This was a collage of all the dances together.
That's a mask by Remesas.
You can't see that.
That has a key.
It was called play.
It was a charming idea, I think.
That you can't see either.
That's a rope, and I called that toil, and I did this dance with a rope.
That's Juliette, the girl.
That's a very humorous dance.
It's called Delirious Delusions.
It was a comedy.
That was fun to do, too.
That's Frankie and Johnny.
Maybe you've seen that.
It's been on television.
I did that with Bentley Stone, who was my partner for years and years.
He was a great dancer.
He died just last month.
But we did that together.
That was fun to do.
It was considered very daring at the time.
I know we took it to Paris.
Dance in Paris with Frankie and Johnny.
They were absolutely shocked.
They said, it's not a ballet.
It was done so -called in the vernacular.
That's Frankie and Johnny in the end.
That's a very humorous dance.
That's a very humorous dance.
That's also Frankie and Johnny, to get to see how good that song was there.
You remember, don't you, Arn? Of course you do.
And this is Bentley also in the Boise e la Cicina Rita.
That's a ballet I did called Love Song, which is quite lovely.
But, it's gone.
That's Romeo and Juliet again.
And this is the Zephyr and Pharoah.
This was a little comedy, which is the Queen of the World.
This is called Park Avenue Atlas.
We danced at the Rainbow Room in New York.
I don't know if you've ever heard of that.
That's a very swank, sort of a night clubbing place in New York.
And I had to compete with the beefsteak.
People were all eating all the time.
I found that rather difficult, so I knocked myself out in this dance, trying to make them look at me instead of eating their beefsteak.
And that's E .E.
Cummings.
Do you know the poet E .E.
Cummings? Do you? This was His Quistal Goes Things.
No, this is His Quistal Goes Things.
I did a whole bunch of E .E.
Cummings poems.
I think they're marvelous to dance to, and I like to speak and dance at the same time, which was considered very outrageous at the time.
That's another one.
But do you know the one, the Cambridge ladies who live in furry souls, are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds, also with the church's pious at lastings adulterers, unscented, in the shape of spirit, that they believe in Christ and longfellow, both dead, are invariably interested in so many things, that the present writing one still divided fingers, knitting for the, is it poles perhaps? For permanent thesis, calling down these scandals.
This is in Professor Lee.
The Cambridge ladies do not care about Cambridge, if sometimes in its box of sky -locked moon corners, the moon rattles like a frightened, angry candy.
Well, that was the Cambridge ladies, and I did a whole series of those.
I like E .E.
Cummings because if you read them long enough, they mean something.
When you first read them, they sound, well, flettable about, you know.
But anyway, I think he's a great poet.
Oh, that's Rebecca Sandor -Styrfan, Perish Miserably by H.
Bellack.
I did a lot of little limericks.
I had to lighten up my program a bit so people would laugh.
And that's A Lot of Wine Among Flowers, I Alone, Drinking Without Compagny.
That was inspired by that lovely statue in the art institute of the Goddess of Mercy.
And that's Devin Harlow.
Oh, this is Carl Sandberg's songs.
Carl Sandberg's songs.
This is I Had a Horse and His Name was Bill.
Woody ran, he couldn't stand still.
He ran away one day, and I ran with him.
That's the same horse.
This is also the same horse.
There were a whole series of little ones.
This is Obe Joyful, the one that's made the most of spring.
And this was I'm Sad and I'm Lonely.
My Heart Will Break, My Sweetie Loves Another.
I Wish I Were Dead.
And there's Bentley Stowell and me and some of those Stravinsky things.
I'm going to go fast because I've got some more to show you, and I think I'm going on too long.
Can you tell me when I should stop, Lauren, if you get bored? This is me in my house, my home.
My husband did all those pictures of all the dancers.
He's a French artist.
He did all the pictures of the dancers on the walls.
And this is Nuria that teaches having fun.
Now we'll go to the ballets.
Can you change? What? Oh, we have to change now.
So I'll show you some of my ballets now.
How much longer should I go on? What? Can we have an hour more? Yes.
All right.
Well, now that's where I got all my ideas was by making dances all myself.
Now, these are ballets.
That one is called Oak Street Beach.
You've all been to Oak Street Beach.
And this is when I was trying desperately to be American.
And Oak Street Beach seems about the most American thing I've ever known.
The skyscrapers right there on the beach practically.
That's Oak Street Beach also.
See how realistic it is.
Oh, that's here, that's the first ballet that Aaron Copland ever did.
And I commissioned it from him.
I thought he was talented.
And this was a ballet about a child on a law court.
And it was interesting.
He's, of course, a great composer.
That's the same ballet that Mastiff and Jury, Remesov did those costumes.
You know, it's very important in ballets that you pick the right people to work with.
You have to pick a good composer.
You have to pick a good designer for your costumes, a good designer for your sets.
And then the dancers can make you or break you.
I mean, you can do a perfectly lousy ballet, and if you have wonderful dancers, I'd say it's a good ballet and vice versa.
So you have to be very careful who you pick.
Oh, this one was called American Pattern.
This is an interesting ballet.
I did that in 48, wasn't it? 37.
I'm never going to remember days.
I'm sorry, I apologize.
And that was a ballet about a wife who didn't want to be domestic.
She was bored with domesticity.
And these three women that come in represent domesticity.
And she was always trying different things.
She tried to, well, she didn't like to be a housekeeper.
Oh, this is the one, the Bentley Stone.
Oh, that was the Millicent Museum.
She was attracted to him and was going to stay with him forever.
But he was too much for her, so she finally at the end goes back to being a housewife and bored.
That's Frankie and Johnny.
That's Frankie and Johnny also with Nellie Blythe.
This is Frankie and Johnny also.
That's what's that Frankie and Johnny, the Bentley Stone and myself.
That's Carmen.
Do you all know Carmen? I guess everybody in the world knows Carmen.
And you can't fail with Carmen.
I found that out.
You can do anything to it.
You can sing it, even badly, and people will love it.
You can dance.
So I've done four different versions of Carmen.
And I finally gave up.
I said I can't do any more of Carmen's.
This is the first one I did.
This is the contraband one.
This is kind of ringing contraband.
That's Walter Cameron.
And that's Carmen also.
It's the first one I did.
This is myself in the middle of Carmen.
And that's Bentley Stone as Escamillo.
I did it with Escamillo as a fascist.
And Jose as a loyal soldier.
And Carmen didn't know how to do with politics.
She didn't know anything about them.
She was just interested in the two men.
And I think that's kind of an interesting version of it.
Actually, somebody else just did one now.
I think it was Beverly Sills.
She used that same idea.
But just last year, mine was, I don't know what date this was.
Do you know the date? 39.
39? Well, that was a long time ago.
And then I did a Carmen, oh, every four.
Oh, that's me on the floor dead with Walter Cameron as host.
That ain't killing me.
That was a very dramatic ending.
And that's the same thing.
And this is Prudhusha Klekovich.
And Kevin Johnson.
They were wonderful in Carmen.
This was done by Bernard Diddy.
Have you ever heard of him? I bet you have.
You see, you don't know very much.
You're here to learn.
But this is a strange way to kiss, but it's very effective, Valerie.
You might try it some time.
You like kissing that way.
Kissing in a perfect arabesque.
And that's a big kiss too.
Oh, now this is the last Carmen I did.
You see how different, this is completely in the, without any of the broccoli ruffles and anything.
And we took these costumes, they were made in Paris.
And when we unpacked them, the wardrobe mistress said, oh, my goodness, that is in Carmen.
I could do a better Carmen than that.
You don't have the ruffles, red ruffles, and lots of ruffles, and ruffles, and ruffles.
So you see, she didn't know.
And this was by a very great artist, Andre Del Fou.
And I think this was the most interesting Carmen that we did.
But you see how you can take Carmen and do practically anything with it.
This was a, I did this for the Dance Theatre of Harlem.
They're all black.
And they did it marvelously.
That's Lydia Barker, she's a black girl.
She was a terrific Carmen.
This is Carmina Barana, this is the figure of the, do you know the music to Carmina Barana? It's wonderful, isn't it? Well, I did, first I did it with a lyric opera.
It was an opera.
And there was a lot of dancing in it.
And I loved the music, so I finally made a ballet out of it.
It was very successful.
I don't know if I have any more pictures of it.
Oh, no, this is the bells, the Bissamo Novici.
You know the poem, I suppose, the bells, the bells, the bells, the tinted tangle -lations of the bells.
And that's a very interesting set.
Noguchi designed that.
And with each, the gold, the silver bells, the golden bells, and so forth, the set kept rising up until it was like this.
Wait a minute.
Oh.
Ah.
No.
You see what an interesting set that is? And then at the end of the ballet, the whole church collapsed down as when all the bells were finished.
It was a very interesting idea that he had there.
So you see how many things go into the making of a ballet.
It isn't just the choreography at all.
It isn't just the dancers.
It takes a little bit of everything.
This is Billy Sunday.
You might have seen this on television.
We've done this on television.
And Andy Wendick here, he did a long prelude to it that is so interesting.
It was all about Billy Sunday.
I don't know if you know who he is.
Do you know who Billy Sunday was? You do.
He was a person who told the Bible stories in the vernacular.
He told them in slang.
I've always been interested in the Bible.
I love the Bible.
I wanted to do some Bible stories, but I thought, oh my God, everybody's done Bible ballets.
I've got to have a point of view.
I did something different.
So then I discovered about Billy Sunday.
So I did this ballet.
This is Bathsheba with her bath.
That's the wise and foolish Burgess.
That's Frederick Franklin there.
I don't know if you've heard of him.
He's a very famous dancer.
And you see the wise version in white and the foolish version there on the floor.
It's amusing, I think.
This is Danila.
Have you ever heard of her? Well, you have to.
She's one of the greatest dancers that ever lived.
And she doesn't dance anymore.
She's the teacher now in New York.
But she was a terrific personality, a Russian.
She had to speak a few lines in this.
She was marvelous in it.
Well, this skips right away.
Now, this is a ballet that I did called Revenge.
And you know, I worked with opera so much.
I love opera.
I adore opera.
And they didn't rehearse the ballets till the very end because they had to pay overtime or something for the seniors.
So we waited till the end.
I had to sit all through the whole operas to wait for the ballet.
And I found them so marvelous.
The music was so marvelous.
But I didn't like the way they looked.
And so then I started making a...
Come on in and shut the door and stop talking.
And I don't mean to be rude, but I can't talk while you're talking.
If you want to talk, I'd be delighted to hear you.
Are you guys willing to say? Whatever you say.
What was I talking about? Oh, I was talking about doing the operas and the ballets.
So I did...
This one was called Revenge.
And it was based on a Trovatore.
And I made an opera, usually two or three hours long.
So I did them all in about one hour.
I did it with dancing.
And they were very successful.
Oh, interesting, I think.
That's Clave.
He's an artist that you should all know.
That's this design from Leonoro.
And that's Alicia Marker.
Have you ever heard of her? No? Well, she's one of the greatest dancers in everybody.
She was terrific.
She's a very frightening person.
She takes centripetal, where I go in the summer, I used to go every summer, to learn this part.
And I made a terribly hard dance.
Oh, quick and little and on toes and sticking around.
And I thought she never once did it.
She'd say after we'd been working for about an hour, she'd say, I wasn't in time to go to the beach.
I thought she could.
I never once saw her do it.
But when she came to the performance, she was absolutely starling.
She was so good, so quick.
But she was a sort of a...
I wouldn't suggest any of you try that.
It's better to rehearse your dances.
Oh, well, that's the gypsy scene in the same ballet.
You can't very well see this.
This is the Azucena.
It's a part of the work with Azucena and her son, Manrico.
You have to know all these stories to be able to see what...
You can't see them very well here either.
That was by Clavet, who, as I said, was a very great artist and designer.
And this is me, I, if I don't be correct.
This is I as Salome, which is a rather unusual interpretation of Salome.
It wasn't...
I think it's interesting anyway.
Remesov did the costume.
It was all Lacey Silver Russells.
I'd call it the Daughter of Perodias.
I think it's quite an interesting conception.
And this is Alicia Markleburg in the Mary Widow.
Now, the Mary Widow was my most famous ballet.
Maybe you've seen it.
Did you see it on television? It took a Peabody Award.
I did it for the Larry Garber in 1955.
I do know that date.
And we've been doing it ever since.
Ever since everybody's been picking up.
It's often to be a failure, but it's even worse to be a success.
Because when you're a success, then you're stuck with it all your life.
And that's...
This is a lovely picture of her.
The costumes were so beautiful.
That was all white, pink, rose.
