The 92nd Street Y is celebrating 90 years of dance. The ebullient Joan Finkelstein led a panel of eight illustrious dance artists at the Library for the Performing Arts on March 10. A major part of the leadership lineage at the Y, Joan gave us a jam-packed history lesson before introducing the panelists in three groups: First Janet Eilber, director of Martha Graham Dance company; Dante Puleio, director of the Limón Dance company; and Sylvia Waters, artistic director emerita of Ailey II. The second group consisted of choreographers David Dorfman, Doug Varone, and Ronald K. Brown with Arcell Cabuag (Ron’s associate artistic director). The last contingent was three young dancemakers who have been artists in residence at 92NY (as it is now called): Yue Yin, Omar Román De Jésus, and Hope Boykin.
Joan Finkelstein at right. All photos by Jonathan Blanc/NYPL
Joan, director of the Harkness Harkness Foundation for Dance, flashed a recent Dance Index, in which she explains the long lineage of dance at the YM-YWHA. (Go to Dance Index and scroll down.) Joan also reminded us that the vibrant exhibit about dance at the Y is up until August: Dance to Belong: A History of Dance at 92NY: An 150th Anniversary Exhibition.
Everyone was lively while speaking and even while listening. I jotted down a few choice words I remember (I don’t have a recording so these quotes are not exactly verbatim):
Janet Eilber
Janet Eilber: “Some of Martha Graham’s company members were young women in revolution, like Jane Dudley and Anna Sokolow, who brought their own work to the Y.”
Dante Puleio
Dante Puleio: “José gave his dancers agency, not just the steps.”
Sylvia Waters
Sylvia Waters: “The first time I danced at the Y, it was with Hava Kohav, not Alvin. But I saw Alvin’s Blues Suite in his first performance at the Y in 1958, and it was like dessert. The Y was the place to be. I learned to schmooze at the Y.”
Doug Varone
Doug Varone: “Joan introduced the Y to an entirely new generation. When I was in residence there, it felt utopian.”
David Dorfman
David Dorfman: “The Y let you grow. Lucas Hoving taught us how to make a whole dance in a weekend.”
Ronald K. Brown talked about his mentor Mary Anthony, performing at the Y. Arcell Cabuag about rehearsing at the Y: “You’d back up to let the queens pass — Judith Jamison or Sylvia Waters.”
Arcell Cabuag has the mic
Yue Yin: “The Y helped me shape a fast-evolving thing into a technique called FoCo. It’s a blend of contemporary and Chinese, and now two dancers are certified to teach it.
Yue Yin
Omar Román De Jésus
Omar Román De Jésus: “You didn’t always have to do new work. You could look at old work and ask, What makes a work timeless? What makes you want to come back and see it again?”
Hope Boykin
Hope Boykin: “When you have a residency at the Y, you can pay dancers and show them you value them. You are allowed to fail, and they’ll still ask you back because you’re a good risk.”
Joan took that idea of good risk and applied it to the whole 90 years. Then, to wrap up, she asked for “popcorn” answers to the question of what words come to mind that relate to dance at the Y. Among the words that came up were courage, home, and inspiration. David Dorfman, hesitated and then said, “The Y helped me feel my Jewishness.” Thus bringing it back to the beginning, 90 years ago, when William Kolodney, a German Jewish immigrant, believed he could give young people culture and community through the 92nd Street Y.
I loved Carolyn Brown’s book so much when it came out in 2007 that I gushed about it on dancemagazine.com. Now that she has passed away, I’m feeling a great loss and am re-posting it here.
Carolyn Brown and Merce Cunningham rehearsing Suite, 1972, with John Cage at the piano, photo James Klosty
For anyone who has devoted herself to a choreographer and still wonders what he/she thinks of her,
For anyone who has been puzzled by Merce Cunningham and John Cage’s work,
For anyone who loves the Cage/Cunningham work,
For anyone who has ever seen Carolyn Brown dance,
For anyone who separates modern from ballet, Cunningham from Denishawn,
For anyone who sees a continuum between all forms of dance,
For anyone who wants to understand how modern dance morphed into postmodern dance,
Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham (Knopf, 2007), by sublime dancer Carolyn Brown, will give you hours of pleasure, demystification, and insight. This book is one dancer’s account of working with one choreographer. I learned so much about Cunningham’s early work that it made me want to re-see his work right away and apply the new knowledge. Not theoretical knowledge, but something more real: knowing what a struggle it was to become accepted…how many years and tours when their audiences were either indifferent or battling each other…how many years Cunningham, with his unstoppable passion for dance and making dances, met with scant success…how many years John Cage’s enthusiasm and love for Merce kept the company going—in finding performance dates, organizing the tours, keeping the dancers cheerful, and of course, providing music ideas and the idea that was the conceptual foundation of the Cage/Cunningham work. (Which was that separating the choreography, music, and visual decor in the creative process produces an entity in the eyes of the viewer that is different for each person but valid for everyone.)
If you want to know about Cunningham, Cage, Rauschenberg—the people, not the theories—gorge yourself on these 600 pages. Every page has insights and realizations, small and huge, that help us understand the evolution of dance (and art) in the 20th century. Every page carries Brown’s absolute honesty—about herself, her insecurities, her interactions, her observations about Merce. About John. About Merce and John. About Merce and John and Bob (Rauschenberg). You start to realize that though there were many obstacles and few triumphs during those years (1953–73), Merce and John and Bob were a charmed circle that collectively exploded all previous rules of choreography. Their three-way collaboration (though there were other major players like pianist/composer David Tudor) was the crucible in which all of Cunningham’s work is made.
One of the surprises is that Brown, for years, flirted with possibly dancing with the Metropolitan Opera and with Antony Tudor. (She did occasionally take gigs as an extra.) She adored Margaret Craske’s ballet class and would nearly go broke paying up her debt on classes. Another surprise (or non-surprise) is that the book is written beautifully.
Though Brown’s dancing was serene, she was not. Her life was filled with ups and downs and doubts galore. Like any dancer who strives, falters, gets frustrated, gets tunnel-minded, opens up, loses her footing as a performer, has exhilarating moments onstage, she sometimes gets depressed. And Cunningham has his moments of bad behavior, i.e. non-communicativeness, relying on others to do damage control.
But this is also a book about love. The love between a choreographer and dancer of longstanding partnership, however unspoken, demonstrated solely in the gifts they gave each other. He gave her many challenging roles to dance, and she gave him her beautifully fluid and alert dancing, which nudged his ideas of pure movement onto a heavenly plane of existence.
Ashley Bouder and Gilbert Bolden in Firebird, Bouder’s Farewell, ph: Erin Baiano
With the farewell of Ashley Bouder last month, I realize that she is the last of a cluster of brilliant ballerinas I admired at NYCB some years ago. I happened to come upon this review that I wrote of the Winter Season in the May, 2007 issue of Dance Magazine. As I look back, I see that all the principals I describe here have gone on to leadership positions, and the soloists I named at that time have stepped up to be NYCB royalty.
Janie Taylor and Craig Hall in Afternoon of a Faun. This and subsequent photos by Paul Kolnik.
In a season of 38 ballets, the dancing of NYCB’s women came to the fore. In both familiar and new roles, the female principals blossomed into their full ballerina glory. Janie Taylor gave Robbins’ Afternoon of a Faun an outsize sensuality that was mesmerizing…
Ashley Bouder, every inch a creature of impulse, put the fire back in Firebird. She exuded power, she shimmered and shattered the demons. And yet at the end she revealed a certain sadness…
Jenifer Ringer and Philip Neal in Sleeping Beauty
Jenifer Ringer was a burst of innocent joy as Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, and oozed glamour as the woman in black in Balanchine’s Vienna Waltzes …
Wendy Whelan in Mozartiana
Wendy Whelan, slow as a floating cloud, light as air, imbued Balanchine’s Mozartiana with a celestial presence…Jennie Somogyi, jazzy and juicy, had a thrilling physicality in the master’s Symphony in Three Movements. Her Lilac Fairy ruled Sleeping Beauty with such expansive benevolence that I wished she could come and bless my household too…And there was something inexorable about the swooping and soaring of Sofiane Sylve, as dazzling as her crown in Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2.
Among the men, Damian Woetzel was superb, more than superb, in A Suite of Dances, the solo Robbins made for Baryshnikov in 1994. He graciously communed with Ann Kim, the onstage cellist playing Bach. Mischievous and nonchalant, he slipped slyly from earthy folk steps into whizzing multiple turns. He was a welcoming host, virtuoso technician, and wise-guy adolescent all at once.
The soloists, who danced lead roles as often as the principals, were less dependable. We saw a lot of Teresa Reichlen, Sterling Hyltin, Abi Stafford, and Tiler Peck. Hyltin tends to overdo and is weak in her center but was fun and flirty in Martins’ Jeu de Cartes and elegant in Feld’s Intermezzo No 1. Stafford tends to have more determination than flow; however she loosened up in Walpurgisnacht Ballet. In Mauro Bigonzetti’s In Vento, Peck was gutsy in a brazen broken-limb solo and duet, but in Martins’ Friandises, she was a bit brassy. Reichlen’s lovely gentleness and fluidity graced many roles, but she could have used more crispness in the Agon clicking solo and more authority as the Lilac Fairy.
The sprightly Daniel Ulbricht and the full-bodied Sara Mearns were the most consistent soloists. One of the best technicians in the company, Ulbricht bounded with unforced eagerness in all his roles. Mearns had warmth and allure in all of hers.
And some corps members stood out. Wide-eyed Tyler Angle breathed fresh air into classical roles with his ease, smoothness, and line. Stephanie Zungre teased and snapped her paws with expert comic timing as the White Cat in Beauty. Sean Suozzi boldly extended into space with strength and assurance, exemplifying the drama of black and white in Agon. And Kathryn Morgan was achingly lovely as the ingenue in Wheeldon’s Carousel (A Dance).
Slice to Sharp, with DeLuz in front
Choreographically, the highpoint of the season was Jorma Elo’s Slice to Sharp. One of four ballets repeated from last spring’s Diamond Project, it takes NYCB’s non-narrative tradition and rockets it into the future. With its sheer momentum, veneer of anarchism, and a semaphoric code language that lent a touch of mystery, it blows away the orderly lines of both Petipa and Balanchine. Using centrifugal force, it sends the dancers spinning and hurtling through space off-kilter. There are daredevil slides along the floor, windmilling arms, jutting pelvises, big wheeling lifts, a lot of “open sesame” hand moves—the whole piece is a magic carpet ride. The motif of touch-reaction—or rather near-touch-guess-the-reaction—makes it seem like invisible strings tie one action to another. A man touches a woman’s waist and her knees knock inward. A woman whips her leg and just misses the chest of a man in a backbend. Facing upstage with her hand behind her neck, Maria Kowroski slithers her head sideways and back into place behind her hand. It’s a bit of fun voguing, one of many small surprises that spill out and make you keep your eyes peeled. The men dance to the hilt, especially Edwaard Liang and Joaquin De Luz, who dive into their partnering and crazy pirouettes.
The one premiere, Christopher d’Amboise’s Tribute, in honor of Lincoln Kirstein, has clear structures, a gentle humor, and old-time chivalry (lots of bowing and curtsying). Embedded in it are quotes from famed Balanchine ballets, like the sudden opening into first position of Serenade, and the bent-knee jump the men do on the first notes of Agon. It ends with a beautifully spooling pas de deux for Bouder and Tyler Angle. She dances with delicacy and authority, and he really seems to care about her. Twice, she leaps and he assists her mid-leap before taking her for a big lift. You can hear a collective sigh from the audience when they go whirling off.
The major revival was Robbins’ Dybbuk (1974), which seems to be about a wronged couple facing society—or at least a posse of rabbis. (A dybbuk, in Jewish folklore, is a lost soul, a spirit of the dead whose voice enters the body of a living person.) Seven men in black with caps could be cousins of the bottle dancers in Fiddler on the Roof. However, the hieroglyph-like backdrop by Rouben Ter-Arutunian gives it a mystical tinge. The Bernstein score, with its vocal sections à la Stravinsky’s Les Noces, emphasizes community and ritual. The high-point is an entwining duet for Ringer and Benjamin Millepied, as though to get under each other’s skin. But never does the ballet have the power of the original play, The Dybbuk, by S. Ansky, in which the voice of Leah’s dead lover possesses her—two tormented souls in one body.
Russian Seasons with Albert Evans, Rebecca Krohn, John Stafford, and Rachel Rutherford, ph John Ross
Another popular holdover from the Diamond Project was Alexei Ratmansky’s Russian Seasons. With long, bright-colored dresses, it has a folksy charm. There is a wonderful twisty solo for Albert Evans (it’s good to see him move), and for Sean Suozzi a fine solo with sudden jumps. There are funny touches, as when two crouching men, their shirts riding up in back, pull their shirts down in unison. Jenifer Ringer has a nice playful solo and a poignant scene where she walks on a path in the air made by the men’s hands. But some moments are hokey, like dancing in a line-up that looks like a bunny hop. It has the quaint feel of a work from long ago, like, say, Sophie Maslow’s The Village I Knew (1949). More intriguing was Ratmansky’s Middle Duet, performed only once, on opening night. In that brief sketch, with haunting music by Yury Khanon, Maria Kowroski’s elegant attention to simple tendues was somehow transporting.
Mostly, the Balanchine ballets provided the perfect setting for the dancers to shine. But a few of them, for example, Monumentum pro Gesualdo, Duo Concertant, and Stravinsky Violin Concerto, may be losing some of their appeal. There are those who argue that these ballets are no longer performed well by City Ballet. However, I feel that choreographically they represent a time gone by, a time of orderliness and politeness. Ballets that slice through that remoteness (other than Slice to Sharp) are the atmospheric ones: Robbins’ Afternoon of a Faun, Martins’ staging of Sleeping Beauty, Wheeldon’s darkly glamorous Klavier, the Balanchine/Robbins Firebird, Bigonzetti’s In Vento, and Balanchine’s Vienna Waltzes. These ballets pull you into a different world and make you care about the characters. When they are over, you feel nourished by the art, sated with the fullness of people dancing.
Some updates, as of March 1, 2025: Wendy Whelan is Associate Artistic Director of NYCB; Janie Taylor is Artistic Director of Colburn Dance Academy in L.A; Jenifer Ringer (the previous director of Colburn), now teaches at SAB; Maria Kowroski is at the helm of New Jersey Ballet; Edwaard Liang is Artistic Director of The Washington Ballet; Joaquín De Luz stepped down after five years as Artistic Director of Compañía Nacional de Danza. Benjamin Millepied is founder/director of L.A. Dance Project. Jennie Somogyi runs the Jennie Somogyi Ballet Academy in Pennsylvania. Sofiane Sylve leads Ballet San Antonio. Damian Woetzel is President of Juilliard. All this makes me wonder where Ashley Bouder will land in the near future.
