Dance Trailblazers Leave Signposts - ballet choreographers William, Harold and Lew Christensen - Brief Article

Dance Magazine, Oct, 2000 by Richard Philp

THE FASCINATING SAGA of dance in the American West is filled with legends, fraught with peril and boasts a host of determined, colorful pioneers. Geographically as well as artistically, the territory is vast. Three brothers--Willam, Harold and Lew Christensen, born in Utah of Mormon stock--led the way in the twentieth century.

My first encounter with these men provided a thought-provoking glimpse into the nature of stardom. The brothers had been selected that year, 1973, to receive the prestigious annual Dance Magazine Award. The fourth recipient, Rudolf Nureyev, who had the uninhibited charisma of a rock star, was just passing the peak of his astonishing career. Through his performances and outspoken presence he fueled a great surge of interest in all forms of dance worldwide, but especially ballet.

When Nureyev showed up that afternoon at our awards party--and we were not at all sure that the bristly superstar would show up at all--he turned out to be taciturn, uneasy and distracted, like a frightened jackrabbit. Friends of Nureyev--and there were many, most of whom furiously defend this driven genius--have since assured me that he must have been having a bad day. One of many, I am sure.

Why am I telling you this? In contrast to Nureyev, the pioneering brothers--who against all odds had gotten folks in the West to take the cause of professional dance seriously--were glowing, open, golden, smiling. Like Nureyev a generation later, they championed the cause of men in professional dance in an era when male dancers were regarded with suspicion, if not open hostility. They had welcomed generations of dancers into their various domains. They were glad to meet you--always, I suspect, with the hope of converting you to at least one of their causes. It had always been confusing just which brother did what and when, and so they endured our confusion. They told amusing stories about their beginnings in vaudeville, their participation in the Balanchine/Kirstein efforts to create an American dance, about the early years in Hollywood and the golden era of Broadway. They were good men who had done helpful things for many people. They had changed lives.

Willam, the eldest, born in 1902, is now the lone survivor of the trio. "Everything is just fine these days," he told me in Salt Lake, "except my body is wearing out." In June, he was presented with a lifetime achievement award from a young organization called the Council of Organized Researchers of Pedagogical Studies of Ballet, acronym CORPS de Ballet. Having garnered countless honors over the years, Willam accepted this one with pleasure at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he founded the first university degree program in ballet and created the company we know today as Ballet West. Willam also founded Portland Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet, where brother Harold ran the distinguished school that has turned out generations of dancers who are now at the top of their field around the world. He was the first American choreographer to set Coppelia, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.

Buoyed by a renewed interest at the end of the nineteenth century in the healthfulness of fresh air and exercise, higher education began to include gymnastics and "aesthetic dancing" (such as around maypoles or in free-flowing draperies). By the 1920s, what was then called modern dance was taught in several university dance programs. In Wisconsin, Margaret H'Doubler created a sophisticated philosophy of dance education based on scientific principles. (See Janice Ross's new book, Moving Lessons: Margaret H'Doubler and the Beginning of Dance in American Education.) Modern dance was far more compatible with the university setting than ballet, which requires years of training from an early age. But along came Willam with his own ideas: He modeled the department at Utah along the lines of the great ballet academies, and you have only to see the glorious facility today in Salt Lake to measure the degree of his success.

Of course, you can't make a professional ballet dancer, starting from scratch, in four years of university programs, but you can provide young dancers with the opportunity to finish their training with seasoned professional dancers who might otherwise be unavailable. Regional companies, the backbone of American dance today, have especially benefited from the availability of these dancers. You still hear the old lament, however, that universities train dancers to fill their own ranks, and that dancers with professional credentials are regarded with uneasiness by academics.

Recently, I spoke with three students about the advantages of a university dance degree. The first was a Chinese national who had performed for fifteen years as a soloist with a large ballet company and then decided to earn his degree in order to teach ballet at the university level. His horizons, he said, were enormously expanded by the overall university experience, and he feels that he is a much better teacher as a result of his years working on a BFA degree.