Square deal in K.C - Dance Matters - Kansas City Ballet stages George Balanchine's ballet "Square Dance" - square dance caller Elisha Keeler

Dance Magazine, Feb, 2004 by Martha Ullman West

When Kansas City Ballet's artistic director William Whitener decided this season to mount George Balanchine's Square Dance as it was done at its 1957 premiere (San Francisco Ballet is also planning to stage the original version this year), he had no idea that Elisha C. Keeler, the original caller, was living right outside Kansas City, until Keeler's wife telephoned for tickets. When she told the ticket seller that her husband had been the original caller, Whitener was notified, and immediately asked him to coach actor Phil Fiorini in the right way to call such instructions as "coupe, pas de bas, jete, jete, dig that crazy old chasse!" to the strains of the Vivaldi-Corelli score.

Balanchine's witty braiding of classical ballet, seventeenth-century court dance, and American country dancing is seldom done with a caller these days--New York City Ballet dropped this Version in 1963--but Keeler had worked with The Joffrey Bal]et on the piece in the 70s, when Whitener was performing with the company.

KEELER FAMILY members, including daughter Mollie K. James, were in Kansas City' Ballet's studios last October to watch rehearsals and coach Fiorini. "Mr. Balanchine came to our house in Westchester County," Lois Keeler said, "and gave us records of the music and two weeks to write the script. We listened to it twelve hours a day, and whenever any of us thought of a couplet, we'd write it down." The result was eight pages of rhymed couplets, many of them traditional square dance calls, commentary, on current events, and instructions for original cast members Nicholas Magallanes and Patricia Wilde that Keeler recited from memory at all performances from 1957-1963.

Balanchine had read a New Yorker profile on Elisha's prominence as a square dance caller and musician who claimed lie could play any instrument. He came knocking on the Keelers's Westchester County' door. Mrs. Keeler knew his name; she, after all, had seen Anna Pavlova dance. Her husband, however, had seen only one ballet, Roland Petit's Carmen.

"It was a challenge," said Mr. Keeler, now 96 and proud that he can still wear the striped pants he wore onstage in 1957, "but I can call to any music, and I said I'd give it the best I can. Balanchine was always loving and patient with me."

Keeler remembers standing in the wings on opening night, terrified, waiting for his cue, with his wife beside him. "But as soon as I heard the music I was a different person, and I got right out there." Like a Balanchine dancer.