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We are about the same size, but she got sick of something.

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I just threw it out recently.

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This was every bit of 30 years ago, kid.

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When did I first meet you?

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How long have I known you?

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When did I first meet you?

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I don't remember our meeting.

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The actual meeting personally that happened during WPA days, you had this picnic and you

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asked all the companies to come out and remember there were the grobs.

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What was the date of WPA?

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19.

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Oh, this was the late 1930s.

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Oh, that I know.

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It's late 1930s.

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Then one day you asked, you knew Bernice Holmes pretty well, and you asked Bernice and myself

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and Marguerite Walbrook, remember that skinny blonde girl and all of them, to come out to

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Hubbard Woods on a Sunday.

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You were really asking Bernice, but Bernice always had her.

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I'll throw her out.

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So we came.

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That's the first time I really talked to you.

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The funny thing was we didn't know, we thought we were invited just to go swimming.

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As Bernice with her crowded little roadster, we got up to no man's land, you know, said,

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oh, let's stop at Demetri's and have a hamburger.

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Are you old enough to remember Demetri's and the hamburgers?

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So we stopped there.

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We had a hamburger.

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Next to us were some people and they said, can we have the ketchup?

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So we gave them the ketchup and we got talking to them.

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We got up and left.

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They got up and left.

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Forget your roots house.

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There's dinner and they're invited and we're invited.

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We all kept our mouths closed that we didn't realize that it was for Sunday dinner that

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we were.

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Oh.

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Why is it, do you think, that you've become such good friends?

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Well, I don't have very many girlfriends.

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I got along well with Tom.

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And then I asked you, could I come to rehearsals?

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I'd sit and come quietly and watch.

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And then when I got on the newspaper, the Hearst paper was right across the street from

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the opera house.

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It was so easy to go dangling across the street and looking on rehearsals.

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But we were interested in the same things.

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We took a few trips together.

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That wonderful Hamburg.

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We had a wonderful trip to Hamburg where we stayed for a week and we'd get along well.

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We travel well together.

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We're not, neither of us, very particular about how we eat or where we sleep.

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We sort of take things as they are.

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I stay the joint like the Wellington and elegant Ruth doesn't mind, so she stays at the Wellington.

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Yes, I mean, I'm not fussy at all and Anne isn't.

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She's the only person here in Chicago that I really am very close to.

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Why?

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I don't know.

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Because we'd pick ourselves up in the go.

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Yes, that's right.

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Well, that happened after I finished, gave up teaching school.

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Yes, I always admired her very much because she finished teaching school, so she got her

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pension and then was free to spend all her time on dance.

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She spent a lot of time on dance anyway, which I thought was marvelous.

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And she's one of the few intelligent people here that are interested in dancing, at least

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that I know.

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There may be more now, but I don't know them.

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I don't know any critics at all, really.

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And I don't like to know them.

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I think it's much better not to.

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Well, you knew Remy Gassman and I knew Remy, so it was a different way.

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Remy Gassman did the score.

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Was he a critic?

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Oh, yes.

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He composed My Billy Sunday, and I didn't like it at all.

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He was a music critic for the Chicago Times.

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I guess he was, that's right.

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And he also wrote on dance.

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And he was going to Europe.

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And I was just writing for Dance Magazine and he came over to me one day, I'm not going

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to write today, I'm leaving town.

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You go over to the Times building, tell them that Ray Hunt told you to come here.

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And they were furious.

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Nobody had ever seen me before, but there's an opening of the ballet, how could you possibly

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not have?

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So I wrote it in the ultramarine.

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I didn't know where to give it in or what.

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And I said to one of the boys in there, where do you hand things in?

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How do you do this?

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How do you do that?

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And that's how it happened.

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It was Remy.

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Remy Gassman?

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That was on the Times and then on the Hearst paper.

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Well I knew Claudia Cassidy, I adore her.

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I think she's a terribly interesting person aside from being a critic.

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She's a very cruel critic, but I think she's a fascinating person.

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And I always liked John Martin very much.

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I was crazy about him.

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Otherwise I don't know any critics I don't think.

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The Walter Terry, but he was so sweet.

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Oh, well Walter Terry was something very special.

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Nobody could hold anything against Walter.

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He was very tactful.

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He was critical, but he was very tactful.

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Yes, I think he was a marvelous person.

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But who else is there?

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Do you know anybody else?

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Well you know, just met Clive Barnes.

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I don't know him really at all.

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I think he's a very good critic.

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I like Clive very much.

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Yes, he's marvelous.

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Or a writer of books who we both know, Agnes DeMille.

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What do you think about her?

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Agnes?

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Well, she and I used to be very good friends.

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She, I think, takes credit for a lot of things that she hasn't done.

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She always says she's the first one to have ever done an Americana.

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And she's the first one who, like in Oklahoma, integrated the story.

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That's not true because Balanchine had done the same thing with I forget what, just before.

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Jean Loring had done Billy the Kid way before Rodale was done the horse.

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Yes, that's right.

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So I think she is inclined to exaggerate her own importance.

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I like her very much.

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She's an interesting person and I haven't seen her for a long time.

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I don't know what she's watching.

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She's in a wheelchair now.

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I know.

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Very sad.

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But she gets around.

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She's a very good speaker.

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Yes, she is.

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Of course, if she doesn't know, she'll write anyway.

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She did a book on American dance, which is so full of inaccuracies.

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Remember what she wrote about you?

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I don't remember what she said about me.

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Ruth Page and Bentley Stone run a ballet school in Chicago.

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And with this they have a company.

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It's all wrong.

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Remember?

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I think she was very jealous of me.

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I really do.

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And I think she resented the fact that I did everything before.

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She didn't.

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So she'd never like to talk about it.

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Of course, the two coasts do not know that there is a Midwest.

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That's true.

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That's very true.

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In fact, a great deal happened here that they don't even know happened.

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In 1852 in St. Louis, there was the first resident repertory ballet company, which was

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directed by Leon Espinosa.

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I didn't even know that.

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Did you?

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No, I didn't.

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I read somewhere who came across.

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It lasted a whole season there.

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It broke up because cholera hit the company and several of them died.

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But things like that.

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I'm amazed at how many companies there are now.

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Really good ones.

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Regional companies all over the country.

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I don't know.

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I haven't seen any of them.

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But they tell me they're very good.

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They say Indianapolis has a very good company now and St. Louis and all over.

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Tell us the one that is going to do your flater massage.

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They're supposed to be very good.

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Thank God.

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And Milwaukee.

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I'm doing some ballets up there.

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They're very good too up there.

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So the dance is really spread around.

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It's not just in New York anymore.

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I used to go down there always to see the New York City Ballet.

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Balanchine was there, but I don't care about going down now, especially to see them.

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And Ballet Theatre always comes here.

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Joffrey always comes here.

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So there's no point to go to New York anymore.

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European companies.

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Which ones are the most interesting?

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Well, I was just trying to think of ones I've seen.

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The Paris Opera Ballet has marvelous dancers, but they don't do very much.

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At least I haven't seen very much that they do.

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And they did do there, I just saw it last month ago, a whole program of Tudor's works.

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Which the dancers put on themselves.

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Tudor never went near it.

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And I thought that showed great initiative.

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I was very impressed with the fact that they did that.

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And in London, what did I see?

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Well, the London Festival Ballet does some interesting things every now and then.

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The Royal Ballet, what I've seen, hasn't been very interesting.

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But that's about all I've seen.

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Well, one of your ex-dances, Edith Allard, is now Ballet Mistress of Luskawa and Mila.

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Yes, that's true.

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That's right, she was with you all season.

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Yes, that's...

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And she was in the first belt.

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How did she happen to go to Europe and have a whole career over there?

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How did she happen to first go to Europe?

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She went to Europe with the last expiring breath of the Debassil Ballet.

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Oh, yeah.

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Went to Paris and then he died.

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And then she stayed there, she married a Frenchman, and then she auditioned for the Châtelet

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and was there, was a minor soloist.

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And there she is.

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Yeah, I would love to live in Europe.

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I mean, I'd love to be there more often.

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It's so much more interesting than here.

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But now my husband, who is from Paris, he thinks that all the action is here.

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He says Paris is still a beautiful city, but all the action is over here.

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In America, he means, by that, the whole of America.

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And that may be true now, that we are a great nation of dancers and have produced so many

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different kinds of dancing.

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So it's hard to say.

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Do you think that's true, Anne?

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That most of the action is here in dance?

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In the United States, a great deal of it, yes.

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London has a great deal.

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But we have the thing called the regional ballet movement.

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There's no similar thing to that.

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You realize there are some over 100 companies attached to different civic companies.

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You know, there's a phenomenon that people don't realize that the dancing school, which

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proliferated all over America in the days of fancy dancing, aesthetic dancing, tap acrobatics,

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there was no such thing in France until after World War II.

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The only people who studied dance were those who were attached to a theater and studied

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at that theater.

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England did have, and they had these organizations, you know, that's the Espinosa family, the

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man who started here, really lived in England.

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So they don't have a lot of different companies.

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But when you realize how many ex-dancers find places to become directors, like Bruce Marks,

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well, I'm talking about in America.

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I went to Germany, but here in America, Roman Yatsinsky and Lucia Larkin have a company

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in Tulsa.

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Somebody who danced in the Ballet Rouge by the name Natalia Krasovska has a company in

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Dallas.

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There are companies in, well, just those I know, Kansas City, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Tulsa,

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Miami, Atlanta, Seattle.

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There are several in Seattle.

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San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco.

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I think how many companies, most of these are directed by former dancers, like Helgi

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Thomas, and I will be with the San Francisco.

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Ballet West, which is in Salt Lake City, has Tony Lander now.

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They've changed things.

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Bruce Marks is leaving.

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But you realize how many there are.

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Part of that is that all these dance schools, at one time, the level of teaching was very...

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Well, I won't say it's low.

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Did you know that dance had more done for it in the kindergartens and gymnasiums of America

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in the early 20th century?

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That when the Pestilazzi-Frobo psychology of childhood said, let them move around, kindergarten

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teachers had to go take normal courses in dance.

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That's where Miriam Lavitt came from.

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She was a kindergarten teacher.

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Oh, I didn't realize that.

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And then, well, Edna McCray was going to be a gym teacher.

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She and her sister, Elma, went to the National College of Physical Education, and there were

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Pavley and Okrensky teaching.

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And when colleges became coeducational, what the heck were you going to give the girls

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and throw a basketball to them?

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Oh, we'll give them dancing.

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And first, it was a very dilute ballet.

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And then, with the Greek idea, and that wasn't just Duncan.

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The Greek dancing was pre-Duncan.

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It was Schliemann and Winkleman, who were archaeologists.

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Just like the Egyptian thing became very fashionable recently with all the excavations.

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That's when Vassar started its Greek games and the Vassar daisy chain and the tunics.

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And then there's Del Sarte.

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I mean, all these things together.

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But the United States picked it up educationally, and the gymnasiums and the kindergartens were

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full of dance.

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Are there enough good choreographers to go around with?

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No, because choreography is a very rare creative talent, because there are no materials.

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It has to come from here and here.

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Pick it up.

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You can't just, if you're going to be a painter, you buy a piece of canvas and you get some

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colors and you daub it.

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But what choreography?

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Either you work it on your own body first, which you have to.

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I know Ruth did her first one.

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Or you have to have clay to work on, and that clay is going to criticize you, just the way

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they, so that the whole choreographic picture is a very difficult one.

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And that's why it is so sinful when a great choreographer such as Jerome Robbins, with

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a very rare talent, wasted 20 years of his life doing great musicals like West Side Story

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and Fiddler on the Roof.

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In Russia, choreography is important.

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No choreographer would think it more important to do some musicals.

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But our American standards are such.

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And that's why when Jerome Robbins came back, he was like a hungry man.

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He kept coming out of him.

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But he's very stupid in that he lets his own humanism be killed while he's being a disciple

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of Balanchine's academicism.

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That shouldn't go on the tape, this is barzell.

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It's true though, isn't it?

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Very true.

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Do you think Balanchine has had too great?

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Balanchine's a very great choreographer.

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I wish they wouldn't put him on a pedestal and try to make everybody a Balanchine.

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I think even he sort of shrugged it off.

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What do you think, Roswell?

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I agree he's a great choreographer, but I don't think anybody should copy anybody.

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Even if he's a great choreographer, I think you should think of things yourself.

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Otherwise you're just a sort of a...

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He loved Frankie and Johnny.

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He recognized there could be other sorts of things, but that was his interest.

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But everybody's doing the same thing.

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What about all the lost ballets?

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There's so much choreography that's lost.

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The minute a dance has been finished, it's gone.

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Even the second time they do it, it isn't exactly the same.

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It's a very ephemeral art.

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When you think of all the great ballets that are nothing but a few words on a piece of paper,

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either in a program or a book or a newspaper,

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it's a very ephemeral art.

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So is acting.

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But you have the play.

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You can read a script.

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You have a different interpretation.

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A great deal.

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For instance, we say Giselle is the...

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Well, Femal Garda is the oldest ballet still being danced,

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but we're quite sure that very little of what's done now is like what they did.

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By that time, a ballet changes even in one season as dancers put in their own improvements.

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And yeah, it's important to record it.

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Yes, it is.

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And of course, taping has been the great thing.

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Film should have done more, but it was so expensive and difficult.

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And worse than that, the stagehands and musicians' unions

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have helped kill the perpetuating of choreography

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because although any musician could go in anywhere and record on tape or on a piece of wax,

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if he's a pianist, his ability to play, if he's a composer, the piece itself,

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if he's a poet, he could write it down, he's a painter who puts it on canvas,

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he's a choreographer, ha ha, million dollars.

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You have to pay the stagehands and the musicians and everybody.

335
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What about laban notation?

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Do you think that...

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Yes, that's a very wonderful instrument.

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It is not perfect, but it's great that it exists.

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Can you read it?

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No, it's highly...

341
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No, no, it's just as how many people,

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anybody can turn on the faucet in the water,

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how many know what to do if it goes wrong?

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You have to get a plumber.

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Same with notation, there have to be specially trained people.

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Also, we're not sure how accurate the actual notating is.

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For instance, if I say I put my...

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The notation is that the right arm is up.

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You realize up is here and up is here and up is here,

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and where is the palm and where are the fingers and where is the elbow?

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Of course, there are things in notation to show that.

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And what is every other articulation of the body doing

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while arm is up, is the head here or here or here or here?

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So many...

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And if it's a ballet, say, with even 12 people,

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what are they doing and where is their relationship on the thing

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and what is their relationship to the time of the music?

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So that notation is really very laborious.

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They do get a simulation of...

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Were any of your things...