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

While at the Joffrey he met his companion, dancer Philip Jerry, and "it was absolute bliss. We started to go everywhere together," touring Europe and across the States. But after Jerry left the company (he's studying art history at Princeton, where they live), Corbin found that he was looking down the barrel of his own private cannon--stage fright. Much as he admired Joffrey and Gerald Arpino for their love of dance, Corbin was daunted by their constantly posting notes of correction on the bulletin board where the entire company could read them. Corbin says, "My dancing was getting worse and my technique was getting worse. I was terrified to go onstage."

In 1989, he decided it was time to leave. He began auditioning, getting callbacks for Jerome Robbins, Broadway and San Francisco Ballet. "But Paul asked me to join his company, so it was good-bye. It was something I had to try." He'd survived an audition of two hundred fifty men that went on for two days. His first class with Taylor included Tom Patrick, Andrew Asnes, David Grenke, Rachel Berman Benz, and Caryn Heilman. "When Joao Mauricio taught me the first couple of dances," Corbin says, "I just felt as though I'd stepped into this happy, adult atmosphere. You could see the sun. Cathy McCann sort of retaught me how to dance. She liked my dancing, and would give me attention in class and rehearsal. She taught me not to be afraid of looking unattractive."

From McCann and Mauricio, Corbin began understanding line: "Just something I never had. I didn't know how to make a nice arabesque. I still struggle with it in ballet class, but now I have a sense of the pure joy of being in class, rather than going after an unattainable ideal." One of his teachers, Jeremy Blanton of Joffrey II, always said, "technique is a means to an end. Why get freaked out about what you're doing? That's what I always tell myself when I stare at my ugly old self in the mirror."

But at Taylor's studio in SoHo, there are no mirrors. "I love it. If it feels right, it's going to look the way he wants," and the way ballet mistress Bettie de Jong wants. "Nothing gets past them." Corbin's favorite of the repertoire is Esplanade, the company's signature piece, "so musically complex and so simple. There's constant brainwork. You can't put on the automatic pilot."

Corbin also took on a new role as the detective in Taylor's Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal), revived last fall. The role was created for Christopher Gillis, who died last year of AIDS. "I never thought I'd be asked to do that part," Corbin says, sadly recalling Gillis in the role and in life. "Chris was godlike when you saw him onstage. You had thoughts about whether he was human or not. His cool persona and his beauty were intimidating at times. The sheer strength involved in that part!" It was the polar opposite of Corbin's role in Company B, "spazzed out and frenetic." Mauricio told Corbin, "I think it's going to change your dancing."

"I was incredibly nervous about it," Corbin says, "because it was Chris's part, and he was sick. He was dying." Gillis spent the last months of his life on tour with the company. "It was his decision, and Paul backed him 100 percent. That was a hard year, when Chris was leaving us. Gods don't waste away. It's just not done."