Tag Archives: Andre Eglevsky

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VAI – Keepers of the Dance

Courtesy of VAI Music

courtesy of VAI Music

This morning, I had the pleasure of interviewing Allan Altman of Video Artists International — the label that has been preserving and bringing to the public, many historic fine arts performances on DVD and CD for years. We’d originally gotten in touch with each other partly because he’d found this blog and commented on last month’s entry about the Tanaquil Le Clercq documentary. I was thrilled that he agreed to this interview and found it fascinating to hear how they’re able to do what they do. I thought you, dear readers, perhaps would also be interested in their behind-the-scenes work as well as new releases they’re working on producing. Below is my interview with Allan:

I see by your website, VAI is enjoying its 30th Anniversary. Can you tell me how VAI got started, who established the company?

Video Artists International was founded by Ernest Gilbert in 1983. Ernie had been an executive at RCA Records in the days when they were still doing major classical projects, such as complete opera recordings. When Ernie began the VAI label, he was a pioneer in the field of performing arts programming on home video. It’s hard to imagine it today, but in 1983, the ability to see complete operas and ballets in your home – on demand, so to speak – was a new and exciting concept. Ernie was the President and CEO of VAI until he retired several years ago, when Edward Cardona (previously the company’s General Manager) took over.

As Production Coordinator for VAI, what is your role in producing the various DVDs and CDs?

At the risk of mixing metaphors: many roles, many hats, from soup to nuts. I’m involved, of course, in the selection of the programming (more on that below). Then there are the multitude of issues relating to licensing and clearances, involving the copyright-holders of the videos, music rights, performers clearances, etc. These tasks are divided between myself and Ed Cardona. We also work together on the look of the video packaging, which often involves more research and clearances for photos or other images. Of course, the “main course,” if you will, is the actual video material, which is often of historic vintage. I oversee the video editing and restoration, audio re-mastering, etc.

I see that you produce and publish a variety of DVDs and CDs across different genres in the world of historic artistic performances — from music, opera, ballet to musical theatre and jazz. With so much material out there to choose from, how do you decide what you’re going to produce and publish?

Everyone on the staff over the years has either been a musician or an avid follower of the arts. For example, founder Ernie Gilbert was an accomplished dancer in his youth and is still today a very fine amateur pianist.  So, over the years, while we remain a commercial enterprise and aim to release products that will generate public interest, every potential release has been filtered through our artistic sensibilities. Like any arts-based organization, we cross our fingers and hope there will be enough people out there in the buying public whose tastes match ours! More specifically, there are what we could call “personal projects” – releases that have been tied closely to individual staff members. For example, Ed Cardona is a flutist on a professional level and jumped at the chance to approach the legendary flutist Julius Baker about issuing some of Baker’s recordings. A friendship developed between them and the result was two volumes of live recitals on CD, performances  which had never before been made available to the public.

There is another very important component to our choice of material: the input we receive from customers. We regularly receive emails and phone calls with suggestions of programs to release. Sometimes these are programs which we already know about and are already researching, but sometimes we are made aware of something new, and that’s always very exciting. We are right now on the trail of a Balanchine-choreographed ballet produced by Radio-Canada that had not been listed in Radio-Canada’s database. Thanks to a call from a ballet fan alerting us to the existence of this program, we are now doing the research (I can’t divulge details yet) and hope to include it in our ongoing New York City Ballet in Montreal series.

Following the previous question, however do you go about your research and actually getting the material to publish? Can you describe the process for my readers?

Since the company has been around for 30 years, we already have close connections to a number of archives. Like our long-standing relationship with Canadian Television (made up of two divisions: the CBC in Toronto and Radio-Canada in Montreal), which makes up an important segment of our catalog. From CBC and Radio-Canada, we have ballets with Nureyev, operas with Joan Sutherland, instrumental programs featuring such legends as Jean-Pierre Rampal, etc. In other cases, we search out the copyright-holder of the program and proceed from there. Sometimes the performers (or their estates) need to be cleared separately, and we embark on the detective work of finding these people, a task definitely made easier by the existence of the Internet. Of course, in the process, there is the thrill of connecting with legendary artists of the past – dancers, actors, opera singers – many of whom had never seen their performances, which were telecast live before the days of video recorders, TiVo, or YouTube.

In particular for this blog, can you talk about upcoming Dance DVDs that will be available to the public for sale?

We are right now in the process of releasing a series entitled New York City Ballet in Montreal. These DVDs feature performances from the 1950s and ’60s, many with the original casts, and all with Balanchine present in the TV studio. In fact, we have learned through Joel Lobenthal (co-editor of Ballet Review, and the author of the insert notes for the series), who has interviewed many of the dancers in these programs, that, in the course of these television productions, Balanchine would occasionally make adjustments to the choreography based on his ability to view the dancers from different camera angles – adjustments that sometimes were brought back to New York to become part of the standard performing editions.

The third volume will include a very rare scene from Coppélia that Balanchine choreographed specifically for a 1954; it stars Tanaquil Le Clercq and André Eglevsky. The first two volumes are already available. As per the press release:

This first volume (http://www.vaimusic.com/product/4571.html) features two of Balanchine’s most beloved ballets. A 1957 performance of SERENADE stars Jacques d’Amboise, Diana Adams, and Patricia Wilde. Balanchine himself appears on screen to discuss ORPHEUS, performed here in 1960 by Nicholas Magallanes and Francisco Moncion dancing the roles they created for the work’s 1948 premiere, and Violette Verdy as Eurydice.

The second volume (http://www.vaimusic.com/product/4572.html) includes three complete Balanchine ballets. CONCERTO BAROCCO stars Diana Adams, Tanaquil Le Clercq, and Jacques d’Amboise. PAS DE DIX features principal dancers Maria Tallchief and André Eglevsky. AGON, a work Balanchine and Igor Stravinsky created for NYCB in 1957, includes original cast members Diana Adams, Arthur Mitchell, Todd Bolender, and Roy Tobias, in a 1960 performance. Rounding out the second disc is an interview with Balanchine as well as the Grand pas de deux from Balanchine’s THE NUTCRACKER performed by Adams and Nicholas Magallanes.

Please visit their website, www.vaimusic.com, for more information on their entire catalog of DVDs and CDs — find them on Facebook by clicking here — and to keep up with the latest from VAI, sign up for their special offers and new release alerts here.

 

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Marina Eglevsky – A Legacy of Dance, Part 3

This month, we continue with Part 3 of my interview with Marina Eglevsky. We take up where we left off last month, with her move to the Bay Area.

Marina teaching at Shawl Anderson, Berkeley CA

Marina teaching at Shawl Anderson, Berkeley CA

Q:  How many years now have you been in the Bay Area?

A:  I came here in 1994.

Q:  I’m sure my readers at Adults in Ballet would like to know this – I know you’ve talked about this that you felt like your father Andre Eglevsky had really spearheaded the whole idea of lay people, of adults studying ballet – can you talk a little bit about that – he had his school attached to his ballet company, how did he come to invite people into his home to study ballet with him? I’m curious about how all of that happened?

A:  Well he didn’t invite anybody – he was so famous that people would come to him – and his school wasn’t that big, one tiny studio that my mother usually taught kids in, and one bigger studio but not very big and he taught his classes in there and there were so many people, it was so crowded – we had children in intermediate and advanced classes. And at the beginning, so many people would come into his advanced class and of any age and he allowed that, but at some point they decided to separate it, so they put the adults in their own class and kept the advanced for the advanced students.

Q:  So the adults that came into the advanced class before you separated them, did they have to have a certain amount of technique to get into that class?

A:  No, his premise was that – he welcomed most everybody and he felt that if you were a beginner, you stand in the back and you learn. And it’s the very best way to learn, is that you don’t stay in the front, you stay in the back and you watch and you pick up. He thought that was the best way of picking up – and I think they did that in Europe.  I’m not exactly sure that he was the very first one in history that had adult classes – maybe not in the U.S., but in Europe, because I know like (Olga) Preobrajenska and Cecchetti, I think they had classes with adults in them and he studied with those teachers. And that’s the way I am, I would see adults come in there that wouldn’t know anything. Especially the guys – not women – the guys – he’d see a guy in the street and say why don’t you come into ballet class?

Q:  Really…  just because of the way they looked or the way they moved?

A:  For instance, he invited a school teacher from down the street into class, and he really improved, he started performing – a lot of them would start performing, my father would have them in productions – we were doing productions all the time. I still feel that way – I teach at Shawl – I welcome adults. I have people at all levels and ages – I am just totally open to that, because of my father.

Q:  What I see as a potential problem with adult classes, is the lack of proper correction in class. That’s a big concern I have for ballet training – is having schools that have reputable training – that teachers will take time with each adult, for proper placement.

A:  Well in my father’s class you got corrected, he looked at you as learning how to dance and if you could fit in a production, he’d put you in a production. Like this man, who he brought in – he would play the father or the mother in productions – you’re in class your treated as if your wanting to be a dancer. And then he – there were so many adults, the classes were so big – he broke it up, so there were separate adult classes and then he broke those classes into beginning and intermediate dance, so there were 2 levels.

Q:  So, what keeps you going now? What keeps you teaching, what keeps you doing the bodywork – is it the natural passion you found as a child?

A:  The bodywork is more of a passion – of teaching too I think really a selfish thing – a passion to understand myself better. You know I have to in order to teach – I really have to understand myself and who I am and my – I rekindle my relationship  to the essence of – because I’m not a dancer anymore – to the essence of ballet and of movement what ballet is about, what makes something work in a person – and that fascinates me.

Q:  Interesting… so, a movement that might work for a particular person, particular technique, with a particular personality, might not work for another person?

A:  Well, it’s on many different levels – a level of what would work for this class today – what would make it worthwhile for this class in general – what would work for people in class. Then, there’s what would work for training pre-professionals. I like to gear my focus how to produce that individual so they would become professional material.

Q:  For your private ballet coaching and group classes – do you teach weekly?

A:  At Shawl Anderson in Berkeley, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach an intermediate/advanced adult class. And I also offer private ballet coaching for adults and pre-professionals by appointment.

Q:  The bodywork that you do – how would people find out about your bodywork and what are the different methods you use in your sessions with clients?

A:  It’s generally word of mouth from my clients – I haven’t sold myself that much.

I do medical massage – and that incorporates acupressure, deep tissue and energetic work, so I do a lot of energy work. And I do alignment work and I look at a person’s alignment and work them through processes and hands on work. I also do rosen method bodywork and also I’ve trained extensively on the gyrotonic machine and I work extensively on that for alignment, but I’m not certified on that. I have a machine in my office and I use some of the movements.

And this concludes my interview with Marina Eglevsky – truly a glimpse into a fascinating life and she carries on the legacy of dance instilled in her by some of greatest legends of the ballet world.

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Marina Eglevsky – A Legacy of Dance, Part 1

Marina Eglevsky on the cover of Dance Magazine, January 1969.

Marina Eglevsky, born into ballet royalty, started dancing very early – almost as soon as she could walk. Her parents, Andre Eglevsky, premier danseur with George Balanchine’s American Ballet (which later became the New York City Ballet) and her mother, Leda Anchutina, also a soloist with NYCB, brought to her a legacy of dance that is a fascinating account. I had the great pleasure of interviewing her about her life – from her growing up years, being taught by George Balanchine, and on to when she took the spotlight in her own right as a dancer, first with the New York City Ballet, then onto Harkness Ballet and the Hamburg Ballet with John Neumeier, among others. Her father Andre is also credited with – if not the first – then surely the first in this country, of inviting amateur adults into his ballet classes at The Eglevsky Ballet school. What follows is Part 1 of my interview with Marina.

Q:  Marina, you are the daughter of Andre Eglevsky, widely regarded as the greatest male classical dancer of his generation, and you began studying ballet with George Balanchine and now stage his ballets for other companies. When did you start dancing? Where did your passion for dance come from?:

A:  I just started dancing, my parents were not really involved in whether I did or didn’t – but, once I was in it, then they became involved in how I was working in ballet.

By the age of 2 or 3 I was sitting around in rehearsals backstage. At that point, my father went on a major tour in Europe, and when he was rehearsing or busy – I would disappear and start just dancing somewhere – my mother said she would lose me all the time and to find me, would look for the crowd of people because I would be in the middle of the crowd dancing – I drew the crowd with my dancing.

My father had a performance to do on major network and was running around the studio and somehow I got into a Howdy Doody set and they whisked me away and put me in someone’s office. I remember sitting in this office and there was a pair of pointe shoes, they were really little – I just kept looking at them, and then the lady in the office gave them to me and I put those on and took Balanchine’s class in those shoes until they disintegrated and shredded.

I was allowed to take Balanchine’s class at a really young age and take company class, even though I hung underneath the barre, he would correct me. I was able to reach the barre and so he would teach me turnout, etc.  Everyday I came in with my father, and I would be in company class. By 5 or 6 they started to put me in Nutcracker and then I was more or less taking regular classes at the school and being involved in performing Nutcracker.  After various roles, eventually I grew too big for the party scene and auditioned for Clara and really wanted it, but I was too small for the costumes. I performed in Pulcinella up until 12 or 13 and by then I was a teenager and really questioned whether I wanted to continue in dance since I’d already put in a lot of time and I wanted to get more involved with regular school.

At that time, my father started his own company and school, (while still dancing for NYCB) – The Eglevsky Ballet – and out of his school he would do his own guesting appearances. At one of those guest appearances he had two heart attacks and that was end of his career so when he recovered, he went more into his own school, and Mr. Balanchine said “Please, I will help you with your school and your company and please come and work with my school” (SAB, School of American Ballet). I was around 12 at the time – it was a big change. I thought maybe I should stay around and go to school and be a doctor. I asked my parents what they thought – they said:  we don’t care. So that made me angry and I thought I’d  show them – so I decided to continue dancing. I went over to American Ballet Theatre (ABT) and focused in on a teacher there.

Eventually, Mr. Balanchine did take me into NYCB at 14 – and it was like a 2ndhome there – it was just part of the course. Yet, I was afraid to be only one kind of dancer, a Balanchine dancer – and, I was also under the shadow of my father – part of me wanted to get away from that and be on my own. Rebekah Harkness of the Harkness Ballet – had the kind of choreography I felt an affinity for and it was the kind of repertory I wanted to do – so, one day I went up to the director and asked to be in Harkness – and they ended up saying yes.

Q:  What was your experience like with Harkness – how long did you stay?

Marina with The Harkness Ballet.
Courtesy of Marina Eglevsky.

One of the 1st choreographers in Harkness was John Neumeier, and he’d expressed a great interest in me. At that time I was 15 or 16, and I didn’t understand the implications of a choreographer liking me, otherwise if I’d understood I would’ve stayed with Balanchine. While I was at Harkness, I married a dancer there which my parents were also against – after Harkness folded in the 70’s, we worked a little bit with Eglevsky Ballet and tried to heal and mend things with my parents.

After that, we were taken into Maurice Bejart’s company – we stayed with them until contracts started, and while we were waiting for them to begin, it didn’t feel right to me, but my husband was thrilled. Once I was married, my husband and I had a goal to stay together – which made it difficult to get a job. We went to Stuttgart, got a yes, but it didn’t come through, so then we went to ABT, I got a yes but not my husband, so I didn’t go. One day I was hanging around in ABT in the studios, and a man from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet was there, and asked if we wanted to be in the company, and they had this amazing repertory – like Harkness – so we said sure. So we went there – it was wonderful, one of the first choreographer’s that came to work with us was John Neumeier, and we worked with the Winnipeg company for awhile. John said he was starting a new company in Hamburg, Germany and “would you come to Hamburg?” We both said yes to joining Hamburg Ballet – John’s still there – (he was from Stuttgart, but branched off to the Hamburg Ballet.)

End of Part 1 – stay tuned for next month’s installment.