S2: Ep 3 - Risk All

cult around all of it. In the school, of course, it was an insular world into which we were permitted to enter and chosen, and so I don't even know really what that first impression could have been, other than nervous anticipation and excitement and a desire to be seen. Stephanie the land is a form or dancer. When she stepped into balancing school for the first time, he was

in his mid sixties. Stephanie was fourteen, and she knew the only way to dancer balancing in his company was to train in his school, the School of American Ballet. People were not taken from the outside. We had to go through the school for at least two or three years even to be considered for the company. Nobody ever came from the outside. We always had to be an insider. It was definitely a unique situation in that way, and

getting into that school wasn't easy to do. Do you remember your first day at the School of American Ballet. I first remember my audition. I think I went in sixty eight. It was a private audition, and I went in and I was fourteen and a half and I only had had occasional classes, and I was told to ring point shoes. I didn't have point shoes. I've never been on point. Stephanie didn't know a lot of the

names of the steps. So Diana Adams, a famous balancing dancer who had retired from the stage and was running the school, demonstrated every step for her and she showed me everything. I imitated her by all standards of what I understand now. I was extremely unsophisticated, and it was terrifying. I came out and she came to my mother and she said, well, she's years behind. I'll put her in with the eleven year olds. It's unlikely that it's going to work, but she does have some turnout. That was it.

Fourteen year old Stephanie towered over the eleven year olds in her class, but it didn't deter her. I love to move, I love to dance. I was fascinated by where I was, and I was enchanted by the people around owned me. Stephanie didn't know what she was doing, but she imitated well. She could copy the other students and replicate the movement, even when she didn't know what step came next or even what it was called. And

three months later I was moved up. It was exciting, and I thought everybody was the most beautiful creatures on the earth that I'd ever seen, and they were so talented. So I'd come home report about all these people I'd seen and how beautiful they were. M m m. And also, there's something about being elite, you know, I'm just going to say that, as much as I don't like to say that about being chosen an elite, you know, there's

this um ego. Part of your sense of self recognizes that you are being selected and selected in our particular arena where it is so super refined and quite close to the outside world. We were christened, we were graced to be allowed in the school and allowed to be in that studio, and allowed to be in relationship to that organization, to the organization. It's like when you first fall in love and you feel like you're the person. Oh my god, it's me. How can that not be?

Throwing from my heart? Podcasts and Rococo Punch, This is the turning Room of Mirrors. I'm Erica Lance, Part three, We're ESK Call. When Stephanie started at the School of American Ballet, she was entering something big. New York was in the middle of what came to be known as the dance boom in the six season seventies. New York was a hub for all kinds of dance. I was going to two or three performances a week. Dance historian Lynne Garafola remembers being at the start of her career

as a critic and writer in the seventies. It seemed like everyone was talking about dance. There were performances everywhere, Tickets were still relatively cheap. There were ballet companies coming from many different places. So I think there was this sense of energy and possibility, and at the center of this movement was Balanching. By then, he'd been in the US for thirty years. He'd built a ballet school and

a ballet company. As far as the dance world was concerned, he'd become the Shakespeare of neo classical ballet, and audiences got to watch him write his masterpieces right in front of them. Balancing in the New York City ballet became really one of the pre eminent artistic institutions. These were just one of the pre eminent cultural moments in New York City. This is historian Jim Steaken. He got people

who aren't necessarily into ballet to care about ballet. You made ballet something that was on TV on a regular basis. He turned certain ballerinas into cultural icons that girls wanted to emulate and inspire them to study ballet. One thing I would like to say is that it's pretty clear when you read all the reviews beginning in the late sixties, seventies into the nine eighties, the balancing is portrayed as someone who could do no wrong. Even when he does

a really terrible ballet. The language is kind of nice. I mean, you read some of those things, it's like he could do no wrong. It's like he was a god. Balancing was ever present in the school. He could walk into any class any day and wait to see what would catch his eye. As the world around her worshiped Balancing Stephanie c the Land was still a teenager, hoping to join his company someday. One day she was asked to be part of these performances they called lecture demos,

where students would go to public schools to demonstrate ballet. First, they had to learn the choreography. There were three couples dancing. Stephanie and her partner were in the back behind the lead couple. I wasn't very good at ballet in my mind, not yet, she remembers. That day. A talented dancer named Fernando Bojones was there sitting on the udio floor at the front, and then Balancine walked in. She'd never met him before, and I thought, well, nobody looks at the

people in the back. And I thought, well, he's not watching me. Balanciine is not watching me, so it really doesn't matter. I can do whatever I want back here. And Fernando said, well, he didn't take his eyes off of you for one minute. You know, by the time he saw me, I don't know how old he was. He had seen so many dancers, he'd lived such a long life. If you spark his curiosity, that's a good thing. He never wanted to be told who to like, and very often, in fact, I think he went the other way.

So if the heads of the schools, who were his Russian colleagues at the time, would say we like this and this and this person, likely he would turn his head and look for somebody else. Balancine wanted good dancers, but Stephanie said he was also looking for someone unformed, someone's still raw, somebody who doesn't quite have it all, and he could shape them. He could form them. She doesn't quite know what she's doing, but there's something. Then it was very what you say, Chavi and Pygmalion a

little bit, you know, Eliza Dolittle. There's perhaps a sculpture in that marble. He could make sixty mistakes and one was going to come out of full sculpture. H And that was basically how he saw it. And he even would talk about, you know, it could be a field of grass, but one flower. Could Stephanie be that flower. Stephanie quickly learned how much the school of American Ballet

was about balancing and his choreography. People were trained to hone his particular sensibilities, even his ethics, so that there would be a readiness definitely a readiness and all of us to fall right into the company, efficient and ready to be useful, immediately, ready to execute and embody his visions. Usually when you're a teenager, you don't meet the one person who will make all of your career decisions. But

that's kind of what balancinge was. Balancine was basically the be all, end all answer to the rest of your life, sounds wise. As a student, Stephanie a Land learned there were many expectations for dancers at the School of American Ballet, some explicit, some so ingrained in the culture they didn't have to be said aloud. There's a certain stringent criteria for body types and adhering to those body types. There were criteria that were very very clear and in no

uncertain terms. What were the criteria generally long limbed, tall, long necks, small heads, that was understood, fair skin. I think I've even heard something like when you slice an apple open, that kind of the whiteness of the fruit. There was certainly exceptions, but that was it. It's well documented that Balancine had a preference for pale, thin dancers, for dancers he loved. He'd praised them with phrases like alabaster princess or pale skin that reflected the light. He

had a lot of opinions about dancers bodies. Here he is in the nineteen sixty three interview on w n y C talking about how he evaluates female dwan. There's specifically girls. He starts by comparing the pros and cons of two girls bodies. One girl is tall, It's very very tall, with beautiful legs and fantastic extension. One of them but doesn't turn as fast and has a beauty will express her marble face, you know, almost like Angel.

Where another girl is short. The other one would be shorter, cool, short legs, dark face. She can't jump very high and stretch her legs, but she could be very faster, and maybe her ability to express with the face, maybe she exceeds the first in terms of artistic expression. I mean they're all different animals balance, She says, you can't say who is better. It's like you say what's better m leopard or jaguar or line or He had animals and images for everyone. One dancer said she was a porcupine,

her friend a delicious mushroom. Whether this was playful or dehumanizing. It's hard to tell, but if you made the cut, it might have been because of your idiosyncrasies, your individual style. It might be a shimmer of something balancing could mold into a timeless sculpture. When balancing choreographs, it's like it fits like a glove, you know, It's like it's meant for you, and that's so special. It's it's a glove that fits. Deborah Austin entered the school as a shy

thirteen year old. She'd always depended on dance to draw her out of her cocoon. Then she found herself vying for a position with Balancing's company. And they told my parents that most likely I would never get into the New York City Vallet because I would not fit in. The message came from a teacher at the school that she would not fit in because of the color of

her skin, because she's black. They said she could never dance in the court ballet, the group of dancers you often see dancing behind the soloists, because she wouldn't match. You know, I would have to be a soloist if that was possible. And I'm looking at them at thirteen years old, thinking, I know I have talent, but a soloist, you've got to be getting me. Jumping from student to soloists seemed impossible, but Deborah wanted to dance for me.

It was like there was not going to be a no. I mean, I was going to achieve this on my own, Marrior, no matter what color I was, no matter what I did. You had to sparkle something for him to be interested in you. I mean, just being there was not exactly ideal. You had to really show your worth. Balancine had been watching her, and she did get in. At age sixteen. She was the first black female dancer admitted into the company.

She danced in the Core and Swan Lake, a role she'd been told she could never dance, and she danced soloist rolls, one that Balancine specifically choreographed for her. He was so kind, just the way he took your hand and said, come here, dear. You know yet you were still scared of him, at least I was. He could be tough, but he was a father figure, you know, to some of us, and we were his disciples. I think he cared more about individuality than he cared about

a look. I think he cared about how you were or as a artist. I really don't believe that there was a specific type that he wanted. I mean, supposedly he wanted the skin tone to be the color of a fresh peeled apple. My skin color was not the color of a freshly peeled apple by no stretch of the imagination. So there you have it. Still, the reality was that Balancie's company was almost entirely white. For the nine years Debbor dance at the New York City Ballet,

she was the only black female dancer there. I might have paved something. I I literally made a driveway, but I was there for nine years by myself. It might have hindered me, you know, in some ways because of what I was told when I was younger. I feel like I wanted to fit in, keep down inside. Possibly I went back into my cocoon and myself for many

years in the company. Deborah believes that Balancine didn't have one type in mind, that he was open to many kinds of dancers, and this is one of those areas where Balancine seems to hold opposites at the same time. Did he want dancers to conform to his aesthetics or did he value variety. What was clear was that being thin was important. I mean, I just wanted to be thinner because I knew being thinner was gonna get me parts, and he was gonna like me more. And you wanted

so badly, you know, you please him. Then he used to call us all briocious because we were all like the young and our bodies changed from being these skinny little things to like becoming women. But he wanted us dinner than we probably were being pubis and young girls. Now I look it picked with myself when I was younger in those photographs, and I go, oh my god, they called me fat, Like how is that even possible? We were definitely indoctrinated with a certain aesthetic that was

known as the Balanchine body. Stephanie and Deborah overlapped at the company in one piece. They danced back to back solos while Debora spins off stage in a joyful mix of peak turns and jumps. Stephanie, almost mirroring Deborah, twirls on stage all length and speed. The preference for very long legs for thin I did not match that. In all moments. I was a little more round than the

preferred body. There were times when I was taken out of ballets because of my weight, and this was before it was politically incorrect to address it, so basically I'd just be called fat and pulled out. So I had those phases and those conflicts and self deprecation certainly, and went through them. Some see balancing as the person most responsible for changing the expectation of ballerina's bodies not just to be slim, but to be absolutely as thin as possible.

If you look at photos of the late nineteenth century ballerinas, they're very, very different from the ballerinas of the twenties or the nineteen forties. In the nineteen fifties, slender dancers all had little shapes, they had wastes. No one in New York City ballet in the late sixties or nineteen seventies or early eighties had waste They were much more straight, and that was what Balanchine apparently wanted. Historian Lyne Garef points out it's hard to pin the extreme body standards

all on balancing. In the sixties and seventies, extreme thinness became apparent across the fashion industry. If one picks up fashion magazines from the mid nineteen sixties on and you see Twiggy. You know this is a moment when the beauty industry is saying that thinness is really what is beautiful. Either way, Balancing's dancer is worthinner than their predecessors, and

Balancing pressure dancers to lose weight. One time, he told a dancer named Heidi Vostler she was too fat to dance the ballet serenad just moments before she had to go on stage and perform it. She was so upset she could barely get through the steps. Another former dancer, Suzanne Farrell, received a letter from Balancing and included a personal poem and a ps that read, vote I hope by now you are thin and beautiful and light to lift.

Suzanne later said she felt frightened and hurt. She wrote quote, I should have known it. I shouldn't have had to be told. I felt stupid and inadequate, and I was so upset that I proceeded to try to lose weight right there. Thus my life was now hinging on two big problems, getting my entrance right and losing weight. Suzanne would eventually become Balancin's most famous dancer. His muse he was in love with her and her dancing. Soon, younger

dancers were trying to mold themselves after her. Gelsie Kirkland was one of them. She famously wrote about it in her memoir Balancing. Teased Gelsey for having a big head. Everyone wanted a small head like Susanne. Gelsie was desperate to look just like her, Balanchine's favorite ballerina. She wrote, quote, he had such an obsession with her face that everybody, all of my friends, were trying to imitate the shape

of her mouth. I went to the dentist and said that I want buck teeth, and Gelsie knew she had to be thin, she says. Balanchine wrapped his knuckles on her stern um and said, must see bones. He did not merely say eat less, she says, he repeatedly said eat nothing. I think I tried harder to please balancing than anybody. The physical cost was that it killed you to do it. An interviewer asked her once if Balancine cared about her body. She said he cared how it looked,

not how it felt. When she was too sick to dance, she writes, Balancine gave her pills. He told her they were vitamins, but later she realized they were in phetamines. Eventually, Gelsie would depend on drugs to get through her performances, and when Balancine thought that her head was too big for her body, something she says he pointed out to her all the time, I'm she got silicone injections and

had her ear lopes trimmed. Gelsie said, I starved by day, then binged on junk food and threw up by night. I took injections of pregnant cow's urine, reputed to be a miraculous diet aid. I emptied myself with enemas and steam bass, anything to mold the body her boss wanted. You might think, based on these clearly desperate measures, that Gelsie was unappreciated, but actually no, she was a legend,

one of Balanchine's favorites, frequently cast in lead roles. But these were the kinds of measures she felt she had to take. Plenty of dancers resorted to plastic surgery or other extreme measures to stay slim. The pressure was real, and they knew what was required of them. You eat, sleep, and drink ballet. It is first, it's before everything down precedes everything. You give your all after balancing, noticed Stephanie. He visited her class frequently, often his eyes were on her.

She couldn't understand why I really was behind and I really was not capable of delivering the goods consistently. But when I was allowed to do whatever I wanted to

do in my own particular way, that worked. And then he started coming around, and then the teachers would say, you know, go to the front of the room, and I didn't want to go to the front of the room, and I would have practical panic attacks when he would come in, and I'd hide, and balancing would start, even coming into the back of the studio if I wouldn't go forward, whatever he saw, I can't say. What I do know is that I haven't over the topness. I've

been told I don't do things some little ways. So I think what he saw was this person that if let loose, was going to run. Stephanie was willing to go there. When she danced, she didn't hold back. Balancine had this thing he said to his dancers all the time. People quoted again and again in the middle of rehearsal or the middle of class. If a dancer seemed not to be giving absolutely everything. He looked at them and say, what are you saving for? Dear, where are you gonna lose?

You're gonna fall down. The floors really close by, and so you fall down, you get up. We were trained for that risk all, basically risk all, And then I got in and I didn't know which way was up. H m hm hm. I definitely loved drama. I loved heightened experiences, extremities, zig zagging. I don't I don't know that I loved it so much as I was drawn by it, to it and and embodied that as much as possible. Stephanie got into the company when she was eighteen.

It meant a life of extremes. It was glamorous. And then we did a tour and then suddenly I was in and I was really in. It was really like quicksamp. Being in meant Stephanie had an intense schedule as a company member. You'd have morning class at ten am, rehearsals all day, get ready for a performance, perform in the evening, and finally leave the theater at maybe eleven at night.

On top of that, you never know your exact schedule until the evening before when it would be posted, so you can't make plans for your life outside the company to be near the studio. All the dancers lived in the same area, a stretch of blocks on the upper west Side the dancers called the Ballet Belt. Because there is very little control of one's life in a company that size in terms of casting scheduling, there is a feeling of lack of control and a lack of ability

to make choices for oneself. Decisions about you are being made for you, and so what happened was I would lash out by going dancing at clubbing, sleep with someone and staying up all night. That could be self harming in certain ways, but it was a way to work out that energy of frustration that I was not getting to choose. I think that's a normal Ladlescent behavior, to tell you the truth. But my escapes were really physical venting,

really really physical venting. That was a coping mechanism for me. I could feel like you lived or died by what balancing thought of you. A dancer named Barbara wall Zach wrote about it. She says, I remember talking to him once when I must have been about sixteen. He said, you know, dear, I know you someday want to dance Swan Lake. But you know, if you ever do Swan Lake, I will never come to see you, because you will

be terrible. Barbara writes, I was absolutely destroyed. Still, Barbara felt she had to dance for Balancing and not another ballet company. Balancing looked through you. When he watched you dance, she said, he saw things no one else saw. And she says the feel of having him set the steps on you, of the music, of the counts, of the kind of kinesthetic movement and quality was addictive that dancer.

Barbara danced with him for fourteen years. When she was eventually let go, she says it was so wrenching she had a nervous breakdown. The reality was that even if you gave everything, you could be fired without warning and without explanation. You might hear it directly from someone other than balancing that he decided it was time for you to leave. You might just get a pink slip in the mail. I could be in the wings or the studio and feel like phenomenally insecure home and cry and

just feel that I couldn't possibly ever measure up. But the minute I was on stage it felt like another him all entirely. I just felt very connected, very alive. I loved being on stage, but I love to dance. She loved feeling that she was doing something deeper, something important, and that was a feeling you had in the company. It was more than a job. You were buying into

a philosophy, a way of life. There was a sense you were part of something sacred, like balanching was channeling something higher and turning it into steps in front of your eyes. That's what it felt like very frequently with balancing in the room. It really was. He was just like a funnel or a vessel, and like divine inspiration. Absolutely absolutely, and for the observer, looking effortless and very graceful.

M hmm. I just really feel that I was a witness too, and a participant in thing quite unusual and rare in the world. Could you tell me about Balancine's philosophy? Mm hmm, just danced, dear, don't think what does that mean? I think it means a myriad of things. If I were being narrow or defensive, it would be just so that he could get everything precisely as he wanted it, and he didn't want the mind or the personal vantage point of a dancer to interfere with what he was

looking for. And yet I also see it as very zam. Don't clutter, don't get in your own way. Just danced here, Just danced here. Balancine wanted his dancers to be in the moment completely, to live like the present was all. They had to believe that this moment was of utmost importance, and in that way dance at the highest level. Balancing was known for choreographing incredibly speedy movement in his ballets. It was something the dancers had to train for and

he drilled them on it incessantly. They had to learn to move faster than they ever had before. We had to get it into our bones, into our nervous system, because it's not a brain process. It's really like a trigger finger. He likened it very often to a horse when the gun goes off at a race. You have to be out of the gate when it starts, not thinking about going out of the gate, and you have to be ready. We would have classes with pot of

Ray for a half hour. Oh my gosh, practicing direction, speed, weight transfer, being super super quick, and you get the thighs to get together faster. The back leg is almost the front leg before the front leg even gets a chance to start transferring weight. We could have sixty four tondos with speed of light front side and back and one M, three and four and five, you know, and then you could go one and just go and you'd have to do it. And if you're not doing it,

somebody is. That's the other thing about the company. If you're not doing it through, somebody replace you. Stephanie learned that Balancine might ask you to do just about anything in class, even things that seemed impossible. So for example, let's say you're jumping. You're doing these little jumps in place, straight up into the air, switching your feet from front to back and back to front. That's called a changement. Then you start jumping higher and you start beating your

feet together while you're in the air. That's an entra shakat. Then you add more beats and notre cise. All of us is normal. Usually you'd start these jumps by bending your knees a little what's called a plier, a small knee bend. Usually you have a small, little one, and you practice your little beats and you land. But he's famous for giving what we call a grand pliers into chasse, and that's a big knee bend. Okay, what we called fifth position. Instead of bending your knees a little, you

crouch next to the floor. In fifth position. In a grand plier, your legs are flattened to the sides and you're balancing on the balls of your feet. And from that almost torturus thigh burning position, you're supposed to jump all the way up into the air to three beats, beating your feet together while you're in the air and landing. He would do it out of these extreme positions just to see even if you had the volition to do it. Wow. It was also a test of are you a patriot?

Are you a citizen? Are you willing to do these unheard of things? Are you willing to do whatever I ask you to do? Set yourself beyond the margins of safety and it might actually be possible. Yeah. Sometimes when I'm explaining to people that were not exposed to this into that particular culture, I laugh at my former self, because not only would you want to demonstrate something when he asked for it, you would show that you were excited about showing that you were showing you're showing your

fervor kind of exactly you were demonstrating your fervor. It was layer on layer on layer of energy for revolution. Yeah, it's like you have to demonstrate your passion for the art and your your reverence for it. Just being there is not enough. You have to really amplify it to let it be known in the visible world. He would request things that could be almost undoable, and most of it was really challenging our willingness to risk. It was really about risk and and passing through any kind of

imagined limitations or real limitations, doing the impossible. M hm. The dancers learned it was music first, choreography second, you third, the dancers were in service to the music and to ballet. Too many in the audience, it was Balancine who was the star. He stood in the wings every single performance. He was always in the front wing, watching and waiting to be either surprised, entertained, intrigued or otherwise I suppose.

But he was always in the wing. So we were always not not only literally on our toes, but we were always aware of his part in our lives mm hmm, and his part in your lives being what exactly ever present, Yeah, ever observing, ever present, and also realizing that we were we were taking part in something that was his creation, that was run by his aesthetic, and that the criteria was to be met to the absolute best of our ability.

In all moments, He was God in the theater. And in fact, I don't know if I told you that when the theater apparently was built, you know, we only had windows and very little slipper windows on the fourth floor in the offices. There are no windows otherwise because basically we don't need windows because the outside world doesn't matter. We are not part of the outside world. Wow, It's

separate from us, and we are removed from it. And once you go downstairs into the theater, enter through the stage entrance, and go into the studios, the dressing rooms in the stage, there is no need for the outside world because we are removed from it and apart from it and in our own unique sphere, we had our own universe. YEA. The Turning is a production of Rococo Punch and I Heart Podcasts. It's written and produced by Allen Lance Lesser and me. Our story editor is Emily Foreman.

Mixing and sound designed by James trout. Jessica Carissa is our assistant producer. Andrea Swage is our digital producer, fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. Our executive producers are John Parotti and Jessica Albert. At Rococo Punch, I Get Trina Norvelle and Nicki e Tor at I Hard Podcasts. For photos and more details on the series, follow us on Instagram at Rococo Punch, and you can reach out via email The Turning at Rococo Punch dot com. M I'm Erica Lance. Thanks for listening. M.