At The Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center on April 3, 2023, a program from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division honored renowned dancer, choreographer, writer, and lecturer Agnes de Mille on the 30th Anniversary of her passing. With live performances, video clips, and a panel as moderated by Linda Murray, curator of the Dance Division, the program was educational, inspirational, and fun. With her receptive, generous manner Linda Murray allowed the panelists to enjoy a comradery that energized each other as well as those of us in the packed house at the Bruno Walter Auditorium. Not only is Linda Murray, with her expertise, humor, and intelligent observations, a walking Wikipedia of dance information, but she speaks with a charming Irish lilt.
First, Linda Murray introduced the distinguished panel in the order they sat next to her on the stage:
- Diana Gonzalez-Duclert, former rehearsal assistant to de Mille, professor, and associate director and répétiteur of the De Mille Working Group
- Virginia Johnson, founding member, former Principal Ballerina, and Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem
- Kathleen Moore, Former Principal Ballerina, American Ballet Theatre, teacher at Princeton Ballet School and American Repertory Ballet
- Diana Byer, Artistic Director Emerita of New York Theatre Ballet and stager of de Mille works and cultural
- Elena Zahlmann, Associate Artistic Director and Principal Ballerina, New York Theatre Ballet, repetiteur, and dancer
After the introductions came the first live performance of the evening with Elena Zahlmann. dancing De Mille’s solo from Debut at the Opera from 1927. A humorous piece, the dancer fell, rubbed her sore feet, collapsed in fatigue. Then, with one hand using a chair for a barre, she practiced leg elevations, front, side, back and arms front, side, up. However, the dancer, in an outrageous, taboo, balletic expression of exertion, opened her mouth, very wide, and closed it in concert with raising and lowering her limbs. Then, as she mimed getting tired, the dancer stopped raising her leg. Almost like a puppet with the leg string cut, she continued doing the arm movement with her mouth still opening and closing with her arm. Amazing, I thought, although facial expressions were often used in ballet, this was the first time I’d seen actual choreography for a mouth. From my spot in the audience, my own mouth split into a grin.
After performing, Elena Zahlmann joined the panelists in conversation about working with de Mille. In talking about the deep psychological ground that de Mille excavated, they screened a clip from “Civil War Ballet” from Bloomer Girl, filmed in 1956, an emotional, wrenching occasion of women waiting for their men to return from the Civil War. The cast of anxious wives and returning union army men consisted of all white people. This wasn’t surprising as this dance was part of the 1944 Broadway play, Bloomer Girl, but I wondered how Agnes de Mille’s choreography would translate with an all-Black cast. I didn’t have to wait long.
In the discussion of how de Mille depicted empathy for complex characters, such as vulnerable misfits like Lizzie Borden, whom she showed as alternately a victim and a murderer, a clip was screened from a televised version of Fall River Legend performed by Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1989. Here’s Lizzy Borden, danced by stunning, inspired, cultural icon Virginia Johnson with an all-Black cast. The choreography, for either Black or white dancers, had a powerful emotional resonance and these DTH dancers, especially Virginia Johnson, killed it, knocked it out of the park. After the screening, we in the audience were so moved that we couldn’t stop clapping and Virginia Johnson had to quiet us down
In speaking about the work, Virginia Johnson noted that no matter where it was performed the audience would gasp when Lizzie pulled the ax out. She said in spite of the horror of Lizzie Borden’s life and this murderous act, that dancing it was “fun.” This audience “gasped” at this too and I could practically hear them wondering: if that’s “fun,” what’s a rough day for the Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem? Virginia Johnson laughed at the response and added that dancing in a wool dress was difficult because it was so hot and inflexible. Then Diana Byer, a wonderful story-teller and Artistic Director Emerita of New York Theatre Ballet, told us about a performance in which the ax that sits in a block of wood was too loose, so a stage hand or someone gave it a good heave-ho and stuck it in deeper. At the performance, when it was time for Lizzie to pull the ax out, it wouldn’t let go of the wood block, which rose as she lifted the ax. She tried to pry the ax out by pushing with her foot at the block of wood. No go. For that performance, she ended up having to strangle her parents to death.
The panelists discussed de Mille’s technique that incorporated not only balletic movements but natural movements, such as the dancers throwing their arms up in the air as they see their men come home alive from war. Kathleen Moore said that she herself was studying—some demanding scientific course which I don’t remember—and that de Mille use of this gesture showed her deep understanding of movement, as even blind people, who have never seen that gesture, spontaneously throw their arms up in excitement at a homecoming.
I don’t have the supersonic memory to offer more than a taste of this two-hour program, but panelists told more striking, affecting and often humorous anecdotes, dancers— who included, besides Elena Zahlmann, Emma Von Enck and Victor Abreu accompanied on the piano by Michael Scales, all of New York City Ballet—performed several startling pieces of de Mille works, and film clips showed how robust and dynamic her choreography still was. I wish I could remember in greater detail, but I can mainly only recall my enjoyment of the stories, dancing, and film clips
For the screening of the final clip, The Informer performed by American Ballet Theatre (1988), Linda Murray explained that people think because it is Irish that it is about the “troubles” but those came later. This dance is partly based on the novel The Informer by Irish writer Liam O’Flaherty published in 1925 about the Irish Civil War. Another panelist noted that de Mille’s choreography depicted highly emotional, personal accounts of events that spanned time from American West, to the United States Civil War, to the Irish Civil War.
The feeling of excitement was palpable as the audience left the theater. I spoke with Allen Greenberg, President of The Jerome Robbins Foundation and a Trustee of The Robbins Rights Trust. We agreed it was a wonderful program and I noted that Linda Murray was a terrific moderator. Very generously Allen said that, when I was curator, I put on some great programs too and that he’d never forget the African dancer summersaulting on stilts almost directly into the audience. Indeed, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division knows how to put on a program that sparks joy.
