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Okay, on the boom mic right now, we're testing it.

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We're at Ruth Page right now.

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What floor?

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13th floor west.

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That's the elevator.

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Yeah.

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I want to hear how loud you're speaking.

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I'm talking in my normal voice right now, and she's probably going to be a little louder.

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Yes.

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Okay.

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Are we ready?

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This will be Ruth Page interview.

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It's 25 March 85.

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We're with the Aflon.

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And we are going to have audio from mixer on channel one, which is lav and shotgun.

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And the boom microphone will be on channel two.

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Everybody, this is awesome.

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And so he knows.

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And he has a memory.

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He has a very good memory.

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He's good.

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He's very good.

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And he's done a very sensitive job, I think, of editing this book, which he did.

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I like this book.

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I keep telling you how much I like the way you write.

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I can't believe that.

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No, it's true.

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I've got enough articles now for another one.

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Yes.

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I've got quite enough.

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And...

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Oh, did I do that?

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It's like, did I do that?

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Yeah.

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And...

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I just told the title.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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Let me know when you have speed.

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Speed.

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Okay.

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Here we go.

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We are rolling and recording.

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Your birthday was Friday.

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Mm-hmm.

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It was very overwhelming.

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It was almost too much.

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They had a marvelous party.

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There's some mothers of the children over who go to my school, they call the friends

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of Ruth Pagan.

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They really gave the party.

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And it was a marvelous party.

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And I don't know how they found all my friends, but everybody was there.

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And it was very exciting.

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We had raffled off some trips.

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And I talked to everybody.

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And I had a very good time.

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It was a wonderful party.

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Now, I know that when you came into the party, you were there.

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And you must have stood, Ruth, for two hours before you sat down at the party.

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Did you get tired?

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No.

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I was having a nice time.

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I didn't get tired.

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And earlier in the day, what did you do?

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When you got up in the morning, how did you spend the day on your 85th birthday?

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It was my 86th birthday.

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86th?

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Yeah.

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Well, I went to class.

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I always go to class at 11 and do bar.

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And I came home, changed my clothes, and went to the party.

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It was 5, I think it was, wasn't it?

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And before that, yeah.

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The party was at 7.

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7.

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And before that, the slideshow.

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Oh, I did a slideshow that day, too.

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You're right.

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Where did I do it?

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I can't remember.

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The Academy High School.

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Oh, yes, I did that at 1 o'clock.

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Yes, that's right.

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Mm-hmm.

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They were a very nice audience over there.

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The day before, I did one before a bunch of old ladies, and they didn't know what I was

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talking about.

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It was the hardest thing I ever did in my life.

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I practically stood on my head to get them interested, and I just couldn't.

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They just sat there perfectly blank.

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But the Academy, it was a wonderful audience.

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Of course, they're all people that are interested in theater.

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That was very much fun to do.

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I enjoyed doing that.

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And one of the teachers of the Academy, the head of the dance program, is...

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R.N.

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Cann.

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Yes, he's been with me for a long time.

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One of your dancers.

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Yes.

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A long time.

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Mm-hmm.

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What was the best thing about your birthday?

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What was the most fun?

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What did you enjoy most?

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Seeing all my friends, I think.

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When the children brought you the flowers, what were you thinking as they brought them

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to you?

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Oh, I thought how sweet they were.

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They were darling.

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We have charming children in the school.

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I thought it was lots of fun that they came to the party.

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It was a wonderful party, actually.

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I've never had such a nice birthday party before in my whole life.

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Well, that's saying something, because I imagine you have had a lot of good birthday

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I've had a lot.

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I've certainly had a lot.

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The training that the kids are getting at your school, very different from the training

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that you had when you grew up in Indianapolis.

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Oh, well, ours is a real school.

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In my day, in Indianapolis, there weren't any real, real ballet schools.

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There were probably very good ones there now.

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I don't know.

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But I just studied with a teacher there that called it fancy dancing.

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I don't know.

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I don't think I learned much.

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But I went to New York to school, and then I took lessons from Adolf Baum.

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I had lessons from Chiquetti in London and in Monte Carlo.

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And so I finally learned properly.

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I began all wrong.

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My school, they're taught right from the beginning.

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I have an excellent teacher for the children, Patricia Klikovic.

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And I've watched the children's classes.

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I go in there and watch them quite often.

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It's a long process to learn to dance.

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I didn't realize how hard it was to learn to dance, but it's very hard to learn to dance.

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And she's very patient with them, and they really learn properly.

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They learn the names of the steps, and they know how to do them correctly.

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They learn how to do the different rhythms, the mazurka, you know.

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And the waltz, that's the hardest one for everybody to learn, apparently.

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So...

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Why?

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I don't know.

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Waltzing doesn't seem to be natural to anybody these days.

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Everybody used to waltz, I suppose, in our grandmother's day.

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But in our day, people remembered waltz.

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They're starting to again now.

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But it's a rhythm that doesn't come easily.

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It's hard to be that graceful.

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You've got to be graceful for the waltz.

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And I think our style of dancing is more hacha and jazz jazz stuff, you know, struts and

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I don't know what all we do, but nobody waltzes anymore, I guess.

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It's starting to come back into fashion, though, I think.

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It is lots of fun to waltz.

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I just discovered that.

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You've choreographed some marvelous waltzes.

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Well, that's for professional dancers, of course.

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Those are all professional dancers.

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What do you mean?

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Oh, yes, there are marvelous waltzes in there.

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Now, the children at the school are learning, would you say, what is the curriculum at the

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school?

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Is it classical and modern?

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It's mostly classical.

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They can learn modern later, but we like them to start with the classical.

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The little children, we just teach them to sort of skip around, skip and hop and jump.

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The little timers, when they're seven, they start ballet very seriously and learn correctly.

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Now, when you see a child of seven, are you able to tell whether or not that child has

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talent?

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Oh, you can tell sort of, but you can't really tell.

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So much depends on the child, whether she or he wants to do it.

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Some of them don't want to do the role, and their mothers force them into it, you see.

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And I think it's good that the mothers do, because I think everybody should learn to

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dance, not just dancers.

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I think everybody should learn to dance, because it's such good exercise and it's fun to do

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and very scientifically arranged.

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But we don't start them seriously on ballet until they're seven.

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Do you think it teaches discipline?

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Oh, yes.

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It teaches you to think.

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It tells your mind, tells your body what to do.

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I think it teaches you a lot of different things, discipline and quick thinking.

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And your body's important, I mean, how you use it in life.

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I'll say.

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Isn't it?

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Mm-hmm.

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Is there such a thing as a naturally graceful person?

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There are, aren't there?

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Or is it learned?

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How much of it is learned?

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Oh, a lot of people are naturally graceful.

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Not very many, but some are.

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Oh, yes, of course.

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I was just naturally born graceful.

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And you, you were born very graceful, I should think.

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I don't know whether I...

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I always danced.

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I always remember wanting to dance, always, when I could walk.

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But I don't know if I was graceful or not.

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I have no idea, really.

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Can you sense how old does a child have to be before you sense that as a dancer,

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this child holds promise of having a certain kind of individual flair or style?

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Well, you can tell when they're seven or eight or nine.

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Yeah, sure.

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Mm-hmm.

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A lot of them don't stick to it.

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It's hard, you know.

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And a lot of them don't want to do it.

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And you don't make very much money out of it either, unfortunately.

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So a lot of them don't stay with it because they can't make their living out of it

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or because they get tired of it or they're not that interested.

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A lot of the people associated with your school are former dancers,

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people who danced with you, Dolores Lipinski.

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And...

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Dolores has been with me since she was a little teeny girl.

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And she studied with Bentley Stone.

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He was her teacher.

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And she's Larry Long's wife.

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She's a marvelous teacher.

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She teaches dance.

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She was a marvelous dancer too.

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Do you think that in general it's true that former dancers make the best teachers?

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Not necessarily.

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I don't think.

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Margaret Crask is a wonderful teacher.

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I don't know if she ever danced or not.

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I really have no idea.

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Chiquetti was supposed to be the greatest classical teacher.

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And he was supposed to be a good...

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He used to do the Bluebird marvelously, they say,

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but it was so long ago nobody remembers.

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So who knows whether he did it or not.

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Now we can take films, of course, of all these people we know.

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But in those days they didn't have any pictures.

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We haven't any pictures of Pavelova.

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Oh, there's one or two very bad ones that are nothing like her.

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Does that make you sad, Ruth?

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I mean, does it make you sad or angry that there aren't...

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There are some of your ballets, for example, that...

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Oh, they're completely lost.

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My ballets are almost all completely lost.

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And Mary Widow isn't lost because we kept doing it.

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And it was done on television.

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Also Frankie and Johnny.

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And also, I think, Romeo and Juliet also.

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And what else?

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Billy Sunday.

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What?

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Billy Sunday.

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Billy Sunday, yeah.

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Those four will be...

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They're preserved.

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Speaking about preserving, the other day we were looking

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at the film, and I said to you that I had found...

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Do you have glasses?

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Your glasses aren't here, I bet.

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Do you need your glasses to read something?

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Remember I said that someplace I'd read your notes

264
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for the Polka Melancholique that Balanchine choreographed for you?

265
00:11:50.920 --> 00:11:50.920


266
00:11:50.920 --> 00:11:51.620
Here they are.

267
00:11:52.440 --> 00:11:53.480
Oh, I don't want to read them.

268
00:11:53.560 --> 00:11:54.040
You don't?

269
00:11:54.120 --> 00:11:54.560
No.

270
00:11:55.000 --> 00:11:57.320
I wonder if you could remember what they...

271
00:11:57.320 --> 00:11:58.440
Oh, probably.

272
00:11:59.740 --> 00:12:01.620
From the look of them, yeah.

273
00:12:02.060 --> 00:12:03.580
Oh, I didn't have my glasses.

274
00:12:04.340 --> 00:12:07.760
When I was with the I look, Bally Russo, Monte Carlo,

275
00:12:07.780 --> 00:12:11.180
I was also on my honeymoon.

276
00:12:12.300 --> 00:12:13.320
Well, that doesn't say anything about...

277
00:12:13.320 --> 00:12:14.180
No, here it is.

278
00:12:14.180 --> 00:12:14.940
It's right here.

279
00:12:15.560 --> 00:12:16.560
It's right here.

280
00:12:17.360 --> 00:12:18.860
It says Ronnie in from...

281
00:12:18.860 --> 00:12:21.320
Oh, Ronnie from the back left-hand corner,

282
00:12:21.980 --> 00:12:23.520
on toes and fifth,

283
00:12:25.160 --> 00:12:28.760
and Shake Your Head, it looks like.

284
00:12:30.120 --> 00:12:32.020
And at the same time,

285
00:12:33.840 --> 00:12:35.520
I can't read it without my glasses.

286
00:12:35.720 --> 00:12:36.560
Yeah, Loretta will get them.

287
00:12:36.840 --> 00:12:40.600
I think they're on my dressing room there on the table.

288
00:12:41.840 --> 00:12:44.000
I can sort of read it, but there's such fine print.

289
00:12:44.220 --> 00:12:44.860
Yes, it is.

290
00:12:45.460 --> 00:12:46.620
Why do you want me to read it?

291
00:12:46.920 --> 00:12:49.220
Yeah, I wondered if in reading it,

292
00:12:49.220 --> 00:12:50.460
we can wait until the glasses come,

293
00:12:50.620 --> 00:12:52.700
I wondered if in reading it you would remember back

294
00:12:53.740 --> 00:12:55.620
to what the little dance looks like.

295
00:12:55.620 --> 00:12:57.460
It looks like it must have been a very short dance.

296
00:12:57.480 --> 00:12:59.260
It was. I told you it was very short.

297
00:12:59.620 --> 00:13:01.260
It was about three minutes at the most,

298
00:13:01.260 --> 00:13:03.260
three or four minutes, something like that.

299
00:13:03.480 --> 00:13:04.460
Just a little solo.

300
00:13:05.620 --> 00:13:06.760
Nothing special.

301
00:13:08.760 --> 00:13:10.040
Wasn't anything...

302
00:13:10.040 --> 00:13:11.960
It was in fifth and Shake Head left,

303
00:13:11.960 --> 00:13:12.840
right,

304
00:13:14.480 --> 00:13:15.120
left.

305
00:13:15.460 --> 00:13:16.780
At the same time,

306
00:13:17.100 --> 00:13:20.800
lifting right arm from down across face

307
00:13:20.800 --> 00:13:22.960
and up, fourth.

308
00:13:23.260 --> 00:13:25.260
Down across face and up, fourth.

309
00:13:25.660 --> 00:13:26.660
Then down again,

310
00:13:26.760 --> 00:13:28.300
ending with left arm up.

311
00:13:28.780 --> 00:13:30.300
That must have been changing arms.

312
00:13:30.300 --> 00:13:32.660
That's very easy to understand.

313
00:13:33.020 --> 00:13:33.860
Plie on the left,

314
00:13:34.400 --> 00:13:36.740
footay kick bringing right

315
00:13:36.740 --> 00:13:38.960
to back soutenu position.

316
00:13:39.240 --> 00:13:40.440
Pose to back soutenu pose.

317
00:13:41.900 --> 00:13:44.300
Then three soutenus on toes,

318
00:13:44.420 --> 00:13:46.220
right, left, right, then go to left.

319
00:13:46.660 --> 00:13:47.720
Rise on toes in fifth

320
00:13:47.720 --> 00:13:50.240
and say how do you do with left arm?

321
00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:51.760
Then same to right,

322
00:13:52.020 --> 00:13:54.720
then walk diagonally front left on toes,

323
00:13:55.260 --> 00:13:56.520
regular walk step,

324
00:13:56.700 --> 00:13:58.520
then one turn to right

325
00:13:58.520 --> 00:13:59.720
and raise arms overhead.

326
00:14:00.240 --> 00:14:02.060
The notes may be a little cryptic,

327
00:14:02.080 --> 00:14:03.460
but I guess I knew what they meant,

328
00:14:03.480 --> 00:14:05.940
and I'm sure they proved that I must have been

329
00:14:05.940 --> 00:14:08.700
the first American Englishman to dance from George Belich.

330
00:14:10.440 --> 00:14:13.300
What does it mean, say how do you do with your arm?

331
00:14:14.640 --> 00:14:15.260
How do you do?

332
00:14:16.520 --> 00:14:16.900
Oh.

333
00:14:16.980 --> 00:14:17.780
Or how do you do?

334
00:14:19.020 --> 00:14:21.160
There's lots of different ways of saying it.

335
00:14:24.540 --> 00:14:26.860
Now as you read those notes today,

336
00:14:27.100 --> 00:14:28.240
as you just read them,

337
00:14:28.240 --> 00:14:32.520
does it strike you as an anything special kind of dance?

338
00:14:33.060 --> 00:14:33.220
No.

339
00:14:33.560 --> 00:14:34.560
Very ordinary.

340
00:14:36.020 --> 00:14:37.640
Just an ordinary little dance.

341
00:14:38.540 --> 00:14:41.200
You could see even then that he had a lot of talent, Ruth.

342
00:14:41.320 --> 00:14:42.320
Is that why you asked?

343
00:14:42.320 --> 00:14:45.160
Well, I thought he, I saw his pas de deux.

344
00:14:45.220 --> 00:14:48.820
He came with the Javajera of the Javah, Tamar Javah,

345
00:14:48.820 --> 00:14:50.880
and they did a number of pas de deux,

346
00:14:51.140 --> 00:14:52.260
and I thought they were stunning.

347
00:14:52.540 --> 00:14:53.620
Most people thought they were awful,

348
00:14:53.640 --> 00:14:54.900
but I thought they were marvelous.

349
00:14:54.900 --> 00:14:57.740
That's why I asked him, I thought he was good.

350
00:14:58.240 --> 00:14:58.240


351
00:14:58.640 --> 00:14:59.520
I'll take that.

352
00:15:02.460 --> 00:15:06.260
Moving to a few years later than,

353
00:15:06.740 --> 00:15:08.800
about five years later as a matter of fact,

354
00:15:09.560 --> 00:15:13.800
in 1930, you were invited to go to Russia,

355
00:15:14.020 --> 00:15:16.340
and you gave six performances in Moscow.

356
00:15:18.440 --> 00:15:19.560
They were solo performances.

357
00:15:20.140 --> 00:15:22.380
They were indeed, all solo performances.

358
00:15:23.420 --> 00:15:28.560
It was unusual for an American dancer to perform in Russia.

359
00:15:29.120 --> 00:15:32.600
What do you remember about that trip to Russia?

360
00:15:33.780 --> 00:15:35.840
Well, I remember mother went with me,

361
00:15:35.960 --> 00:15:37.580
and two of my girlfriends went with me,

362
00:15:37.920 --> 00:15:40.640
and mother got sick, and she left us right away.

363
00:15:40.760 --> 00:15:42.900
She said, I don't want to get sick in Russia, so she left us.

364
00:15:43.100 --> 00:15:44.000
So we were on our own.

365
00:15:44.080 --> 00:15:45.980
We had a good time there, a very nice time.

366
00:15:46.560 --> 00:15:49.920
The Russians are very, you know, they're awfully nice.

367
00:15:50.200 --> 00:15:51.960
Attracting, interesting people usually.

368
00:15:51.960 --> 00:15:54.840
And they're all interested in dance apparently.

369
00:15:55.380 --> 00:15:57.160
So we had a wonderful time there.

370
00:15:57.520 --> 00:15:59.200
Did you go to the ballet there often?

371
00:15:59.860 --> 00:16:02.780
Not too often, and we went.

372
00:16:02.860 --> 00:16:04.480
I can't remember what I saw even,

373
00:16:04.520 --> 00:16:07.360
but they do very classical ballets mostly.

374
00:16:07.560 --> 00:16:09.820
They don't do anything very, anything,

375
00:16:09.960 --> 00:16:12.840
they didn't at that time do anything modern that I saw.

376
00:16:12.940 --> 00:16:15.500
Maybe they did, but I didn't see anything modern that they did.

377
00:16:15.860 --> 00:16:17.180
So they just did the classics,

378
00:16:17.240 --> 00:16:20.280
and at that time I wasn't especially interested in the classics.

379
00:16:20.280 --> 00:16:26.040
And so, of course, they're, they're, they do it right.

380
00:16:26.120 --> 00:16:29.160
They put the dancers in the school at the right age,

381
00:16:29.480 --> 00:16:32.400
and they can stay there until they die, you know.

382
00:16:32.420 --> 00:16:34.380
They don't have to go out and look for jobs,

383
00:16:34.900 --> 00:16:36.980
and so that's marvelous, I think.

384
00:16:37.840 --> 00:16:40.560
They don't get paid very much, but they get a living wage,

385
00:16:41.380 --> 00:16:45.140
and they don't ever have to leave Moscow or Leningrad.

386
00:16:45.180 --> 00:16:46.640
They have a school in both places,

387
00:16:46.660 --> 00:16:49.800
and all the cities in Russia, I think there were schools.

388
00:16:49.800 --> 00:16:52.820
I wouldn't swear to, but I know in Moscow and Leningrad,

389
00:16:53.020 --> 00:16:55.300
there were St. Petersburg.

390
00:16:56.560 --> 00:16:58.800
And your dances, your solos,

391
00:16:59.400 --> 00:17:02.880
some of which were fairly modern.

392
00:17:03.620 --> 00:17:04.960
I don't remember what I did, you know.

393
00:17:05.140 --> 00:17:05.980
What does it say there?

394
00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:07.160
Mm-hmm.

395
00:17:08.100 --> 00:17:09.940
What year was it, 1930?

396
00:17:10.440 --> 00:17:10.960
1930.

397
00:17:11.960 --> 00:17:14.040
I can't remember what I was doing then.

398
00:17:17.040 --> 00:17:20.640
You were doing what was called a program of American dances.

399
00:17:21.160 --> 00:17:21.240
Oh.

400
00:17:21.840 --> 00:17:28.220
And you did the Siamese dance, the lagong.

401
00:17:28.440 --> 00:17:30.400
I remember that, mm-hmm.

402
00:17:31.060 --> 00:17:33.140
Not exactly what you'd call American, but...

403
00:17:33.140 --> 00:17:36.760
No, well, it was...

404
00:17:36.760 --> 00:17:38.740
Poison flower, I think it was called or something.

405
00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:43.120
As a matter of fact,

406
00:17:45.780 --> 00:17:49.300
I thought there was a list of the dances, but there wasn't.

407
00:17:49.520 --> 00:17:51.420
There probably, it was probably, Ruth,

408
00:17:52.020 --> 00:17:53.980
that you were doing some of the same things

409
00:17:54.340 --> 00:17:58.120
that you might have been doing in your programs at home.

410
00:17:58.760 --> 00:18:00.280
I think you did do a Gershwin.

411
00:18:00.700 --> 00:18:03.500
I was going to say I did the preludes in blue of Gershwin.

412
00:18:03.680 --> 00:18:06.500
I did several preludes of Gershwin.

413
00:18:08.040 --> 00:18:10.000
And maybe you did the flapper and the quarterback.

414
00:18:10.180 --> 00:18:12.180
I didn't have a partner with me, so I couldn't have done that.

415
00:18:12.180 --> 00:18:13.100
No, you couldn't have done that.

416
00:18:13.100 --> 00:18:13.680
That's right.

417
00:18:17.760 --> 00:18:20.040
So that was probably...

418
00:18:20.040 --> 00:18:21.320
What else?

419
00:18:22.060 --> 00:18:22.680
Balinese, Rhapsodies...

420
00:18:22.680 --> 00:18:26.580
I did those, yes, the pleasure dances and the religious dances.

421
00:18:27.600 --> 00:18:28.500
St. Louis Blues.

422
00:18:28.980 --> 00:18:29.480
Mm-hmm.

423
00:18:33.160 --> 00:18:36.960
You went to see, you describe in your book, page by page,

424
00:18:37.200 --> 00:18:43.080
going to see a very long socialist, socially correct,

425
00:18:43.900 --> 00:18:47.400
workers ballet that sounded as though it was just endless.

426
00:18:47.940 --> 00:18:49.420
It ended up with the ball...

427
00:18:49.420 --> 00:18:52.060
It was called, I think, the footballer,

428
00:18:52.340 --> 00:18:53.980
and it ended up with the ballerina

429
00:18:53.980 --> 00:18:55.880
coming in riding on a tractor.

430
00:18:56.380 --> 00:18:57.180
Was that in Russia?

431
00:18:57.300 --> 00:18:58.580
That was in Russia, too.

432
00:18:58.760 --> 00:19:00.640
I sort of vaguely remember it, yes.

433
00:19:01.300 --> 00:19:03.300
OK, I'm sorry.

434
00:19:03.460 --> 00:19:05.340
They have to change cassettes and then we'll...