In Balanchine's Company: A Dancer's Memoir
The air literally crackles with excitement around something new. The feelings of daring, expectation, and hope provide sustenance to the artists involved. New work is a promise to believe in the idea and a pledge to do everything possible to encourage and support that which is new.
Ballet in America was initiated by an innovative vision for dance in the mid-twentieth century as George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein devoted time, energy, money, and dancers to the promise of a new creative ideal that rested in the principles of pioneering, industry, and intellectualism. The dancers chosen to be members of the fledgling New York City Ballet could sense the excitement surrounding the development of the first truly American ballet school and company, but only in retrospect can the sensations be genuinely appreciated. Writer, teacher, and former NYCB dancer Barbara Milberg Fisher has produced a memoir of her experiences with the Balanchine/Kirstein vision of an enduring and honestly "home grown" American ballet. She attempts an honest, sincere portrayal and hits it right on the money.
Milberg Fisher is a retired college English professor with a passion for the poetry of American modernist Wallace Stevens. She writes of the early days with Balanchine in an engaging style often relying on poetic techniques to express her ideas. For example, instead of saying "we hugged," Milberg Fisher says, "we clinch." Rather than say she was a stubborn child, she claims, "And pigheaded into the bargain." When retelling the traditional version of the Prodigal Son and explaining what the young man had done with his riches, she chooses colorful language again and writes, "...the younger takes his portion and heads for the fleshpots." It's enjoyable to read Milberg Fisher's interpretation of the 1940's ballet world flavored with her personal impression of today's society. Undoubtedly, her years in college classrooms have contributed to much of her imagery.
Each chapter is tinged with the sense of holding together the original ideals of the New York City Ballet. The writer repeatedly quotes Balanchine as saying, "He did avow, more than once, that after he was gone his ballets would fall apart. We all remember that--and to a certain extent he was justified." However disenchanted with the evolution of NYCB Milberg Fisher claims to be from time to time in her book, she also remembers a "more positive prediction." Balanchine also said many times, "You will all leave me and go and start ballet schools and companies, and there will be good dancers all over America." Those first company members still meet annually to renew old stories and share new impressions of ballet today bringing to reality the prophesies of Balanchine.
In Balanchine's Company: A dancer's memoir is a valuable contribution to the literature surrounding the early growth and development of American ballet. Milberg Fisher's academic background and artistic appreciations make the book readable and an important record of Balanchine's temperament and creativity before his life and art were beset with personal unhappiness that undoubtedly affected his work and relationships. Milberg Fisher's membership in the small and unique group of New York City Ballet's first company allows her to provide a serious yet intimate treatment of a legacy she helped create. Her perspective is honest and her stories of the early creative pangs of NYCB combine to make her book a worthwhile addition to the bookshelf of every balletomane.
In an interview Milberg Fisher calls the young ballet movement in America, "that original wonder." Every dancer is painfully aware of the fragileness of dance, how one moment it's there and the next it isn't, and how every repetition is different from the ones before it. Milberg Fisher is cognizant of the fleeting nature of dance and thankfully has seen her way to helping us recapture that original wonder in poetic fashion.
(In Balanchine's Company: A Dancer's Memoir, Barbara Milberg Fisher, Wesleyan University Press, 215 Long Lane, Middletown, CT, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress.)