Yvonne Mounsey's Westside Academy of Dance - Santa Monica, CA dance school - Great Starts: American Teacher Series, part 2

Dance Magazine, August, 1994 by Donna Perlmutter

It's a long way from Pretoria to Santa Monica--especially if you take the whole itinerary into consideration. But for Yvonne Mounsey, who left her South African homeland a half-century ago, traveled to London, then to Monte Carlo, Paris, and New York, and finally settled in the desirable suburb that lies between the Pacific Ocean and Los Angeles proper, the journey could be called a ballerina's progress.

The high point for this estimable teacher came when George Balanchine formed his New York City Ballet in 1949 and soon after conferred on Mounsey principal status. In the three decades since she retired from the stage, however, the former Prodigal Son Siren has been happily ensconced in the famous beach town where she draws students from near and far.

One by one they enter the studio--these West Coast acolytes-by-proxy of the late Balanchine, with every hair neatly pulled into sleek little chignons, faces smooth and scrubbed, attention taut, thoughts silently composed as they take their places at the barre.

It is a special, chaste, insular world they inhabit. A stranger would never know that on the street just outside the Westside Academy of Dance, other teenagers with purple-streaked hair and nose rings pass by. Here everything complies with Balanchinean dictates, those of another time.

With Mounsey as the Western shrine's materfamilias the master's legacy is ensured. She holds forth not only as a teacher--so successfully that three of her recent protegees have won places at NYCB and American Ballet Theatre--but also by passing along the gospel according to Mr. B. His imprint is indelible.

"We didn't know it at the time," Mounsey recalls, before giving her daily Westside Ballet company class, "but those early days were a golden era. It was the beginning of the New York City Ballet, and we were the dancers Balanchine taught and coached. To think he made his wonderful works on us, and major dance history in the process, is mind-boggling."

Mounsey, immune to recent artistic fluctuations in NYCB, prides herself on being a guardian of the original flame. And at an age when most retirees from the stage content themselves with their scrapbooks, she continues to go full tilt.

Tall, slender, and still little, she exemplifies "the Balanchine look"--a physique that features the longest of narrow limbs, a minimum of torso and a small head. But it's not easy to keep Mounsey on the subject of her own past glories; she prefers giving credit to others, chief among them Rosemary Valaire, formerly a Royal Ballet member and now a teacher she calls her "right hand ... the one who refines the dancers, has boundless patience and a marvelous eye for detail."

As for the organization of her Westside Academy of Dance, Mounsey rents the premises, which features four studios with sprung-wood floors and costs her in excess of $9,000 monthly. She employs seven teachers who give classes in jazz, tap, and modem dance, in addition to ballet. Class size is limited to thirty, with an average of twenty, and teachers are paid "by the head." She logs 1,500 students weekly, 960 for ballet classes, with fifty or sixty attending daily.

But it is through word of mouth that Mounsey has built her reputation. A wall hung with glossy photographs of dancers who now make up the ranks of ballet companies throughout the land attests to that. What's more, she operates within her own realm, belonging to no dance teachers' organizations.

Mounsey does homage to Balanchine by way of example, not declaration. You do not hear her invoking his name, yet she perpetuates the aesthetic and, like him, wants merely to illuminate the art of dance, not personalize its sponsorship.

"Much of what I try to impress on the dancers," she says, "comes from Balanchine. I remember, for instance, how he explained the finesse behind that fabulous footwork of his, and how to stress the elegance of the upper body, and how the hand would unfurl like a flower. The head is critically important. And when you see uninteresting dancing, it's because the head hangs there like a hook on a clothes rack, dead. How many times he would get us to properly emphasize it by saying, |Give your cheek for a kiss.'"

Despite all the Balanchine hoopla, Mounsey points to the fact that she was certified by the Royal Academy of Dancing before coming to this country from her native South Africa. She also had benefited from study in Paris with such historic names as Olga Preobrajenska and Lubov Egorova. And, by the time Mounsey joined NYCB, she had already danced leading roles with various incarnations of Ballets Russes. She even came into contact with Antony Tudor when the British choreographer briefly tried to find a home at the House of Balanchine.

"I remember auditioning for Tudor's Jardin aux Lilas," Mounsey recalls. "He was deciding between me and Melissa Hayden and Tanaquil Le Clercq for the role of A Woman in His Past and, of course, he conducted a little test for that purpose." She refers to a scene in which the Woman has her back turned to her antagonist. "|Why did the character keep her head turned [away from him]?'" he asked. |Because she didn't want to see what was behind her,' "I answered. That explanation pleased him and I got the part."