Patrick Corbin: life after ballet; the former hippie at the School of American Ballet finds the grass is greener at Paul Taylor Dance Company - Cover Story

Dance Magazine, June, 1994 by Janice Berman

Of his SAB teachers, "Andre Kramarevsky was really supportive, but Stanley Williams was cold to the point of being cruel." Williams is one of the world's most venerated ballet teachers; his pupils have included the likes of Martins, Edward Villella, and most of City Ballet's recent dancers.

"In class, I stood at the barre under the clock," and Williams went around the room giving corrections. "When he got to me, he'd look up at the clock," Corbin said with a laugh. "I thought maybe I should stand at the other side of the room." Now, said Corbin, when Williams reached him he'd fiddle with his trademark pipe.

Corbin found himself ignored again at his part-time job, scooping ice cream at a shop on Columbus Avenue. His SAB classmates would stop by for cones and pretend they didn't know him. He also killed bugs for an exterminator, and ferried messages at SAB. "I was exhausted all the time."

For a while Corbin lived on the Lower East Side in a studio apartment. His roommate had painted everything yellow--"the TV, the shower, everything"--and one night had a fight with a crazed downstairs neighbor who had sneaked into their place through a window. "I was quaking in my boots." Finally, he moved uptown, sharing an apartment with dancer Loren Schmalle. "He was my sanity and my saving grace. He kept me going," Corbin said. Schmalle "was talented but very lazy. He'd never go to class. They loved him. Peter Martins was calling our apartment, wanting him to join City Ballet." Schmalle didn't want to. Corbin, who was dying to get into that company, settled instead for Kansas City Ballet. (Schmalle is now pursuing an acting career.)

After only a month in Kansas City, he returned to take an ABT II summer workshop. "If there was a glimmer of hope in New York, I had to do it."

But he found himself awash in the politics of the era, when ABT's new artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov was at loggerheads with ABT II's leadership. "It was very painful and horrible. He obviously didn't want us around. There was a lot of friction." But there was an upside:

Before ABT II was dissolved, Corbin had his first encounter with the choreography of Paul Taylor. "Christine Spizzo taught us the fugue from Airs and I absolutely adored it."

In 1985, Corbin joined Joffrey II and then tried out for the main company. "Mr. Joffrey likes you very much, but he thinks you may be too short" was the word. "I fell into a heap, crying on the sofa. The next day, I found out I had gotten into the company." He remembers the delight he felt. The first day he and another new dancer, Victoria Pasquale, watched the company rehearse Jiri Kylian's Forgotten Land. "We just smiled at each other. We were very proud of being in this company. Later that day we started learning Arden Court, Taylor's lyrical masterwork. It was my real introduction to Paul, and I fell in love with it from nanosecond one."

He loved the jumps. He loved the shapes. And he found it "hard as hell. You sweat a lot." In the men's duet, he found the William Boyce music "so uplifting, it takes you by the sternum. It's an incredibly musical dance. You never feel like there's a cheat or something missing. When the overture begins you feel like you're getting shot out of a cannon."