England' Contribution to American Ballet David Howard's Celebrates 40 Years of Teaching in America.
David Howard sat at his desk in his Columbus Avenue studio waiting for his morning class to begin. It was a few minutes before ten, and as was his custom every morning he greeted each student with a cheery hello. He knew them all. Chances are if you were a dancer you found your way to Howard's class before too long. It was a good place to hone your professional skills, to warm-up for an evening performance, or to assemble your own "how to teach ballet" lesson plans to take back to Peoria or to Europe. Taking a "David Class" meant you were a smart dancer, and once you took his class you rarely went anywhere else. Howard also kept a memory bank of the dancers who took his classes, personal observations as he watched them work, on the chance he would be called upon to produce one for a director or choreographer.
On one particular morning the phone rang and was passed to David by the receptionist. "How are you Erik," he said, with the cheeriest of responses only the English have perfected. "Of course I can," he answered as he beckoned to one of the young lean ballerinas pulling her leg over her head in a nearly impossible stretch. "Erik Bruhn wants to know if you would like a spot in the National Ballet of Canada," he whispered. "He needs someone immediately." So began this dancer's career. She had come in like the others to take her daily class. She left as a member of a corps de ballet.
Howard cautioned that this incident was not an ordinary one. "If I know the dancer's history, their sincerity, and I trust them to behave when they go to work, then I am happy to do it," he said. "Yes, I am putting my name on the line and I have made a few mistakes, but I keep getting calls from directors '...if you see any one...' Why shouldn't I? It is so difficult to get a job out there."
Using his many contacts to get a pos-ition for a dancer is only one small "side barre" of David Howard's teaching career. Not only are his ongoing classes in New York City always spilling over with eager students, both famous and novice, who want to absorb some kinetic corrections that will make a longer arabesque, a more precise jump, multiple pirouettes, or arms that will extend more meaningfully into space, but his reputation as a master class teacher is internationally known as well. He conducts ballet classes for the major companies of the world, and coaches many of the dance world's most famous stars guiding and supporting professionals like Natalia Makarova, Gelsey Kirkland, Alexandra Ansanelli, Patrick Bissell, and Cynthia Harvey, to mention a few. They came to Howard at a time in their professional lives when advice and support was sorely needed, and remained as close friends.
"Natasha once asked me, 'why do you want to teach all those ladies?'" She was referring to the non-professionals, the "ladies" who may have once dreamed of becoming a ballerina and are past the possibility yet still love the vocabulary, the music, and the movement. Howard shifted in his chair and his engaging smile turned to a laugh. "Because they pay my rent," he chided her. Howard never differentiated between the "stars" and the "ladies and gentlemen" who flocked to his studio. Both were respected and taught with care. The barre was never altered to suit either level. It was structured musically to cover all of the ballet vocabulary.
The professionals often sought him out to be a "fixer." Natalia Makarova paid Howard a visit when she needed some help with the "Black Swan" variation. "Don't try to do the legendary thirty-two fouettes," he had advised her. "Run in on the first eight counts, and you do twenty-four and no one will know the difference. You will finish in a flourish with the music," Howard said. 'Well, that's cheating,' a perplexed Makarova responded. 'Cheating?' I said. Well if you only do twenty-four and finish ahead of the music, the critics will put it in the morning papers, and it will be the audience that is cheated. If you start late, no one will know, and you will get your ovation. Which is better?" As Makarova grew older Howard came up with many similar suggestions designed to prolong her career and extend the critics adoration like suggesting she change some jumps to releves. "...which I liked better anyway," he admitted. "With releves, the tutu isn't busy bobbing up and down. It looks much better."
Alexandra Ansanelli was ten when she took a summer program that Howard was teaching and at that young age it was evident to him that something special was there. Howard suggested the director move her front and center for a "Bluebird" variation she was staging. "But she is not nearly as good as the others, the director told me. Just you wait and see," Howard said of the future principal dancer at City Ballet. "Alexandra had her heart set on the classics, and we worked together on a letter she needed to fill out for The Royal Ballet. I was told she was difficult to work with, but I truly feel dancers who are really good, and she is, are difficult to work with. You must find a way to get to them. I advised her to trust Monica Mason and tell her whatever bothered her. A dancer in a foreign country is a bit lost...I know I was there once. They need a friend."
Speaking of "difficult" - perhaps there was no more difficult pupil/teacher relationship than when Gelsey Kirkland turned to David Howard for help. Kirkland, quite possibly the most brilliant American ballerina of our time, had a well-publicized tough career. Brought up as a baby ballerina in the Balanchine era, she defected to ABT to become Misha Baryshnikov's partner, a short-lived artistic pas de deux that had dire consequences. What Kirkland needed in her life was a calm, encouraging presence, and she sought out Howard as teacher and coach. "My relationship was very different with Gelsey," Howard began. "I rarely corrected her in class. If I had, she might have killed me. I went to her performances only when I was invited and sat way in the back with her grandmother and mother. Sometimes there were very long intervals between acts and her mother would worry and ask me to go back and see what had happened. Often Gelsey might not appear for the second act. I would not let her drug problems get in the way of our relationship. We did not talk about it, nor did I ask her why she needed to borrow money, though I knew." Howard emphasized that the advance from Kirkland's book went to pay back her debtors. "She remembered every penny I had loaned her."
Kirkland had arrived on Howard's doorstep at Harkness after she had a falling out with Maggie Black. Then she broke her foot and had a long time off ahead of her. Howard began by questioning her. "How do you bring an audience to their feet," he asked her. "You know, it has nothing to do with a brilliant arabesque. It is what is behind that." He urged her to join him in finding out where a dancer's power comes from.
"To start, let's work with the torso," he began. He made her sit in a chair for several months as she was healing her foot and concentrate on her arms, shorter than she would have liked. "Can we make them look longer,' she asked. Howard pointed out that the arms must create an illusion. "Here is how we fix them," he said. "The torso releases the arms, the fingers go up as the arms go down and voila, you have lengthened them." Although Kirkland bristled at the word "illusion," thinking it to mean phony, she practiced Howard's suggestions, and those of us who have seen her dance, have succumbed to the beauty of this so-called "illusion" time and again.
Kirkland was an artist that may not pass before us again in our lifetime, and Howard deemed it more of a privilege than a problem to help her as much as he could. "I remember Misha once said I should be canonized for I was indeed a saint to put up with all her shenan-igans. But she was so special, with a vulnerability that made you weep when you saw her on stage. Her pointe work was miraculous and completely instinctive. She was a great dancer."
The immortal English ballerina, Margot Fonteyn, was one of Kirkland's idols, though they were totally different dancers. Fonteyn never had high extensions, a dazzling jump, or the capacity to toss off multiple turns. Then what did she have that mesmerized audiences for so long? "I asked Margot that," Howard remembered. "Well, she told me I can balance on one leg forever, and I am musical, but I need to find a way to be not ordinary." She smiled at Howard, and immediately he knew the answer. "It was her eyes, large, black, riveting eyes," he recalled. I was in the corps of the Royal Ballet when Rudy, in his early 20's, came to do (Swan Lake) with Margot, in her mid 40's. In rehearsal, she was falling all over the place. We all thought our 'Queen' would make a fool of herself with this kid who was trying to make her into a Russian ballerina. The rehearsal was a disaster. The performance--well the company had never seen anything like it. When she finished the "Black Swan" pas de deux, he was on his knees, as well he should be, I might add. She threw her head back and pointed her finger at him and laughed. Well, we (in the corps) all stood on the stage and wept. She had been brilliant before, but never like
this. Never!"
An invitation from Rebecca Harkness, patron of the arts and avid balletomaine, came to Howard at a time when he felt he had to try something new. His background, English vaudeville and three radio shows a week as an "Ovaltiney," singing and dancing about the virtues of drinking Ovaltine every morning, and a long stint in the corps de ballet of the Sadler's Wells Company (not yet renamed as The Royal Ballet) was beginning to wear thin. This coupled with the yen to come to America led him to accept Mrs. Harkness' offer to teach at her school and be involved with her company. "Had I not taken her offer," Howard reflected, "none of this would have happened." Howard joined the staff along with Matt Mattox, Luigi, and Jack Cole - an impressive bunch--in a magnificent mansion on East 75th Street. He coached the Harkness Ballet, and spent eleven fruitful years with her. But it was again time to move on, and Howard set up quarters on 61st street and Columbus Avenue to begin teaching on his own. This is where his reputation flourished and his easy manner became a magnet at attracting students, so much so that he outgrew the space and moved farther west to a much larger space.
However, the new quarters proved to be an unwieldy financial obligation, more than Howard could manage especially because much of the funding promises he had solicited were just that -- promises. The large studio had to close, but not entirely to Howard's dismay. Teaching during the height of the AIDS epidemic (which had begun before he moved to the larger school) took a terrible toll on Howard. "I must have lost thirty boys during the period before the 'cocktail of pills' was discovered and able to prolong the lives of these young people." Peter Fonseca, one of Howard's protégées and a greatly talented ABT soloist was one of the first of his students to die. Attending funerals, one by one, took so much of the joy from his teaching. "When Patrick Bissell died of a drug overdose I felt I could not go on anymore," Howard said quietly, a slight break in his voice. "Then I realized I had to formulate something in my mind that would carry me through, so I convinced myself these beautiful young dancers were simply away on tour, and that I would see them again soon."
Howard does not think of himself as a legend though others most certainly do. "I am finally enjoying my life, and I feel privileged to be able to do what I do. I have been fortunate and I am having a great time. I never have thought of myself as the greatest. Other people will come along and do just as well." Howard's sees himself back in England, in a big apartment, sitting in a rocking chair, reading the paper, sipping his tea or possibly a glass of good wine, and recalling his cherished memories. "I keep seeing it in my mind's eye, the rocker welcoming me home," he said softly. "You know, I am not a ballet freak. Ballet performances do not hold the interest for me as they once did. The age of dramatic partnerships is gone. Many great dancers are gone. I just hate to be provoked into saying -- I remember when." He turned to look at the resplendent photographs of dancers hanging on the walls of his apartment. Most had personal notes written at the bottom. "But I do," he said wistfully, "remember when."