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

Dance Magazine, Sept, 2002 by Kathryn Posin

Day Three

PATTERNS

I have always observed the patterns of nature: the ripples that wind leaves on sand, the waving of seaweed in water. For space, line, and form, nothing competes with nature. I plot all my dances on graph paper and endlessly push pennies around the graph, searching for the right forms.

What I do with the pennies on paper isn't always easy to translate into human bodies in the studio. But these dancers were a dream. They were so immaculately trained; they knew how to stay together and how to keep their spacing marks onstage. They reported to me discrepancies in execution amongst themselves even as I stood lulled with enchantment at my beloved form taking shape. We now had two thirds of "Winter" finished.

Day Four

VIVALDI

I had only glanced at the Vivaldi score, writing instead all the measures in my notebook, with little signals beside them: "slow theme," "loud," and "sad part." The music was easy to work with, so we counted much less than I was used to. These dancers were confidently on the beat--in their clear young minds, the only place to be.

Day Five

REMEMBERING AGNES BE MILLE

I read that Agnes de Mille had to write a list of all the people who had wronged her before she could choreograph a step. This I understand all too well, and my list was a little long just now. She learned from the Native Americans always to find the "god" in what you made. I called upon her in times of need, and she showed up as a vision, often mockingly with one eyebrow raised....

The dancers seemed impressed, a little, that I had finished "Winter." No one talked about it, and we went on to "Fall."

Day Six

MARCIA

I finally had a chance to watch Marcia [Dale Weary] teach a class. Located down the hill a few blocks from "the Warehouse" where we had been working, "the Barn" was low and small and dark, with unimaginably little studios. Marcia was in the smallest one, with the 5- to 7-year-olds. Perhaps the first secret: Start small.

Although she's 65, Weary gets down on her hands and knees to give the gentle touch that allows the 6-year-old body to feel what is right. My first despairing thought was: Why had nobody pulled me up and pushed my knees back? Why did they just let me do it wrong? Maybe they didn't know or didn't care or couldn't figure out how to tell us. Marcia knew, cared, and could somehow tell the children how to do what she asked. Her powers of communication were firm and directed to each individual child. After the third time guiding a tiny foot into tendu, she questioned, "Why can't you do it like I fix it for you?" Later, holding her hand high above the 6-year-old who wore a flower on her bun, she exclaimed, "See, she jumped and touched my hand with her flower."

Marcia's quiet face and truthful eyes reminded me of the Buddhist monks I had seen in saffron robes in China, living in monasteries, meditating, gently plying a useful trade like carpentry or gardening.

Day Seven

FINISHING

Vivaldi had ended "Fall" with a sad violin solo, which the program notes said was the drunken harvesters falling asleep. But I looked out the window at the dry, brown leaves blowing and thought, "No, inside of `Fall' is death." Does one mention death to 15-year-old career-bound ballet dancers? I tried and made no impression. But when I told them to promenade en attitude for sixteen counts without wobbling, they understood, and it worked.