WEBVTT

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for speed, please?

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Speed.

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Go ahead.

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Go?

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Starting with a question I didn't say I was going to ask, however, tell me about the first

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time you met Ruth Page.

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I think I've always met Ruth Page at some intermission, and that's one of the things

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that I like about her is that she's still interested.

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It's usually in New York, but it was also in Denmark.

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In 1979, all the critics in the world seemed to converge on Copenhagen for the Bornholm

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Ville Festival celebrating the 100th anniversary of the great Danish choreographer August Bornholm

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Ville, and Ruth was there.

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But I've always met her in a lobby or at an intermission because I think she continues

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to be interested.

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I've seen her in Chicago as well.

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Before you met her, you must have heard some things about her, about her personally and

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possibly about her work and her place in American dance.

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To what degree did she sort of live up to the expectations that you had?

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Ruth Page is a historical figure.

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In a way, because she did live in Chicago, although certainly her work has been seen

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internationally, especially in Europe, Ruth Page is a name that you hear about, much talked

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about, but her work isn't always seen.

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So therefore, you always wonder what is it that she really did if you didn't belong to

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her generation.

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What you really realize about Ruth Page is that she was very much a dance pioneer and

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an American pioneer.

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When you read up on the early activities in the 20s and 30s, she was very much ahead of

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her time, knew where the artistic currents were going, and in fact had been invited,

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I think several times by other people who were trying to start ballet companies in America.

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The interesting thing is that when you look back at what other people did, she was there

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first.

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She worked with Isamu Noguchi before Martha Graham did.

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And Martha Graham's very interesting solo and crucial solo, Lamentation, is performed

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in a costume which is very similar to the one that Noguchi designed for Ruth Page at

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the same time.

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And also, Lincoln Kirstein certainly, if not George Bouncing, founded what was the precursor

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to the New York City Ballet at a time when they were thinking of inviting Ruth Page in

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to participate at some point.

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Also, it shouldn't be forgotten that before anybody even heard of Bouncing, Ruth Page

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was in Europe and had commissioned, in the sense that you can commission Bouncing to

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do anything, she asked George Bouncing to choreograph something for her.

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So unlike many people who lived in this dance wasteland, which really was the United States

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in the 20s, through her own interests and the encouragement her parents gave her, I

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think she was aware of what dance in America could be.

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In what ways do you think that she's personally, and her career path is different from other

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American dance pioneers?

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Ruth Page chose to stay in what I suppose we should call the Midwest.

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Now I don't really know how personal a decision that was, but as a result, because New York

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became the center of dance activity, which is not surprising, her work was not as familiar

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to everyone.

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On the other hand, I feel that she was working along the currents that other people were,

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but in her own way.

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I'm really struck by the fact that in the 30s, she did two ballets that today sound

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very modern, and one was Hear Ye, Hear Ye, with a commissioned score by Aaron Copeland.

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I think perhaps she was very much the first choreographer to commission Copeland to do

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a dance score.

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It was later that of course that he did Billy the Kid and that he did Appalachian Spring

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for Martha Graham.

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What she did at that time was the kind of thing that you'd say, well you don't deal

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with that kind of theme in American ballet or ballet in general, which was that she staged

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a courtroom drama.

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Another ballet that I of course haven't seen but have heard about was called American Pattern,

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which is really very feminist in tone in which an American housewife rebels.

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It's a ballet in which an American housewife rebels against being a housewife.

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In a way it was very much in tune with the social currents of that time, the 20s and

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particularly the 30s.

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You had Sinclair Lewis writing about Babbitt, the idea that American midwestern life was

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very provincial and narrow and was full of conformity.

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Here was Ruth Page in the middle of the Midwest saying women shouldn't be housewives.

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The point about Ruth Page is that she was a nonconformist.

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Is there anything in the ballets of hers that you've seen that has a nonconformist kind

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of quality?

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Maybe you could talk in general about the ballets that you have seen and the qualities

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you see in them.

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Two of the ballets that certainly still stand out and are revived occasionally are Frankie

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and Johnny and Billy Sunday.

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Of course some of the ballets that she made on opera librettos, in other words she would

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take the plot of an opera and then redo it.

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Those are the ones that people tend to revive because they're entertaining.

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Some people say, well there's not much substance in that.

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I don't think that she was after high drama in most of those ballets and she was out to

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entertain after all the words are missing in these opera ballets.

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They're not a substitute for the opera and I think she knew that.

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What was interesting was that she would give a twist, her own interpretation, to these

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opera scenarios.

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Of course here in her own way she was ahead of what a lot of opera directors are now doing.

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A lot of opera directors in fact are criticized for taking Carmen and updating it and putting

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it in say the Spanish Civil War period which was recently done in New York.

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That's exactly what she did is that she took Carmen and put it in the context of the Spanish

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Civil War and this has been done in opera only 40 years later.

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That is it's been done so much later.

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Ruth Page did take opera scenarios and update them and opera directors are now doing that.

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I think that Frankie and Johnny is one of the best ballets of its genre.

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It has to have that special funky period of the 40s and that's very hard for dancers today

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to transmit.

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But when it comes across I think it works very well.

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It's extremely funny, it's also poignant and she of course co-choreographed that with Bentley

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Stone.

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The flavor is what counts but the structure is there and the whole idea of taking a well-known

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ballad and then using it to show sort of American low life was also I think an original idea.

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To what extent do you think her work has been an influence on American dance?

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Ruth Page is rather an eclectic figure in American dance.

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She studied ballet and that was her background.

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She is a classical dancer.

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However, she chose at some point when she became Harold Kreutzberg's partner to be

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a modern dancer.

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If you want to say again she might have been ahead of her time in that she fused modern

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dance and ballet in her own performances.

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She did it in her own special way and that is being done today in a different way.

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But when you are an eclectic figure and you really don't necessarily make clear what vocabulary

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you want, you don't always tend to influence choreography.

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What her legacy is is really the eye is in terms of ideas and in terms of what she chose

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to express through her ballets.

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I don't think she left some sort of specific choreographic style but I think that she opened

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up a lot of doors and she told people out there in the audience that dance didn't have

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to be one thing.

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I think she chose a variety of themes.

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Deep down I think she remained a ballet choreographer.

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Her company at one point, she had a company for 17 years that toured the United States.

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The length of its tour was second only to that of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo that

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was always on tour.

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Practically, it seemed like.

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They were dancing in places like Beeville, Texas and Leadville, Oklahoma where the last

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company that had been there, they would find old posters, was Pavlova.

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Looking at sort of all of America rather than at the dance establishment, what kind of effect

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do you think that had, if any, on bringing dance to a wide audience of America?

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Before the days of television, they never would have seen it.

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Ruth Page herself was never a provincial figure but she came from a background of wealth that

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allowed her to go to South America and Europe when she was still a teenager.

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She'd seen the world and she'd seen the art in that world.

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I think what she realized was that a lot of people didn't have the opportunity to do that.

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There's no question that building up the audience in America owes a debt, let me put it differently,

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that people who now attend dance in America to some extent owe a debt to companies like

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the Ruth Page Ballet which toured the United States and showed them what dance could be

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and also built up an audience.

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Of course, Ruth Page was not the only one who did that.

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One of the companies that toured most was the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and it was

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at that time as well, I think, that her company toured.

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But her company, if you want to put it that way, was more American.

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So it showed another side of the coin and that was very useful.

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She also did some touring in Europe.

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Frankie and Johnny scandalized Paris in 1950, big cause celeb.

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And some performances in New York.

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But basically her reputation was sort of, as you said before, internationally based.

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Is that unusual?

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Well, as I said, Ruth Page is not a provincial figure.

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She always turned to composers and choreographers.

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She always turned to painters who were maybe not internationally known but who had had

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international experience and some of them were internationally known and the composers

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were on that level.

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And actually she was one of the first to commission certain American composers and she was right

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to do so.

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Her sights were never to be just a choreographer who was known to a small community and I think

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that she always thought big.

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I think that one of the problems, of course, that the funding sources at that time were

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not what they are now.

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When you think about Ruth Page, is there one thing or a couple of things where you say

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to yourself, I wish that this had been true rather than that about her?

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Well, in a way I wish that Ruth's company had kept on going because today I think certain

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her ballets from what I've seen and what I've heard would be much more successful because

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I do think she was ahead of her time.

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In many cases, people didn't quite understand everything she was doing and her ideas did

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seep into the dance world through some form of osmosis so therefore what was then considered

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unusual is now taken for granted and as I said whenever I see Frankie and Johnny, I

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do think that had she had her own company and had her company kept going, then there

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would be this repertory of Page ballets and we would be able to appreciate them.

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On the other hand, there's no question as this is true of any choreographer, some works

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don't stand the test of time and that's the risk that her company would have taken.

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In a way, as I said, I wish perhaps she had been a little stronger in the kind of choreographic

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language she wished to use because when you see a Page ballet, the few that are still

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given, you're not quite sure of what really marks her choreographic style.

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You see the ideas, you see the structure, you see the ingeniousness and the originality

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of it but what is the way that she really wants to use a language in dance?

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That's not entirely clear.

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Where would you rank her if you had to make a rank?

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Where is her place in the history of American dance?

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Where does she stand?

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Ruth Page is definitely one of the pioneers of American dance.

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A, she started a company before everyone else did and B, she did certain things that are

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now taken for granted.

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When you think of her, what kinds of qualities in her personally do you think might have

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affected her work in some way?

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I haven't seen enough of her work really to answer that.

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I do want to say that Ruth Page is what you would call an American original.

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As a person, she's extremely vivacious.

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If you think it's strange to see a woman in her 80s lift her leg up on the table in the

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living room to show that she can still do her ballet bar work, you might think that's

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strange but she doesn't.

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She obviously has a sense of humor and also I think she's an extremely democratic person

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which is unusual in ballet, it's less so in modern dance.

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How that affects her work directly isn't really clear.

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You don't necessarily see it in the work but you just see that this is somebody who enjoyed

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her life in dance.

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You say democratic, what do you mean by democratic?

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A lot of ballet directors want to be called Mr. Joffrey and Mr. Balanchine and they're

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not called Martha like Martha Graham.

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I've always heard Ruth Page described as Ruth, I've never heard her described as Ms. Page.

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Also I suspect that there wasn't a huge distance between herself and her dancers.

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You mentioned something once before that's been kind of a source of problems to me.

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Are we running out of tape?

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No, sorry.

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That's kind of bothered me.

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There is in this world a notion in this dance world that Ruth Page came from a very rich

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family that she had a very rich husband and that by and large she could just sort of support

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her activities out of family money.

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She went to South America on a tour with Pavel when she was 16.

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She went to Japan to dance at the coronation of Emperor Uroido in 1927.

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I mean it's a long time ago but she was invited to dance.

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Her family was, her father was a doctor, her family was what was in those days considered

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sort of fancy middle class.

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Her husband made a great deal of money from one major lawsuit that he won in 1955.

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Before that, and that was truly an awesome amount of money as I understand it, however

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before that he worked as a lawyer and he was a strange sort of man.

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Did you ever meet Tom Fisher by the way?

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He was a strange sort of man and he was just totally focused, so you've heard right, totally

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focused on this one big case.

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Do you think that there's a certain amount of prejudice against Ruth because of this

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notion that here was a rich Rebecca Harkness person?

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I mean I know it's different for Rebecca Harkness but you know what I mean, that kind of...

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Well there is the idea that American ballet, more than American modern dance, has to some

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extent grown out of the fact that certain women who inherited wealth or married into

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wealth such as Lucia Chase, Ruth Page, Rebecca Harkness, tended to use that wealth to set

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up companies that were vanity companies for themselves.

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The test of time of course deals with that and what you can do with that wealth is of

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yourself and then hire the people who will do the work for you.

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The problem happens, the problem is that do you use that company as a showcase for yourself?

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There's no question that Ruth Page did use it as a showcase for her choreography and

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her dancing.

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However, what she produced is what matters and the thing there is that the ballets that

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exist beyond her company are still being produced.

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I have to really look at it in terms of what the situation was when Lucia Chase joined

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Morkin's Ballet.

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There were no permanent ballet companies in America.

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In fact Ruth Page was trying to set one up at that time before ballet theater actually

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got going and the thing is who else was going to do it?

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This was not exactly a dance conscience country.

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The Puritan heritage in this country is very, very strong and to this day I really defy

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anybody who can find a father who wants all his sons to be ballet dancers.

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Who was it that was interested in ballet?

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Maybe you could say they were dilettantes but at least they were interested dilettantes

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and it took money to set things up and later on you got the civic fathers to set up companies.

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Now you have the Cleveland Ballet, you have the Dallas Ballet, cities are attached to

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names but that wasn't true.

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In the old days you really had to have a creative figure or a wealthy patron to do that and

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Ruth Page tried to be both a creative figure and a wealthy patron.

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In fact I think among all the other women in ballet who could do it,