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Ready?

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And 30 seconds.

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OK.

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It seems we were saying the same things all over again

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that we did the other day.

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No?

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No.

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No.

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More detail.

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More detail.

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Detail.

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More detail.

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Yeah.

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Because it all seems like we'd better get further along.

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Well, we will.

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We may.

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Would you like to skip around?

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You know, we could do that not today,

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but if you want to, we could just skip.

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If we don't have to go in chronologically.

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I'm OK.

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Do it any way you want to.

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I'm OK.

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We're rolling speed.

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OK.

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In 1932, you met Isamu Noguchi in Chicago.

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Do you remember the first time you met him?

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I met him at the arts club.

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I remember meeting him there.

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I don't know some performance we were at.

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That's where I first met him.

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You're quoted as having said he was one of the most beautiful men you'd ever seen.

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He was.

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He's very handsome.

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Very handsome.

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Very attractive.

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You said about him he had a sort of lost, faraway look that was irresistible.

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Well, that's true, I think.

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Very penetrating eyes that looked right into your soul.

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My goodness.

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Did I say all that?

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Allegedly.

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Are we rolling?

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Yes, indeed we are.

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I'm terribly sorry.

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Excuse me.

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Oh, that wasn't...

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No, we were.

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Are you ready?

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Yes, ma'am.

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Very penetrating eyes that looked right into your soul.

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Well, that's interesting.

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He was a very... at that point, just at the beginning of his career,

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and it seems as though the two of you,

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there was a synergistic sort of artistic thing that happened between you.

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That the kind of dance that you had begun to create became even freer,

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and his, the sculpture that he was moving into, I think, was influenced to some degree by you.

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What do you think?

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I don't know.

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I really couldn't say.

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He always did beautiful sculptures.

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They're all, they're very different now.

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He's changed a lot over the period of years.

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But he was, I think, a very great sculptor,

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and I think he's continued to be all his life.

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He did those drawings, too.

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He did, those are stunning, I think, in the sacs.

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How did the idea for the sac come about?

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I don't know. It was his idea.

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It was his idea?

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Yes. That was my idea.

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Do you remember your first reaction to it?

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I mean, what did he say?

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Ruth, why don't you dance in a sac?

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No, he just gave me some designs, and we had them made.

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We took jersey material, which stretches, you know,

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and got somebody to sew it up for us, and then I got inside of them,

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and they were awfully interesting.

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Very, very, you could do anything inside of them.

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They were unusual.

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Very unusual.

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That must have been quite a challenge,

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figuring out what the choreography should be inside a sac.

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Well, you had to put the sac on and see what you could do in it.

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It would make me interesting, you know,

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how you could take it here and push it out there.

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There are pictures of me. You can see them.

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It's very easy to see what I was doing inside the sac.

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And always sort of interesting, I think.

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I didn't do them for very long, but they were intriguing for the time,

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at that time.

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You could dance very much in the so-called conventional way of dancing.

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The first time you went out on stage in a sac,

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were you worried? Were you afraid the audience might laugh?

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No, I wasn't at all.

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I don't remember the first time I went out on the stage in a sac.

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Usually I started sitting on the floor,

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and the curtain went up, and I was in the,

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and then I would get into different positions,

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and I'd get up and move around.

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They never laughed. There was nothing to laugh at.

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Shocked? Were they shocked? Did you guys?

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I don't know. I don't think so.

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I think they were just very interested. Everybody seemed interested.

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Martha Graham used them a lot also later.

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And then the sticks, using the sticks,

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the sticks were someone else's ideas or an agucci's?

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No, they were mine ideas.

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Oh, the sticks were your ideas?

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And the elastics were mine.

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His ideas were just the sacs.

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Just the sacs.

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An expanding universe.

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That was inside the sac.

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You named it?

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No, he gave it. I think he gave it that name.

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I don't remember who named it.

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There's nothing, I mean, the

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titles of the dances don't make much of a difference.

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If you notice today,

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the titles of dances don't give you any clue as to what they're all about.

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They're all so crazy.

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And this one didn't either.

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Expanding universe, when you think of it, what does it mean?

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I don't know what it means to you.

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I thought maybe it meant that

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it seemed to me that it would go with the

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idea of expanding the universe of the mind inside

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the way expanding the perceptions of dance.

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Well, that's your interpretation. That's fine. I'll accept that.

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Okay.

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As good as any.

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And the sculpture, expanding universe, the one that's in the living room.

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In the living room. What about it?

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That was named, that he did that before you did the dance,

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after you did the dance, or?

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I think it was after.

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Yeah, quite a bit after.

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Would you say

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that the work that you did

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with Noguchi

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was part of an expanding universe for you in terms of your

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growth as a choreographer?

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I don't think so, no.

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No? Uh-uh.

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It was not an especially important time?

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I don't think so.

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I mean, every thing you, at the time, is important to you.

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Afterwards it seems less important.

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You go on to other things and you forget about what you did in the past.

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My, sort of went in cycles.

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I had the American period, and I had the period when I made operas and the ballets,

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and the period when I had all the music specially written.

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And then I went into a period where I used music that was already written,

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like the Nutcracker and Carmina Burana, Cattulli Carmina.

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And so you go in various cycles.

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When we had Wilkins, he composed everything for us.

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Because he knew what we were doing and he was at all our rehearsals.

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Louis Horst was the same.

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Louis Horst composed some dances for me because we were working together all the time.

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He did the Balinese dances, I think, and I forget what else he did.

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But it's wonderful if you have somebody that's talented who's working with you.

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Or you can take music and have it, the music that's already written is fine also.

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Merce Cunningham doesn't care what music they use for his dances.

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He says they can play anything they want to. He doesn't bother with them at all.

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Balanchine on the other hand is entirely inspired by the music.

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He finds a marvelous piece of music and he is completely influenced by the music.

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So you see there are all kinds of different ways to choreograph.

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There isn't one set rule. One day you'll do it this way and the year from then you'll do it some other way.

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And you go in periods, I think, in various periods.

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I know my husband who's an artist, he...

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What was that?

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Go ahead. No, it's just the tape machine going off.

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Go ahead.

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What was I saying?

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Your husband who's an artist.

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Oh, he goes in cycles too.

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He'll paint.

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When he was in Japan, he painted sort of Japanese things.

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When he was in Guatemala, he used the colors of Guatemala.

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And now he's in the period of doing harlequins.

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We've got millions of harlequins all over the house.

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I don't know when he'll get out of that period.

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And the brothels of Bombay, he's done a lot of those.

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And I don't know, he's not here right now so I don't know what he's painting.

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He'll be back soon but maybe he'll still be in the same period.

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I don't know.

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All artists go work in different periods, you know that.

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When you would move from one period to another, were you aware of a sense of progress?

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Or did it seem to you that it was merely change, that you were changing your report?

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It's just change. You can't do everything always the same every day.

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You've got to go one way or the other, backwards or forwards or sideways or upwards or downwards.

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You can't just stick in one place.

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At least I can. I think it's impossible for anybody to do that.

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Oh, I don't know. Don't you think that there are some people who, artists even, who don't grow,

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who do the same thing over and over and over?

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Well, maybe, yes, that's true. I mean, I'm trying to think.

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Rodin certainly changed around a lot.

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Monet and Manet both did.

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Grew?

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Yeah. I think, I don't know, I don't know enough about so many artists.

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I don't know what they do.

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Did you get up in the morning and do what you feel like doing?

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Do you think that if you had not been involved with the opera, in other words,

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if that job that you got, the first opera job at Rovina hadn't come to you,

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that you would have gone and sought out the opera as the likely place for you to expand to?

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No, I don't at all. I love opera.

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And I was influenced by it because I was always in an opera company.

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But it's not an ideal place for a choreographer at all because there's so little you can do.

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There are very few opera ballets that are really worth doing.

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Some of them are. There's a great big ballet in Faust, the Guno Faust,

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which is marvelous to do. Tannhäuser has a wonderful big ballet.

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But on the whole, there's something that fits into the opera.

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There are peasant dances or something that you have to fit yourself into the opera.

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Bartered Bride is sort of a fun one. It's charming music, smetana's music.

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But on the whole, there's not many opportunities.

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But it's a job. You get paid every week, so it's not so bad to do it.

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Counts for something.

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What would you say is the ideal kind of setting for a choreographer?

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Oh, the ideal would be if you had a whole company at your disposal,

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and you could work with them as long as you want to,

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and get the composer that you wanted to compose the music that you want,

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get the designer that you wanted to compose the costumes,

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and then the audience to do it for.

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It requires an awful lot. It isn't like a painter,

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where you can paint something and it doesn't matter.

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It can be appreciated ten years from now.

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And the painter just puts his pictures aside.

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But you can't do that with dance.

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They have to see it then and now.

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Now it's better because you can take films of your ballets.

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But it was just so recently that you could do that.

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So that's what you have to have.

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The WPA was very good.

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They gave you a studio and they gave you carte blanche

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to do whatever you wanted to do.

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They gave you all the time you wanted.

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But I was the only one in the WPA for a year.

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That's what I did Frankie and Johnny and some of my best ballets.

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I know.

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Because we had time.

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You could have class as long as you want to

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and work on your dancers' technique.

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We had a modern group. We had a classical group.

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And I appreciated the time very much.

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And that's when you were working with Bentley Stone in the WPA.

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And then later, did you feel as if,

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I mean you had, when you had the Page Stone ballet

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and some of your other, when you had your own company,

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was that, that sounds a little bit like the ideal?

254
00:13:48.800 --> 00:13:52.880
Well it was, except that you didn't have enough money to do it, don't you see?

255
00:13:53.180 --> 00:13:55.160
It costs a lot of money to engage a studio,

256
00:13:55.340 --> 00:13:58.120
engage a pianist, and engage the dancers.

257
00:13:58.940 --> 00:14:02.480
And as long as we had tours and we had places to work.

258
00:14:03.040 --> 00:14:06.400
See, well Bentley wasn't with me when I did the Nutcracker,

259
00:14:06.440 --> 00:14:12.720
but when I got that, that was very good

260
00:14:12.720 --> 00:14:14.580
because it goes on from year to year.

261
00:14:15.600 --> 00:14:17.360
When did I do that? I forget.

262
00:14:17.700 --> 00:14:19.460
I think it's twenty years old.

263
00:14:19.580 --> 00:14:20.420
It's twenty years old.

264
00:14:20.900 --> 00:14:23.280
Yes, I think that will go on forever.

265
00:14:24.120 --> 00:14:26.780
But it took me a long time to do it.

266
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And it was worth doing.

267
00:14:29.300 --> 00:14:34.140
And it was paid for by the Tribune and McCormick place.

268
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So they own it.

269
00:14:36.400 --> 00:14:39.700
And that was very well worth doing,

270
00:14:39.880 --> 00:14:42.080
but I didn't get many opportunities like that.

271
00:14:44.380 --> 00:14:50.800
It seems as though in the period of the 30s and 40s,

272
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even into the 50s,

273
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a good many people important in American choreography

274
00:14:59.820 --> 00:15:02.700
were working as part of opera companies.

275
00:15:03.740 --> 00:15:06.560
I don't know, I don't think so. Who was?

276
00:15:06.560 --> 00:15:08.760
Well, at the Metropolitan.

277
00:15:10.660 --> 00:15:12.180
There's nobody important there?

278
00:15:12.180 --> 00:15:14.020
That I know of.

279
00:15:14.800 --> 00:15:15.440
Maybe there was.

280
00:15:16.200 --> 00:15:18.260
Maybe there was just somebody who was there and then left.

281
00:15:18.480 --> 00:15:19.900
So it's far from an ideal.

282
00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:23.180
Oh, the opera is not ideal at all for a choreographer.

283
00:15:23.540 --> 00:15:25.600
As I said, it gives you weekly money.

284
00:15:26.800 --> 00:15:29.240
And you have your company there all the time.

285
00:15:29.400 --> 00:15:31.100
It's valuable in that respect.

286
00:15:33.560 --> 00:15:36.100
And once in a while, like I did the Mary Woodow,

287
00:15:36.280 --> 00:15:38.040
if I couldn't have done that,

288
00:15:38.080 --> 00:15:40.080
if I hadn't had an opera company,

289
00:15:41.460 --> 00:15:43.980
behind me, that was the lyric.

290
00:15:45.380 --> 00:15:46.520
And I couldn't have done that

291
00:15:46.520 --> 00:15:49.160
if I hadn't had that company there.

292
00:15:50.880 --> 00:15:56.920
So in Chicago, opera was really a very important thing to you

293
00:15:56.920 --> 00:16:03.580
because you moved from the Ravigna Opera, then to...

294
00:16:06.060 --> 00:16:08.580
I was with all the Chicago opera companies.

295
00:16:08.580 --> 00:16:11.500
They changed names, they started a new one, and you were it.

296
00:16:11.960 --> 00:16:13.800
I know, I think it was called, I want to get it right.

297
00:16:13.920 --> 00:16:14.960
Chicago Opera, probably.

298
00:16:16.020 --> 00:16:18.920
The Lyric Opera started later.

299
00:16:19.500 --> 00:16:21.080
That started...

300
00:16:21.600 --> 00:16:22.480
When was it?

301
00:16:23.120 --> 00:16:27.800
Oh, in 1934, you moved then,

302
00:16:27.800 --> 00:16:29.540
you had finished the season at Ravigna,

303
00:16:30.420 --> 00:16:34.580
and were asked to become the premier dancer and choreographer

304
00:16:34.580 --> 00:16:36.980
for the Chicago Grand Opera,

305
00:16:36.980 --> 00:16:40.120
which was a new company then starting.

306
00:16:40.500 --> 00:16:42.380
And that's where you met Bentley Stone.

307
00:16:42.900 --> 00:16:43.580
Oh, was it?

308
00:16:44.640 --> 00:16:47.260
He was dancing with the company.

309
00:16:47.360 --> 00:16:47.960
Oh, he was?

310
00:16:48.060 --> 00:16:49.680
He was the premier male dancer,

311
00:16:50.520 --> 00:16:54.080
and once he heard that you had signed on, so the story goes,

312
00:16:54.880 --> 00:16:56.380
he very much wanted to stay.

313
00:16:56.640 --> 00:16:58.560
I've forgotten that completely.

314
00:17:05.140 --> 00:17:05.780
Um...

315
00:17:05.780 --> 00:17:08.440
It seems as though that was a pretty good creative group.

316
00:17:09.400 --> 00:17:11.020
That's Isaac Van Grove.

317
00:17:12.020 --> 00:17:12.860
He was wonderful.

318
00:17:13.500 --> 00:17:16.940
And Nicholas Remesov was at that point the artistic director.

319
00:17:20.380 --> 00:17:22.460
And Bentley Stone and Blake Scott,

320
00:17:22.860 --> 00:17:24.480
Blake Scott, with whom you danced before,

321
00:17:24.640 --> 00:17:25.540
and Bentley Stone,

322
00:17:27.040 --> 00:17:28.780
that's where you met Bentley.

323
00:17:29.320 --> 00:17:31.140
It seems like it was a good group of people.

324
00:17:31.800 --> 00:17:34.040
Do you remember it all being excited about the opportunity

325
00:17:34.040 --> 00:17:38.880
to move from the suburbs into the opera in the city, or...?

326
00:17:38.880 --> 00:17:39.800
No.

327
00:17:41.640 --> 00:17:42.900
Just another job.

328
00:17:43.420 --> 00:17:43.940
Yes.

329
00:17:45.120 --> 00:17:48.360
I was glad to get the job, the opera companies.

330
00:17:49.080 --> 00:17:50.980
I was delighted to get the whole job.

331
00:17:51.260 --> 00:17:51.980
Very delighted.

332
00:17:57.740 --> 00:17:58.140
Um...

333
00:17:58.560 --> 00:17:59.720
Do you need to change?

334
00:18:00.260 --> 00:18:01.060
Is the time changed? Okay.