Happy Ballet Memories of Roni Mahler
The grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria was crowded from wall-to-wall with dance teachers. When ballerina and guest teacher Roni Mahler opened the floor to questions at the end of class, there was only time for a few. The next group was eager to take the boards so not every question was answered as convention classes must be kept to a strict schedule. Sigh. I had wanted some more explanation about turning the wrists in port-de-bras between fifth and second positions.
Since I'm a believer in fate, when I passed Ms. Mahler in the hallway after class, I asked if she had time for a question. Twenty minutes later I was amazed and grateful at the time and attention she devoted to a total stranger, but I've never forgotten it, and still to this day explain the turn of the wrists as "..at ten o'clock and two o'clock turn the wrists just ever so smoothly, then as the arms reach nine o'clock and three o'clock, the palms turn down and the elbows say, 'Thank you!'" My mother has a similar memory about asking Ms. Mahler to explain holding the knees to avoid injury and improper muscle development. And my mother's ballet students continue to hear Mahler's directions thirty years later.
In a more recent conversation with Mahler, she told me it's these stories and the tradition of passing ballet onto the generations that Mahler says are part of what she likes best about her career now as a teacher and artistic advisor. "Not long ago a woman of about thirty-seven came up to me with a ten year-old girl in tow and said, 'I hope you don't mind my telling you this. I took my first ballet class with you in Texas and you're the reason I'm a ballet teacher. I was just telling my daughter how important you are to my career.' We hugged and got teary-eyed." Mahler says that meeting people whose dance careers have been affected by her work happens all the time. "If you hang around long enough, you have those moments. It's the best!"
These memories of Roni Mahler's classes and patient guidance are found in students and teachers from California to New York. Her brilliant performance career of the sixties and seventies led to a long teaching career that is still going strong. Her schedule is exhausting with guest teaching stints in several states and Mexico for the summer. During the school year she is on the permanent faculty at the Julliard School, the Alvin Aley School, and Ballet Academy East in New York. She sees dancers from all over the country in the city and teaches with the same patience and happiness as when she first began giving classes.
"If you're unhappy as a person, you are too unhappy to be in touch with human kindness and you shouldn't take your bitterness out on the students in ballet class. You shouldn't teach people if you aren't nice. They are putting themselves in your hands and they are very vulnerable in that state. If you can't be nice while you help people improve, you're cheating them out of their well earned dollars. They are paying you to help them. As a teacher you've got to get yourself into a state where you are not going take out your bitterness on the classes."
Everyone has bad days and Mahler acknowledges this. It has even happened to her. "I was a witch one day in class on a Monday after a rough weekend with my family where I had gotten some unsettling news. After class I realized what had happened. On Wednesday I apologized to the class. I told them I had received some bad news and I took it out on them." Mahler herself has experienced classes with unpleasant, "artistically tormented" ballet teachers. "It doesn't make anything better for them to be abusive. It's inappropriate to teach this way. The public loves the reputation but it doesn't do anything for the dance to treat people that way. Over-romanticism of the negativity and good teachers who are horrible people doesn't help promote the art in a positive way. No body should feel like they have a license to be like that. You're given a trust when you teach. My job is that the person who walks out of the class feels better about themselves than when they started." Still, some days ballet can be a bitter pill to swallow and it's just hard work. "If you're going to work that hard, you have to have a good time. Everybody should feel better about themselves after the class. Teachers should recognize courage and identify different levels of achievement." Mahler chuckles lightly when she adds, "I tell all of my classes at some time or another, 'If you pay attention and I'm a good teacher, you will learn at least one thing. Then everyone will have succeeded.'"
Mahler's ballet classes are very musical and the transitions are smooth and comfortable, still she sees all sorts of dancers from different schools have trouble with the simplest movements like port-de-bras or glissade. Mahler, who calls plies a "moving meditation," says, "Ballet has expanded over the years. It derives from a classical base and it is one of the only dance forms besides Martha Graham modern technique that has become specific enough that its study will bring about changes in your body. Jazz is very difficult, tap is very difficult, but they don't have the specificity to make changes in
the body."
Mahler is concerned, however, with the formulaic ballet methods she sees in some students. Although she says regional ballet schools are doing a wonderful job of instilling a love of dance in students, and that without teachers all over the country there would be kids who would never know that they love to dance. But too many dancers are being taught "in a box." To Mahler, ballet is a living, breathing thing. "It's safer to teach with a million and one restrictions because it seems like it's safe to teach within a system. That is like teaching something codified rather than alive. You become so afraid to make a mistake that you make dancing smaller and smaller until it dries up and blows away. There are people who keep it living and breathing and people that freeze dry ballet to the point where you have to add something to make it flow, and we aren't talking perspiration!" Mahler's suggestions for a cure to "freeze-dried-ballet" are, "Study more, take classes, the convention circuit is a good idea, and see performances. Find someone you trust to allow you to take chances with your dancing."
Besides keeping teachers fresh and creative, Mahler has some ideas for how students can begin now to achieve the longevity and creative successes she continues to know. "Without a demi-plie, you won't have a long career." A girlish laugh slips out as she says, "That was a little joke. Here's the real answer: Number one, redefine a successful class. A successful class is not one in which you were able to do all the combinations correctly. A successful class is one where you struggled away while still maintaining a positive point of view. Class is just the means to an end. Class gives you the legs and the technique to perform. Dance is not about class. Number two, remember you should always take a risk on stage. Don't dance "safe." If you dance "safe" the audience will know. Something will be missing. The risk factor is always exciting. What do you do after a great performance? No self-editorials while you're dancing either. What you're feeling and what the audience is getting are different. Number three, open yourself up to everything, other art forms. Stay open, especially if it's pushing the envelope. When "Swan Lake" premiered it was booed off stage because it wasn't considered classical enough! Go to art galleries, movies, opera, especially if it seems like it's different and really challenging the average. Don't close your mind to any and all progress." After a thirty-plus year career that spanned performance (American Ballet Theatre, San Jose/Cleveland Ballet, among others,) injury, teaching, establishing a university dance department (Kansas State University,) albums, and videos, most teachers would be about ready to jete into the sunset. Not Roni Mahler. She has an extensive teaching schedule on tap, a new website in the works, and plans for a special project to bring her unique style of teaching ballet to a world wide audience. "It's just getting out in the world that interests me. I'm sixty-four, single, living with a dog in New York. I figure I've got thirty good years left on this earth. I want to spend them traveling and having a good time!"
Mahler will be teaching for Dance Makers conventions in June and at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico in August. Additional information is available at www.rancholapuerta.com.