Dance The Patter of Creative Feet

Any evaluation of the state of ballet in Dallas must begin with two facts: first, dance is the fastest growing art in the country; and second, the current economic crisis, whatever its sources, horrors, and direction, has affected Dallas less than most other cities. The question is, then, why has dance fared so poorly in this town, and are there hopes for change? The recent visits of the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater may provide some answers.



Shortly before the two companies appeared here, Toni Beck, chairman of the SMU Dance department, felt that the climate for dance in Dallas was worse than ever. She cited the enthusiastic reception of the Alvin Ailey company in Austin in early March as an example of the sort of dance event Dallas was not likely to patronize. In fact, five years ago certain members of the artistic elite in the city vetoed an offer from Ailey to visit here. When George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet was here ten years ago it was poorly received.



Arthur Mitchell suggested a Dallas stop for his Dance Theatre of Harlem on his current tour only because the company had been booked in Fort Worth, and he thought there was a chance that Dallasites would want a glimpse of his famous and fast-growing company. That Dallas appears to want more than a glimpse of Mitchell’s company (there is talk of a longer visit next year) should lighten, if it doesn’t entirely dispel, Beck’s gloom.



Mitchell’s company was in competition, on the weekend of March 14-16, with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater which appeared as part of the Dallas Civic Ballet’s first subscription season. There was only one real conflict (both performed on Friday evening), but people around town were fearful that there wouldn’t be enough interest or energy to fill both McFarlin and the Music Hall for five performances. Except for a fairly weak turn-out at Pittsburgh’s Saturday matinee of Romeo and Juliet (which conflicted, ironically, with nothing), the halls were almost completely sold out all the time.

First conclusion: the way to bring out audiences is to offer them an embarrassment of riches rather than a meager diet of occasional performances.

The two companies attracted very different sorts of audiences. The crowd for the Pittsburgh was well-heeled, be-jeweled and befurred (some of them looked as if they’d stayed over at the Music Hall after the fall opera season). They applauded politely; at the Sunday Swan Lake, which ran for three-and-one-half hours, a noticeable trickling of people up the aisles began after the third act.

At McFarlin, the audiences looked more like a warm, varied, excitable New York crowd (the kind you’d see at the City Center, for example, or the State Theater in Lincoln Center) than any I’ve seen in Dallas. As one might expect, the audience was heavily black, but there were also lots of students in sweaters and jeans, many people who clearly had never seen a ballet before, as well as a good chunk of sturdy North Dallas citizens. The crowd went wild both nights, clapping rhythmically during the finale of the exuberant potpourri, Forces of Rhythm, which closed the Friday performance. Cheers and standing ovations were bestowed on the company like roses.



Second conclusion: there’s more of an audience, and a more varied one, than some of the old guard patrons of the Civic Ballet might once have admitted, or wanted to admit.



The DCB is beginning to realize this. Incorporated in 1957 by a group of 40 teachers, it limped along until 1969 when George Skibine and Marjorie Tallchief became artistic directors. It lost money continually until two years ago when Mary Heller Sasser, a Dallasite with dance training, no business experience but lots of local contacts, was signed on as general manager. Now the company is in the black and is currently staging its first major fund drive – for expansion, a new building in North Dallas, and a fully paid professional company. Sasser is sanguine about the future state of the company.



The problem is, exactly what sort of artistic direction is the company going to take? The plans for the 1975-76 season include a new Nutcracker to replace the one borrowed at Christmas from Houston like a hand-me-down. There will be a March visit from the American Ballet Theater, currently the stomping ground of big stars like Makarova and Baryshnikov. The only really new project of DCB will be a fall production, in conjunction with the symphony, to celebrate Ravel’s 100th birthday: Skibine’s 1958 version of Daphnis and Cloe, and a revival by Tallchief of Njinska’s 1928 Bolero. Clearly, the DCB is playing it safe with old chestnuts, a not-so-daring Skibine ballet, and the most popular and attractive guest artists in the country.

The fund drive is going well. Bulk mailings brought in 1,500 subscribers for the first season (as compared to 2,200 for the symphony after many years). Sasser attributes the growing interest in ballet to the large number of good choreographers in the country; she also acknowledged that “beauty of movement and not setting is what’s important,” and that the public must be educated to appreciate dance in all its forms and not just in its by-now-tired nineteenth century dress.

But this dress is the one that DCB is wearing. The Pittsburgh performance of Swan Lake conformed to the public’s idea of ballet: it looked good, there were sets and costumes for miles, but the production itself was just a little tired. Dagmar Kessler, the Odette-Odile, is an accurate dancer (all 32 fouettés were there), but somewhat tense and tight. She projected not frailty but coldness, and as the black swan she missed grand opportunities for archness. Lesser lights in the company, especially Jordeen Ivanov as the gypsy in Act I and the Spanish girl in Act III, provided the kind of easy grace the principals did not have.

What Dallas needs, frankly, is daring. This means, above all, a company with a strong leader, autonomously making artistic decisions, who will be forceful enough not to be pushed around by a board of directors and patrons. Second, it needs to mount massive publicity campaigns to attract the large potential audience (Beck points out that Austin has two civic ballets, and that Utah has dance companies which function independently of foundation support). Third, it must be willing to gamble on young, innovative talent, especially choreographers.

This is the most important point. As long as Dallas is willing to get by with the old repertoire, no matter how well done, the city will remain at best apathetic, at worst uninformed and hostile, to the major developments in dance.

Third conclusion: great companies begin with youth (Balanchine and the City Ballet, Lucia Chase and ABT are the most eminent examples; Eliot Feld in New York and Benjamin Harkarvy and the Pennsylvania Ballet are more recent ones).

Arthur Mitchell is the strongest example of what can be done with brains, talent, energy, business acumen, and connections. Five years ago, the Dance Theatre of Harlem was working in a garage which, on hot days, kept its doors open with the result that kids from the street wandered in to see what was happening. Today, the enterprise is a major one, with 1,500 students, a five-month touring schedule, and rave critical notices. When I saw the baby company five years ago in Cambridge, Mass., they looked like a group of schleppers; today they’ve grown up. One can find many faults with DTH: they do too many things, some of which they seem more suited to than others; Mitchell’s own choreography (Rhyth-metron) is warmed-over Balanchine; the men in the company seem stronger than the women (notable exception: Virginia Johnson and Lydia Abarca, both leggy Balanchine types, who were fine in Agon and Concerto Barocco).

But these flaws point to corresponding virtues. The company tries to present a balanced and spicy diet to its audiences. Some of the choreography is razzle-dazzle vulgarity and utterly irresistible, like Forces of Rhythm where a great joyful schizophrenia takes over as Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, rock tunes, girls in tunics, boys in practice clothes, other in loin cloths, join forces in a jolly gallimaufry. I’ve never seen so much physical beauty in any company on stage before.

Like all naive audiences, the McFarlin throngs on March 14 and 15 applauded everything uncritically (so did those at the Music Hall, however; it’s merely a matter of how you like your naivete, enthusiastic or lukewarm). But they were there and responding. The audience exists. Dallas must try to discover and cultivate that audience if ballet is to enjoy more than brief week-end flurries of activity in a city which prides itself on its growing sophistication.