WEBVTT 1 00:00:15.620 --> 00:00:17.500 This is the Larry Long Interview. 2 00:00:17.540 --> 00:00:21.480 This will be Zero View on Channel 2 and No Tone on Channel 1. 3 00:00:21.820 --> 00:00:25.280 And this is Zero Nine Nine Hour on the Timecode Channel 3. 4 00:00:25.420 --> 00:00:27.200 On Channel 1 will be a boom microphone only. 5 00:00:27.200 --> 00:00:31.320 On Channel 2 will be a mix of the lav and the other chef's microphone. 6 00:00:31.580 --> 00:00:34.520 And this will be toned to the place of the first minute, Zero Nine. 7 00:00:58.660 --> 00:00:59.080 Rolling. 8 00:01:00.020 --> 00:01:01.240 Rolling. Are we ready? 9 00:01:02.360 --> 00:01:04.720 Do you have a regular angle camera on the side? 10 00:01:05.900 --> 00:01:06.920 Do you have a regular camera on the side? 11 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:08.720 Taking out the wrinkles from my mouth. 12 00:01:08.720 --> 00:01:09.760 I know, I know. It's alright. 13 00:01:10.080 --> 00:01:11.180 I think you can fix that in the edit. 14 00:01:11.440 --> 00:01:11.860 Right. 15 00:01:12.560 --> 00:01:14.240 Yeah, I do a Geraldine Freund. 16 00:01:14.680 --> 00:01:16.220 Right, that's what, take your whole face up? 17 00:01:16.220 --> 00:01:17.420 Yeah, take my whole face up. 18 00:01:18.280 --> 00:01:19.640 Put on a babushka. 19 00:01:19.800 --> 00:01:21.780 Alright, alright. 20 00:01:22.420 --> 00:01:23.040 A wig. 21 00:01:23.460 --> 00:01:24.600 Yes. Are we rolling? 22 00:01:24.660 --> 00:01:25.020 Yes. 23 00:01:25.020 --> 00:01:26.620 Okay, here we go. 24 00:01:26.920 --> 00:01:32.560 Larry, you first started dancing with Roos in 1958? 25 00:01:32.900 --> 00:01:33.860 1958, yes. 26 00:01:33.960 --> 00:01:35.220 Tell about it. 27 00:01:35.980 --> 00:01:44.400 Well, when I first joined the company, actually I joined the company after having met Patricia Klekovic during Summer Stock. 28 00:01:45.200 --> 00:01:54.940 And at the end of the season for the Summer Stock, Patricia asked if I wouldn't like to come and stop with her in Chicago on my way back to New York. 29 00:01:54.940 --> 00:01:55.520 That's where I lived. 30 00:01:57.360 --> 00:01:58.880 And auditioned for Ruth. 31 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:00.680 Which I did. 32 00:02:01.640 --> 00:02:04.960 Strange, because I auditioned for Miss Page five times. 33 00:02:05.180 --> 00:02:08.880 I auditioned once on my way back to New York in Chicago. 34 00:02:09.080 --> 00:02:11.400 At the end of that audition, there were two boys that auditioned. 35 00:02:11.440 --> 00:02:18.900 Myself and a boy named Chris Edwards, who had been a dancer in My Fair Lady, which was playing in Chicago at the time. 36 00:02:19.860 --> 00:02:25.800 At the end of the audition, she took us to lunch and she said, no, of course I don't know. 37 00:02:25.960 --> 00:02:27.360 She spoke to Chris Edwards. 38 00:02:27.560 --> 00:02:29.340 She said, I don't know why you want to join the company. 39 00:02:29.460 --> 00:02:32.200 You know you make so much money dancing in a big Broadway show. 40 00:02:32.220 --> 00:02:32.920 It's a big hit. 41 00:02:32.940 --> 00:02:35.700 It's going to run forever and I can't pay you nearly so much money. 42 00:02:36.180 --> 00:02:39.760 Our season is very short and it's going to be over very quickly. 43 00:02:40.900 --> 00:02:45.020 You get paid hardly anything at the opera and you have to work long hours and hard. 44 00:02:45.020 --> 00:02:47.240 I don't know why you want to join the company. 45 00:02:48.700 --> 00:02:51.720 And said to me, she said, well, I don't know if I can use you. 46 00:02:51.760 --> 00:02:56.520 I don't know who's coming back from the company the year before, but I'll let you know. 47 00:02:56.700 --> 00:02:57.680 Thank you very much and everything. 48 00:02:57.760 --> 00:03:08.620 So I went back to New York, kind of discouraged about the whole affair and went to an audition for the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in New York. 49 00:03:09.120 --> 00:03:11.980 And present at the audition was Miss Page. 50 00:03:12.760 --> 00:03:15.840 So she watched that audition in its entirety. 51 00:03:16.460 --> 00:03:22.460 At the end of that audition, she called me over and she said, you know, in a week I'm giving another audition. 52 00:03:22.580 --> 00:03:26.280 I'm having another audition at Judson Hall. 53 00:03:26.520 --> 00:03:29.580 Would you come and dance for me again? 54 00:03:29.920 --> 00:03:30.220 She did. 55 00:03:30.420 --> 00:03:36.580 Actually, we didn't remember that I danced for her not too long before that, but she asked if I'd come and I said certainly I would. 56 00:03:36.580 --> 00:03:41.520 Meanwhile, I went to an audition for Ballet Wust of Monte Carlo at which Miss Page was present. 57 00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:43.580 So audition for her. 58 00:03:43.680 --> 00:03:45.040 That was the third time. 59 00:03:45.560 --> 00:03:47.560 And at the end of that audition, she said, didn't I? 60 00:03:47.620 --> 00:03:49.360 Haven't I just seen you someplace before? 61 00:03:49.380 --> 00:03:52.680 And I said, yes, you just saw me at the Metropolitan Opera audition. 62 00:03:53.800 --> 00:03:55.540 And she said, well, I'm giving this audition. 63 00:03:55.640 --> 00:03:58.480 And I said, yes, ma'am, I'm going to be there. 64 00:03:58.860 --> 00:04:01.860 So I went to Judson Hall and auditioned for her again. 65 00:04:02.860 --> 00:04:04.240 That was the fourth time. 66 00:04:05.540 --> 00:04:08.220 At the end of that audition, she said, thank you very much. 67 00:04:08.380 --> 00:04:11.940 I still don't really know if I'll be able to use you. 68 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:15.060 I don't know what the situation is going to be and so forth. 69 00:04:15.780 --> 00:04:24.540 And as I was leaving to get dressed after the audition, she said, oh, by the way, does anybody here speaking to the whole group do acrobatics? 70 00:04:25.340 --> 00:04:28.120 And I raised my hand and I said, yes, ma'am, I do. 71 00:04:28.920 --> 00:04:30.420 And she said, oh, what do you do? 72 00:04:30.420 --> 00:04:33.760 And I said, well, I do regular tumbling runs. 73 00:04:35.320 --> 00:04:36.720 She said, can you show me something? 74 00:04:36.820 --> 00:04:39.760 So I did a round off back handspring, back handspring, back flip. 75 00:04:40.340 --> 00:04:41.700 I did a couple of other things. 76 00:04:41.800 --> 00:04:46.620 I did an aerial flip. 77 00:04:47.060 --> 00:04:50.880 And I did a thing called Butterflies, which is another acrobatics. 78 00:04:50.940 --> 00:04:52.880 Well, that clinched it. 79 00:04:53.300 --> 00:04:59.820 Right then, she said, we start rehearsals in, I think it was a week and a half or something in Chicago for the Lyric Opera and so forth. 80 00:04:59.820 --> 00:05:00.900 Would you come? 81 00:05:01.320 --> 00:05:02.420 And so I did. 82 00:05:03.420 --> 00:05:06.200 And what was the company like when you joined, when you got to Chicago? 83 00:05:06.320 --> 00:05:07.720 Who was here? 84 00:05:07.820 --> 00:05:10.660 Who were the other, who were the principal dancers at that point? 85 00:05:11.540 --> 00:05:23.780 The principal dancers when I joined the company were, of course, Kenneth Johnson, a wonderful dancer named Barbara Steele, who'd been with Miss Pagan for quite some time. 86 00:05:24.640 --> 00:05:27.380 They were the two kind of resident principals with the company. 87 00:05:27.380 --> 00:05:41.540 The soloists in the company were Patricia Galkovich, Orin, Dolores, who was to become my wife, Charles Schick, Etta Burrow was another dancer in the company, Bill Maloney at that time. 88 00:05:43.060 --> 00:05:45.260 Only four of us joined the company that year. 89 00:05:45.280 --> 00:05:47.700 The rest had been with Miss Page before. 90 00:05:48.600 --> 00:06:10.280 That year, our guest stars, which was the, every year for every tour, Miss Page would engage a guest couple to come and dance the leads in, usually one, but sometimes both of her ballets and the company would do a little, very small, in the middle. 91 00:06:10.280 --> 00:06:15.140 And the guest stars that year were George Skabeen and Marjorie Tallchief. 92 00:06:17.820 --> 00:06:23.280 And the, but the company stayed very, very, very much the same. 93 00:06:25.040 --> 00:06:28.960 Almost the whole time I was a member of the company. 94 00:06:30.420 --> 00:06:35.260 The personnel, particularly the soloists and principals, changed hardly at all. 95 00:06:35.260 --> 00:06:47.400 We've had wonderful guest stars, usually different every year, but the nucleus of the company, what we called Miss Page's dancers, remained the same almost the whole 15 years that we toured. 96 00:06:47.660 --> 00:06:49.020 Why was that, do you think? 97 00:06:52.640 --> 00:07:03.260 The reason for it, I think, is the reason why everybody stayed is varied and many. 98 00:07:03.260 --> 00:07:04.280 There are all kinds of reasons. 99 00:07:04.440 --> 00:07:06.820 First of all, we made a life in Chicago. 100 00:07:07.020 --> 00:07:09.980 We made a probably for dancers at that time. 101 00:07:10.160 --> 00:07:17.280 We made more of an actual life for ourselves in Chicago than dancers anywhere else did. 102 00:07:18.340 --> 00:07:27.520 A good many of the dancers in Miss Page's company were from Chicago, so they had family ties here, ties to their school where they trained and everything. 103 00:07:27.840 --> 00:07:28.980 So there was that. 104 00:07:28.980 --> 00:07:35.420 Also, jobs were just enormously scarce for dancers in that time. 105 00:07:35.460 --> 00:07:39.320 There were very few companies where one could actually make a living as a dancer. 106 00:07:40.580 --> 00:07:54.380 That meant when you found a job and you found a place, particularly one that was satisfying and led you to progress as a dancer and as an artist, if you will, you didn't give it up easily. 107 00:07:54.380 --> 00:07:58.480 The largest company probably at that time was Ballet Theatre. 108 00:07:59.000 --> 00:08:03.240 Second, certainly largest, although it toured the most, was Ballet Brust de Monte Carlo. 109 00:08:03.960 --> 00:08:09.100 Our company was the third most secure company at that time. 110 00:08:09.120 --> 00:08:16.580 We were the only ones who toured as extensively as we did, although even we didn't tour as much as the other companies. 111 00:08:16.960 --> 00:08:19.440 And there were no other companies that exist nowadays. 112 00:08:19.620 --> 00:08:24.120 There was no Houston Ballet, no Pennsylvania Ballet, no Milwaukee Ballet. 113 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:25.120 None of the Ohio companies. 114 00:08:26.420 --> 00:08:28.060 No Joffrey Ballet. 115 00:08:29.320 --> 00:08:33.040 The opportunities for dancers were very, very, very limited. 116 00:08:33.740 --> 00:08:37.860 The big companies weren't nearly as big as they are now. 117 00:08:39.520 --> 00:08:55.300 Also, one has to honestly say that working with Ruth had almost as much an influence as all of the other things put together to keep us here. 118 00:08:56.140 --> 00:08:58.960 We were never bored working with Ruth at all. 119 00:08:58.960 --> 00:09:00.280 She was always challenging. 120 00:09:00.360 --> 00:09:02.440 She was very difficult to work for. 121 00:09:02.500 --> 00:09:03.960 Not an easy lady at all. 122 00:09:03.960 --> 00:09:06.820 Not easily pleased from a technical standpoint. 123 00:09:06.820 --> 00:09:10.440 But more even from an artistic standpoint. 124 00:09:10.620 --> 00:09:17.020 One really had to strive to do something extra to please Ruth. 125 00:09:17.360 --> 00:09:21.820 And if you did that, you felt immediate gratification. 126 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:26.500 It was like having a real strong drink of vodka right away. 127 00:09:26.540 --> 00:09:28.220 You felt the effects immediately. 128 00:09:29.580 --> 00:09:32.600 You also felt the effects if you didn't please her immediately. 129 00:09:33.660 --> 00:09:38.440 So the satisfaction of dancing was very great. 130 00:09:38.600 --> 00:09:39.240 Very great. 131 00:09:39.640 --> 00:09:41.520 I think that's what kept the company together. 132 00:09:42.020 --> 00:09:45.700 And kept it such a unique unity for so long. 133 00:09:46.800 --> 00:09:49.120 When you were touring, how many months a year did you tour? 134 00:09:50.380 --> 00:09:53.480 The company schedule was a marvelous one. 135 00:09:54.040 --> 00:09:58.360 Again, for the time, a very, very long, long contract. 136 00:09:58.360 --> 00:10:00.960 We got together at the beginning of September. 137 00:10:01.960 --> 00:10:05.640 And worked for the opera September, October, and through November. 138 00:10:05.840 --> 00:10:07.100 We had December off. 139 00:10:07.680 --> 00:10:12.500 And then when I joined the company, we were touring January, February, March, and into April. 140 00:10:12.520 --> 00:10:13.900 Depending upon the dates. 141 00:10:14.740 --> 00:10:16.300 Sometimes it was April 18th. 142 00:10:16.300 --> 00:10:17.540 Sometimes April 20th. 143 00:10:17.540 --> 00:10:19.840 Sometimes April 11th. 144 00:10:20.060 --> 00:10:27.760 And then later, when Miss Page did Nutcracker in 1965, then it was solid through all that time. 145 00:10:27.760 --> 00:10:31.380 We did Nutcracker in the December that we used to have off. 146 00:10:32.020 --> 00:10:36.080 So the contract went through from September through, usually through April. 147 00:10:36.720 --> 00:10:41.540 And in those days, that was an enormously long, that was really a plum of a job. 148 00:10:44.320 --> 00:10:48.720 And then what did you do from April or May through September? 149 00:10:50.120 --> 00:10:52.120 Almost everybody in those days did stock. 150 00:10:52.260 --> 00:10:53.140 I know I did. 151 00:10:53.200 --> 00:10:54.160 My wife did. 152 00:10:54.340 --> 00:10:55.880 Patricia Klekovich did. 153 00:10:57.480 --> 00:10:58.840 Orin did. 154 00:10:59.860 --> 00:11:01.740 Kenneth, everybody did stock. 155 00:11:02.180 --> 00:11:05.560 We usually had places that we had gone several years. 156 00:11:05.720 --> 00:11:14.180 My place, as it were, was the Starlight Theatre in Kansas City, which was a 17-week summer job. 157 00:11:14.620 --> 00:11:19.060 We went there, usually the end of, sometimes the middle of May. 158 00:11:19.060 --> 00:11:28.100 And then did usually 15 shows for a whole summer, ending just after Labor Day, 159 00:11:28.160 --> 00:11:31.880 when it was time to come right back to work at the opera. 160 00:11:32.320 --> 00:11:33.320 That was a grueling sketch. 161 00:11:33.420 --> 00:11:44.240 But that also, in a funny way, all of these things that we did, for example, touring with Ruth, meant we were sponsored by Columbia Artists Management. 162 00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:50.240 And particularly, the arm of Columbia called Community Concerts. 163 00:11:50.820 --> 00:11:59.300 Well, that meant we did seven performances a week, usually one in a different town every performance. 164 00:12:01.960 --> 00:12:07.520 We performed six days, the seventh day, usually. Sunday was a travel day. 165 00:12:09.900 --> 00:12:12.520 So every night was a different place. 166 00:12:12.520 --> 00:12:16.160 Now, that's a grueling schedule. It's very, very hard. 167 00:12:16.660 --> 00:12:25.320 But with the kind of ballets, it's a kind of experience that young dancers nowadays don't really get, or very seldom get. 168 00:12:25.820 --> 00:12:35.540 And I think it's one of the reasons, I like to think it's one of the reasons, that we developed as dancers and actors and everything the way we did. 169 00:12:35.540 --> 00:12:47.520 When we did a ballet, 90 performances in a season, in a tour, you really got to be perfect friends with your role, with your character. 170 00:12:47.920 --> 00:12:49.800 There wasn't anything about them that you didn't know. 171 00:12:49.800 --> 00:12:57.160 If it was a comic ballet, as some of them were, you knew exactly what to do to get the laughs, what to avoid to lose a point. 172 00:12:58.340 --> 00:13:10.020 If it was a dramatic ballet, you knew exactly how to bring out the drama, how to bring out the story, how to bring out the character, how to get the most response. 173 00:13:10.240 --> 00:13:12.740 It's a tremendous experience. 174 00:13:13.200 --> 00:13:21.120 The summers were that way, too. A different show for 15 weeks in a row, performing one while you're rehearsing the next. 175 00:13:22.980 --> 00:13:37.500 You get a kind of experience and your mind works immediately to grasp things and to catch the essence of things because you have time to experiment a lot. 176 00:13:38.120 --> 00:13:41.420 You've got to learn it, do it, make it right immediately. 177 00:13:41.580 --> 00:13:44.560 Now these are acting roles that you're doing during the summer, not dancing roles. 178 00:13:44.780 --> 00:13:49.460 Both. Both. Because in stock you got the opportunities to do both. 179 00:13:49.460 --> 00:13:53.880 The dancers got fewer opportunities than the singers in stock in those days. 180 00:13:53.980 --> 00:14:01.460 Now to do musicals, one has to be a dancer and an actor and a singer, the whole thing. 181 00:14:02.240 --> 00:14:05.620 In those days it was a little bit more compartmentalized. 182 00:14:05.620 --> 00:14:08.700 If you were a dancer, you were a dancer. If you were a singer, you were a singer. 183 00:14:09.220 --> 00:14:14.200 And the singers in stock generally got a few more parts than dancers did. 184 00:14:14.200 --> 00:14:18.560 Dancers were always a suspect when they opened their mouth. 185 00:14:20.600 --> 00:14:26.220 But still, one did get the opportunity to do roles and even to sing a bit. 186 00:14:26.340 --> 00:14:28.000 It was a wonderful, wonderful experience. 187 00:14:28.220 --> 00:14:33.620 It's too bad dancers nowadays don't have that kind of opportunity to learn and to work. 188 00:14:34.140 --> 00:14:39.480 What's more, that kind of touring has completely left the American dance scene. 189 00:14:40.800 --> 00:14:48.780 The whole system that works now, I think, in going around to the companies as I do now, 190 00:14:48.860 --> 00:14:56.260 to stage page ballets particularly, you find it's really apparent, 191 00:14:56.260 --> 00:15:03.640 it becomes really apparent to you what good experience we had as compared to the younger dancers today. 192 00:15:03.640 --> 00:15:10.740 For example, in doing Mary Widow, now when I go on stage Mary Widow, 193 00:15:10.860 --> 00:15:18.060 I go in two weeks, stage the ballet, come back a week before, whatever the performances are, 194 00:15:18.400 --> 00:15:25.100 and oftentimes five performances is a long, extended season, which means, and usually with two casts, 195 00:15:25.160 --> 00:15:29.380 so it means one cast gets three chances at a role and the other only two. 196 00:15:31.640 --> 00:15:35.500 You can't possibly get into a role that quickly. 197 00:15:36.940 --> 00:15:41.120 You're just learning the bare essentials of it at that point. 198 00:15:41.640 --> 00:15:46.380 What you'd really like to do is do it a hundred times. 199 00:15:46.740 --> 00:15:52.500 By the end of a hundred times you'd know exactly what you wanted to do, how to get the fun out of the role. 200 00:15:53.820 --> 00:15:59.380 It's different from doing a kind of technical pas de deux that you can rehearse 201 00:15:59.380 --> 00:16:06.060 and you actually get the most value out of a rehearsal in a technical kind of role. 202 00:16:06.100 --> 00:16:09.000 You can perfect everything, the conditions are absolutely right, 203 00:16:09.380 --> 00:16:14.540 but when you're doing a role as opposed to a kind of variation or something, 204 00:16:15.280 --> 00:16:21.080 it's the performance, it's the interaction between you and the audience that is the most valuable. 205 00:16:21.080 --> 00:16:24.900 That's what makes you really learn that part and learn that role, 206 00:16:25.140 --> 00:16:27.680 because you're always making dramatic points. 207 00:16:28.320 --> 00:16:35.160 You can't do it in a void. You have to be able to react to an audience. 208 00:16:35.680 --> 00:16:41.580 When you teach a ballet like Flatamass or Mary Widow, 209 00:16:42.840 --> 00:16:49.440 what do you do to help the dancers that you teach it to substitute for the fact that they don't have feedback 210 00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:54.660 from an audience in which to build their familiarity with what works inside this role? 211 00:16:54.820 --> 00:16:55.300 What do you do? 212 00:16:56.120 --> 00:17:05.080 I talk myself silly. I talk myself hoarse. I try to give as much imagery as I can. 213 00:17:06.200 --> 00:17:13.380 I try to react myself for the dancers so that they have an idea of what it is they're going for. 214 00:17:14.460 --> 00:17:20.360 I talk as much about the story and what's coming across and how to bring it across, 215 00:17:20.680 --> 00:17:26.200 about their character and how to develop their character, how to bring their character to the fore. 216 00:17:27.060 --> 00:17:33.580 I talk as much about that as I do about the technical aspects of the piece. 217 00:17:34.460 --> 00:17:40.840 In a way, it's more important. Dancers nowadays are very, very good, very strong, very quick. 218 00:17:42.680 --> 00:17:51.300 They're wonderful dancers, so they grasp the dancing portions of the ballets fantastically well. 219 00:17:52.660 --> 00:17:58.380 It's almost more important the things that I tell them about the ballet, the things that we talk about the ballet. 220 00:18:01.400 --> 00:18:13.260 Mainly, I think it has so much to do with imagery, some kind of verbal image that will create an ambiance 221 00:18:13.260 --> 00:18:19.200 and a feeling for them of what they should go for, what they should hopefully expect from an audience.