WEBVTT

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Yeah.

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Very bad.

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Very hard.

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Very hard.

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We're a little weird piece of Hollywood trivia.

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This is David Nivett's last film.

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It's 102485.

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Which little did his voice?

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Zero E on the M2.

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Marble.

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Oh my God.

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This will be the tone and the place where the voice met.

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The uh, the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh,

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I can't afford him.

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Who's Dolan?

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He's a dancer.

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Dolan is a dancer.

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He was a dancer with Diaghilev Company.

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Very, very famous.

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Meaning she can't afford him, that he would cost her too much.

23
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Exactly.

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Keeping the style.

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It would be like having to keep Nereyev.

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I mean, Nereyev is famous.

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Well, Dolan's more extravagant than Nereyev.

28
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Go?

29
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Go.

30
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As in go?

31
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Okay.

32
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Um, tell me about the tours to the schools that you were doing.

33
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Where Ruth would, would give a narration and you would have to dance.

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Would you describe those to me please?

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You know, they're almost indescribable.

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First of all, nobody believed them.

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Um, one of the activities when we first started the, the new Chicago Ballet as it were, um,

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was to do a whole tour.

39
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I think we did 65 performances in the Chicago Public School System.

40
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We used to do two a day.

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The first one usually was first grade, which is 820 in the morning.

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And Ruth said, we'll do just a simple little program, nothing extravagant.

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We'll do Sleeping Beauty pas de deux and we'll do the pas de deux from, uh, uh, Camino

44
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Burana from the spring scene.

45
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And we'll do a little class and a little adagio.

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And I mean, she thought up a program that would kill an elephant.

47
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It really would at 820 in the morning.

48
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Um, well, my wife, Dolores was doing the classical things.

49
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Well, that meant that, and of course I, we lived together, being married, uh, that I

50
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had to get up at five o'clock with her while she'd put on full makeup and all, and did

51
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a warm up for an eight o'clock pas de deux.

52
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It was, it was, that was really disastrous.

53
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It wasn't disastrous.

54
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It was wonderful, but it was hard to get through.

55
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So anyway, we would get to these, these, um, theaters, theaters, schools.

56
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Um, occasionally actually they were really nice theaters as a matter of fact, but sometimes

57
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they weren't, um, get there at 820 and do an hour program.

58
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Miss Page absolutely always, no matter what school, whether it was a suburban school,

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it was an inner city school, a middle class school, uh, uh, kind of an urban environment

60
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school, didn't matter.

61
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She had them in the palm of her hand.

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She wore a Yves Saint Laurent, um, Lord Fauntleroy outfit.

63
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Uh, well when she took the stage as she did before, because she began with the narration

64
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and told them a little bit about the history of dance and how it all started, from her

65
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very special point of view and in a very amusing fashion, uh, she was just an immediate hit.

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She was very much the star of the performance.

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She really was, deservedly so.

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She was quite wonderful.

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And then when we do this, we do a little bit of a bar and a little bit of center and then

70
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we would just do excerpts from things.

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We did a classical pas de deux as I said, either Nutcracker or Sleeping Beauty, which

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is very difficult to do at 820 in the morning.

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We do the little spring pas de deux from Carmina Burana.

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One of the girls did, um, a wonderful solo that Miss Page had done, choreographed for

75
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herself called Delirious Delusions, which was kind of a dolly.

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She wore a costume that was, there was a dress on one side and no dress on the other and

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she had a great huge eye on her stomach and she did it with a false arm and an empty picture

78
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frame.

79
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It was absolutely wonderful.

80
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Um, and we did 60, 65 I think of those.

81
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Having lunch in the schools, you know, with all the people coming around, the young people

82
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coming around Miss Page, they were really, really, they were really unique.

83
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They really were.

84
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She was wonderful.

85
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Why?

86
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Why were you doing them?

87
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Well the company, we earned money doing them.

88
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Ruth was the sole support of this new venture called Chicago Ballet and I think we got quite

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a minimal amount of money, but we did get something, which was toward the support of

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the dancers.

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I think there were six of us who did these, six or eight of us who did these performances

92
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with her.

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And it was just a little bit of income, a little bit of extra into the coffer.

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It enabled us to hire some dancers, which made it possible then for us to do that.

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And I think the most important reason why was that Miss Page felt we should do it.

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The same way she felt we should go to Leadville, Colorado and Beeville, Texas.

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It was the thing one should do.

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It's not enough to be a dancer if you don't dance.

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To be a dancer one must dance.

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To be a choreographer one must choreograph.

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We should do that.

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It was a responsibility we had.

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She took it quite seriously.

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She was wonderful and very amusing, but it wasn't something that she took lightly.

105
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She was quite serious about them.

106
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And I think that's why we did it, because we should do it.

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It was a responsibility to educate and a responsibility to actually practice the craft.

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Ruth isn't one to sit back at any time about anything.

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You should be doing something.

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It's kind of Puritan ethic in a way.

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I don't know if she'd really appreciate that description at all.

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But I think it harks back to her roots.

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It's Midwestern.

114
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It's very Midwestern, right.

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I don't know if she'd appreciate that either.

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But it's true.

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One should be doing something, not just kind of coasting.

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That's contrary to our nature.

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Describe, if you will, the growth pattern in the history of the school.

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Well, we started the school literally with nothing.

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We had a studio, we had bars and mirrors, and very few students, no children whatsoever.

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It finally got so bad that I talked to Ms. Page, and with her agreement,

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I went to a group called Urban Gateways in Chicago, headed by a lady named Gertrude Guthman,

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a wonderful lady.

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And we made an arrangement where I would go to various schools

126
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and audition children in the Chicago Public School system

127
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and select suitable children who showed an interest and some aptitude,

128
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with no training whatsoever, to come to the school, to the loop, and study dance.

129
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They got two lessons a week, one modern class, one ballet class.

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We paid for all of their shoes and leotards and tights.

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We made sure that they had something for after the class,

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a carton of milk and cookie or graham cracker or something.

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And we also paid for an escort to bring them down.

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Now, I adored this program.

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To me, this was, I think, one of the most stupendous things that school has ever done,

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because so many of these children had never, none of them had ever seen a ballet before.

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That was taken as for granted.

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But you'd be surprised at the number of them who'd never been downtown in the loop before,

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who'd never been on the subway before.

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Now, these are urban children who spent their lives in the second largest city in the United States, I guess.

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And they'd never been on the subway, they'd never been on a bus, they'd never been downtown in the loop.

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So they were getting a wide range of cultural experience, not only to dance,

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but cultural, in the real sense of cultural, a real cultural experience in coming downtown

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and seeing what this place was all about.

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And they were the most wonderful children, the most incredible children I've ever seen in my life, so avid.

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We did it for four years.

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We picked, I think we would pick about 40 children.

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Naturally, there'd be some attrition before with the first class.

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But we usually ended up with about 25, 26 children at the beginning of each season.

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The most fantastic children, the most open children, the most enthusiastic children.

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And strangely enough, from the very first group that we got, there were three wonderful children, exceptionally talented children.

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One little girl, Annette Jackson was her name, stayed with us for about 10 years until she finally decided not to dance and go to college.

153
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But she turned out to be a lovely, lovely dancer.

154
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And then we had two wonderful young men.

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Donald Williams was one, and it's a little like me, I can't think of the other young man's name right now.

156
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But one of those first years of Chicago Ballet, we did a program in conjunction with the Dance Theater of Harlem,

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in a program called Dances of Love and Death.

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The Harlem Ballet did Ruth Carman, which was especially made for their company, a version especially made for their company.

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And we did Carmina Barana, and then we did a pas de deux of Ben Stevens, who called Three Preludes.

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And while he was here with his company during that program, he came to watch the children's class,

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and picked those three young people to go on a summer scholarship to his school in New York, which he just then started.

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Now, one of those boys, the only one who's still dancing, but still one of those boys, is the leading dancer,

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leading male dancer with Dance Theater of Harlem, Arthur Mitchell's Dance Theater of Harlem, Williams, Donald Williams.

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And he's coming back to Chicago this Christmas to dance the lead in the McCormick Place Nutcracker this year.

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Now, when you think, all right, that's a group of 26, and out of that 26, three had real problems, did something, and one made it, kind of.

166
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Sounds, the odds, one out of 25, not so hot. But for dancers, you can't imagine what a tremendous...

167
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Yeah, it's a big deal.

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It's a big deal. And he did it. And to kind of come full circle that way, that's the kind of joy.

169
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That's the kind of thing that has made this school, I hope, a special place, and will continue to make the school a special place.

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At any rate, we're talking about the school. The school was three years in the Stevens Building.

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At the end of those three years, the school had really grown enormously.

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Also, at the end of those three years, the company had grown.

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There wasn't... We had only one studio at the school.

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It wasn't possible to continue everything in one rather small, confined space.

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Prospects for Chicago Ballet at that time seemed quite happy and objective and enthusiastic.

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And everybody thought, well, okay, it's time we look for a more permanent place, one that will give us the possibility of greater scope, more activity.

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And I happened to find this...

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Oh, you found this building?

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I found this building. I always tell Miss Page that I found it for my sins. That's what I did.

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Tell about this building.

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This building, I found... I was just riding a bus one day and I looked up in this kind of strange place.

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It looked like a Gothic castle or something from the outside. And I saw a for sale sign.

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We'd looked at several... I'd looked at several other places.

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And when I'd find something I think would be a little suitable, I'd show it to Miss Page.

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And for one reason or another, things just weren't right.

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Well, I told her finally about the Moose Lodge.

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The title amused her no end.

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The Moose Lodge is a dance academy, if you can imagine.

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Well, anyway, we bought it, she bought it, the Foundation bought it, somebody bought it.

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And we ended up here in the summer of 1974.

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When we bought it, there were seven bars in the building.

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And I don't mean B-A-R-R-E, I mean B-A-R.

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Those moose might have done a lot of things, but they were wet.

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So we had lots of remodeling to do to make the use suitable for us.

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So we removed all seven bars.

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And I remember when we were going through the building with the architect at one time saying,

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well now this bar, this room will be the library and we'll take the bar out of here.

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This is going to be the theater and we'll take the bar out of there.

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And this is the balcony of the theater and we won't need a bar here because we'll put seats here.

200
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And this is going to be a studio, so we'll take this bar out.

201
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And there is two rooms upstairs, each had a bar and we'll take those out because we'll make those one studio.

202
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And Miss Page kept saying, but you're taking out all these wonderful bars.

203
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I mean, where are you going to put your purse when you do class?

204
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No? We did leave some bars.

205
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Now, today the school has how many students?

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The school now has about 420 students, which is quite large, but manageable.

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We have about 40 students on full scholarship, about 20 on half scholarship,

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and about 15 on work scholarship, which means they do a little something around the building to help, to justify their scholarship.

209
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The full scholarships are generally people who start at the school at a relatively young age, show a lot of talent,

210
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and have continued up through the school now, mostly on in the advanced classes or the more advanced classes.

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We have seven teachers on the faculty, five pianists.

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We have four studios, a little theater, which experimental type theater, which seats 250 people.

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A canteen down in where one of the restaurants were, where one of the bars was.

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We have a canteen which serves the building.

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And the building has become, the school and the building has become more than simply a ballet school.

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It's become, I hope, a kind of center and hub of arts in Chicago.

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Miss Page has really bent over backwards.

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She's, thank heaven, very interested in the school and in the progress of the school and the place the school kind of take in the cultural community in Chicago.

219
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And has instigated all kinds of things.

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She did sponsor a wonderful lecture series a couple years back,

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a series of six lectures which included Anton Dolan and DeMargo Fontaine and John Gruen and Anna Kisilkov.

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Wonderful things like that.

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We have an opera company which performs for two months of the year in the school.

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We have music lessons which are taught in the school.

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We have drama lessons which are taught in the school.

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We have a full-time therapist at the school who teaches therapy and corrective exercise for dancers.

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At the school we have a full range of dance activities going on at the school.

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Ballet, pointe, modern, character, tap, jazz.

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And I think this school has become more than simply a little kind of parochial establishment.

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I can only see its place kind of expand in the future.

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I hope.

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We've been very lucky with the students.

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The school having started in 1971, so it's about 14 years old total now.

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In that 14 years the school has placed dancers in American Ballet Theater, in the Milwaukee Ballet,

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in the Dallas Ballet, in the San Francisco Ballet, in Joffrey's Company, in the Washington Ballet,

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in the Cincinnati Ballet.

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We have a very, very good record.

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It's very gratifying.