An unsentimental journey - remembering the Pillow dance school in 1950

Dance Magazine, June, 1998 by Doris Perlman

A PILLOW ALUMNA RECALLS HER STUDENT DAYS AT AMERICA'S PIONEERING SUMMER DANCE FESTIVAL AND SCHOOL.

Too old for camp and not quite old enough for working papers, I petitioned my innocent parents to let me attend the Jacob's Pillow summer dance school in 1950. 1 had been studying ballet most of my life and, not having reached my full adult five feet ten, I still blithely entertained the notion of dancing professionally. At that time the Pillow was just about the only place for serious study; the onslaught of countless summer dance programs was then far in the future.

The Pillow was affordable and not too distant from my home in upstate New York. My family was familiar with the beautiful Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, and we had often attended performances at nearby Tanglewood as well as at the Pillow. Furthermore, my excellent local teacher, Gertrude Hallenbeck, had herself studied there for many summers, and she and her father were longtime friends of founder Ted Shawn.

Shawn was by then the personification of that overused term living legend. He was referred to jocularly as the "Great White Father" and was wont to give little introductory speeches before each of the performances. These talks were often light in tone, as when he said that his own mildly satirical dance, Somewhat Baroque, should perhaps be called "Baroquefort." He adored his own joke. A bit of the mountebank--perhaps necessary in a performer's personal arsenal--he introduced Ruth St. Denis, "Miss Ruth," as "my charming wife" when they had been apart for years. But that didn't really matter; they were genuine pioneers and also forerunners of the current vogue for dancers over forty. In 1950 Shawn was fifty-eight and St. Denis seventy-one, and both were still performing. One of Miss Ruth's numbers may have been Incense--I remember a candle and lots of draperies.

Well equipped with items from Capezio, I was driven to Jacob's Pillow and assigned my cabin in what a rustic signpost designated as "Ballet Alley." My bunkmates, mercifully, were not all virtuoso dancers, although some were quite advanced, and one even had her own ballet school in Boston. The ages ranged from the early teens to the midtwenties. They represented a true socioeconomic cross section. One girl, whose mother worked as a waitress to pay for her daughter's lessons, had even taken some private ones with Maestro Vincenzo Celli, former primo ballerino of La Scala and Cecchetti's last favorite pupil. The daughter later appeared with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. Another was a classic princess ("I have a very high extension") from Montreal who, although quite talented, ended up marrying her longtime boyfriend and leading a wholly bourgeois and utterly protected life. We also had the obligatory Southern belle--a potential Miss America contestant--and a tomboy who, nevertheless, chattered constantly about a boyfriend with the unlikely name of Traybor. She also told us that she had to eat every four hours, or else! Anorexia and bulimia were yet to become common terms, and the Pillow's less-than-basic cuisine discouraged either malady from ever developing.

Naively, I assumed that all of the scholarship students, who did the donkey work and who met and escorted us to our Ballet Alley cabins when we first arrived, must be extremely talented. However, the main requirement for a Pillow scholarship was probably that one be willing, and happily so, to perform slave labor. No doubt some of the students were gifted as well. They all seemed to be in advanced classes, but I never actually saw any of them dance; although I did hear that one of them had "a very pleasing line."

Everyone smoked, at least a little. I purchased my basic pack of Chesterfields and, I'm relieved to report, really didn't care for the taste of tobacco. When that pack was used up--it took about a month--I never smoked again, except for the occasional cigarillo. (Footnote: When I was voted "most sophisticated" in my high school graduating class, the photographer posed me and my male counterpart with cigarettes dangling, Bogey and Bacall-style, from our lips. In reality, I've never believed that there was anything remotely sophisticated or attractive about smoking. Tacky is more like it.) Those cabins in Ballet Alley certainly looked like potential firetraps, but fortunately no actual blazes ever broke out.

Rustic indeed was the word for the Pillow. I didn't have to clean latrines as I had done at Girl Scout camp, but I remember that the sanitary facilities were on the primitive side. At the morning's first ballet class, many of us could be found sniffing our own armpits during the port de bras accompanying plies. Just checking!

Antony Tudor made the most lasting impression on me, although not necessarily on my ballet technique. I'm not revealing anything new by mentioning that the Englishman was not noted for kindness and diplomacy. Donna Perlmutter's recent biography, Shadowplay, portrays him as driving some of his dancers to tears, if not distraction. As a fourteen-year-old who appeared deceptively more mature than her years, I was the object of his derision in class one day. He was placing students in lines and asked me to move forward. Not knowing what to do with my hands, I had them on my hips, perhaps looking more confident than I actually was--possibly even arrogant. He mocked my stance, saying "Well!" in a tone that implied, "Just who do we think we are, anyway?" (Ever since then, I've held my hands behind my back while awaiting instructions in class.)