Tag: Ballet

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Lesbians in Ballet: ‘Has Anybody Like Me Ever Walked These Halls?’

Lesbians in Ballet: ‘Has Anyone Like Me Ever Walked These Halls?’

Two new ballet projects, both released online this month by the Joyce Theater, allow dancers to be their authentic selves in very different ways. In a live stream on June 10th, Ballez, who turns 10 this year, will unveil “Giselle of Loneliness”, a radical reinterpretation of the classic romantic ballet “Giselle”. And Pierce’s “Animals and Angels”, a short film with the dancers Cortney Taylor Key and Audrey Malek in a duo on top, celebrates its premiere on June 21st.

In a project that is still developing, the dance artist and scholar Alyah Baker, 39, is researching her artistic background as a queer black woman in ballet. For her final master’s thesis at Duke University, “Quare Dance,” she brought together three dancers (on Zoom) who share their identities: Malek, a member of the Washington Ballet Studio Company; Key, a freelance artist based in New York; and Kiara Felder, dancer with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal.

“Always being the only one is one thing I’ve seen a lot,” Baker said, “either the only black woman or the only black dancer or the only queer dancer or woman in certain circles.” Her research, she added added, “was really motivated by: I know that I am not the only one.”

Dance historian Clare Croft, editor of Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings, notes that ballet education for women begins so early that it is imperative for women to have different role models. “Looking up to the older girls is so ingrained in what it means to grow up a woman in ballet,” said Croft. “That’s why it’s exponentially more important to have people who come out as lesbians or queer women.”

Throughout her career, Pierce, 32, who danced for the New York City Ballet and Miami City Ballet, rarely met other lesbian ballet dancers. When she saw an article in Pointe magazine about queer women in ballet last fall, she immediately contacted one of the featured dancers, Lauren Flower, a former member of the Boston Ballet and founder of the Queer Women Dancers blog. Together they reached out to others with similar experiences and organized a “big queer zoom call,” as Flower calls it.

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Carla Fracci, Expressive Doyenne of Italian Ballet, Dies at 84

Carla Fracci, Expressive Doyenne of Italian Ballet, Dies at 84

Carla Fracci, Italy’s grande dame of ballet and one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century, who was admired for the naturalness and emotional directness of her performances, died on Thursday at her home in Milan. She was 84.

The cause was cancer, her husband, Beppe Menegatti, said.

Over her five-decade career, critics and audiences marveled at Ms. Fracci’s ability to transcend technique, merging so completely with her characters that she seemed to become them. In Italy she was called “the Duse of the dance,” as Clive Barnes of The New York Times wrote in 1977, a reference to the great 20th-century Italian actress Eleonora Duse.

“The pleasant alliteration apart,” he continued, “there is indeed a strong histrionic undercurrent to her performance, so that its softness, its essential prettiness, can at times be torn apart by an unexpected display of almost volcanic emotionalism.”

Mikhail Baryshnikov, who danced with her in the 1970s, said in a phone interview that Ms. Fracci would subtly alter her interpretation of a role from performance to performance. “She never did the same thing,” he said, “and because of that she was really alive, and very full onstage.”

She made her professional debut at the Teatro alla Scala in 1955 and before long became a household name in Italy, where she brought luster to Italian ballet after it had languished for decades. She became the first Italian ballerina since the turn of the 20th century to have a major international career, performing frequently with American Ballet Theater, the Royal Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet, among other companies.

In the early 1970s, Ms. Fracci formed the Compagnia Italiana di Balletto with her husband. Through appearances in small towns, on opera stages and in outdoor arenas, she brought awareness of ballet to the farthest corners of Italy and inspired new generations of dancers, including Alessandra Ferri and Roberto Bolle, both of whom became international stars.

She also appeared frequently in Italian TV specials, and in 1982 had a dramatic role in a popular mini-series, “Verdi,” about the composer Giuseppe Verdi, on Rai, the Italian state broadcaster. She played the composer’s second wife, the singer Giuseppina Strepponi.

In everyday life Ms. Fracci struck an elegant figure, often appearing in public dressed all in soft, white fabrics, her dark hair parted in the middle. “She was like a figure out of the turn of the last century,” Mr. Baryshnikov said.

She was most closely associated with the title role of “Giselle,” a young woman driven to madness and death after discovering her lover’s betrayal. In The Times, Anna Kisselgoff wrote of a 1991 “Giselle” performance by Ms. Fracci (she was 55 at the time) in which “her foot seemed barely to touch the floor.”

“It was the image that others have never matched,” Ms. Kisselgoff added, “the airborne wraith who seemed to fly out of a lithograph.”

Ms. Fracci performed the role for more than 30 years, into her 50s, and was partnered in it by a long list of celebrated dancers, including Erik Bruhn, Rudolf Nureyev, Vladimir Vasiliev, Ivan Nagy, Paul Chalmer, Mr. Baryshnikov and even Julio Bocca, 31 years her junior.

As recently as January she was invited by La Scala to give a master class on “Giselle.” (The class was filmed and is available on YouTube.) The dancers who took part, Nicoletta Manni and Martina Arduino, had both grown up watching a much-loved 1969 movie version of “Giselle,” starring Ms. Fracci and Mr. Bruhn, based on an American Ballet Theater production.

That film shows all the qualities for which Ms. Fracci is remembered: lightness on her feet, crisp technique, sincerity and a naturalness that makes it seem as if dancing were breathing. Just as compelling is the great beauty of her face, which she uses to maximum effect.

“I studied that video from beginning to end, over and over,” Ms. Arduino said by phone from Milan. “Where her eyes looked, how she moved her arms. And when she came to give the master class, she told me, ‘You have to say with your eyes exactly what you’re thinking.’”

Mr. Baryshnikov remembered this same quality. “She had these enormous, dark eyes,” he said. “She danced with them. And then there was the abnormal beauty of her face. Dancing with her was quite a mesmerizing experience.”

Carla Fracci was born in Milan on Aug. 20, 1936, the daughter of Luigi Fracci, a tram driver, and Santina Rocca, a factory worker at the Innocenti machinery works. Carla liked to dance around the house, and when she was 9, family friends suggested that she might be suited for ballet.

Despite being small and rather frail, she was accepted at the ballet school associated with La Scala, where one of her teachers was Vera Volkova, a student of Agrippina Vaganova, a founder of modern Russian ballet technique.

The young Ms. Fracci did not take to ballet right away. “School was a crashing bore and a terrible chore,” she told The Times in 1981. Then one day she found herself onstage in a children’s role.

“I was cast as a girl with a mandolin in ‘Sleeping Beauty,’” she said. “Once onstage next to Margot Fonteyn, I suddenly changed my mind. Dancing to an audience was something entirely different from dancing at school.”

After graduating from the academy, she entered the ballet company at La Scala.

Ms. Fracci got her first big break in 1956, when she was called to substitute for the French ballerina Violette Verdy in a production of the evening-length “Cinderella.” Two years later she became a principal dancer. That same year, 1958, the choreographer John Cranko created for her the female lead in his new production of “Romeo and Juliet.” She went on to perform the role many times during her career.

Very soon she began dancing abroad as well, appearing for the first time with the London Festival Ballet, in “Giselle” in 1959. In 1962, she debuted another of her best-known roles, the sylph in “La Sylphide,” alongside Mr. Bruhn. The two were regular partners during Ms. Fracci’s years as a member of American Ballet Theater, from 1972 to 1976.

Not all her roles were tragic, however: She was also celebrated for her sense of buoyant mischief in the comic ballet “Coppélia.”

At Ballet Theater, Ms. Fracci’s repertory widened to include dramatic ballets like José Limon’s “The Moor’s Pavane,” Antony Tudor’s “Lilac Garden” and “Medea,” by John Butler. In 1991, she danced the role of Lizzie Borden in Agnes de Mille’s “Fall River Legend.” Ms. Kisselgoff described that performance as “hurtling furiously into insanity.”

As her dancing career drew to a close in the 1990s, Ms. Fracci took on the role of director at several ballet companies, including those at the Teatro di San Carlo theater in Naples (1990-91), the Arena di Verona (1995-97) and the Opera di Roma (2000-10). She also dabbled in politics, serving as the councilor for culture for the province of Florence from 2009 to 2014.

In addition to Mr. Menegatti, her husband of 56 years and a stage director who had once been an assistant to Luchino Visconti, Ms. Fracci is survived by her son, Francesco Menegatti, an architect; her sister Marisa Fracci, also a dancer; and two grandchildren.

“To us, as Italians, she represented the importance of dance,” Ms. Arduino, the dancer, said. “Not just the steps, but the purity of art. Something precious.”

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Jacques d’Amboise, Charismatic Star of Metropolis Ballet, Is Useless at 86

Jacques d’Amboise, an Early Male Star of City Ballet, Dies at 86

Jacques d’Amboise, who broke stereotypes about male dancers when he helped popularize ballet in America and became one of the most respected male stars in New York Ballet, died Sunday at his Manhattan home. He was 86 years old.

His daughter, actress and dancer Charlotte d’Amboise, said the cause was complications from a stroke.

Mr. d’Amboise embodied the ideal of a purely American style that combined the nonchalant elegance of Fred Astaire with the classicism of the Danseur nobleman. He was the first male star to emerge from the City Ballet’s School of American Ballet, joining the company’s corps in 1949 at the age of 15. Its extensive presence and versatility were central to the company’s identity in the first few decades.

He had choreographed 24 roles and became the lead interpreter of the title role in George Balanchine’s seminal “Apollo” before leaving the company in 1984, a few months before his 50th birthday. He has also choreographed 17 works for the city ballet, as well as many pieces for the students of the National Dance Institute, a program he founded and directed.

The energy, athleticism, infectious smile of Mr. d’Amboise (which critic Arlene Croce once likened to that of the Cheshire Cat), and the appeal of a boy next door made him popular with audiences and made ballet more attractive to boys in a world of tutus and pink toe shoes.

He also helped bring the ballet to a wider audience, danced on Ed Sullivan’s show (then called “Toast of the Town”), played important roles in several film musicals from the 1950s, including “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and ” Carousel “, and has appeared in appealing” Americana “ballets such as Lew Christensen’s” Gas Station “and Balanchine’s” Who Cares? ” In the early 1980s he directed, choreographed and wrote a number of dance films.

Although Mr. d’Amboise was never seen as a virtuoso dancer, his repertoire was demanding and extraordinarily broad, ranging from the princely “Apollo” to the daring head cowboy of Balanchine’s “Western Symphony”. He was one of the company’s best partners, including the cavalier of ballerinas Maria Tallchief, Melissa Hayden, Allegra Kent and Suzanne Farrell.

Mr. d’Amboise, Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times in 1976, “is not just a dancer, he is an institution.”

Mr. d’Amboise was astonished when Balanchine invited him to the City Ballet in 1949, one year after the start of the first season. He was 15 years old. “I can’t do it, I have to finish school,” he recalled in his autobiography of “I was a dancer” (2011). His father advised him to become a stage worker, but his mother loved the idea and Mr d’Amboise left school to dance professionally, as did his sister Madeleine, who was known professionally as Ninette d’Amboise.

Although Balanchine was generally more interested in creating roles for his female dancers than for his male performers, Mr. d’Amboise identified with many of the key roles Balanchine played in ballets such as “Western Symphony” (1954), “Stars and Stripes” ( 1958), “Jewels” (1967), “Who Cares” (1970) and “Robert Schumanns Davidsbundlertanze” (1980). Early in his career, he also created roles in ballets by John Cranko and Frederick Ashton, and received praise for this. (“Balanchine was upset” with the Cranko Commission, he wrote in his autobiography.)

In a 2018 interview, urban ballet dancer Adrian Danchig-Waring described the qualities that Mr. d’Amboise embodied as a dancer: “There is this machismo that is sometimes needed on stage – this bravery, this boasting, this self-confidence and us all I have to learn to cultivate this and yet it is a huge canon of work. There are poets and dreamers and animals in it. Jacques reminds us that all of this can be contained in one body. “

Mr. d’Amboise was born Joseph Jacques Ahearn on July 28, 1934 in Dedham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, to Andrew and Georgiana (d’Amboise) Ahearn. His father’s parents were immigrants from Galway, Ireland; his mother was French-Canadian. In search of work, his parents moved the family to New York City, where his father found a job as an elevator operator at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. The family settled in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. To keep Jacques, as he was called, off the streets, when he was 7 years old, his mother and sister Madeleine enrolled him in Madam Seda’s ballet class on 181st Street.

After six months, the siblings moved to the School of American Ballet, founded in 1934 by Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Energetic and athletic, Jacques immediately faced the physical challenges of ballet. After less than a year he was selected by Balanchine for the role of Puck in a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

In his autobiography, he wrote of how his mother’s decision had changed his life: “What an extraordinary thing for a street boy with gang friends. Half grew up cops and half grew up gangsters – and I became a ballet dancer! “

In 1946 his mother persuaded his father to change the family name from Ahearn to d’Amboise. Her explanation, wrote Mr. d’Amboise in “I was a dancer”, was that the name was aristocratic and French and “sounds better for ballet”.

After joining City Ballet, Mr. d’Amboise soon danced solo roles, including starring in Lew Christensen’s “Filling Station,” which led to an invitation from film director Stanley Donen to join the cast of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” (1954).

In 1956 he married the soloist of the city ballet Carolyn George, who died in 2009. In addition to his daughter Charlotte, his two sons George and Christopher, a choreographer and former main dancer of the city ballet, survive. another daughter, Catherine d’Amboise (she and Charlotte are twins); and six grandchildren. Two brothers and his sister died before him.

Mr. d’Amboise starred in two films in 1956 – “Carousel” alongside Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones and Michael Curtiz’s “The Best Things In Life Are Free”. But he remained committed to ballet and balanchine.

“People said, ‘You could be the next Gene Kelly,” said Mr. d’Amboise in a 2011 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “I didn’t know if I could act, but I knew I was a great ballet dancer could be, and Balanchine laid the carpet for me. “

His faith was rewarded when Balanchine revived his ballet “Apollo” in 1957, originally a collaboration with Igor Stravinsky in 1928, and cast Mr. d’Amboise in the title role. For this production, Balanchine took off the original, elaborate costumes and dressed Mr. d’Amboise in tights and a simple scarf over one shoulder.

It was a turning point in his career; Dancing, wrote Mr d’Amboise, “became so much more interesting, an odyssey towards your Excellency.” The role, he felt, was also his story, as Balanchine had explained to him: “A wild, untamed youth learns nobility through art.”

For the next 27 years, Mr. d’Amboise continued to be a strong member of the city ballet, creating roles and appearing in some of Balanchine’s major ballets, including Concerto Barocco, Meditation, Violin Concerto and Movements for piano and violin . “

Encouraged by Balanchine, he also choreographed regularly for the company, although the reviews of his work have mostly been lukewarm. In his autobiography, he wrote that both Balanchine and Kirstein had assured him that one day he would lead the city ballet, but Peter Martins and Jerome Robbins took over the company after Balanchine’s death in 1983.

Mr d’Amboise appeared to have resigned himself to this result: he withdrew from the performance the next year and turned to the National Dance Institute, which brings dance to public schools, which he founded in 1976.

The institute grew out of the Saturday morning ballet class for boys that Mr d’Amboise began to teach in 1964, motivated by the desire that his two sons learn to dance without being the only boys in the class. The classes were expanded to include girls and moved to numerous public schools.

Now the goal is to offer free courses to everyone, regardless of the child’s background or ability. Today the institute teaches thousands of New York City children ages 9-14 and is affiliated with 13 dance institutes around the world. The Harlem-based institute where Mr d’Amboise lived was featured in Emile Ardolino’s 1983 Oscar winning documentary “He Makes Me Feel Like a Dancer”.

“That second chapter brought something more fulfilling than my career as an individual artist,” wrote Mr d’Amboise in his autobiography. He told the story of a little boy who, after trying hard to master a dance sequence, wrote: “He was on the way to discovering that he could take control of his body and learn from it, control of his own to take over life. “

For his contribution to arts education, Mr. d’Amboise has received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1990, a Kennedy Honors Award in 1995, and a New York Governor’s Award, among others.

He saw himself as a dancer all his life, but was also a passionate New Yorker. When asked in a 2018 article in The Times that he wanted his ashes scattered, he replied, “Spread me out in Times Square or the Belasco Theater.”

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Nancy Lassalle, Longtime Promoter of Ballet, Dies at 93

Nancy Lassalle, Longtime Promoter of Ballet, Dies at 93

Nancy Lassalle, a longtime patron of the New York Ballet and its School of American Ballet, died on April 26 at her Manhattan home. She was 93 years old.

The death was confirmed by her daughter Honor Lassalle.

As a teenager, Ms. Lassalle attended the young ballet academy founded by George Balanchine and now the School of American Ballet. She wasn’t meant to be a ballerina – she was too big and too scratchy, her daughter said – but she loved the dance and mission of Balanchine and his collaborator Lincoln Kirstein. She became a lifelong patroness of ballet and a tireless promoter of Balanchine’s legacy.

She was a founding member of the boards of the city ballet and the SAB, as the school is called. She organized numerous exhibitions and events for the company, including the centenary celebrations for Mr. Kirstein in 2007.

“She was the ultimate board member,” said Albert Bellas, SAB chairman emeritus. “She was financially supportive, knowledgeable, and dedicated.”

She was also in daily, touring with the company and giving parties for the dancers in her Fifth Avenue apartment, said Kay Mazzo, who was once a solo dancer with City Ballet and now heads the school’s faculty.

“Because she was an early student at the school, she understood what Mr. Balanchine and Mr. Kirstein had in mind,” said Ms. Mazzo. “She has kept her ideals and made sure that the school stays on course over the years.”

Ms. Lassalle was editor with Leslie George Katz and Harvey Simmonds of “Choreography by George Balanchine: A Catalog of Works,” which was first published in 1983 by Eakins Press. She was also the editor of Lincoln Kirstein: A First Bibliography. (1978). In 2016, her photographs of Balanchine, who taught a two-day master class in 1961, were published as “Balanchine Teaching”, also by Eakins.

“She was a demanding person, which could be frustrating,” said Peter Kayafas, editor and director of Eakins Press. “There was a time when I was much younger when it was difficult to have a conversation with Nancy without her correcting my grammar. And then came a time when that stopped. “Not because she was tired of the exercise, Mr. Kayafas added,” It’s like I finally learned my lessons. Whenever Nancy was around, the bar was raised. “

Alastair Macaulay, former chief dance critic for the New York Times, wrote in a social media post: “The dance world has a number of generous donors, but there was one in Nancy who combined acute intelligence with a unique devotion to the two visionaries whose work she discovered in her own youth: Balanchine and Kirstein. “

Last year, the SAB launched the Lassalle Cultural Program, which allows older students to explore ballet history and gain free access to New York cultural institutions. When she died, Ms. Lassalle was the emeritus director of the city ballet and the school.

Born a privileged child in New York City on November 10, 1927, Nancy Norman grew up in a eclectic modernist townhouse filled with contemporary photography, pre-Columbian art, and a steady stream of guests, including notable figures of post-war America Culture like Alfred Stieglitz, Aaron Copland, Allen Ginsberg and Ralph Ellison. Her mother, Dorothy Norman, was a photographer, newspaper columnist, and promoter of the arts, and an advocate for social justice and political causes. Mr. Stieglitz was her mother’s mentor and lover. Her father Edward Norman was a son of a founder of Sears Roebuck.

Ms. Lassalle attended Dalton School and the Balanchine Dance School at the age of 14. Her classmates included ballerinas Patricia McBride Lousada, founding member of City Ballet, and Tanaquil Le Clercq, Balanchine’s muse and fourth wife. The three were lifelong friends.

In addition to her daughter Honor, Mrs. Lassalle survived another daughter, Diana Lassalle Turner; one son, Philip Lassalle; and five grandchildren. Her marriage to Edmundo Lassalle ended in divorce.

In 1991 Ms. Lassalle was cast by Jerome Robbins in the lead role of Mother Goose in a bizarre children’s ballet. (It wasn’t a dancing part: As Jennifer Dunning wrote in the New York Times, she was sitting in a chair on the stage when the curtain opened and dancers were spread around her.) It was a gesture that took her place in the Embodied ballet community. Ms. Mazzo said and she loved doing it.

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Jacques d’Amboise, an Early Male Star of Metropolis Ballet, Dies at 86

Jacques d’Amboise, an Early Male Star of City Ballet, Dies at 86

Jacques d’Amboise, who broke stereotypes about male dancers when he helped popularize ballet in America and became one of the most respected male stars in New York Ballet, died Sunday at his Manhattan home. He was 86 years old.

His daughter, actress and dancer Charlotte d’Amboise, said the cause was complications from a stroke.

Mr. d’Amboise embodied the ideal of a purely American style that combined the nonchalant elegance of Fred Astaire with the classicism of the Danseur nobleman. He was the first male star to emerge from the City Ballet’s School of American Ballet, joining the company’s corps in 1949 at the age of 15. Its extensive presence and versatility were central to the company’s identity in the first few decades.

He had choreographed 24 roles and became the lead interpreter of the title role in George Balanchine’s seminal “Apollo” before leaving the company in 1984, a few months before his 50th birthday. He has also choreographed 17 works for the city ballet, as well as many pieces for the students of the National Dance Institute, a program he founded and directed.

The energy, athleticism, infectious smile of Mr. d’Amboise (which critic Arlene Croce once likened to that of the Cheshire Cat), and the appeal of a boy next door made him popular with audiences and made ballet more attractive to boys in a world of tutus and pink toe shoes.

He also helped bring the ballet to a wider audience, danced on Ed Sullivan’s show (then called “Toast of the Town”), played important roles in several film musicals from the 1950s, including “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and ” Carousel “, and has appeared in appealing” Americana “ballets such as Lew Christensen’s” Gas Station “and Balanchine’s” Who Cares? ” In the early 1980s he directed, choreographed and wrote a number of dance films.

Although Mr. d’Amboise was never seen as a virtuoso dancer, his repertoire was demanding and extraordinarily broad, ranging from the princely “Apollo” to the daring head cowboy of Balanchine’s “Western Symphony”. He was one of the company’s best partners, including the cavalier of ballerinas Maria Tallchief, Melissa Hayden, Allegra Kent and Suzanne Farrell.

Mr. d’Amboise, Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times in 1976, “is not just a dancer, he is an institution.”

Mr. d’Amboise was astonished when Balanchine invited him to the City Ballet in 1949, one year after the start of the first season. He was 15 years old. “I can’t do it, I have to finish school,” he recalled in his autobiography of “I was a dancer” (2011). His father advised him to become a stage worker, but his mother loved the idea and Mr d’Amboise left school to dance professionally, as did his sister Madeleine, who was known professionally as Ninette d’Amboise.

Although Balanchine was generally more interested in creating roles for his dancers than his male performers, Mr. d’Amboise identified with many of the key roles Balanchine played in ballets such as “Western Symphony” (1954), “Stars and Stripes” ( 1958), “Jewels” (1967), “Who Cares” (1970) and “Robert Schumanns Davidsbundlertanze” (1980). Early in his career, he also created roles in ballets by John Cranko and Frederick Ashton, and received praise for this. (“Balanchine was upset” with the Cranko Commission, he wrote in his autobiography.)

In a 2018 interview, urban ballet dancer Adrian Danchig-Waring described the qualities that Mr. d’Amboise embodied as a dancer: “There is this machismo that is sometimes needed on stage – this bravery, this boasting, this self-confidence and us all I have to learn to cultivate this and yet it is a huge canon of work. There are poets and dreamers and animals in it. Jacques reminds us that all of this can be contained in one body. “

Mr. d’Amboise was born Joseph Jacques Ahearn on July 28, 1934 in Dedham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, to Andrew and Georgiana (d’Amboise) Ahearn. His father’s parents were immigrants from Galway, Ireland; his mother was French-Canadian. In search of work, his parents moved the family to New York City, where his father found a job as an elevator operator at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. The family settled in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. To keep Jacques, as he was called, off the streets, when he was 7 years old, his mother and sister Madeleine enrolled him in Madam Seda’s ballet class on 181st Street.

After six months, the siblings moved to the School of American Ballet, founded in 1934 by Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Energetic and athletic, Jacques immediately faced the physical challenges of ballet. After less than a year he was selected by Balanchine for the role of Puck in a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

In his autobiography, he wrote of how his mother’s decision had changed his life: “What an extraordinary thing for a street boy with gang friends. Half grew up cops and half grew up gangsters – and I became a ballet dancer! “

In 1946 his mother persuaded his father to change the family name from Ahearn to d’Amboise. Her explanation, wrote Mr. d’Amboise in “I was a dancer”, was that the name was aristocratic and French and “sounds better for ballet”.

After joining City Ballet, Mr. d’Amboise soon danced solo roles, including starring in Lew Christensen’s “Filling Station,” which led to an invitation from film director Stanley Donen to join the cast of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” (1954).

In 1956 he married the soloist of the city ballet Carolyn George, who died in 2009. In addition to his daughter Charlotte, his two sons George and Christopher, a choreographer and former main dancer of the city ballet, survive. another daughter, Catherine d’Amboise (she and Charlotte are twins); and six grandchildren. Two brothers and his sister died before him.

Mr. d’Amboise starred in two films in 1956 – “Carousel” alongside Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones and Michael Curtiz’s “The Best Things In Life Are Free”. But he remained committed to ballet and balanchine.

“People said, ‘You could be the next Gene Kelly,” said Mr. d’Amboise in a 2011 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “I didn’t know if I could act, but I knew I was a great ballet dancer could be, and Balanchine laid the carpet for me. “

His faith was rewarded when Balanchine revived his “Apollo” in 1957, the ballet that marked his first collaboration with Igor Stravinsky in 1928, and cast Mr. d’Amboise in the title role. For this production, Balanchine took off the original, elaborate costumes and dressed Mr. d’Amboise in tights and a simple scarf over one shoulder.

It was a turning point in his career; Dancing, wrote Mr d’Amboise, “became so much more interesting, an odyssey towards your Excellency.” The role, he felt, was also his story, as Balanchine had explained to him: “A wild, untamed youth learns nobility through art.”

For the next 27 years, Mr. d’Amboise continued to be a strong member of the city ballet, creating roles and appearing in some of Balanchine’s major ballets, including Concerto Barocco, Meditation, Violin Concerto and Movements for piano and violin . “

Encouraged by Balanchine, he also choreographed regularly for the company, although the reviews of his work have mostly been lukewarm. In his autobiography, he wrote that both Balanchine and Kirstein had assured him that one day he would lead the city ballet, but Peter Martins and Jerome Robbins took over the company after Balanchine’s death in 1983.

Mr d’Amboise appeared to have resigned himself to this result: he withdrew from the performance the next year and turned to the National Dance Institute, which brings dance to public schools, which he founded in 1976.

The institute grew out of the Saturday morning ballet class for boys that Mr d’Amboise began to teach in 1964, motivated by the desire that his two sons learn to dance without being the only boys in the class. The classes were expanded to include girls and moved to numerous public schools.

Now the goal is to offer free courses to everyone, regardless of the child’s background or ability. Today the institute teaches thousands of New York City children ages 9-14 and is affiliated with 13 dance institutes around the world. The Harlem-based institute where Mr d’Amboise lived was featured in Emile Ardolino’s 1983 Oscar winning documentary “He Makes Me Feel Like a Dancer”.

“That second chapter brought something more fulfilling than my career as an individual artist,” wrote Mr d’Amboise in his autobiography. He told the story of a little boy who, after many attempts, had succeeded in mastering a dance sequence: “He was on the way to discovering that he could take control of his body and learn from it to take control of his life . “

For his contribution to arts education, Mr. d’Amboise has received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1990, a Kennedy Honors Award in 1995, and a New York Governor’s Award, among others.

He saw himself as a dancer all his life, but was also a passionate New Yorker. When asked in a 2018 article in The Times that he wanted his ashes scattered, he replied, “Spread me out in Times Square or the Belasco Theater.”

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Kyle Abraham’s Second Act at Metropolis Ballet: Spare, Wintry, Summary

Kyle Abraham’s Second Act at City Ballet: Spare, Wintry, Abstract

Few ballets in recent years have attracted as much attention as Kyle Abraham’s The Runaway at the New York Ballet in 2018. In it, Abraham fused elements of classical ballet with street and contemporary dance for an exciting effect – and rave reviews – through his equally varied musical choices (Kanye West and Nico Muhly, Jay-Z and James Blake) and fantastic costumes by Giles Deacon.

It’s hard to follow. And so Abraham consciously took a different path for his new piece for the city ballet “When We Fell”, which will appear on the company’s website and YouTube channel on Thursday, and moved away from the charged atmosphere of “The Runaway” .

In a video interview, Abraham said that the tone and mood of the new piece was partly inspired by his childhood obsession with the Prince film, “Under the Cherry Moon.” (“I asked my mom to rent it every time we went to the video store.”)

“If ‘The Runaway’ were my ‘Purple Rain’,” said Abraham, “this new work would be closer to ‘Cherry Moon'” – a black and white film whose key song for Abraham is “Sometimes it snows in April”. ”

“This dance was very developed in the snow and winter for a premiere in April,” he said. “So there is a kind of homage to all of these things.”

Also in black and white, “When We Fell”, based on piano pieces by Morton Feldman, Jason Moran and Nico Muhly, is an economical, abstract and cinematic homage to the choreographic legacy of the City Ballet, its dancers and its home in Lincoln Center, the David H. Koch Theater where it was filmed. Directed by Abraham and Ryan Marie Helfant, the film reflects the experiences and visual influences of a three-week “bubble” residence in the Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in Tivoli, NY, where Abraham worked on the piece with eight dancers.

When he was filming “The Runaway”, Abraham, who comes from the contemporary dance scene, was the first black choreographer to be commissioned by the City Ballet in over a decade. He’s in high demand in the ballet world these days – he’s going to London next week to work on a new play with the Royal Ballet – but like so many people, he has had a difficult year of pandemic.

“There have been a lot of difficulties and so many unknowns for all of us,” he said. “I’ve tried to consider it a blessing to use the online rehearsal time to talk” – something that would be too expensive under normal circumstances – “but it was a challenge.”

In an interview last week, he talked about how he can find a way back to dancing, how bubble residency affects his creative process, and his musical and aesthetic choices. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

You had several assignments and a teaching position at the University of California in Los Angeles. when the pandemic started. What happened after everything shut down?

It was a difficult time. I was about to return to New York to work on a new piece with my company, AIM, and I had just left my Los Angeles apartment. I moved seven times in the first few months. Two of my dancers had left, I was trying to hire new ones, and I didn’t want to work on Zoom or FaceTime.

I’m actually quite introverted, and a lot of my work has dealt with isolation, so it was emotionally difficult to have that real distance. I also had some health problems and couldn’t do much physically. It wasn’t until Lincoln Center asked me to create a solo for Taylor Stanley that I found some confidence in the virtual creation – send material to Taylor, have it mailed back to me, and so on.

How did the Kaatsbaan residence influence the creation of “When We Fell”?

In every sense. When we started, the dancers and I were working on two different materials. But we were in deep winter and snowfall, and something about the silence, the peace, the elements pushed me to what became “When we fell”.

A lot of my decisions had to do with working with Ryan Helfant. I told him about the snow and sent him a winter song playlist. He sent me wonderful pictures that he had taken in the Koch Theater, which inspired me.

Did the dancers take time to get used to being in the studio together?

Yeah, I think people took time to drop the walls. Even approaching a friend is a new negotiation. Some hadn’t danced much in the past few months, and seeing how their bodies handled the work also influenced which direction I went with the piece.

One of the great things about a residence is that they don’t try to manage a lot of different things as they would if we were to work in New York the “normal” way. I don’t know if the amount of subtlety we’ve worked with could have existed in a faster setting. It was a real luxury to work like this.

Besides Prince, what were the other inspirations for the film’s aesthetics?

I also thought of works like Balanchine’s “Agon”. I’m not a ballet dancer, but much of my early education came from people teaching and studying balanchine technique. It’s the Port de Bras, the lower body work that I admired.

Merce Cunningham’s choreography was an influence too – I like the way he tilts body off-center. I wanted to create this kind of functional abstraction.

The ballet is divided into three sections. How did you think about the music?

I was interested in how different the piano can sound and in using that in a single ballet. I knew right away that I was going to use the Feldman I was very attracted to and the Jason Moran. For the third section, I turned to Nico Muhly and asked him for something that hadn’t been used in any other dance. He suggested this piece, “Falling Berceuse”, which I found beautiful in a very special way. There’s a little bit of hope and a little bit of despair in it.

For me, everyone suggests sitting in your window and looking at the falling snow – the first is the initial slow fall that has a kind of melancholy, the second a faster restlessness, the third very internal. I think I’ll add another section for the stage version of this work.

In the short documentary on When We Fell, Taylor Stanley talks about how to incorporate gestures that are meaningful and relevant to the Black Community. Is that a conscious decision?

It’s not that conscious; It’s only part of who I am I come from the rave and club culture where so much has to do with using your torso and like many people I grew up dancing in front of the mirror in my bedroom. I practice a lot of yoga, put one hand on my heart, one on my stomach, or there are gestures to stroke my chest or head.

I want to draw attention to the hybridity between what my body does naturally and what these dancers and their technique do naturally.

How has working with these dancers – and ballet dancers in general – influenced your choreography?

I definitely feel more capable and have more access to opportunity than before. Even in the contemporary work that I do, I allow myself to be more expressive and really work on things for the lower body, which has been much less emphasized in my work. To be honest, I think this has to do with negative comments from my ballet teachers that I recorded.

The city ballet really influenced the way I work. These dancers who are so encouraging make it okay to try these things out. I feel safe in this rehearsal room. I can be vulnerable, and that means the people I work with can also be vulnerable.

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Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros Dies at 63; Helped Ballet in Miami

Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros Dies at 63; Helped Ballet in Miami

The company’s debut program focused on works by George Balanchine – the founder of the City Ballet, whose repertoire still dominates that of Miami City – but also included Mr. Gamonet’s “Transtangos,” which became the company’s signature.

Updated

March 28, 2021, 3:40 p.m. ET

Mr. Gamonet was prolific, creating several ballets each season. He described himself as a neoclassical choreographer who was indebted to Balanchine, but also to the theatrics of his parents. His offer ranged from remakes of Spanish classics such as “Paquita” and “Carmen” to original pieces by Bach and swing music in “Big Band Supermegatroid”.

In a 1989 Washington Post review, Alan M. Kriegsman wrote that Mr. Gamonet’s works showed “a talent full of flair and flavor and an instinctive sense of dance rhetoric, but also, not unexpectedly, some compositional flaws and immaturity. ”

Music always came first for Mr. Gamonet, with careful study of the score. “Two in the morning,” recalled Mr. Mursuli, “and he would still be preparing and making notes on the score with his headphones on.”

Ballerina Iliana Lopez, who played many roles in Mr. Gamonet’s plays for Miami City, said, “He came with the choreography in mind,” adding, “He made me feel beautiful and free in his work, and not every choreographer can do that. “

During rehearsal and classes, Mr. Gamonet was often weird, nicknamed everyone, but he expected the dancers to work as hard as he did. “He always said, ‘Nobody’s hand is tied to the bar,'” said Mr. Mursuli. “If you didn’t want to work hard, you could go.” But, he added, Mr. Gamonet was also generous: “I can’t tell you how many times he has helped dancers who have no money.”

In 2000, Mr. Gamonet’s position with the Miami City Ballet was eliminated. From 2004 to 2009 he ran his own company in Miami, Ballet Gamonet. At the Ballet Nacional del Peru, he revived his earlier works and created new ones, including a full-length “Romeo and Juliet” in 2019.

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American Ballet Theater’s Chief to Step Down After 30 Years

American Ballet Theater’s Leader to Step Down After 30 Years

McKenzie, a former principal dancer for the company, is a direct link with the founders of the Ballet Theater, founded in 1939 by Richard Pleasant and funded in part by a dancer, Lucia Chase. She co-directed with Oliver Smith, a set designer, in 1945 and hired McKenzie in 1979, shortly before Mikhail Baryshnikov took over artistic direction in 1980.

McKenzie remained prominent in ballet theater until 1991 (critic Arlene Croce once called him “the Jeremy Eisen of ballet”) when he became an artistic collaborator for the Washington Ballet. It was a short training; In 1992 he was offered the position of artistic director by a beleaguered ballet theater that was heavily in debt and without a director. (Jane Hermann, who ran the company after Baryshnikov’s abrupt departure in 1989, had resigned five months earlier.)

“To say things were messy was an understatement,” McKenzie said of those early years. “I succeeded in the beginning because everyone needed me, and our only resource was sheer determination. I don’t think the current moment is a crisis point like it was back then. It’s not intuitive, but the company is in good health. “

McKenzie will be leaving a different company than the one he inherited. In recent years he has moved away from the historical dependence of ballet theater on international ballet stars. While stars generated obvious excitement, they were “not primarily focused on the company’s success”.

When asked if this was a good time for the company to make a change in leadership, Barnett said it was “a natural time in many ways because the pace of change has accelerated.” She added, “If Kevin has decided that he oversaw this catalytic year and that this next era will require new skills, interests and ideas, I trust his instincts to do so.”

Barnett said the company, which has $ 26.8 million in endowment assets, has managed to lower its operating budget over the past five years ($ 45 million in 2019 and under $ 30 million last year ) to balance. She added that government support, as well as individual and corporate donations, would have enabled the ballet theater to continue providing benefits and health care and a portion of their salaries to the dancers and musicians during the shutdown. For 2021, given the uncertainties surrounding returning to live performance, the company planned a number of different budgetary scenarios.

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A Paris Opera Ballet Étoile on Being Younger, Gifted and Profitable

A Paris Opera Ballet Étoile on Being Young, Gifted and Successful

Hugo Marchand, probably the most famous of the stars of the Paris Opera Ballet, or étoiles, stares bare-chested and muscled from the cover of his new memoir “Danser” (Arthaud), released last month in France.

Marchand, 27, seems a little young to have written an autobiography. Although he climbed to the top quickly – at 23 he was an étoile, the highest rank in the company – he still has a whole career ahead of him. And from the outside, his life looks like a lighthearted string of accomplishments, confirmed by critics and audiences who love his poetry, virtuosity, acting skills and leading man looks.

Then why a book now? Marchand asked the same question when an editor approached him three years ago. “I had a lot of doubts, but the editor told me she wanted to hear the voice of a young person talking about following your passion and what the cost of doing it,” he said in a video interview from his Paris apartment.

As it turned out, he had a lot to talk about. In “Danser” (“to dance”) Marchand (with the help of a journalist, Caroline de Bodinat) describes the strenuous, competitive world of the Parisian opera ballet school and company, often with poetic intensity, and lets the reader into his claustrophobic boundaries.

He also writes movingly about his own struggles with self-acceptance. At 6 feet 3 and a naturally muscular build, he felt too tall and too tall for the fine-boned Paris Opera ideal, and his career was marked by self-doubt and visits by stage fright. And he goes, albeit frivolously, on the tricky politics of the past few years at the Paris Opera Ballet: Benjamin Millepied’s brief tenure as director, Aurélie Dupont’s current reign, an internal report from 2018 on the dissatisfaction of the dancers.

Marchand and other opera dancers have been able to give daily lessons and rehearsals since June, although performances have been restricted. Marchand also worked on a project, a pas de deux with Hannah O’Neill (an opera ballet colleague) for Gagosian Premieres – a series of filmed collaborations between visual artists and artists from other disciplines. The film, which will be released online on March 23, plays in a series of giant Anselm Kiefer paintings now on view in the Le Bourget grounds of the gallery in Paris.

Kiefer, who was present during the filming, described the relationship between the dancers and the arts as “a happy and wonderful interface”. In a video interview, he said, “It was as if the dancers came out of the paintings and wrote fleeting lines in the air,” adding that the images “are fleeting too; They are never finished, nor in action, and the dancers make it so clear. “

Marchand spoke about the Gagosian Project, the Paris Opera’s latest report on diversity and the ambition to dance in New York. Here are edited excerpts from that conversation.

What attracted you to the Gagosian piece?

I’ve always wanted to work with other artists and bring other artistic disciplines into play. Hannah and I asked Florent Melac, a friend of ours in the Corps de Ballet, how we liked his choreography. He chose the music, Steve Reich’s “Duet”. I like the way it repeats and brings together Kiefer’s work that uses recycled and repetitive materials. We were lucky enough to meet Anselm Kiefer and I was very touched and moved by the paintings.

Are there any other projects or ambitions you would like to pursue?

I’ve always wanted to explore another house, dance with other companies. I would love to come to New York and perform with the New York City Ballet or the American Ballet Theater. I’m very interested in the American style of ballet, how fast and efficient it is, how well people move. But we cannot even cross the borders in Europe at the moment. Maybe one day!

Benjamin Millepied encouraged and promoted you during his tenure. After he left, Aurélie Dupont came in and there seemed to be a lot of dissatisfaction in the company. How did you feel back then?

When Benjamin arrived it was a breath of fresh air. What was crazy was that these rules, which hadn’t moved in years, suddenly changed. We could dream of having roles even if we weren’t of the “right” age or rank. He paid me so much attention; As an artist, I would have done anything for him. I switched from understudy to soloist in the two years he was there, and when Aurélie arrived I was concerned.

Why? And how is your relationship now

Ballet is a matter of taste; It is not because one director liked you that the next will. But Aurélie made me an étoile six months later, which changed my life.

She has ideas for a long term career, and that can be frustrating when you have specific roles to dance to. Sometimes she’ll think it’s too early. But she has the experience of a long career; At the Paris Opera you have to be a long-term solo dancer because you usually stay there until you retire at 42.

An internal survey in 2018 that was released to the press revealed a high level of dissatisfaction with the company. In your book you speak about it very neutrally. Did you identify yourself with some of the issues you encountered?

I was shocked and sad when the internal survey came out. Aurélie hadn’t been there long and it was unfair to burden her with long-term issues like harassment or bullying. The survey should have helped the institution grow and improve, but it had the opposite effect.

What do you think of the opera’s latest commission of inquiry into racism and its conclusions?

The report indicated that changes must be made from the start. that we need to send the message, you are black, asian, mixed race, whatever and you should come to the paris opera ballet school if you have the ability. This message has not yet been delivered, but the report means they will be working on it. The company must look like French society, and in a few years it will be.

In your book you vividly describe the training of the Paris Opera Ballet School – the ranking, the competitiveness, the desperate desire to join the company. Are you critical of the system at all?

Being a good ballet dancer isn’t about being good in the studio. It’s about being able to do your best at the right moment in the performance. The system is violent, but it helps you understand this very early on. Of course, it is very stressful to face competitions and exams at a very young age. But it gives you the guns for the moment you need them.

Once in the company, is the annual advertising contest a continuation of that idea?

When you join the company, annual competition plays an important role because for the first year or so you don’t dance at all, you’ll be in luck if you ever get on stage. The competition gives you a specific goal and reason to work and improve every day. There is some luck and chance; Two minutes on stage determine your fate for the next year. But here, too, it’s about doing your best at the right moment.

And I believe that ultimately people get where they need to. Ballet is about talent, a lot of work, the right body type – but also about dying to appear on stage. This is my best talent: I love ballet so much that I could die for it.

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Patrick Dupond, French Ballet Virtuoso, Dies at 61

Patrick Dupond, French Ballet Virtuoso, Dies at 61

At the age of 16, Mr. Dupond was inducted into the Paris Opera Ballet, and Mr. Bozzoni proposed to enter the Varna competition. After winning the gold medal, he steadily rose to the Paris Opera – although his virtuoso technique and philanthropic style were not to everyone’s taste.

“Of course you don’t want to put out the fire, the furnishings, or the excitement,” said Violette Verdy, then director of the Paris Opera Ballet, upside down in a 1977 interview with The Times, explaining to him that what he sometimes does is like that What is tasteless is that it belongs more to the Moulin Rouge than to the Paris Opera. “

“Because I like him so much,” added Ms. Verdy, “I’m especially tough on him.”

Mr. Dupond’s star quality and charisma made him a crowd favorite even after leaving the opera in 1997. In 2000, after a serious car accident, he had 134 fractures, constant pain, and a morphine addiction that he had to overcome for a year. But he returned to the studio and worked with Mr. Bozzoni to regain his strength. Less than a year after the accident, he appeared in a musical entitled “Un Air de Paris”.

In 2004 he met Leila Da Rocha, a former professional basketball player who had trained as a dancer and choreographer. Although Mr. Dupond was always open about his homosexuality, particularly in an autobiography, “Étoile” (2000), he described their encounter as love at first sight.

Ms. Da Rocha encouraged him to appear on several reality television shows, most recently as a judge on the French edition of Dancing With the Stars. Together they taught and staged works at their dance school in Soissons.

In addition to Mrs. Da Rocha, Mr. Dupond is survived by his mother.

In an interview with the Liberation newspaper in 2000, Mr. Dupond presented his credo as an artist: “To please, to seduce, to distract, to enchant; I feel like I’ve only ever lived for it. “