Dance in Saratoga Springs

by Denise Warner Limoli

  Mayor Raymond Watkin presents George Balanchine with the Keys to the City. Photo provided by Mayor Watkin. BALANCHINE is a trademark of The George Balanchine Trust.

  The New York City Ballet, under the guidance of Mr. Balanchine, has had immeasurable impact upon our community in terms of both culture and economics. Dance has become a way of life in Saratoga, and people are drawn from miles around to view this remarkable company on our stage. Numerous schools of ballet have come into being in the area because of the interest in dance generated by the New York City Ballet. Saratoga Springs salutes George Balanchine, one of Saratoga’s most distinguished citizens.63

  Mr. Balanchine, who usually preferred to remain in the background, was pleased with it all.

  Mayor Watkin still has great regard for Balanchine and an appreciation for the impact the company has had on the community. “He was such an interesting guy. Balanchine was a very talented fellow. He wanted perfection; he brought in new things, introducing us to music and his style of dance. Balanchine educated us about Stravinsky. A lot of people didn’t like it, but he really wanted to educate his public. I liked it.”64

  Ironically, even after eleven summers of beautiful performances and that summer’s citywide celebrations, in 1977 the New York City Ballet and Saratoga Performing Arts Center made the joint decision to shorten the ballet season to three weeks.

  The Saratoga Performing Arts Center’s directors had implemented popular programming that generated revenue, but the shortfall from ticket sales and overall costs of the ballet season were growing year by year. The situation was exacerbated by an unexpected cutback in funding from the state. Herb Chesbrough, the executive director at that time, stated clearly, “Unless SPAC can get the additional $125,000 in funding it figured on from the New York Council on the Arts when it planned for the full ballet season, it simply cannot afford the fourth week.”65

  Led by Mayor Watkin, concerned local citizens and many determined fans advocated strenuously against the cutback. Mayor Watkin convinced the Saratoga Springs City Council to give $25,000 to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. He wrote a letter in protest directly to Governor Hugh Carey and distributed it to other state officials. Mayor Watkin went to Albany to testify about the benefits the New York City Ballet brought to his city: “This was really important, not only culturally but economically that the ballet be here. I worked very hard for this; I fought for what I believed in!”66

  THE END OF AN ERA AND THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER

  The 1980s brought huge changes to the New York City Ballet. Mr. Balanchine was ill, and principal dancer and choreographer Peter Martins was being groomed to take over the company:

  Memorial to George Balanchine, Saratoga Performing Arts Center program. BALANCHINE is a trademark of The George Balanchine Trust.

  It was at SPAC in the mid-’70s that Martins first got word from Balanchine that he was a likely heir to the ageing master’s throne. “I remember getting a call from Balanchine one morning. I was living in the dorms at Skidmore. The phone rang, and he said, ‘Come for lunch at Sperry’s.’” Martins recalled. “He said to me out of the blue, ‘You see, dear, you’ll have to run this place, New York City Ballet. One day you’ll have to run the company, and so we have to begin to teach you.’ He didn’t ask me, he told me. He took me by surprise.”67

  After several years of deteriorating health, George Balanchine died in 1983. He left a legacy of masterworks and the great company he had created. Peter Martins retired from performing and joined Jerome Robbins as co–ballet masters in chief. That decade at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the programs featured ballets by Martins and Robbins, although the foundation of the repertoire was still the collection of George Balanchine’s ballets.

  During the summer of 1985, the New York City Ballet celebrated its twentieth anniversary of performing in Saratoga with a whole week of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the ballet that started it all. Ballet fans were discovering new favorites as the New York City Ballet found its new identity. Saratoga audiences said goodbye to their favorite ballerina, Patricia McBride, when she retired from the stage after her final performance at the 1989 Ballet Gala. Future stars Darci Kistler, Jock Soto, Wendy Whelan and Damian Woetzel were all in the corps de ballet in the early 1980s and quickly rose to principal status.

  Peter Martins explained:

  First of all, as I grew older and into my non-dancing phase, each year I became more appreciative of SPAC and its importance in the life of New York City Ballet. I essentially continued Balanchine’s maxim, which was that Saratoga deserves exactly what our New York audiences get to see. So I try every year to do just that, however in a minimized version.68

  The 1990 season marked twenty-five years of the New York City Ballet in Saratoga. To celebrate, the company performed a retrospective selection of ballets that represented each of the past twenty-four seasons. During this decade, Peter Martins debuted his staging of two full-length classic ballets: Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. These were large productions, and both ballets were great favorites of the audience. To commemorate the tenth anniversary of Balanchine’s death, the company paid tribute by performing twenty-four of his ballets in one season. Jerome Robbins assembled dance scenes from his famous Broadway musical West Side Story into a suite that was very popular with Saratoga audiences.

  Jerome Robbins, choreographer and co–ballet master in chief. Photo by Ohringer.

  Ballet master in chief Peter Martins considers the pursuit of new works to be “the life blood of the company.”69 Martins initiated the Diamond Project in 1992. This sponsored program enabled him to commission choreographers such as Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon and to introduce them to the Saratoga audience. The Diamond Project has continued since then, enabling dozens of choreographers to create work for the company dancers.

  Unfortunately, attendance at the ballet continued to decline. Although the season remained at three weeks, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center reduced the total number of ballet performances and presented more popular entertainment.

  THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

  To encourage audiences of all ages, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, New York City Ballet and several sponsors scheduled promotional theme nights. These events often included pre-curtain activities. Ballets were chosen to appeal to specific audiences, such as young dance students and their parents, young adults or families. The success of these sponsored theme nights has made them annual events: Junior Ballerina Night, Girls’ Night Out, Sage Colleges Date Night, CDPHP Family Night and Emma Willard American Girl Night.

  The tenth anniversary of the Diamond Project was celebrated in 2002 with a variety of new works offered at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Christopher Wheeldon was named the New York City Ballet’s first choreographer in residence. Wheeldon’s light-hearted Carnival of the Animals, featuring the comedian and actor John Lithgow, was a big success with Saratoga audiences. Local writer Mae Banner said of the ballet, “Lithgow wrote and narrated the rhyming libretto…and also did a dainty turn as a humongous lady elephant in this whimsical confection. Wheeldon and Lithgow set out a plateful of sweets in this fantasy about a child locked in overnight at the Museum of Natural History.”70

  In another of her reviews for the Saratogian, Ms. Banner wrote:

  Symphony in Three Movements is one of the great collaborations between Stravinsky and Balanchine, and it has never looked better. The dancers out-did themselves, thrilling the audience from the first moment of this well-wrought leotard ballet. Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto in the central duet were like lifelong lovers who finished each other’s sentences. The air between them zinged and crackled. One would query with the gesture of a leg; the other would answer with a leg. The amphitheater erupted in prolonged applause at the finale of this knife-edged dance…Saratoga audiences do know a good thing when they see it.71

  For more than forty years, Saratoga audiences have witnessed final performances of many of their favorite dancers as they retired fr
om the stage. In July 2004, Jock Soto was celebrated by hundreds of his fans. Mae Banner described the homage to one of her personal favorites: “The luckiest and most fervent NYCB fans come every night to see something unexpected and wonderful. At the July 17 Gala, Jock Soto was showered with flowers after dancing his last performance in Saratoga, a sculpted ‘Barber Violin Concerto’…a loving audience gave him an emotional sendoff.”72

  The fortieth-anniversary season began once again with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Popular ballets by Balanchine and Robbins and new works by Martins and Wheeldon formed the bulk of the repertoire. Other highlights were Jerome Robbins’s NY Export: Opus Jazz, a new work by Alexiei Ratmansky from the Diamond Project and a premier by former principal dancer Benjamin Millepied.

  Peter Martins’s full-length ballet Romeo+Juliet introduced a cast of very young dancers in the principal roles. This production drew in large audiences who loved the familiar story and Prokofiev’s music.

  In his review of The Waltz Project, local dance critic Jay Rogoff stated:

  Peter Martins’ lively ballet characterizes four couples in piano waltzes by nine contemporary American composers. Originally scheduled for SPAC in 1988, The Waltz Project was scratched that summer because of a string of injuries. Thursday’s performance, with a cast entirely new to the ballet, revealed it as charming, intriguing, and a little scary. Its format, a series of brief duets, makes it a distant cousin of Jerome Robbins’ In the Night, also showing this season. Martins paints his characters less richly and subtly than Robbins, but his waltzers’ relationships offer greater variety, with two compatible couples and two problematic ones.73

  A summer 2012 review in the New York Times stated:

  It’s startling how different NYCB looks at the open-air SPAC. The light has the effect of subtly changing faces, feet, musculature. Choreography, too. As I watched two performances here on Saturday, works as familiar as George Balanchine’s “Concerto Barocco” and “Symphony in C” suddenly revealed fresh details. The dancers looked happy, despite the afternoon heat, as if performing for friends. A high quotient of young people in the audience cheered and clapped at every opportunity.74

  SARATOGA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONS

  The Saratoga Performing Arts Center made major changes in its administration in 2005. In the same year as the fortieth anniversary of the Arts Center, Marcia White became the new president and executive director. Ms. White organized a new board of directors with William Dake, chairman, and the return of Mrs. Marylou Whitney, honorary chairwoman. Several local arts personalities and businessmen have since been added to the board, such as Dolores “Dee” Sarno, Skidmore’s Donald McCormack, Heather Mabee, Ronald Riggi and current chairwoman Susan Phillips Read.

  Due to mounting financial losses on both sides, in 2009 the New York City Ballet and Saratoga Performing Arts Center made a second joint decision to reduce the ballet season from three to two weeks. The Saratoga Springs community rallied in protest, but the realities of production costs, low attendance numbers and poor ticket revenues could not be argued.

  After the 2012 season, it was announced that the New York City Ballet would come to Saratoga in 2013 for only one week. Two other dance companies would complete the remainder of the classical dance programming—the National Ballet of Canada and a contemporary American company, the Aspen/Santa Fe Ballet.75

  Marcia White shared her thoughts on the relationship among the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the New York City Ballet and Saratoga Springs:

  SPAC has always been something incredibly important to my whole family. My daughters and I grew up on this lawn together, and one of them performed in Coppélia for four summers. I had great educational opportunities and a background that gave me diverse skills from marketing to politics to triage. When I came to this position, we all embraced change, and we made change to regain the public trust. SPAC has a legacy and a heritage established over time. We have two magnificent resident companies, and they are our backbone. However, these times are different from earlier days, and we must deal with the realities of the situation as it is now. Together, we—NYCB and SPAC—must establish something that is sustainable and as close as possible to the “glory days” that the fans yearn for. The quality of life in the Saratoga area is greatly enhanced by the arts. SPAC has helped to generate many millions of dollars into the local economy, and the arts have helped to attract major corporations and businesses to the area. I’m very proud of that. I’m also proud of SPAC’s educational programs; we really want that next generation of artists and audiences to be here! The arts lift us up in hard times, and the “SPAC Experience”—seeing great art on a beautiful summer evening in a beautiful outdoor setting—provides that lift.76

  OTHER DANCE EVENTS AT THE SARATOGA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

  In addition to the New York City Ballet, there have been several other dance companies and dance events featured at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. In 1967, the Russian Music and Dance Festival included the Ukranian Dance Company, Oldavian Dancers, Uzbek Dancers and several soloists from Moscow’s famous Bolshoi Ballet. The great ballerina Margot Fonteyn of Britain’s Royal Ballet appeared in 1975 with the Chicago Ballet. During the 1990s, the Miami City Ballet, led by former New York City Ballet star Edward Villella, and the Irish dance and music phenomenon Riverdance appeared. These two companies were so popular that they were brought back the following season.

  Dancers have also performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra during their August seasons. Rudolf Nureyev and Friends appeared during the summer of 1986. New York City Ballet principal dancers Merrill Ashley and John Meehan performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, led by New York City Ballet conductor Robert Irving.77 For the final classical performance of 2012, dancers Tiler Peck and Chase Finlay performed the Act II pas de deux from Swan Lake during the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Tchaikovsky Spectacular.

  A unique cultural dance event was held on the lawn in 2012. The Saratoga Native American Festival featured the Haudenosaunee Singers and Dancers, a popular performing troupe from Syracuse. This festival was sponsored by the Ndakinna Education Center and the Spa State Park.78

  The Saratoga Performing Arts Center Walk of Fame, located on the mezzanine pavement before entering the amphitheater, was established at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in 2010. To date, three honorees have been recognized with an engraved bronze star inset into the flooring. Mrs. Marylou Whitney was the first to be honored for her many years of personal and financial commitment to dance in Saratoga Springs. The following year, George Wein, jazz impresario and founder of the Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival, was inducted. In 2012, Lewis A. Swyer, long-serving chairman and president of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, was recognized for his vision and dedication to dance and the arts.79

  Chapter 4

  DANCE TEACHERS AND DANCE SCHOOLS IN SARATOGA SPRINGS

  Many dancers train here; many dancers are inspired here. Saratoga Springs is well known as a “Dance Town.”

  Saratoga Springs is a small city with approximately twenty-eight thousand year-round residents. One attribute that makes Saratoga unique among cities of this size is the presence of dance in the community. Saratoga Springs currently has ten independent dance schools and a history of many more. Instruction ranges from the elegance of classical ballet to the exuberance of Latin salsa. These schools continue to thrive, occasionally changing location to accommodate a growing enrollment. The local dance studios help to build a knowledgeable audience in a city that values the art of dance.

  Prestigious dance schools and companies frequently hold auditions in Saratoga Springs. Hundreds of young dancers and their parents come to town to audition for the New York City Ballet, the New York State Summer School of the Arts Schools of Ballet and Dance and for many national summer intensive dance programs.

  SARATOGA SPRINGS DANCE SCHOOLS, 1900 TO 1965

  For two centuries, Saratoga Springs has had a dual personality as a small town for
most of the year and a famous resort for the summer. The local population has developed a higher cultural awareness than that of many other small towns because of this exposure. Dance, and dancing, was an important part of the cultural and social fabric. Those who teach dance have been employed in Saratoga since the time of the great hotels of the nineteenth century.

  At the turn of the twentieth century, Miss Ryan’s Saratoga Dancing Academy offered dance instruction to young ladies and gentlemen.80 Several short-lived dance schools opened in the community from the 1930s to the 1950s. The students of the De Marco House of Dance performed in the newly built Spa Little Theatre. Jane and Gloria Conway, who owned a studio in Latham, opened the Conway Sisters Dance Studio in Saratoga in the 1950s. They taught jazz, tap and ballet, and their students performed annually in the Saratoga High School. The Dunster family of Ballston Spa held dance classes in Saratoga for a brief time after the Conway sisters closed their school.81

  As a young girl, Peggy Delay was a student of the Conway Sisters and performed in local vaudeville shows at the Congress Theater. In 1959, she opened Stepping Star Dance and Gymnastics, the first full-time commercial dance school in Saratoga Springs. Ms. Delay’s daughter excelled in gymnastics, and the school gradually changed its focus to recreational and competitive team gymnastics. Currently three generations of Delay women along with many other instructors teach in Stepping Star’s custom studio space in Congress Plaza. Although she is now retired, Peggy Delay still teaches one class for “little ones” and oversees her school’s annual dance recitals that showcase over four hundred students.82

  Oleg Briansky, a former premier danseur from Europe was the first to introduce classical ballet to Saratoga Springs. Briansky drove through Saratoga in 1964, on his way to Montreal for a performance with ballerina Marina Svetlova.83 He was suffering from career-ending arthritis and decided to stop in Saratoga to try the spa treatment. Briansky immediately decided that Saratoga would be an excellent location to realize his dream of a ballet academy for serious students who wanted to continue studying during the summer months.