Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet's Choreoplan: making a ballet on the dancers of tomorrow

Dance Magazine, Sept, 2002 by Kathryn Posin

Marcia Dale Weary, the founder of Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, is a name to be honored in the ballet world. Almost every major U.S. ballet company has hired graduates from her school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania--dancers like Tina LeBlanc, Ethan Stiefel, Vanessa Zahorian, Kristin Long, Ashley Bouder, Adam Hendrickson, Abi and Jonathan Stafford, and Tara and Zachary Hench. Founded in 1955, the school started out in a renovated barn and now boasts state-of-the-art, climate-controlled studios that can accommodate more than 500 summer-session students. [] Five years ago, Executive Director Maurinda Wingard and Resident Choreographer Alan Hineline instituted a program called Choreoplan to offer talented choreographers a laboratory to create classically based works on Weary's exceptionally well-trained students. The chosen choreographers generally spend a week to ten days creating a short ballet. Patterned after the now-defunct Carlisle Project, which was created by Barbara Weisberger after George Balanchine died, the program gives the dancers a chance to perform new works while also educating the local community on how to watch and enjoy dance performances. The next Choreoplan performance is on October 20. [] New York-based choreographer Kathryn Posin participated in Choreoplan in October 2001. The following is a journal account of her experience.--Joseph Carman

Day One

THE TRIP/CHOOSING DANCERS

I sit on the train passing through the Pennsylvania fall farmland. Now, like other choreographers, teachers, and dancers, I make my pilgrimage to Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet. I have been chosen along with choreographers Laszlo Berdo, Charles Maple, and Leigh Witchel to attend the ten-day Choreoplan, using the dancers from the three highest levels at CPYB to make a new ten- to fifteen-minute dance.

I have moved to choreographing for ballet from modern dance. I studied composition with Louis Horst, Hanya Holm, Anna Sokolow, and Merce Cunningham. Trying to adapt these templates to ballet, I often wondered why dancemakers in ballet so rarely studied choreography. I quickly realized that the expense of long hours of experimenting denied new choreographers such a chance.

Upon walking into the new and impressive complex of CPYB, I was surprised to see the excellent bodies of this young company walking in the hall and standing at the barres. These students, maybe 6 or 11 or 14 years old, have the perfect alignment, careful muscle development, and movement refinement that speak of classical ballet training. But their bodies are unacquainted with, or just reaching, puberty. Boys in dress-code black and white, when they thought they were unobserved, would, like boys everywhere, run and tackle each other in the hall.

We four choreographers watched Alan [Hineline] teach class to help us find who we wanted in this mass of bodies in blue leotards and pink tights. Asking their names, consulting our lists, we scribbled whom we had chosen to be our "principals."

"I want Rachel." "No, I want Rachel, except ... who's Rachel, the tall one or the blonde?" "You got Michael, so you don't get Marissa!" "Which one is Victoria? I'm giving her to you, even though I wanted her." I got four boys, two lead girls, and eight other girls to make a corps.

Day Two

THE FIRST DAY OF REHEARSAL

There is nothing so gnawingly horrible as the first day of rehearsal. I always promise that if it goes OK, I'll never do it again and will for sure go into another profession.

Because our young etoiles are still in high school--in some cases, grade school--we rehearse from 6:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M., after they have finished classes. With five hours on Saturday, this gives us twenty-five rehearsal hours over the ten-day period.

For two months I had been jeteing around my studio to "Fall" and "Winter" of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. I tried to imagine partnering, using only myself, hoping the dancers would make it work. I felt safe in my studio in lower Manhattan, where I have lived for twenty-seven years. I emboited around, with my two cats occasionally observing.

But now I was in Carlisle, in a big beautiful studio, with dancers coming in the door. Not just regular dancers but future stars. What if I slighted the next Tina LeBlanc? What if I made a Sean Lavery-to-be do a really dumb step or told tomorrow's Ashley Bouder to be in the corps? I had better watch it with these kids!

I started with a corps of eight girls and gave them the beginning steps: snowflakes blowing in swirls onto the stage, a lot of piques and skimming jetes in circles. It looked great, and I loved it. I couldn't believe how brilliant I was! Or how much fun choreography was. There is surely nothing like it, nothing as spiritual, metaphoric, or evocative. (This was the manic stage that followed the harrowing angst of the earlier stage.)

Then came my favorite part of the whole experience. Somehow two extra dancers as understudies walked in. Annie and Katy, 12 and 10, had Makarova bodies: long-legged, narrow, and strong, and were smaller than the others. Instead of wondering how to fit them in with the more fully grown ones, I determined that 19-year-old boys should toss them high in the air in splits, first right, then left, while Vivaldi's most exuberant theme burst out. Everyone else onstage had jumps too, and it was an explosion of excitement and beauty--a lot like what I had been imagining in my studio for two months. I felt so happy I couldn't believe it. But I remained outwardly calm, knowing from experience that I could be a little "out there" during the act of creation. This was the feeling that kept me coming back to choreography. It reminded me of when I was 8 years old and I did tour jetes in my living room to the song "Winter Wonderland." Nothing had changed.