokofiev's business of getting throdgh the gate. the bosons of the Father. As the cloak andante has a 4I4 tread, with dirgelike "It's s great moment," Villella tells the falls and conceals the Son from view - undertones. As a piercingly sweet met- dancers. "So give it full.value. Think so the curtain fall► and Conceals the ody rises, played by the oboe, Pikieris of it as a pain ft -a 'Descent from stage. Unfortunately, a bad choice of coma to a stop and bows his head all the Cross.' " Camera angle spoiled the "Dance in, the way to the ground, covering his The greatest moment of all is the America" fadeout. face with one hand. Then the melody scene with the Father —the whole bal- Villells dismisses the rehearsal, de - is taken by the strings. Gripping his let has built up to it. VMella stages it in taining Pikieris for a few private staff, he pulls himself hand over hand the traditional way: the Father (Ge- words. They both burst out laughing, nearly up to his feet, then sinks back. raid Ebit:) cdeoes out of his tent and Still grinning, Melia walks over to The dirge resumes, with a heavy tread. walks to a point downstage, where he where observers sit in front of the He turns a corner and starts back in the stops and faces the Son, who hesitates, mirror. He reads our minds. "What a opposite direction. Suddenly the music then lift his hands, palms upward, rolel" he says. "What a balled" As the brightmL He looks up and sees the pleadingly. Villells: "You have to room empties and then starts to fill up picket fence --home. plead twice, because he doesn't re- with dancers for Gamonet's Bruch bal- I have condensed Villella's direr- spond." Pikieris pleads in cadence, let, I casually ask Villells. whether he dons to Pikderis: "When you crawl up once, twice. StM no response. The Son isn't being a little more strict with the pole, it's as if you were trying to get turns and retreats. On the high note of Pikieris than he was with Aponte. He's, above something high and we over It. the flute melody, the Father holds out not sure "strict" is the word. "I don't You see it and you start to go fast his hand. "Feel that hand on your like to force my version on people," he toward it, faster and faster. Then you back. Now you turn." With bent back, says. "I don't want anybody imitating fail —it's gone, it's not there. You fall. and both hands as if tied behind him, me. I'm sure Mr. B. didn't want any - Listen for the strings. Batanchine said, the Son creeps forward, straightening body imitating him. But then I have 'It's like a cat crying.' When you fail, himself gradually until he is close seen people imitating me without my it's really the end. You've suffered, enough to fall full length at his father's having coached them. I lived with this you've pleaded, you've begged, you've feet. Then, gripping the mans ankles ballet•, I was Incrediblyemotionallyin prayed to God, you're cried. There's (the Father, like the Siren : towering volved with it, especially after the c `' nothing more you can do —it's over. presence, wean platform shoes)he and season, when it became very appar Over. When you . pull yourself up,, pulls himself underneath him. Ali'", ens to me how much work there was`.-, you're resigned. You may have to time, the Father stands L motionless, left to do on it. I sought thing: in it. I . j spend the rest of your life like this. You and he remains motionless as, the found things. And they're gone now, turn. There's a transition here: you Son hauls himself up the front of andL that malts: me aced." start moving again, but you're lest- his body. Then, on the last, low What was BaLnchine'a reaction to i totally, hopelessly lost. Now, when you horn note of the score, the Father. Villelia's workL- on the roles Did,he ever come upon the fence gently y express in opinions Villells abases ti coven the bo you see it without look- with his cloak. head.' I don t think L he was entirely* — ing st - it. Then you Under Villella's look, and you're home, pleased, even though he aerersud M Godl B coaching, Pikieris goes think he had soeuechinit' much chore y you through the climb "simple in mind in the last scene: He get to It.<Yes, you ran . again, pulling himself ;:gave me very little.mime and almost no' just -get to iLll up by &casping Ebitz's facial expression. He probably "thought j Villells gives all hands and then hIs thu the music war enottgh, plus just these directions as a Zi shoulders, then raising 'that simple cross [of the stage) on they continuity timed pre- his own legs . and ding knees.:The conception is very. miff ' ci:ely to the music., ing to Ebites neck. Vi1 mali:ric But I believed cher+e was much There is no ad-lib movement and, it le11s point out the handholds. but more going- on. And it was important seems, very little choice. In his guid- doesn't demonsav*—"My bade doesn't to me to be able to add more'when `Ifi w am of Piideris he is lose free with the allow me to any more." The Father's believed it right. Not add -find, It's aj "if you prefer"a and the "you may wish gesture with the cloak completes the ballet full of lot and, lots of thinaced tolls than he was with Christopher ballet, He does not turn and start back it took me`�' yeah to find theses. I'm oAly > Aponte, in Boston. Although . Mark toward the teat carrying his, son, as ; pssiing ' along what I=' discovered over has certain dramatic option% Villells 'he now does, for some reason, is the yOM�� binds him to a scenariobf masne -of " the N.Y.C.B. production. The aim- No record o': Vglellrs or specific `muslcsl cap. 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XL(18.20)• $241 ppd. • t On*r by phone: CALL FREE 1.800-932.0709 s y Mon. -Sat.. gam -Spun EST t Armdt: Send creditcard information orcheck to: Lwxku, DW 70 t 114 Nassau Street. PO Box 671, t Princeton, NJ 08542 i The Uncar► 6wal Landau Guvw tise: _ it's been the same since 1914, t - you wilt be satisfied or your money back, A N 0 Send f2 brat cea W. "V#V a welch of i • anewftoWC. tbu%*n"let►arwmgh*rt .......................r....r a sawn•rr wgoYrwrr raow rs roar assutrrce d ouaNNesasd aoouca moos a urs .wrra s tkst Are rwa. taped in rehearsal. Of all his roles, the Prodigal most clearly focussed his per- sona —that combination of athlete and actor which makes the dancer. He be- gan the ballet as an athlete and ended it as an actor, and in between fused the two aspects and became a dancer. One watched the ballet literally to see Vil- lella grow. As he made his perfor- mance more plastically and musically expressive, one saw, too, that the ballet was canonical Balanchine—not some early, untypical effort that its maker was right to be embarrassed by. For me and, I daresay, my generation, Villella was the Prodigal the way Margot Fonteyn was the Sleeping Beauty. His gifts, his personal legend, his looks — everything about him fitted the pan, expanded it, and gave it meaning. There was even a side of his Prodigal that fitted the consciousness of the era, blending in with the Brandos and the Deans —rebels who held their turbu- lence in. Later would come the Beatles and Nureyev—rebels who let it all out. Whatever Balanchine thought of Villella in "Prodigal," the fact is that he allowed him to perform the ballet exclusively for fifteen years. Despite the strain between them, the two men retrained on cordial terms. "Prodigal" became "an old coat between friends." Yet the one time the "friends" came close to having a blowup it was over "The Prodigal Son." New York City Ballet had been in- vited to make in first tour of the U.S.S.R. in 1962. Balanchine did not want to take "The Prodigal Son." In addition to the way he felt about it, he thought that including it would be like admitting he was a prodigal son re- turning to his homeland, which was how the Russians wanted to see him. He did not intend to play into the Russians' hands —especially not when he had already been prevailed upon to leave his patriotic extravaganza "Stars and Stripes" at home. Villella was up- set to hear that he would not get to dance his most important role in the Soviet Union. He went to Balanchine and said that without "Prodigal" he had so few roles there would be no point in his going on the tour. Others were after Balanchine to bring a dra- matic ballet to balance the repertory. (All this has to be seen against the cultural -cold -war background of that era, when Khrushchev went to Holly- wood and demanded, "Which is better, your ballet or oursi" Even sophisd- 89-26 __. IMF esead Americans thought we had no WO ad to Male dancers as powerful ai tbdm) to the end, Balanchine gave In. He almost certainly saw villella's position as an ultimatum. At the first performance of "Prodigal" in Ruaia, the audience gave ViUella an enormous and prolonged oration. But it was an ' hlgii YGiUtEA umbula.11 In the 9trarunaky television ""The Flood," VUle1L was Sun. But these roles are no hate &I". chine's `opinion" of VillelU than the tratucendent creations are; they're just another side of things-..Balanchine's Polaroids. inns. he would not forget for other HERE is a fifty -first -birthday "As I on the bus that was taking for Vrllella at the home of taking Mark Steinberg. It is a family pang, us back to our hotel, I saw him," dancers, board members, friends of the Villella recalled. "He was sitting inp,ny gather. It is also a theme front, next to Allegro. Kent. He gave parhr, Many of the dancers are pecu• me one quick murderous look. I sat liarly got up in their idea of the clothes down behind them. He didn't say any- and hair styles of what they reckon to thing, but on there looking straight be the "Villella era" --the fifties. What ahead and getting madder and madder. with the ratio of Latinos to gringos, I could see the hackles rising on his they look like the can of "West Side neck. Suddenly, he whirled around and Story." Linda tells me that Mr. Vil- said, `You wanted a dramatic ballet. lella is still at home, and that that Now you're the hero!' It was two was the reason for the glum look on weeks before he spoke to me again, and Edward's face when he arrived for then it was only because he had to. He the rehearsal this morning.Mr. VUW- avoided me for the rest of that tour." la's forebears are from Cabr* the re- Balanchine might have addressed gion that forms the ramp of the Italian the identical words to Serge Lifar, who boa. Among Southern Italians, the In 1929 was acclaimed as the creator of Calabrese are noted for being excep- "Prodigal" by people who should have clonally stubborn, headstrong people. known better. Balanchine, these people When I tell this to Linda, she says went around saying, was undeniably that the description fits the Villellas to brilliant, but he had no dramatic gift. a teL It was the first time anyone had sug- , To the intense delight of Cristo. and, gated that there were any limits to his ley" other: small children, ',Vitlella genius. No dramatic gift —the charge starts ope11 6 hie gifts, most of which- stutcL Even Balanchine fell i. with the are_ jokes. To their dismay, he opens praise v Lifer. nclenalsg— offense may them slowly, carefully smoothing paper. only,have batt dancing —and acting and caring nWxm, and he steeps: sot superlatively well 'in a ballet Baran- - chine had come to regard as a humilisc- acing a �� that ssadds s nearby. It turns out to be a yellow Cawint failure.. vas camp chair with his name atenane Villella can certainly console himself on the back. Happy ley, from T f with the thought that Balanchute was Companp seldom easy for male dancers . to get - along with. And I believe, too, that MrAin Cmr Bwt r res second sea - there Is a fatal pattern to the story, on son at the Gusman Center opens Balanchine s side as well as on VU- on fJcoober-15,1987, almostezacdy a. lella's. All �': greatest Banc- year after its dbbut. Edward and Linda an failed him in some way; in the and, - Vilklla watch the Performances from his expectations always exceeded their � audience:, as u their custom. They fat, what Those expectations the w arc, in are a royal couple in this, pact of the fact, what more us in the wonderful world. During : intermissions, they roles he made for them, where they era meet people is the greenroom us stroll their platonic selves. And Balamchine about the house. Strangers coma up sad surely knew how unreal in practical shake Villa e1L's hand. Some;, say they terms his expectations were. Now and remember : his Performance of the then, he would create for his dancers Prodigal or some other role, one;asan on a more mnndama, biographical level, SAM "My _ sister went to school with :and there mightoven be a touch of u at Franklin mischief in what he gave theca to do. I ,, ugh � `the East Villtll+u, L. who nstns went to:,: think of the Han -with-a-back-s , laquirs Franklin High:oa.tile in low riche that he racltorsographed for Val- p&W, "L that sot" .Many ins :the awJhy i kaki is the 1%0 ra�ival of "La Son- r 1 ence look too yaau�g to here sea. Vil 4. } t e ti K t kw 2, d � t Tif m's leatherbom, 6 x 3114 , $25. %cloec, f 5. T� { • '. i. AV a - . OL a, lelta on the stage. in my opinion, they are not seeir� him tonii ht in the p- ion of Dania ikbrie. hey are seeing the outline of the rob of the Prodigal as Villella used to dance it, but with Pikieris filling it out differently, bring- ing to it his own qualities of fragility and pathos. Mark Steinberg comes up and gives Villella a report on box-office business. "We are all sold out except for the last two rows in the upper upper balcony," he says excitedly, and starts talking about adding performances to the Gus - man series. Steinberg has the unshak- able conviction of the recent convert. He believes that the company's success is due to the quality of what it puts before the public. "People here have been skeptical or unknowing at times," he tells me. "But once they come to see us, we've got'em. And they come back. Our renewal rate is a hundred and ten per cent. Not only do about ninety per cent of the subscribers renew but they ask for additional seats. It's unreal." The evening began with "Bour- nonville Italian Suite," followed by "Minkus Pas de Trois"—excerpts from "Napoli," "Flower Festival in Genzano." and "Psanita" that nave the boys something to dance. The. "Prodigal," then Gamonees "Con- certo for La Donna," starring the gi,cls. It was a typical Ville1L program —balanced, provocative. It was alsm a personal statement about where Villella had come from and when he- was going. Bournonville and Minkus: D=g and Russian classicism as in terpreted by Stanley and Mr. B. "Prod- igal": a Balancidne masterpiece, a Vil- lella specialty. "La Donna": a plush new work, Balsnchine-inspired, extol-. ling company talent. On its first anni- versary, the company looked back, then ahead. �r- nb CAI! rri gam. like: r relat: twee: EIarC testa•. their` their - The' and a for cr of _ to` to, be ' spket 'arras W USA* Berli nary; berg Sandi 1 ust thou solid who`; i- {end , dot► �. smois their; got a. N� noR: _= By the time of these performances, vlrhr` Joseph Vlllella was safely installed in Gel ®CASHMERE Villa Biscsys, and he lived there, res. "A srACE jAQCET wai lororddotr aqd WATCHCAP sonably content, for eleven months. # _ r ' lw@as. CuMraere. laocl, Catheters. swae a e.err He died o. September 16, 1988. Ed- a WWO n" kW, lee0 firers thick. wants rrp u dye bnm so tort have ward Joseph VBlella had gone every (ow layers covens roar eats. Warm an/ soh like aad in my 66m"sw M s/ nodwWWn.NanwaWwalitehoramteh.Newo -other day to shave him. During that to re on* rno "d derilitaun{ Las rw MW brnds. lava roes period, he had rehearsed and pre- . WA WW km has to trial aaos roes a perform seated his production of "Apollo,-" with EiEher•Firs plat Foar for sbippiry P r ., a sissy to fir "eR W4 "M Carers arse. Navy. CI"a" Gm. Fbwd Grey. A the ptOlOgtle and the original end- ! i� ! and chddm - � remred. It is the onlyother Bat- aN. Vern" Gees. sl"r ales, ga"O r MeeW a.ew � WrYe or �� Farr afire ►arw net. Ee.rw sst Gres. i.rw taetr. anchins ballet that ends with a son Neaq Crests TMye a.watr ErElw Grl W Yieeat returning to hies father Ant AND r CHECK VMA MASTERCARD. AMEX—ARblNE CRocs , 1 o,l"rdo l" I Airp w VERMONT BIRD COMPANY - Orim PO�WINMUY aUTLANRYERMONTpr�l R►D1/tr�e'VIfA��� r3; (7%Il 11the IKOR% fflf Q1I A�rw[+P�euorMM N��i� two -pat stick.)70 'n - Y e'vsuz Iif t ;r f 4, ` ' ' C L s i j ` � 5 1 y 2 s':' A3 � �`• i Y ''I. ri xx , i'3x.,�; .i '" -.':. :-.� .. �, ::: .- :.- r _.,,.., ..... :+�.Ls. ub kxs �...:,.. ai"��ai• ��� _ b _ o ' �t