New York City Ballet rehearsal of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with Edward Villella and George Balanchine, choreography by George Balanchine (New York) The New York Public Library Digital Collections. (photo © Martha Swope)
During a cultural exchange trip to Moscow in October 2007, I discovered that Dana Gioia and I share a love of ballet and of George Balanchine’s choreography in particular. It was fitting that we made this discovery while in the country that gave us Balanchine, Nureyev, Makarova, and Baryshnikov among other great dancers.
Dana and my husband David Lehman have known each other since they were young men. They worked together on the 2018 volume of The Best American Poetry. In 2003, while Dana served as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, he and David shared the stage at the National Book Festival, where they read favorite American poems to a rapt audience. The trip was memorable for many reasons, chief among them that Dana arranged for David’s mother to join us. She was 88 at the time, and told us that the visit to D.C. and breakfast at the White House was a high point in her life. As a girl she had barely escaped the Nazis, and there she was, with her son, at the White House, thanks to Dana! It was thrilling.
Dana is an internationally celebrated poet, translator, and librettist. You can find out more about him here. I wanted to know more about Dana's experience of ballet. He generously agreed to answer these questions during a recent e-mail exchange.
SL: In his essay “How to Enjoy Ballet” the choreographer George Balanchine writes that “It is strange that many people think ballet is a difficult thing to enjoy. Ballet isn’t any harder to enjoy than a novel, a play, or a poem—it’s as simple to like as a baseball game” and “[we] don’t have to understand [the language of ballet] in detail to enjoy ballet, any more than we have to know about the pigments of the painter or the complex meters of the poet.” Do you agree?
DG: I came to ballet slowly. Although I was immersed in music as a high school and college student, ballet wasn’t part of my formation. I only saw ballet three or four times, always because I was interested in the music being choreographed. Ballet was expensive and felt too genteel for my taste. In the 1960s and 70s, dance in California had a sort of hand-me-down quality—conventional classics safely done mostly by visiting companies.
I started to see ballet regularly only as an adult in New York with my girlfriend and soon-to-be wife. She and a group of friends bought a large block of season tickets at the New York City Ballet. Someone in the group usually cancelled, so I would pick up the spare ticket.
In New York dance had an enormous sense of energy. The art was entirely different from what I had experienced in Los Angeles and San Francisco. During the twenty years I lived in New York there was no question that the NYCB was the preeminent performing arts institution in the city. The greatest choreographer who ever lived had formed an astonishing company to perform his masterpieces. Evenings there were an astonishment.
SL: The dance critic Arlene Croce writes of dance “afterimages,” those visions that remain in the mind’s eye long after exposure to the original. I have many such images of ballet that I can conjure (perhaps the most potent is of Karin von Aroldingen’s “siren” wrapping herself around Mikhail Baryshnikov’s “prodigal” in George Balanchine’s “Prodigal Son”). Which afterimages endure for you?
DG: Speaking of Prodigal Son, I have never forgotten the final moment of that overwhelming ballet. When I watched Mikhail Baryshnikov climb the upright body of his father and then fold himself into his arms as if he were a baby, it brought me to tears.
New York City Ballet production of "The Prodigal Son" with Mikhail Baryshnikov, choreography by George Balanchine (1979) New York Public Library Digital Collection (photo © Martha Swope)
I have many other striking memories for New York City Ballet, especially of Suzanne Farrell. But if I had to pick my favorite moment with any ballerina in that golden age, it would be Helene Alexopoulos as the heartbroken Helena in Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Lost in her romantic despair, she dances around what she thinks is a tree, but which is actually the invisible Puck.
SL: Say you find yourself with an extra ticket to the New York City Ballet and you are going to invite a friend who has never seen a ballet to join you. What ballets would be on the ideal program, where in the theater would your seats be, and how would you advise your friend to help him or her overcome their skepticism?
DG: I would pick any of a dozen great Balanchine works based on well-known scores. I feel if the person recognizes the music, it’s easier to understand the dance. A couple of obvious choices would be Serenade, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Concerto Barocco, and Liebeslieder Waltzes. If the person didn’t know that much classical music, I would pick Slaughter on Tenth Avenue or Union Jack.
If I wanted to make the person addicted to ballet for the rest of his or her life, I would pick Jerome Robbins’s homage to Fred Astaire, I’m Old Fashioned.
I would not start with abstract works set to difficult scores such as Agon or Episodes.
Suzanne Farrell as "the stripper" and Arthur Mitchell as "the hoofer" in George Balanchine's "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" (1968) The New York Public Library Digital Collections. (photo © Martha Swope)
SL: What is the ideal audience for ballet?
DG: The actual audience tends to have more women than men because more girls than boys study dance. It helps to know any art from the inside.
At the old New York City Ballet, there was surely an ideal audience for a poet. The audience was full of literary people—much more so than at the Metropolitan Opera across the plaza. During the intermissions, writers would gather around Edward Gorey, occasionally wearing his famous fur coat, who attended every performance. They would critique the performance and gossip. I would talk to Howard Moss, Edward Albee, Samuel Lipman, Richard Howard, Frederick Morgan, Paula Deitz. Sandy McClatchy, and perhaps James Merrill.
SL: Is it true that during your tenure as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (2003-2009) you were able to increase funding for the arts? Were there dance programs that you were especially pleased to support?
DG: I was able to increase the budget of the NEA every year during my chairmanship. That allowed me to sponsor both the creation of new dance works but also help American dance companies tour. That brought dance to many communities that didn’t have their own groups.
I had a great Dance director at the agency, Doug Sonntag. Together we worked to increase funding as well as to support a special dance critics institute—an intensive two-week workshop at a major dance festival to train newspaper arts reporter to increase coverage of regional and local companies. I also made sure that a major dancer, choreographer, or company was on the list for each year’s National Medal of Arts. We honored Suzanne Farrell, Twyla Tharp, Tommy Tune, Tina Ramirez, and Cyd Charisse, as well as the Jose Limon and Jacob’s Pillow companies. It is important for America to honor its artists.
I gave several thousand speeches as NEA chairman. The only one that terrified me was when I was asked to speak about the NEA and the City Ballet on the stage of the New York State Theater with the company waiting in the wings about to perform. I felt as if I were profaning a sacred space. I didn’t make a fool of myself, but I have never been happier to get off stage.
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(Ed note: If you happen to be in NYC at the end of the month, you can catch a performance of Balanchine's "Prodigal Son" and "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" as part of the "Short Stories" program. I'll be there! More information here.)
