THE FUNNIEST PEOPLE IN DANCE: 250 ANECDOTES

By David Bruce

Dedicated with respect to Gladys Bailin

Copyright 2007 by Bruce D. Bruce

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Cover Photograph

Photographer: Rayna Canedy

Agency: Dreamstime.com

Many thanks to Ed Venrick for the front cover.

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The Funniest People in Dance

Chapter 1: Activism to Death

Activism

• In some South American countries, people who are critical of the government disappear—agents of the government kidnap and kill them. Some relatives and friends of the desapariciones have attracted international attention to the problem by unusual protests—going on hunger strikes, sewing quilts, and dancing alone to show that they miss the disappeared.

• African-American choreographer Alvin Ailey, Jr., created Masekela Langage to protest apartheid in South Africa. In the dance’s climax, a bloodied black man staggers into a party and dies. The program note for Masekela Langage states, “Looks like it’s safer to be in jail.”

Animals

• Ballerina Alice Patelson’s mother was a former Radio City Rockette who taught ballet to neighborhood children in a studio built into her home. Whenever Alice’s mother came downstairs dressed in her leotard to begin teaching a ballet class, the family pet springer spaniel, Lady, went upstairs. When Lady thought the family was busy, she would take a flying leap into the middle of Alice’s parents’ bed, which was forbidden to her. However, the family knew what Lady was doing. After ballet class was over, Alice’s mother used to noisily climb upstairs, giving Lady plenty of warning to get off the bed before being caught.

• In her act, belly dancer Amaya—née Maria Elena Amaya—used a snake that ate three mice a month. Unfortunately, one month the local pet shop ran out of mice, so the pet shop owner suggested, “Three mice = six baby chicks.” However, Amaya remembered what had happened when a belly dancer friend had fed her snake baby chicks. At the conclusion of a dance in Las Vegas, the belly dancer had lifted the snake over her head, and the snake had loudly passed gas. Not only did the snake emit gas, but it also emitted a cloud of baby chick feathers!

• When Rudolf Nureyev was a young child growing up in Ufa, food was scarce and he was frequently hungry. One day, his mother made a long trek through the snow to another village in search of food to feed her family at home. Near nightfall, she noticed yellowish circles of light around her—circles of light that traveled in pairs. Suddenly, she realized that wolves had surrounded her. She took off the blanket she was wearing around her shoulders and set it on fire. Seeing the fire, the wolves fled.

• While studying black dance in Haiti, Katherine Dunham was invited to stay at the home of a friend. However, she smelled something unusual in the house and looked up to see an 8-foot python in the rafters. The snake was a “pet” often kept around Haitian homes to eat rats and mice.

Arguments

• Early in her career, Martha Graham was a dancer for Denishawn. Both she and Denishawn co-founder Ted Shawn had tempers. One day, while on tour, Ms. Graham called Mr. Shawn to say that she wanted to add a new dance to the tour. Mr. Shawn refused to give her permission to add the dance, so Ms. Graham angrily ripped the telephone out of the wall. On another occasion, they grew angry as they talked over lunch in a New York restaurant. Ms. Graham stood up, grabbed the tablecloth, and pulled it, the dishes, and all the food onto the floor, then she stalked out of the restaurant and into a taxi. Mr. Shawn followed her and screamed at her, “I don’t ever want to see you again in my life! And I mean it!” On both occasions, they quickly made up their differences.

• When Lindy Hop dancer Norma Miller was underage, she had a chance to go to Europe as a member of a dance troupe. The problem was this: How could she convince her mother to let her go? After receiving the offer, she went home and her mother, who was tired, asked her to do a favor—to wash a few things in the sink. Norma asked, “Okay, Ma, but if I wash out your underwear, will you let me go to Europe?” Thinking that Norma was joking, her mother said, “Yes, if you wash those things in the sink, I’ll let you go to Europe.” The next day Norma told her about the offer—and reminded her about her promise to let her go to Europe. After a lot of arguing, and the promise that Norma would be chaperoned, her mother let her go to Europe.

Audiences

• Agnes de Mille says, “I’m not a Massine fan at all.” When Léonide Massine was at Covent Garden, his fans were numerous and enthusiastic. Ms. de Mille used to attend performances of his works at Covent Garden and be very quiet. Meanwhile, members of the audience would cheer madly, be wildly extravagant in their love for Massine and his art—and glare at Ms. de Mille because she did not share their enthusiasm for all things Massine. One day, Mr. Massine was introduced at Covent Garden as “certainly the greatest choreographer we have living and probably ever have had.” Ms. de Mille immediately thought of Martha Graham and of Antony Tudor.

• Anita Berber, known mainly as a controversial dancer in Weimar Berlin, performed in many countries. In Fiume, a city now in Croatia, she performed in a very small club where she could hear the comments members of the audience made about her. She overheard one insulting comment and memorized where it had come from. After her dance was over, she walked over to that spot and slapped the man sitting there. Unfortunately, Ms. Berber was nearsighted and did not know that the man who had insulted her had gone and that a man who appreciated her talent had taken his place.

• Being a nonconformist sometimes leads to opportunities. In London early in her career, modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan and Raymond, her brother, danced in the park. Enjoying their impromptu performance was a woman who invited them to her home, where Isadora again danced. The woman was the famous actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who introduced Isadora and her brother to other famous and wealthy people, and soon Isadora was performing in their homes.

• In 1976, Twyla Tharp created a piece for herself and Mikhail Baryshnikov. The piece contained no virtuoso acrobatic dance moves, and Mr. Baryshnikov did not leave the ground at all during the dance. The two danced the piece at a gala at the Metropolitan Opera House, and the audience—which wanted virtuoso acrobatic dance moves—booed them. Mr. Baryshnikov had never been booed before—and all the boos delighted him.

• Vaslav Nijinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps caused a furor when it was first performed. At first, audiences hated it, and made much noise during its presentation, once causing impresario Sergei Diaghilev to shout at the audience, “Silence! The dancers cannot hear the music!” Later, audiences appreciated the ballet.

• What a ballerina remembers about a performance may not be what the audience remembers. Early in her career, Violette Verdy danced the role of Cinderella at La Scala. What she remembers most about the production is something about the audience: the gleaming of men’s bald heads in the dim light.

• In 1907, Isadora Duncan danced in Moscow. At the end of the first act, some audience members hissed because of a lack of appreciation for her art, but Constantine Stanislavsky, the co-director of the Moscow Art Theater, stood up and applauded vigorously. Recognizing him, the hissers stopped.

• Whenever the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performed, many dancers sat in the audience. A non-dancer at a performance looked at the audience members as they walked around during the intermission and said, “I’ve never seen an audience so erect, with such beautiful posture.”

Auditions

• Mary Anthony danced so impressively at an audition that Hanya Holm gave her a three-year tuition waiver. Actually, Ms. Anthony believed that she was successful at the audition because she owned only one record. She was required to dance two solos, and after she had danced to the music of the one record she owned, she danced her second solo without music. This “decision” of hers so impressed Ms. Holm that she gave her the tuition waiver.

• When ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev asked Russian ballerina Alexandra Danilova to audition for him, she was indignant and told him, “Do you know that I am from the Mariinsky Theater? If I am good enough for the Mariinsky Theater, I am good enough for you!” She auditioned anyway, but was further insulted when Mr. Diaghilev asked her about her weight. She stormed, “Are you buying a horse? Maybe you want to see my teeth!”

Autographs

• In June of 1952, Le Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas danced in Rio de Janeiro. Some ballet fans went backstage, where they quickly stole as many small souvenirs as possible, including many, many photographs that George Zoritch kept of himself in his dressing room. These fans brought the photographs around to Mr. Zoritch, who of course recognized where they had come from, but who signed them anyway. Soon, Mr. Zoritch noticed that the same people kept asking him to sign his photograph. He pointed out that he had already given them an autograph, but they said, “Yes, we already have two or three, but would you autograph one more?”

• George Balanchine took the New York City Ballet on a tour to his native Russia and throughout Europe, ending the tour in Poland. During the tour, the ballet company carried grey linoleum flooring to dance on. In Poland, Mr. Balanchine made a present of the flooring to the Polish Ballet School after autographing a corner of it. An official of the Polish Ballet School cut off the corner that Mr. Balanchine had autographed, then framed it and hung it up.

• As a young girl, ballerina Illaria Obidenna Ladré had a crush on Russian dancer Anatole Vilzak. She met him after she graduated from dance school, and he wrote two lines in her yearbook—“First of all love / dance and art”—and signed his name. Illaria crossed out the line “dance and art,” leaving “First of all love.”

• A man once saw dancer/choreographer Martha Graham surrounded by fans, so he asked her for her autograph, which she gave to him. But after reading the name on the piece of paper, he asked, “Who are you?” Ms. Graham grabbed the piece of paper from his hand, then snapped, “Find out!”

• Famous mime Marcel Marceau once watched ballet dancer Peter Martins rehearse and was so impressed that he autographed Mr. Martins’ arm and added his impression of Mr. Martins’ talent: “Wonderful!”

Censorship

• Dance can be censored. The Danny Grossman Dance Company performed National Spirit—a dance that satirizes American patriotism and implies that blindly following your leader can get you killed—at a Florida elementary school. The company was supposed to perform two shows, but after the first performance, the principal would not allow them to perform the second. She told Mr. Grossman, “It will take ten years to unteach what you have shown them.” She also called the police to escort the dance troupe out of the school.

• Anna Pavlova was once censored while dancing in the United States. The authorities thought that the skirts of her ballet costumes were too short, so they made her wear longer skirts before allowing her to perform. About this experience, Ms. Pavlova said, “The evil was in the mind of my critics, I think, rather than in the beautiful art which it has always been my endeavor to give to the world.”

• In Romania in the mid-1940s, censors sometimes read people’s mail. Ballerina Illaria Obidenna Ladré lived in Romania for a while as her husband, Marian Ladré, danced in South America. He once sent her a photograph of himself, and the censor wrote underneath the photograph, “What a handsome husband you have!”

Children

• When ballerina Margot Fonteyn was a little girl, her mother knew how to keep her quiet, at least for a short time. She would put a pin on the floor, put a cushion on the pin, then have little Margot sit on the cushion. She would tell little Margot that if she sat quietly, fairies would turn the pin into a lump of sugar. However, little Margot was not allowed to talk, and she was not allowed to look to see if the pin had turned into a lump of sugar, because if she did, the transformation of the pin into a lump of sugar would take longer. Her mother would then do whatever chore she needed to do, such as baking a cake. Once or twice, she would check on the pin, say it hadn’t turned into a lump of sugar yet, then return to the chore. However, when the chore was finished, miraculously the pin would have turned into a lump of sugar.

• Beth Joiner, a children’s dance teacher in Georgia, plays along when her students decide a certain day is “Opposite Day.” Unfortunately, she learns what day it is after a student comes in and tells her that she is really pretty. When she thanks the student, all of her students snicker and say, “It’s Opposite Day.” Miss Beth then tells everybody how terrible they are when they dance well and how graceful they are when they dance badly. However, Opposite Day does result in problems. Once, a student told Miss Beth that her hair looked terrible, and when Miss Beth cheerfully replied, “Thank you,” the student looked confused. On another occasion, Miss Beth got into Opposite Day so much that she created a family crisis by telling her mother-in-law that she was growing fat.

• Isadora Duncan’s early life was harsh after her mother separated from her father. Little money was available, and the family was forced to move from dwelling to dwelling. When Ms. Duncan was nearly eight years old, her school class was asked to write a story about their lives. The other children wrote happy stories, but little Isadora wrote about unkind landlords. Her teacher thought she was making up lies, and so the teacher spoke to Isadora’s mother about the story. Isadora’s mother started crying and said that the story was true. (Despite the lack of money, Isadora was introduced to culture very early in her life. Her mother played classical music on the piano and read Shakespeare to her children.)

• In the USSR, ballerinas were major celebrities—and in the countries formed by the breakup of the USSR, they are still major celebrities. A group of children from Moldavia was visiting the Bolshoi when they found out that Galina Ulanova was practicing in a room next door. The children raced around the adults trying to keep them out of the practice room and watched her, entranced. Such scenes are repeated. When Ms. Ulanova returned to Leningrad to dance as a guest, its citizens were excited. As she warmed up, a door to the balcony over her warming-up area opened and some children stood and watched her, spellbound.

• As a child, Agnes de Mille saw Anna Pavlova dance twice. She was mesmerized each time and motivated to study dancing. The second time she saw Ms. Pavlova dance, she was able to visit her backstage with a few adult friends. Ms. Pavlova kissed her on the cheek and gave her some flowers, and Agnes was so overwhelmed at being in the star’s presence that she began to cry. Years later, Agnes learned that Ms. Pavlova acted that way with all the little girls who were brought to see her. But it didn’t matter to Agnes, for Ms. Pavlova was a star of dance.

• After World War II, in which she worked for the Resistance and was awarded the croix de guerre and the Legion of Honor with the Rosette of the Resistance, Josephine Baker adopted 12 orphans of several nationalities (including Finland, Ivory Coast, Korea, and Algeria) and several religions (including Buddhist, Shinto, Catholic, Jewish, and Moslem) and brought them to live with her in France. She called the adopted orphans the Rainbow Tribe and hoped that they would be a model for world brotherhood.

• Everyone—including creative, successful, famous people—has been rejected at one time or another. When she was a teenager, young people’s author Jean Little attended a party where a chaperone encouraged her to participate in a Sadie Hawkins dance where her partner would be whoever was closest to her when a piece of music stopped. Unfortunately, the boy closest to her looked at her, said, “Oh, God, no”—then left her on the dance floor. (She spent the rest of the evening standing behind the record player.)

• When children’s book author/illustrator Tomie dePaola was growing up, he took dance lessons and occasionally participated in a dance concert with the other child dancers. One year, he was supposed to dance as a pirate, and he wanted to have an eye patch so he could look scary. Therefore, he started giving his dance teacher, Miss Leah, some drawings of pirates. Each pirate wore an eye patch. Miss Leah got the hint, and she allowed Tomie to wear an eye patch during the dance.

• At age four, future Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller had a problem. Tessa, her older sister, was taking dance lessons, but money was tight and young Shannon could not take lessons with her sister. She solved the problem the next time her grandmother telephoned. Talking on the phone, young Shannon told her the sad story, and Grandma agreed to pay for her lessons.

• As a very young dance student, Suzanne Farrell often practiced at home, using an armchair to represent a male partner. She had read about and liked the male dancer Jacques d’Amboise, so she named the armchair after him. Later, as a dancer with the New York City Ballet, Ms. Farrell danced with the real Jacques d’Amboise.

• Even as a young boy, Rudolf Nureyev loved dancing. One of his report cards included a notation by a teacher who stated that young Rudolf “jumps like a frog and that’s about all he knows. He even dances on the staircase landings.”

• As a very young dance pupil—14 years old—Margot Fonteyn (then known as Margaret Hookham) showed much ambition. When she was told that Ms. Anna Pavlova was the greatest dancer in the world, she replied, “Then I will be the second greatest.”

• When Anna Pavlova was eight years old, her mother took her for the first time to the ballet, saying, “You are going to see the country of the fairies.” Her mother spoke truly—the ballet was Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty.

• When Elise, ballerina Maria Tallchief’s daughter, was very young, she wrote a poem that began, “Because she is my mother, / every night she turns into Cinderella.”

Choreographing

• Felia Doubrovska taught at George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet for 30 years, and before that she danced in many of his works. Mr. Balanchine, of course, often fell in love with muses, who inspired him to create some of his masterpieces for them. He also often made his muses either his wives or his girlfriends, and many of them—Tamara Geva, Alexandra Danilova, Vera Zorina, Maria Tallchief, and Tanaquil Le Clercq, became famous. Ms. Doubrovska remained simply friends with Mr. Balanchine, who told her, “Our relationship is so nice, the way we can look each other in the eyes. My girlfriends and wives I try to forget.” Ms. Doubrovska half-joked that she was a “little sad” that she had not been one of his girlfriends or wives “because then I would be famous.”

• George Balanchine choreographed many ballets for the New York City Ballet. Other companies tried to perform his ballets, but they weren’t as successful as his own company; however, this didn’t bother Mr. Balanchine. He once explained that he loved to play the piano, although he played it badly. When he tried to play difficult compositions such as Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto, he loved playing them, although he performed them badly. And so, Mr. Balanchine explained, “That’s why I understand those other companies when they dance my ballets. They do them badly, but they love them. Let them enjoy themselves!”

• Thommie Walsh is the dancer whose pose with crossed arms appeared in posters for A Chorus Line. According to Mr. Walsh, the pose came from being bored in rehearsals and waiting for choreographer Michael Bennett to create dances. However, after Mr. Walsh became a choreographer, he realized how horrible his body language had been, and he telephoned Mr. Bennett to apologize, saying, “I know now what it’s like, with ten or twelve dancers standing around, waiting for me to come up with the steps, the idea, to move it, to shake it. I know what it must have been like with me standing there with my arms crossed.”

• Robert Gottlieb disliked John Cranko’s Eugene Onegin in part because of what he called “its patched-together Tchaikovsky score”—so did George Balanchine. Mr. Cranko had died young of a heart attack, but Mr. Balanchine told Mr. Gottlieb that he had died because of a different reason: “Tchaikovsky up in heaven looked down and saw that ballet and went to God and said, ‘Get that one!’” Of course, Mr. Balanchine was well aware of his place in history as a great choreographer, and when someone once asked him his opinion of the other choreographers, he answered, “And who are the other choreographers?”

• Sergei Diaghilev motivated his choreographers by telling them, “Astonish me!” They responded by astonishing the world. On May 19, 1912, when Vaslav Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun (L’Après-Midi d’un Faune) premiered, it was a seminal, groundbreaking event. At first, the audience did not know what to make of it, and some boos and catcalls were heard as the ballet ended. However, Mr. Diaghilev ordered the ballet to be encored, and this time when the ballet ended, the audience responded with a great ovation.

• Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed his ballet titled L’Après-Midi d’un Faune to Debussy’s music, which was a prelude to Mallarmé’s poem. Mr. Nijinsky created much consternation for everyone at a dinner party, all of whom thought the ballet was a wonderful introduction to Mallarmé’s poem, when he confessed that he had not read that poem by Mallarmé—or any poem by Mallarmé.

• While the great choreographer George Balanchine was lying in a hospital bed dying, one of his former wives, Maria Tallchief, visited him. Music was playing, and Mr. Balanchine was tapping his fingers together. Ms. Tallchief asked, “What are you doing, George?” He replied, “You see, I’m making steps.”

• When dancer Georges Skibine decided to become a choreographer, he asked the great George Balanchine for advice. Mr. Balanchine said simply, “Listen to the music and wait.” Mr. Skibine’s goal for his dancers became “not to dance to music, but to dance the music.”

Christmas

• Alicia Markova was dancing the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy when Doris, her sister, sitting in the audience, overheard a little boy give what Ms. Markova considered the greatest compliment of her career. The little boy saw the Sugar Plum Fairy, then turned to his mother and said, “Can I have her for my Christmas tree next year?”

Clothing

• Belly dancer Amaya—née Maria Elena Amaya—well remembers her most enthusiastic audience ever. She owned her own dance studio, and at night she turned it into a club. For a performance one night, she decided to wear a red bra that fastened in the front, along with a gold vest. As she danced, the audience grew more and more enthusiastic, clapping and cheering. After the dance, she was called out for three encores. Finally, one of her belly-dancing students revealed the reason for the audience’s enthusiasm. Her bra had become undone, but she hadn’t noticed because she was concentrating on the dance and because her vest had kept pressure on her breasts. However, the audience had definitely noticed. Amaya’s husband had been in the audience, cheering like everyone else—and taking photographs. She had the photographs developed, then looked at them in sequence. Early in the dance, she was showing a little cleavage, which grew greater and greater as her dance progressed. The final photograph showed that the dance had stopped at the moment before she would have revealed all.

• David Janssen, star of TV’s The Fugitive, and dancer Fred Astaire went to the same tailor. One day, Mr. Janssen went into the tailor’s shop and saw Mr. Astaire with a new suit. Mr. Astaire had rolled up the suit and was busy throwing it against the wall. When Mr. Janssen asked what he was doing, Mr. Astaire replied, “The way to wear clothes is to tell them who’s boss in the beginning. Then they fit you.”

• While dancing in San Francisco, ballerina Alicia Markova needed new stockings. She entered a clothing store and told the saleslady her size, but the saleslady replied, “Nobody has feet that small!” However, Ms. Markova did, so the saleslady advised her to exercise more so her feet would grow bigger.

Competition

• At the 1969 International Ballet Competition held in Moscow, Mikhail Baryshnikov danced the lead role in Vestris. Among the judges was famed ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, who was so impressed by the young dancer’s ability that instead of giving him the maximum 12 points for his rating, she gave him 13 points. As you would expect, Mr. Baryshnikov won the gold medal for the competition.

• At the 1966 International Ballet Competition held in Varna, Bulgaria, Canadian ballerina Martine Van Hamel won the overall prize for artistic interpretation as well as the women’s prize for dancing. Ironically, at her last performance, as she was taking a bow, she slipped and fell.

• In 1949, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Anton Dolin was introduced as “the greatest dancer in the world” to an African dancer, who immediately shouted, “No, I am.”

Costumes

• In addition to being an innovator in dance techniques, modern dance pioneer Martha Graham was a pioneer in costuming. In ballet, costumes reveal the legs; however, during Ms. Graham’s period of long woolens, she wore long woolen dresses that she would manipulate with her legs and body to stretch and create dramatic shapes. She took pains with her costumes, and if they weren’t right, she would tear them apart and work with them until they were right. Sometimes, her dancers would use safety pins to hold their costumes together because no time was left to sew them together again in a new pattern after Ms. Graham had ripped them to pieces.

• Ballet companies, not dancers, usually own the ballet costumes—although the dancers do supply their own leotards. This means that more than one dancer wears the costumes. Alicia Markova insisted that her costumes be cleaned each time she was to wear them. At a performance of Romeo and Juliet, Nora Kaye came backstage to change into her next costume—but she discovered that that costume and the others had been taken to the cleaners by an overeager dresser who was following Ms. Markova’s orders. No costume changes took place in that performance of Romeo and Juliet.

• Modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan was also a pioneer in dance costuming. She often wore little more than a short, filmy tunic and left her legs and arms bare. In fact, many women of the time wore more clothing while swimming than Ms. Duncan danced in. Early in her career, she danced for upper-class ladies at teas and garden parties. At least once, some ladies left during her performances because they were scandalized by her lack of clothing. Late in her career, evangelist Billy Sunday complained, “That Bolshevik hussy doesn’t wear enough clothes to pad a crutch!”

• Early in her dancing career, Martha Graham appeared in the Greenwich Village Follies, where she represented artistic dancing in a production otherwise filled with dancing chorus girls. Each day, a police officer arrived to look over the dancers’ costumes to make sure that they didn’t violate any public decency laws. One day, a dancer pointed to Ms. Graham and asked, “What about her?” Although Ms. Graham’s costume was the skimpiest one there, the police officer shrugged and said, “She’s all right—she’s art.”

• Choreographer Bronislava Nijinska danced the part of the hostess in her ballet Les Biches. As she was blocking out the pattern of the dance onstage, she held a cigarette holder as she always did, despite the regulations against smoking backstage. Sergei Diaghilev saw her with the cigarette holder, then insisted that it become part of the costume for her character. Often, Ms. Nijinska drank a glass of champagne just before going onstage because it helped put her in the mood of the character.

• In the musical One Touch of Venus, an ancient statue of the goddess of love comes to life. Nymphs are dancers in the play, and the costumer designed costumes that shocked choreographer Agnes de Mille, who pointed out, “There seem to be breasts under her arms and on her back, too.” The costumer replied, “You wouldn’t want ordinary anatomy on nymphs, surely!” (Fortunately, Ms. de Mille did want ordinary anatomy on the nymphs.)