Each performance of this version of From the Horse’s Mouth In November 2019, to celebrate the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center began and ended with charming, funny, multi-talented Arthur Aviles, gay Puerto Rican dancer/choreographer of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. As we waited in the wings to begin, I chatted away with Kevin Winkler and Kathleen Leary, as though I had nothing to do with what was about to happen. Then I noticed Arthur Aviles. He was wrapped in silence as he concentrated, focused, prepared himself. Whoops. I thought, I should be doing something to compose myself.
Stage lights came on and Arthur Aviles walked purposely to stage left and danced alone in the spotlight. His muscles contracted, released; he gestured, twirled, bent low, rose high, creating lines and life out of body, air, and breath. Suddenly, I was out of breath: he was done and it was my turn. I was to tell a story before I danced. Damn. I walked to the middle of the stage, picked up the mic, and sat on a chair set at a slight angle to the audience—a sold-out audience I couldn’t see because the light was on me.
Tina Croll and James Cunningham, creators of this unusual format of story-telling and dance, have, for over twenty years, successfully produced these From the Horse’s Mouth programs that each year honored different people and institutions in the dance world. Other than Arthur’s solo at the beginning, the format was that, one by one, after each person told a story about whoever or whatever was being celebrated, (for this section all were to dress in black with bit of red somewhere—I had red toenails and fingernails) then performed a solo stage left as the next person spoke, then that person got up to solo and the last soloist went on to the “traveling section” dancing all along the stage before and behind the next speaker towards the last dancer, whom they could interact with. Interspersed in the evening were crossing-the-floor sections where all changed to colorful costumes and dance in a line from one wing to the other.
This time, at The Theater at the 14th Street Y, one by one, we were to tell personal stories to celebrate the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the place I worked for thirty years. I retired as curator nearly four years ago. So what did I say in my two minutes on the chair? Here it is.
The Dance Division was my job and my family. This included not just the talented, devoted, knowledgeable, and comedic staff, but also researchers, dancers, writers, critics, and choreographers. And donors. Not just donors of materials, whose generosity made us the world’s largest collection of dance, but financial donors, Jerome Robbins, the Jerome Robbins Foundation, Anne Bass, the Anne Bass Foundation, the Dance Committee, the Friends of the Dance Division, and among others, Helen Gebig.
In 2010, Helen Gebig, a regular at public programs, an unassuming, retired teacher in a well-worn winter coat, donated to the Dance Division a $100,000 from her personal savings.
In her interview, she talked about growing up in the foster care system in Flatbush Brooklyn. Extremely poor, the only place she went was the library. She saw her first ballet in the early 1950s, when a neighbor who couldn’t attend gave Helen her ticket for New York City Ballet. She went, not knowing what ballet was, and fell in love. Swan Lake with Maria Tallchief changed her life. Later, she went to the ballet as often as eight times a week. Of Balanchine she said it didn’t matter whether you were a dancer, choreographer, orchestra or audience, you were his family. Ballet and the Library were homes, she said, to a girl who didn’t have a home.
Helen Gebig’s gift reaffirmed to me the importance of the Library’s work and the Dance Division’s ability to provide a home for our community.
In 2014 in the Freddie Franklin Horse’s Mouth tribute, I danced. Since I am not a dancer, that performance was meant to be both my dancing debut and my final dancing performance. However, today, after seven months of surgeries and hospitalizations I’m back for another finale!! With stolen choreography from Djoniba’s African dance classes.
Grateful for the clapping, I stood and handed the mic to the next speaker, Kevin Winkler, retired archivist at NYPL, and author of “Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical.” Once at stage left to do my solo while he spoke, out of nowhere, my last two years flashed before me: my mother got sick then died; in the next few months her sister and two more very close friends died and our granddaughter spent nearly a month in ICU; then I got sick for seven months. In my corner on the stage, a terror came over me, who did I think I was trying to dance African dance, without drums, in front of an audience, still recovering from surgery? I asked my mom and dad in the next world to help. And I called on two people, also dead, also important to me, Beth Young and Gwen Jones Diallo, strong, terrific dancers from African dance classes.
When I switched from my first step into the second, without the drums to guide me, I lost the rhythm. This shook me, but I carried on, stomping and jumping. Then, rat-a-tat-tat, I expelled a trail of gas. I looked around. Did anyone suspect? Then another stream of wind. Reaching high then bending to touch my palm to the ground, I farted and toot-tooted with every step. First I was embarrassed and horrified, then a giggle brewed. The ancestors are speaking through me. I’m a medium, channeling through my body the voices of my parents and Beth and Gwen.
Like a gas bubble, a memory surfaced. After my mother’s funeral, my youngest sister told me about drug problems in Wisconsin. She meant to say methamphetamine, but accidentally said methane amphetamine. We cracked up. Methane Amphetamine: Builds Gas Fast. We thought of our mother, our beautiful, peace and social justice, poetry-loving mother, who could often be found, back when she had a body, tooting along in a blaze of methane. When I told this the next day to Gwen’s daughter, Chantay Jones, she irreverently sang to me: “You are the wind beneath my wings.”
With my two minutes up, I got off stage and headed for our dressing rooms. Grinning, I told this to my colleague from the Dance Division, Arlene Yu, a champion Latin Ballroom dancer, already in costume for the crossing-the-floor section, which happens sporadically in the evening. Gorgeous, in her canary yellow sparkly dance outfit, a professional dancer, she told me this often happened on stage and that I should be grateful that at least they weren’t loud or stinky. Whew, thank you ancestors!!
Arlene Yu, Photo by Whitney Browne
For anyone not doing the second and third dance sections, dancers, many from New York Theatre Ballet, replaced us. I only did the solo, so while I went to the back, the handsome, young, powerful, red-headed dancer Julian Donahue danced for me. (The others, all one more terrific than the next, included: Alexis Branagan, Lauren Hale Biniaris, Victoria Dombroski, Silken Kelly, Lindsey Miller, Abby Marchesseault, Kendra Dushac, Jessica Stucke, Dawn Gierling, Heather Panikkar, Monica Lima, Kristina Shaw, Katelyn Conrad.
For the rest of the night, I sat in shadows in the wings, looking into the bright lights, and watched the dancing and listened to stories. Wave after wave of pride and happiness flowed through me. So many people found the Dance Division important to them and I’d had some part in its running. Legendary dancers, writers and critics spoke and danced including: Arthur Aviles; Diana Byer, Artistic Director of NY Theatre Ballet, who spryly danced in point shoes, which she hadn’t been in for years, if not decades; Yoshiko Chuma, post-modern conceptual dancer and old friend from Lower East Side; Ze’Eva Cohen; Alberto Del Saz; Joan Finkelstein, Executive Director of Harkness Foundation for Dance; Julia Foulkes; Deborah Jowitt, dancer and author and dance critic for The Village Voice for over forty years, who talked to me back stage of Derrick Damon, Dance Division’s 27-year-old page who was shot and killed on February 16, 1992; Phyllis Lamhut; Dianne McIntyre; Elizabeth McPherson; Rajika Puri, dancer choreographer of Indian dance trained Bharatanatyam and Odissi; Henning Rübsam, hilarious story teller and Artistic Director of SENSEDANCE; Margo Sappington; Preeti Vasudevan, choreographer and dancer of classical Indian dance; Tony Waag; tap tapping his way across the stage; Theara J. Ward, once baby ballerina from Dance Theatre of Harlem; Lynne Weber, Executive Director of Dance Notation Bureau; William Whitener, acclaimed dancer choreographer; and Kevin Winkler.
And professional dancers from Dance Division’s staff danced: Phil Karg, Kathleen Leary, Cassie Mey, Alice Standin, Arlene Yu. All amazing. But standouts in the costume department Arlene Yu in ballroom dress and Alice Standin in Baroque outfit with many layers including old school lace up corset!! Unfortunately my picture of her has disappeared.
Cassie Mey, Jan Schmidt, Yoshiko Chuma, Deborah Jowitt, Selfie by Yoshiko 
Deborah Jowitt, 
Henning Rübsam
Yoshiko Chuma, Joan Finkelstein 
Yoshiko Chuma, Dianne McIntyre 
Arlene Yu, Yoshiko Chuma, Kathleen Leary
Then showing up on video: Alastair Macaulay, Joseph Houseal, Tanisha Jones, Charles Reinhart, Judith Ren-Lay, and Madga Saleh.
That first night ended with a knockout. After Arthur Aviles’s sang a wild Nuyorican version of When you wish upon a star, an extra-special star performed that first night only. Ann Hutchinson Guest. A Broadway musical dancer, who recently celebrated her 101st birthday. Yes, you read that right—one hundred and one. And could she dance! She swirled and twirled and side-stepped and sang as she used the entire stage as her home. She brought down the house.
Ann Hutchinson Guest, Photo by Whitney Browne 
By the last performance on Sunday we were all relaxed and exuberant. When I took a moment to breathe before I soloed, the drum rhythms rang in my ears, pulsed in my body. Spontaneously, the music was in my muscles and spirit, I was connected, buoyant. I danced, exact, rhythmic, on the mark. My body was a drum, as Djoniba often told us to be.
This run was over. Thank you to everyone who performed in honor of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library of the Performing Arts.
From the Horse’s Mouth celebrated The Jerome Robins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts co-presented by The Theater at the 14th Street Y. November 6-10, 2019, Conceived and Directed by Tina Croll and James Cunningham