Just a heads up. This episode includes descriptions of an alleged sexual assault. I mean, I knew, we all knew that once he was gone, things we're gonna change. There was a feeling in the air in Wilmina. Frankfurt visited Balancing in the hospital. She was on edge about the future. I felt protected by Balancing. He would just always take care of me. I knew that, and I knew that when he was gone, that that was not going to
be the case. Balancing Lee, weak and confused in a hospital bed, that he hadn't left for weeks and that he would never leave. At seventy nine, he was dying of a rare neurological disease. He would have to hand over the company to a success user, but the topic of succession didn't seem to interest Balancing. He'd say, after he died, he wouldn't be there, so they wouldn't be his ballets. He had no expectation that the New York City Ballet would survive his death. He seems to absolve
himself from the decision except for one point. Whoever his successor would be, he said, it could only be a man who loves women. Peter had become the acting director, and you could feel the shift coming. Peter Martin's was a principal dancer in the company, Originally from Denmark. Peter was striking, with full blonde hair and wide set blue eyes, six two inches of muscle. He was known for his technique. His movements were steady and precise. His body cut through
the stage at elegant and crisp angles. His dancing could be emotionless, his expression never changing. The whole package suited Balancing and his plotless abstract ballets. You know, I had lots of good times with Peter. I had lots and lots of fun with him, and I loved his dancing. It's a little boring, but it's what a beautiful technician and balance she made incredible parts for him. Peter had already been involved in day to day operations. He was
casting parts now and running rehearsals. Maybe he would be in charge after Balancing died. Whoever Peter loved, they were starting to dance more. But Wilhelmina says, if he didn't like you, you might be shut out. I was on that list for a number of reasons. People Peter didn't like. Yeah, it's not that he didn't like me. It's just that that I knew too much from my heart podcasts and Rococo Punch. This is the turning. I'm Erica Lance, Part five,
The Prince. I don't know that you can have a ballet company without a certain kind of hierarchy, the same way orchestras usually have conductors and movies have directors. A complex piece of art involving a lot of people and moving parts needs a north star, and that's what Balancine was to his dancers. He controlled the artistic vision and a cadre of dancers who are willing to give everything
to be part of it. I think a lot was codified when Balancing created his school, then company, aspects that have been institutionalized around dancers, work ethic, and body aesthetics. Whoever a successor would be, they wouldn't only inherit the company, but also the culture, a culture that sucks you in from the moment you enter Balancing School of American Ballet. But I lived without my family. I moved out from my family, so my grow up school was fast and furious.
That's where Wilhelmina first encountered Peter Martin's It was nine she was thirteen years old. In the boarding house for the School of American Ballet. There were sixteen of us, kind of like little Maiden saw in a row. Right away, Wilhelmina admired one of the older girls who was sixteen, and she was a very big influence on me because she was California girl, like really California dream and hip you. She had lots of clothes, she was a really good dancer,
and I was awe struck. Someone else was interested in Wilhelmina's friend too, Peter Martin's the tall blonde star in the New York City Ballet. He wasn't a student, he was a professional dancer already in the company. Peter had trained and danced at the Royal Danish Ballet, but in nine he started to perform as a guest artist at New York City Ballet. His first role was Apollo. He played the role of the young god to his three Muses. Soon after, Balancine invited Peter to join the company as
a principal, the highest rank a dancer can reach. Peter asked Wilhelmina's friend out on a date. He was twenty three and she was sixteen, which is you know, a little I know, but but oh well she was allowed to go. So we all fifteen of us helped her get dressed and we were all excited little ballerines. And he came and he wasn't allowed about the second floor and we all looked out the window, and off she went with him, and he was already, you know, big
global star. So it's like she landed the big star at a young age. It felt exciting. Yeah, yeah, very soon Peter and Wilhelmine's roommate became a couple. We used to go over to Peters and play poker and hang out. It was fun. We were like very young couples, right, I was like fifteen sixteen. It felt special to be a dancer in New York. At that moment. The dance boom, great dance of all kinds swirled around them. They could catch the performance any night and they were a part
of it. What was that time, like, did you kind of feel like unsupervised teens or what was that sort of period like, Um, I didn't feel like unsupervised teens. I think we felt like we were grown ups. It was like sort of glamorous in a way, you know, even though we had like crummy apartments and not really any money or anything. It was fun. And how much time did you spend with your fellow dancers, Like in and out of the classroom all the time, all the time.
I didn't have any other friends. It was just you go from class to lunch to the apartments you shared. You were always just with dancers. Your experience with them is so deep, and your children together, and so it carries through for the rest of your life. You're not really call workers your family. Did it ever, do you ever feel like it led to like warped relationships where you know, lines get blurry, or was there ever a
flip side where that went too far? Do you feel like when it comes to the closeness or just how you're like constantly in each other's lives. Well, I wasn't conscious of that, so I don't know. I don't really know anything else to wil Amina. It just all felt normal. It wasn't an until later that I knew there was a dark side. I was always a little afraid of him, even before I witnessed anything, and I think that dates
back to my own instinct with my own father. And my dad was an alcoholic and so there was just that avier, and that's a specific behavior. There's an anger that occurs that's different from other anger. Wilhelmina says they all drank a lot and could lose control, herself included, but there is an edge to Peter that made her nervous. Even if there's not a violence that occurs, it's violent.
It crosses a line. First I started seeing Uh. While I can talk about the public arguments, it's been publicly documented that Peter and Wilhelmina's friend had a turbulent relationship. They've both used the word tempestuous to describe it in the past. Neither of them wanted to comment for this series.
The l A Times quoted her saying Peter and I did not have a physically vie relationship, But after a long silence, she adds, that is not to say that I have not pummeled him in the arm more than once. And if I pushed Peter hard enough, if I shrieked and yelled and cried and screamed and caused a scene and he couldn't take it anymore, he would restrain me. In those days, there was like a lot. I don't know what it is now, but there was a lot of drinking that went down a lot, a lot and
a lot of messy stuff because of it. And then Wilhelmina says there were times she'd pick up her friend and she'd see marks on her body or a black eye. For people who are are kids, what do you do? When Wilhelmina was in her late teens, her father came to visit New York, My very angry father. He was in town, and I was having a birthday party. Willomina threw a birthday party for her boyfriend. It was at Peter's house, a mix of dancers from the comp then
he attended. One of the guests was the renowned ballerina Gelsie Kirkland. Years later, Gelsie would famously write about this party in a memoir, It's a true story. It is a true story. There were all kinds of people there. Gelcie was having an affair with Peter, my boyfriend was seeing somebody else, and everybody was like kids and screwing around, kind of like college, right very college. Wilhelmina was downstairs
in this duplex when suddenly her dad came in. My dad comes and grabs me and says, you have to leave now, and I said, well wait, you know, like threw me in the cab. Wilhelmina's friend, Peter's girlfriend was in the cab. Peter was on the ground. My dad knocked Peter out, knocked him out, apparently. Wilhelmina says her dad had come outside for a smoke and he'd found Peter there in a rage hitting his girlfriend. My dad, who was also physically abusive to my mother all the time,
drunk there. He was seeing himself right, and that was bad. We reached out to Peter Martin's multiple times for comments on this and the other details on this episode, but we received no response. When I hear Willelmina tell this story, it just strikes me how messy all this was. According to her in Gelsie Kirkland, there was a far more senior dancer in the company dating a woman much younger, and here he was allegedly getting violent outside a party
full of people they worked with. And then there's will Almina in the middle of it all. Her dad, who himself has a history of being abusive, gets aggressive. It's strange to think how it must have felt for everyone involved, But It's also strange that it took someone from the outside, someone not in the company, someone not linked to its hierarchy, to intervene in that moment. At seventeen, Wilhelmina was a
member of the Quarterballe. Her ambition at this point was to gain strength as a dancer move ahead in the company land more roles. She says, you didn't care about fame or being well known. She just wanted to dance the parts of her idols like Patricia McBride and a Leger Kent. Meanwhile, Peter Martin's was still a prince of in the company. He had relationships with numerous danswers, but Wilhelmina says she didn't feel he was interested in her.
I never thought he was really attracted to me. I wasn't. It wasn't his body type. He didn't like my dancing, you know what I mean. It was like I was just not his cup of tea. We wound up sitting next to each other on the plane he was going back to New York, and we were talking and and he said to me, I'm intimidated by you. And I said why, and he said, because you're just so much woman you're so feminine, you're so much of a woman. Peter had one specific type, and that was like a
boyish body, which is not my body at all. But Wilhelmina says something changed when she was about twenty. She'd been in the company for four years. This one summer, I was really anorexic and he started coming after me. He kept trying to get with me right now. I kept pushing me away and saying, you know, come on, you have a girlfriend and she's my friend. He just didn't let up. He was trying to corner me, corner me, corner me, and I kept saying, no, you know, stop,
come on stop. It was flattering because he's this big, beautiful, handsome star. At the same time, it was just unnerving to have to handle it. One day that summer, Wilhelmina says she was performing Balancine's Stars and Stripes. It was a high energy piece, rash and silly and technically difficult, and said to music by John Philip Susa. Valentine directed the dancers to prance and jumped in a large moving circle. They walk on their toes on point, flirt with each other,
high kick, and do the splits in mid air. They even salute the audience. He called the ballet an applause machine. Will Almina wore a tutu and a bodice that looked like an American flag. I was on the side of the wing watching Wilolmina had a couple of movements to wait through before as she went back on stage for the finale. Suddenly Peter appeared. He came into the wing in his robe and he said, come with me. I
was like, now, okay. And his dressing room was on the side of stage, and I went in and he opened his rope just like that. He exposed himself, she says. And I mean, I'm in the middle of a vallet. I know, it's like I was like Peter. Then Wilhelmina had to go back on stage. She joined the twenty six other women and fourteen men in the grand finale. She saluted and kicked, lined and pirouetted and marched. She jumped in formation while a giant American flag the size
of the entire backdrop unfurled behind her. She lunched for the final pose. And I just kept it to myself, you know, I kept it to myself. I think if you've never experienced that kind of pressure or that kind of someone stepping over the lawn, it might be hard to understand, you know what I mean. It's embarrassing. And also I wanted to try to keep the peace, so
she didn't tell anyone. She didn't know who she would tell anyway, there was no hr, there was nobody to go to, and if you were going to go to somebody, it was going to be somebody that also wanted to keep their own job, and we're loyal to them. Do you feel like that's something you could have gone to balancing about. No? Uh uh, I think it's that you just I feel like a victim. Act like a victim, you know, it's like that kind of I'm easy prey that way, and you don't want anybody to know. You
always feel like what do what? What have what did I do to cause it? That's just where you jumped to. Other people may have gone to him about things that happened to them and and I don't know who they are or what that would have been, but um, yeah I didn't. I it was I didn't feel like I could go and bother him with that. Yeah, m hm. I went to him more with you know, dancing problems, life problems, money problems, you know, and stuff like that, but not abuse stuff. And I don't think anybody did.
As years went on, I talked to some people who were younger after me, and uh, I was telling that story and she laughed. She said, oh yeah, she said, that's what he did. You know how many people have that story? That's what he did. We spoke with the one dancer she's had. Her friend who has since died, told her that Peter exposed himself to her like this. At the time, Wilhelmina mostly blamed herself. When someone steps over the line with you, you wonder what you're doing
to make that happen. You wonder what have I done? You don't look at that person should just not be doing that, I mean, and that's what you do with your abuser. Wilhelmina says, Peter Martin's left her alone for a couple of years after that Stars and Strikes performance. Meanwhile, he gained power in the company Balancing held private coaching
sessions with Peter in the seventies. Like most male dancers, Peter didn't know a lot about the mechanics of dancing on point balancing, and Peter would took away in an empty rehearsal room for hours with a female dancer. They're balanching showed Peter how to choreograph on a woman. He talked about balance, placement and the female body. By there was a lot of speculation about whether Peter would be
the one to step into balancing shoes someday. A New York Times magazine article from that year wrote about the first piece Peter choreographed. Quote, the boys first entrance expresses all of Martin's frustration and fascination at being a man working at an art made for women. The boy walks across the stage with his toes curled under his foot. He experiments and steps on the tops of his toes, testing what it feels like trying to climb up on point.
The critic wrote of Peter, He's an extremely intelligent and promising choreographer, but he's not found himself yet. The headline read Peter Martin's Prince of the Dance. That same year, Peter Martin's got promoted to ballet master in the company. Three months after the story ran, the company went on tour to Fort Worth, Texas, Wilhelmina was. There was a party one night. Wilhelmina says, you know, one of those fancy dinners. And it was in the hotel and I left.
He got in the elevator with me. He followed me to my room. He was drunk. I had a few glasses of wine. I was not drunk, but you know, and he stood at the door and then I said to him, do you want to come in? And he said yes, and so he came in. I said to him, you want me to get some room service and get some coffee or do you want to talk? What's wrong? Peter said he didn't want coffee. Wilhelmina says, instead, he came toward her. He attacked me. I didn't think I
was going to get out of it. First he shoved me up against the wall. You know, there was a built in desk. He shoved me up against the wall. He he pushed his body weight against me. He ripped up my dress. I pushed him off and he grabbed me again, kind of rough, and he threw me down on the bed. You know, he got on top of me and he was out of control. The guy was out of control, and I think he probably figured since I asked him in that you know he was gonna
fuck me. I said, Peter, get off, get off, get off. You know, I was just screaming at him like that, get off. I remember at one point feeling like I wanted to bash him head with a telephone. I remember thinking that I got it was like I got like an exorcist voice, and I said, get the fuck off me, motherfucker, the fuck off me. So I fought my way and sniggled my way out from underteath it, and then I very firmly said to him, Peter, get out of here,
and he finally pulled himself together. He stood up. He looked at me. He said, you mean you're turning me down? And I said, yeah, turning you down one of the few I remember. I said that. I said, one of the few, huh, And then he left. It was horrible. Right after I was I was shaking. I don't even know if it's so much that he wanted to like to have, if it was the sex as much as the the violence of overpowering me so that I I
was helpless, physically helpless. That was really nervous about seeing him in class and in rehearsal and it was so awkward. But I remember the next day just walking into class and looking at him and thinking, uh, it was it was horrible. Will Almina wasn't a daze for a while after that, like she couldn't make sense of it. Yet. You leave your body, for sure, you get lifted off your body in a way, you know, and out of
your head in order to handle it. I think, just because you're so wounded and you're trying to recover and deal with what happened and did that happen? How did that happen? Did I really live through that? You know? I felt like I had to cover it up and let it go. Will Almina says she told two friends about this incident at the time. We spoke to one of them, who says she couldn't remember whether Wilhelmina told
her about it. She says, you remembers the tour and that tours could be wild times with people running up and down the halls drunk. She says it could have happened, and she can't think of a reason that will Almina would invent the story, But she says it was several decades ago and she couldn't remember a conversation like that with Wilhelmina. Mostly Wilhelmina continued in the company as if nothing had happened. She kept it to herself. Before this interview.
She told a reporter at Salon it was something so big she couldn't talk about it. I didn't say anything, went the next day into rehearsal, didn't say a word, and didn't say a word for thirty years. He didn't talk to me really for a little while after that. We stayed away from each other after that. That's why I knew that when Mr b died, my days were numbered. After Balancine died in three the board of the New York City Ballet made an announcement Peter Martin's and the
choreographer Jerome Robbins would run the company together. They'd be co ballet masters in chief. Those are terrible shoes to have to step into, no matter who you are. Even though she felt for Peter, she was wary of him too, and right away she noticed a difference in his approach compared to balancings. Will Amina says Balantine was tough but fair. He pushed dancers but never yelled, But Peter was volatile. It was taking this new direction of lack of respect
to the dancers. You know, anger, any moment, this rage could occur, and that's scary. It is scary. After this one performance of a role in Western Symphony, he took me into the hallway and he was screaming at me, screaming at me. He was angry with me about the way that I danced. How dare I perform like that? How dare I take advantage of that ballot, this ballot that balancing had coached me in the role, and I knew what I was doing for a year. It was just a way of ripping me out of it. It
was just a way to get rid of me. I talked back to him when he was screaming at me like that, When I stood up for myself, I said, what are you gonna do? You're gonna hit me? Because he was looking like he was going to hit me, and he caught himself and I just ran off crying. Valchan never yelled at us. Never. You knew if he didn't like it, But there was no screaming. As will Amina sees it, balancing was chivalrous, a gentleman, and balancing
is definitely known for that. All of the dancers we spoke to who trained there balancing spoke of him with great affection. We've heard stories of kindness and humor. I get the impression that balancing dancers, at least the ones we've encountered, feel protective over him and his legacy. Wilhelmina included. But what's interesting is that you hear about other sides of balancing too, That he could be cruel, that he
sometimes did yell or seemed to purposely humiliate people. One danswer said, quote, balancing used to scream the same thing day after day. I thought you were better. Come on, come on, what's wrong with you? Are you stupid? In The l A Times reported that when Peter Martin's took over, company members actually saw Peter as quote less despotic than his predecessor balancing, Basically that Peter was a little more relaxed,
easier to work with, nicer than balancing. A dancer we spoke to talked about how much Peter encouraged her, that he mentored her to me. It brings home that different people can have very different experiences of the same person, whether that person is George balancing or Peter Martin's. So much depends on who you talked to. Wilhelmina says, the way she saw it at the time, there was no chance for her once Mr B was gone and Peter
was in charge. I've known him too long and it seemed too much and it was very easy for him to use that like I've been there too long. He didn't like my dancing. He wanted to see other dancers. You know. It was his way of forcing me out. Wilhelmina says she started losing rolls. Her upward trajectory was changing direction when he started to take me out of everything that I danced, which he did. Mr B was
barely cold in the ground. I was very unhappy and I was just collecting a paycheck and that's not what I wanted to do. And my daughter's dad, who was with at the time, he said, well, if I don't like working with somebody, I just leave. And I said, well, it's a little different for you to just leave with what you do than for me to just leave. The only place or thing that I've ever known. Ballet was
her whole world. But she felt she couldn't stay. I'm in a situation where I'm really unhappy, and it's my mental health, or it's my mental health, not just or it's my mental health. It's the only home I've known, if you count from the school for you know, eighteen years. So it is leaving your home, leaving your family, leaving your friends, leaving your whole life as you've ever known it, and leaving your art form for the unknown. So it's terrifying.
It's absolutely terrifying. Wilhelmina wrote Peter a long letter. She says she was too heartbroken to show up and tell him in person. I used the excuse of that I was having a baby, you know, God, I got pregnant, But it was really that he he made it untenable for me to be there, like almost right away, and she left. It would take years for Wilhelmina to tell the full story of what happened between her and Peter, but her account is not the first time we've heard
Peter's name associated with alleged violence and sexual misconduct. Back Peter was married and headed the New York City Ballet. One night, his wife called the police. She told them Peter physically attacked her at home during an argument that he hit her repeatedly. She said there were cuts and bruises across her body. Peter's wife was a big deal dancer in the company at the time, almost twenty years younger than he was. They had started dating when she
was a teenager. After the domestic violence arrest, Peter's wife dropped the charges, and the board of the New York City Ballet supported him. One member said, quote, it has nothing to do with his competency or his support in the ballet community. He was still running the company in when someone sent the company an anonymous letter. The story ran in the Washington Post. Peter Martin's was under investigation.
The letter was never made public, but the School of American Ballet announced that it contained quote general nonspecific, allegations of sexual harassment in the past by Peter Martin's at both New York City Ballet and the school. Peter took a leave of absence, and the School of American Ballet
hired a lawyer to conduct an internal investigation. One former New York City Ballet dancer we spoke to, Shelley Scott, recalls a time when she was fourteen or fifteen years old and a student at the school before she got into the company. She says, Peter, who was in his early thirties, would follow her and a friend around when they were out and about in the city, or hang out at the school studios at night and try to
coax dancers into the men's dressing rooms. Almost immediately after the Washington Post story, articles started pouring out of major newspapers about Peter Martin's history. Dancers came forward to discuss violent experiences they said they had with Peter. The New York Times ran a story with the headline five dancers accused City Ballet's Peter Martin's a physical abuse. One dancer told reporters that Peter once slammed his fists into the
wall about an inch from his head. Another said that Peter grabbed the backs of dancers next to position them during rehearsal, and another that he grabbed them by the neck to throw them out of his office. A former student said Peter Martin's grabbed him by the neck during class and yanked him back and forth and what he calls a death block. The dancer was twelve years old at the time. He'd been horsing around on stage when Peter suddenly grabbed him He said it felt like Peter's
fingers were piercing his neck muscles. He felt assaulted. Another dancer told The New York Times that when she asked Peter about a promotion she wanted, he told her she needed to find a way to stand out in his eyes. To her, it felt like a sexual proposition. He denied these allegations. A few weeks into the investigation, Peter announced that he had decided to retire, effective immediately. He wrote in a letter, I have denied and continued to deny
that I have engaged in any such misconduct. I cooperated fully in the investigation and understand it will be completed shortly. I believe its findings would have indicated me in the end. The internal investigation into sexual harassment lasted two months, and in February it concluded the abuse could not be corroborated. Will Almina watched the news unfold and she didn't like what she was seeing. It's documented that his hands on actions were too rough at times, just too rough, and
people were afraid to talk about it. He was hurting people. You know, when you're teaching Valley, you have to be very careful. I always asked the students, Is it okay if I touch you and adjust you here? Because they're kids, you know you can't. That wasn't always the case, you know, old world dance, they would just grab you and they do it like this and push you around and pull your body this way that way. But you really can't do that anymore. And that's a great thing. Even now,
her feelings towards Peter are complicated. At times, she feels bad for him. You know, I applaud him for the way that he kept that company going financially. I applaud him like nobody could raise money like that guy, and the fact that he did it, that he was there and he was working and completely devoted to it. And she had always loved Peter's dancing. He was a beautiful dancer and he could be like a really fun and
funny person. But when he was put in charge of New York City Valley, there there was nobody saying, hey, wait a minute, you know, we need to all be here and talk about this together. It frustrates wil Almina that people don't want to talk about these things, even if he understands it. It's a tight, tight, tight world, and people are scared people are still afraid to talk. From the beginning, Balancing asked his dancers to take risks,
to put everything on the line when they danced. In a way, that's what Wilhelmine is doing, because she says some people are furious with her for talking publicly like this. You know, like my brother said to me, is that all you want to be remembered for? And I said, well, you know, if that's what happens, if that's all they remember before, well yeah, okay, that's okay with me. People my age think it's still not appropriate. You don't air your garbage, you don't, you know, because they don't see
the importance of standing up for younger generations. And that's really the whole thing. That's the whole thing. I mean. I had have a daughter, I have a granddaughter, daughter in law, you know, and sons. One of the reasons I was willing to talk about things was so that things would change and become safer for young people. Gone unchecked,
bad things can happen, and and they did. And then the tragedy of it was that there was talent that got caught up in it, and I didn't get to come to its full potential because the trauma of the experience was too deep. You're scared when you're young to raise your voice. You're afraid to say you know, this is happening to me, and even then you face being shunned like by others. I mean, it's it's it needs to be constant, and I think constantly talked about. I
think so I think it. You know, it can't be allowed to go back under Peter Martin's resigned five years ago. Balancine has been dead for forty So what does this all have to do with Balancine? Listening to this, you might think the connection is obvious, or you might be angry that I'm bringing these two men together at all or talking about them in this way. I've encountered all kinds of reactions to this story. Everyone has an opinion,
and often they disagree. I've been thinking about just like kind of cultural norms, or the creation of culture in which things become normalized, and so I just wanted to run something by you because I guess I've just been thinking about different ways in which balancing is present even now, and sometimes I think that it's like he normalized a culture that blurs professional and personal life and normalize this idea that you can elevate a single man to such
a place of power that he becomes anipotent in a way in this ballet world, and makes it acceptable for Batman to then pursue dancers who work for him and to sort of eroticized company life so that sex and power and art and relationships all get entangled. Hm, I'm curious what you make of that. Well, I think it's true, you know, I think it has been true. When that's allowed to have been without any oversight, then it becomes a norm. We are hoping now that that's going to change.
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 Swahey is our digital producer. Fact checking by Drea Lopez Crusado. Our executive producers are John Parotti and Jessica Albert at Prococo Punch, I Get Trina Norvelle and Nicki
e Tour at iHeart 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. I'm Erica Lance. Thanks for listening.