Hale and hardy: Marie Hale's Palm Beach company begins its ninth season on a firmer-than-ever footing - Ballet Florida

Dance Magazine, Sept, 1994 by Kristy Montee

A handful of Ballet Florida's dancers have been with the company for all of its nine years, but most, culled from national auditions, represent such diverse backgrounds as Beijing Dance Academy, Stuttgart Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Houston Ballet, and Israel Ballet.

"I like dancers with character and personalities. I don't want them to all look alike," Hale says. "And I like the older ones, the ones who are old enough to understand how to portray a teenage Romeo or Juliet."

Hale herself never danced professionally. Though it was her dream to do so, detours and switchbacks have always kept her on the pedagogic path. Growing up in Greenwood, Mississippi, Hale got her love of dance from a "frightfully glamorous" tap dancer named Whitford Price, who also taught another young Mississippian, John Butler.

But after seeing Alexandra Danilova in a Ballet Russe production of Gaite Parisienne, Hale converted. "I screwed my hair up in a knot, turned out my legs, and turned up my nose at tap."

After finishing college, Hale went to Chicago, desperate to learn ballet technique. But at twenty-one, her start was too late, and she began teaching at Harkness House. In 1962, when her husband began teaching art at a Palm Beach college, Hale dutifully followed him south.

In West Palm Beach, she found the Imperial Studios, run by the autocratic but gifted JoAnna Kneeland, whose use of kinesiology in the ballet classroom was then avant-garde. Hale wanted ballet lessons, but Kneeland talked her into teaching--ladies' morning exercise classes, children's beginning ballet, and, eventually, the advanced adults who "terrified me with their great techniques," Hale recalls.

"I hated teaching because it was taking up my energy," Hale says. "I was desperate in those days to do thirty-two fouettes, right and left. I still thought, in my heart, that somehow it would happen, that I'd become a dancer."

Twelve years passed. Kneeland eventually abandoned Imperial Studios, leaving Hale with a bunch of students, some hefty bills, and the former carpet store, to say nothing of her thwarted dream. Hale renamed the school Ballet Arts.

"Little by little, teaching became more interesting to me," she says. "I began to look forward to going in every morning, to see a student improve. I finally realized I was building something."

Hale's decision to form a company out of her school grew from her desire to give her students performing experience. Appearances at schools and malls gradually progressed to modest concerts at a small theater. A core of arts- savvy Palm Beachers pledged support, and Hale, with the help of Lynda Swiadon as her assistant and ex-dancer Claudia Cravey as ballet mistress, eventually found herself running a professional ballet troupe.

Today, Ballet Florida's exposure outside its home remains limited. Unlike Miami City Ballet, which has toured extensively nationally and internationally, Ballet Florida has toured only sporadically so far. Last year, they did visit five western states. This past August, the company performed on Long Island, in Brooklyn, and the Bronx; in April 1995 it will perform in Greensboro, North Carolina, as part of the symphony's subscription season.