RE-RELEASE: Jennifer Homans, Author of Apollo's Angels
Today we are bringing you another re-release from the early days of 'Conversations On Dance', this time with author Jennifer Homans. In this episode today, first recorded in June 2017, we spoke with Jennifer about the book she prior to 'Mr. B' titled 'Apollo's Angels' which chronicles ballet's entire history, as well as her own history as a dancer and her founding of Center for Ballet and the Arts in NYC.
Listen to episode 318 with Jennifer on her book 'Mr. B'
Get your copy of Jennifer’s books:
Apollo's Angels: https://amzn.to/3WD9h2T
Mr. B: https://amzn.to/3IInO7L
LINKS:
Website: conversationsondancepod.com
Instagram: @conversationsondance
Merch: https://bit.ly/cod-merch
YouTube: https://bit.ly/youtube-COD
Join our email list: https://bit.ly/mail-COD
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was generated automatically. It’s accuracy may vary.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:00:03]:
I'm Rebecca King Ferraro.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:00:05]:
And I'm Michael. Sean, breathe. And you're listening to conversations on Dance.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:00:14]:
Hi, everyone.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:00:15]:
We are coming at you with another.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:00:16]:
Rerelease from the early days of Conversations on Dance, this time with author Jennifer Homans. So many of you tuned into episode 318 with Jennifer, where we explored her latest book, Mr. B, one of the most thorough books on Balanchine Sheen's life ever written. And in this episode today, first recorded in June 2017, we spoke with Jennifer about the book she wrote prior to Mr. B titled Apollo's Angels. Now, that book chronicles ballet's entire history, and we also delve into her own history a little bit as a dancer, as well as her founding of the center for Ballet and the Arts in New York City. We hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane with Jennifer, and if you haven't checked out her most recent episode, again, that's episode 318 with Jennifer. We absolutely encourage you to explore that one too.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:01:04]:
Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join us live today.
Jennifer Homans [00:01:08]:
I'm very happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:01:11]:
So we figured we'd just start at the beginning. If you could tell us about your personal background in ballet.
Jennifer Homans [00:01:18]:
Well, you know, it's funny. My personal background is actually not in ballet. My personal background sort of starts with I grew up in a family of scholars and academics at the University of Chicago. So the interest in ballet really just started as a child when I was sent to the local ballet studio. And when everyone else eventually quit, I just kept going because I really, really liked it. And then somebody asked me to take class with a man who had been a professional dancer, and he was now studying at the University of Chicago, and he was doing, I think, business at physics. And he taught this very kind of strangely conceptual class that had to do with the physics of dance and how the velocity and spin I found it really fascinating. And so in addition to just loving to dance, which is what kept me there in the beginning, then there sort of started to be this sort of intellectual interest in it as well. And at that point, I decided I would study seriously, and so I went to the North Carolina School of the Arts.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:02:31]:
I think that's so interesting because you're basically already jumping into our next question, which was, when did you begin to realize you had a scholarly interest in Bali? So it was really from the very beginning for you.
Jennifer Homans [00:02:42]:
Yeah, it really was. And I think I loved it on a physical level because it was a kind of way of a way of being quiet in a world that just seemed very busy. And so I loved my dance classes because it was music and quiet. And it also had this wonderful thing, which was, if you worked really hard. You got better, and it was kind of reliable in that way. So I found that very sort of comforting and gratifying and then just the beauty of the music and dancing to it. My mother started to take me to performances. We're talking 1970s, so it was still the Cold War, and there were still tours of the Bolshei, tours of the Kirov. We didn't get to New York very much. I grew up in Chicago, so that wasn't really part of my imagination until until I came to New York to study.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:03:47]:
Did you always know that you wanted to study in New York? Was that part of the goal?
Jennifer Homans [00:03:51]:
No, I really went from the North Carolina School of the Arts, which was kind of my introduction into the really professional world of dance. And I had teachers like Sonya Tyvin and Bobby Lindgren and Mimi Paul. And this all led to a scholarship at American Ballet Theater and then at the School of American Ballet. And so once that happened, I moved to New York when I was, I think, 16, to take up one of those scholarships and really to study at the School of American Ballet.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:04:24]:
Did you have aspirations to become a professional dancer?
Jennifer Homans [00:04:27]:
Oh, by then by then, I was going every night for the next I was there for four years at the school, and I think I was at theater every night. I was either at the New York City Ballet or at the Philharmonic or somewhere downtown seeing Flamenco or it was just a great moment to be in New York. It was a wonderful education in dance, but also in the other arts.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:04:54]:
So what was your time like at SCB? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Jennifer Homans [00:04:58]:
Yeah, it was intense, fascinating. It was a Russian world, very much a Russian world. I even remember my audition was with Danilova, and I believe with Madame Duden, and they were certainly speaking Russian most of the time, so I found that all really interesting. Dubrovska was still there. Mariel Stewart was there. It was this sort of Emmy Gray world that I didn't know anything about, so I was kind of plunged into something very foreign. And then sort of on the other side of it, just the daily routines, the discipline, the incredible performances I was seeing at night, it was all kind of of a piece. And I found that Stanley Williams was a really important teacher for me. That was sort of on the more intellectual side in a way. He was much more conceptual about the way he taught.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:05:58]:
So this whole time, you've obviously already been more attracted to the intellectual side of things. Were there other ways at this point in your student life that you were exercising that part of your brain?
Jennifer Homans [00:06:11]:
Well, I was like most dance students, I think, in the sense that I was taking a lot of classes every day. And there was an afternoon when I was lying on the floor at the school at, like, I don't know, 430 in the afternoon, getting ready for my third class of the day. And Danilova walked by and she said, Get dressed. Go to the Met. And she meant it. She was serious. She was sort of too many classes, not enough other stuff. Get out of here. And so I found that actually, that was kind of a moment for me where I thought, oh, okay, that's interesting, and that's something to pay attention to.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:06:50]:
So what were your professional aspirations? Where were you hoping to go and where did you end up dancing professionally?
Jennifer Homans [00:06:56]:
Well, of course I wanted to get into the New York City valley. I did not get into the New York City Valley. And so I eventually left and went to I danced variously with what was then the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet with Maria Tall Chief, and then in San Francisco briefly, and mainly with Pacific Northwest when Kent Stole and Francia Russell were directing it.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:07:22]:
I think I'd love to hear a little bit about your experiences in Chicago because Marie Tall Chief is gone. But that fascinating to me to think about there being more of these Balanchine disciples. It feels to me like there were more Balanchine quote, companies back then. Did you feel like once you left SAB, were you not worried that you wouldn't get to dance his works? Because I know that's something that a lot of the students feel now, am I still going to get to do balancing and use my training?
Jennifer Homans [00:07:52]:
Yeah, you know, that wasn't so much a concern. You're right, that wasn't so much a concern then. I think there were quite a few sort of satellites, as it were. I mean, there were in Europe and in the United States, and so that was really possible to imagine. And there was a lot of other interesting work going on too. And I was very I always took, you know, when I was at at the school and living in New York, I took regularly Graham classes as well. And so I was really interested also in the contemporary dance world. So that doesn't answer your question about Maria Paul Chief. But going to a company besides the New York City Ballet was also interesting in that way, it turned out, because there were other choreographers to work with that I didn't know about.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:08:43]:
I'm willing to venture a guess that you were the only girl at SAB taking Graham classes, because that seems pretty I don't know.
Jennifer Homans [00:08:51]:
I mean, it was a continuation of School of the Arts, because in North Carolina, School of the Arts, you had to take a full course in Graham, especially not so much Cunningham. I don't know why. I think it was just who was there teaching, and so I continued that and I took some Cunningham too. A bit of other people. Viola Farber I kind of went around. It wasn't looked on very kindly at the school, but I think we all did it, or a lot of us did it. I studied with Melissa Hayden. She was down the street.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:09:29]:
So what were your professional years like? And when did you start to feel like you were ready to ease out of dancing as a career?
Jennifer Homans [00:09:39]:
I love dancing. I really loved it. It was just a wonderful thing to do, I'm sure you know what I'm saying? I did a lot of Balanchine, I did some Robbins. We had a variety of things in the rep. That was all good. I had some injuries at a certain point, and one of these injuries took me out for several weeks and I started taking courses at the University of Washington and reading books, reading a lot of books. And so I think at that point I just started to feel these books are really pulling me. And it wasn't easy to stop at all. I'm not going to pretend it was, but I did make the decision to stop dancing. And then I applied to Columbia and a lot of other schools, but I ended up going to Columbia, so I left Seattle and moved back to New York to go to Columbia.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:10:43]:
I think it's so interesting, the people that we talk to on this podcast so often say that an opportunity arises while they're injured or dealing with an injury that kind of steers them in a new direction with something. So I think that's so wonderful to hear. What did you start studying in Washington before you decided to start applying for other school?
Jennifer Homans [00:11:05]:
I was taking courses in the law school.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:11:07]:
Really?
Jennifer Homans [00:11:08]:
I don't know how I managed to do that, but I was taking courses in law, and I thought it was really, really I was just taken with it. As I said, I came from an academic family, so it's kind of natural for me to be I was always a big reader. I was the one in the studio with my Noah's in a book, so it wasn't a surprise really, to me that I ended up doing this. I think what was more surprising was how difficult it was to leave dancing. I mean, it was just it took me a couple of years to really kind of regain my equilibrium, both physically, just because the physical stopping, that kind of level of activity every day was abrupt and shocking, and then just trying to find out who I was when I wasn't a dancer.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:12:00]:
And also going to college a little bit later in life too.
Jennifer Homans [00:12:03]:
Yeah, I was in my late twenty s, and that was a time when fewer people were doing that. So yeah, there were people there. And that's why I chose Columbia, because Columbia has a program. It was a general studies program where a lot of dancers have actually gone. Right.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:12:20]:
So during your time there, was there a moment that brought you back to ballet and back to dance?
Jennifer Homans [00:12:26]:
I kept dancing for a little while while I was at Columbia. I was doing small performances, things here and there. I went to France. I did choreography, found out I was lousy at it. Then at a certain point, I really left dance, and I studied French literature. And although I did, you know, it's true that I when I got to my senior year at Columbia, I did write a thesis on American social dance. So I was always sort of still interested in it. Then I worked for Jacques Dambaz for two years for the National Dance Institute, not teaching, but writing. I was writing curriculum materials, and so I was already moving towards writing and away from the practice of dance. And then at that point, I decided to go to graduate school, and I embarked on a PH. D. In Modern European history, at which point I really left dance for several years and thought I would not go back and then ended up thinking, maybe I can bring this in. I kept going to performances. I was still interested in it.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:13:32]:
So it's interesting you were studying European history because you would obviously soon after go on to be such an important scholar of ballet history. And the two certainly went very nicely. So when did you start to do this sort of in depth research? Like, kind of going deeper than maybe anyone in our generation had into our history? And what drove you to that?
Jennifer Homans [00:14:01]:
I think there were a couple of things that drove me to it. One was that when I was dancing myself, I always wanted to read a book about it. And I read a lot of books, and there were some good ones, but I never quite found the book that I wanted to read. And then that was kind of in the back of my mind, probably for years. Right. And then when I was in graduate school, I really studied cultural history, so I was reading cultural histories of music and of art and of theater and of literature. And, you know, there just wasn't any good work on dance that I could find, or there wasn't enough good work on dance. It's maybe more accurate. And so I thought, well, maybe I didn't think it was possible to do at first because I didn't think the sources would be there because, as you know, it's not an art form that's often written down. It's very ephemeral. It's here and gone. Dances are forgotten. They're not kept in a library somewhere. So I wasn't sure it was possible. So I started to investigate that, and then I thought I could figure out a way to do it. And then it became a kind of once I started, it became a kind of passion, and it started as a PhD dissertation. And then that thing that was focused more on the French Revolution grew into something much bigger.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:15:22]:
So what were some of the sources you were exploring? We were saying, I doubt she just.
Jennifer Homans [00:15:27]:
Googled things since yeah, no, this was really an archival project that took me it was a twelve year project. So I started in the archives in Paris. So in the Paris Opera archives. And these are the papers of dancers, of choreographers, of theater directors, everything from official records to scraps of paper with transpositions of music and maybe a few steps, sometimes whole classes written down longhand. But we're talking about 19th century.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:16:10]:
Do you speak French?
Jennifer Homans [00:16:11]:
So I do speak French.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:16:13]:
I know you had said you studied French literature.
Jennifer Homans [00:16:15]:
I studied French literature. I did French in high school and college. I had reasonably good French. And then I taught myself some Italian in order to go into the Italian sources, which took some time. I did not teach myself Russian, but I did go to Russia and also both look in archives there and also interview people. I also worked a lot in the archives in Denmark because there's a lot of really interesting stuff in the Bornenville sort of tradition and around that whole style of dance. So, yeah, I worked all over Europe and in the New York Public Library as well.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:16:54]:
I'm wondering, how do you think this sort of research can be applied to the ballets we see today? For instance, Alexey Homans did an immense amount of research for his Sleeping Beauty. Do you think or hope that your work can be utilized in that way?
Jennifer Homans [00:17:11]:
Probably not. I think those are two different things. In fact, we actually used some of the same sources. But the focus of his work, obviously, is trying to understand how he can and I think that's the basis of your question, right? That how he can apply it and put it on the stage and make it into something. A living piece of theater today. And my goal is really kind of on the other side of the footlights, as it were. I mean, I'm really trying to look at it historically and analytically and in a way I'm using dance to understand history rather than using history to understand dance. I mean, both things happen. But my idea is that if you look at dance, you can see bigger things in a culture. You can see politics, you can see the way people live, you can see what they think. You can use dance as a kind of way of writing the history of ideas.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:18:23]:
What was some of the most surprising things that you found out through this process? There must have been a whole bunch of moments that were like you were in awe of something that you didn't expect.
Jennifer Homans [00:18:34]:
Yeah, for me it was just a great adventure because I got to all the questions that I had about the art form. Like, why are people even doing this strange stuff? It was a way to actually it was a bit like being a detective, and I would just go back into these archives and find these things. It was tremendously exciting. I mean, I remember walking down the street having these conversations with myself about this, and I was thinking, is anyone else in the world going to be interested in this? But for me, it was just a kind of riveting thing to look at the Renaissance documents and see where these origins were. Other people had done this before, but I hadn't. And so it was my way of coming to it and sort of bringing everything that I knew together. The most surprising stuff probably came from me, really, in the kind of enlightenment and the revolutionary period. Those sources were very interesting and not yet fully explored. So for the latter half of the book on Russia and the US. I was using mainly other people's work for the Balanchine and Robin sections, tutor. I was using some primary sources as well, but I was also leaning very heavily on work that other people had done in order to sort of make a synthesis. So a history that brought all of that together instead of everybody's, you know, everybody doing specialized study. So I my project was to try to bring it together in a way that would be and this was important for me, that it would be well written and accessible to and interesting, not just to dancers, but to a general public.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:20:13]:
So obviously a lot of people were interested in it. So how did can you tell us a little bit about how the book deal came about and when that happened throughout the process?
Jennifer Homans [00:20:21]:
So I guess the book came about, really, because somewhere along the way, back in 2001, I started writing for The New Republic as a critic. So that was a kind of different project of criticism and history related, but a little bit different just because I was looking at live performance and writing about it. But I wasn't writing about it on a day to day basis the way many critics are required to. I thought very I was lucky. I had just a platform to write long pieces that could in which I use I used these pieces really to try to learn how to write the history of dance. But doing that gave me a kind of body of work. So that at the point at which I was also working on the book, publishers were interested. And at that point I did get a contract to do the book.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:21:25]:
So something I think is very interesting that you already brought up that dance. It's not often recorded on piece of paper. We preserve it in our bodies. We have entire repertoires in our bodies. That's where we keep our information. So as dancers store information in our bodies and scholars do in their minds. Did you ever have any part of your research that you sort of physicalized did you have to try things out on your body to know what that was like, because I feel like as a dancer, that's how we understand things.
Jennifer Homans [00:22:00]:
Yeah, I actually did do that. And one of my goals in writing the book was to try to tell the story from the point of view of the dancer. So not just as a critic looking from the outside or even as a historian looking from the outside, but as somebody who was it. One way to try to understand the ideas in dance is to actually do it and feel it physically, just as you were saying. So I did actually take some of the scraps of paper with classes on them or notebooks with steps, and I even hired a violinist to come because some of the music was also there. And I'm not a musician. I'm not a trained musician, so I didn't really know what to do with that without some help. So I hired a violinist because they were using violin mainly, and I spent some weeks in a studio just trying to put this stuff together. And that was actually incredibly informative, especially for the early 19th century stuff, because, as you may know, the notations that we have for the 17th century are still legible to us today. So we can actually reconstruct those dances which are older more easily than the dances of the early 19th century. But by going into the studio, I was able to get a sense of really the kind of physical logic behind them. That's fascinating.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:23:25]:
So in the epilogue of Apollo's Angels, you declared that we have to talk about it, where you declared that bally is a dying art form made quite.
Jennifer Homans [00:23:35]:
No, I said it.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:23:37]:
Maybe I just got nervous because we.
Jennifer Homans [00:23:41]:
Did look it up all right.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:23:43]:
That it may be a fine art form made quite a splash within our community. So now, seven years later, do you still stand by that? And do you feel that the choreographers of today are making moves in the right direction to invigorate the art form?
Jennifer Homans [00:23:58]:
Okay, so this whole tempest, right, was really just the epilogue of the book, which, as you said, got a lot of attention and kind of, in a way, surprised me because it's a 600 page book and epilogue is the last ten pages. But what it was really an effort to do was to look at the whole history of the art form from a historical point of view and then think, just reflect a little bit on where we are today. And my purpose in doing that was not to sort of incriminate the art form or to say that the people doing it weren't doing it well, which I don't believe people I think dancers are incredibly devoted and serious about almost always about their art form. But really to try to say, okay, there have been times in the history of dance when ballet has gone into troughs and it has not always been the glory days. And so where are we now? And it did seem to me at the time that we were in something of a trough, and I don't think dance is alone in that. So it was an effort to really sort of ask the question, what is this art form to us today? And we're in the middle of and we're now even more in the middle of it. But we were beginning it then of a sort of massive social transformation due in part to technology, but also to other things as well. And so the question was really, what does it mean? Why does it matter? What are we doing? How can we make it good? And that's not my I mean, my role is to ask that question and to ask it in a historical context. It's the job of artists, right, to figure out what to do if they even think there's a problem. So that was my goal in asking the question. And I did think that the and I still think that the the sort of contours of the society and the things that people are interested in often go against the sort of ethical foundations of what dance is about, especially ballet is about, and the things it requires. I mean, just to take one thing, as you know, it takes up to ten years of very, very disciplined, serious study to even begin to really be able to participate in this art form. And we live in a really fast paced culture that wants immediate rewards. And so that's a kind of where does that sit? Where does that fit? Why are people willing to devote that time and why should they be willing to devote that time? Those all seem to me questions worth asking. Do I think it is that there are good people working then and now? Yes, I'm a historian, and when I was venturing into the present, there that's a kind of dangerous territory for a historian. Right. So I didn't want to get into the who's doing what, who's up, who's down, who's good, who's bad. I mean, that's the the sort of more, you know, the evaluation of contemporary work in your own time is really a role of the critic. And I was trying to kind of raise a larger set of questions in terms of a history where I tried to reveal the values and ideas behind the art form and then say, what are our values and ideas today, and do those support us going forward in a meaningful way? I do think that right now there's a kind of porousness to the art form so that there seem to be a lot of new ideas in it. And that is one reason I founded the center.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:28:02]:
Exactly what we wanted to say. I think, on the contrary, you're not merely asking these great questions, you are helping to find the answers by bringing in artists through the center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University. So can you tell us? I mean, it's a pretty crazy endeavor to just get off the ground. And how did you have the idea, and what was the process there?
Jennifer Homans [00:28:27]:
Yeah, I guess the idea is really just to do something interesting. I'm not trying to save the art form. That's not my goal. I don't pretend to have that kind of insider authority. But I've devoted my life to this art form, really. I mean, I did it, and then I spent 15 years writing about it. And the reason that I started the center, really, was that it seemed to me always that there was a place for some combining of the world of knowledge in the Academy and the knowledge that I found to exist also in the dance world. I suppose, in a way, it comes out of my own biography. I had been in both of these worlds, and I really couldn't find the academic world in the dance world, and I really couldn't find the dance world in the academic I couldn't figure out how they could go together. So that was really my idea, was how can each of these things help each other, and can they? So I had some long conversations with the Mellon Foundation about this, and they offered me a very important grant to start this center, and NYU immediately jumped on board and offered a sort of inkind support. And as you've seen, we have beautiful facilities, and that was, what, five years ago at least. We've been open for three years, so it took quite a lot of planning. I spent a full year going sort of around the world, really talking to people about what they thought the problems were and how this might offer something that doesn't already exist. So we're just a kind of a think tank, in a way, a research center, an institute where people can come both from the Academy and from the world of dance and its related arts, from design, from music, from poetry. One of the beautiful things about ballet is that it does encompass so many of the arts, right? So that's something that we try to reflect here. We are trying to get people and we have had a wide variety already of people working on projects. And the only requirement for coming here, really, is that you be interested in working on something that is related to ballet, even if it's not ballet itself. And the idea is also to bring people who aren't in the profession full time as their only pursuit, but to broaden the scope of the inquiry so that you're bringing in people who might not know as much, but bring other ideas and so that we can all benefit from those.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:31:28]:
Can you tell us about some of.
Jennifer Homans [00:31:29]:
The programs that the center has helped.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:31:31]:
Foster and which ones you have in.
Jennifer Homans [00:31:33]:
Store or would like.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:31:34]:
To found in the future.
Jennifer Homans [00:31:36]:
Our core program is really our fellowship program. So that's in a way what I was just talking about, where we bring in somewhere between I don't know how many, 15, it depends variable fellows a year to New York to work here and they come with a project each one. And so we are all here and everybody's working on their project, but we're also sort of talking and learning from each other. So there's that. We also have a series of public programs. For example, we have the Lincoln Kirstein Lecture, which is an annual lecture. And the idea there is to bring in a sort of senior and major figure in the performing arts or in scholarship to talk about dance. So we had Helen Vendler, the poetry scholar at Harvard, did the first inaugural lecture. And last year we had Ian Bostrich come and talk about song and dance. And so that's the kind of idea behind that. We have a series of other public talks and programs that is a little bit more depending on the moment. We did one on diversity with Tanjisi Coates in a collaboration with him at the French Cultural Center. We've done programs with the Brooklyn Academy of Music. We did one last year on a Naginsky program that they were doing with Wilson and Barishnikov and Darryl Pinkney. So that we did a program on. So we try to sort of tie the dance and the intellectual sides together and that's where we exist is to do that.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:33:34]:
So what are you working on now and what is next for you?
Jennifer Homans [00:33:37]:
Well, the center is really moving forward that really has to do with sort of deepening our fellowship program, making the things that we do better, expanding more internationally, expanding our collaborations with other organizations. Once you set up an organization and I've learned that it's setting up an organization, it's a bit like putting on a show or something, it's a lot of work. And the center is now not just me anymore. It started with me, but it's now a lot of people, and there are a lot of people here who have great ideas and I have a terrific group of people working with me. And so the center is now sort of live thing. It's a live animal and it has its own life and I'm part of it. So that's very exciting.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:34:35]:
Well, thank you so much for the this was the larger portion of the interview. And now we just do a little quick bit at the end that we do for all of our guests, which is we call it our lightning round. And don't worry, it's not difficult. We're not going to get you questions.
Jennifer Homans [00:34:53]:
Oh, don't worry.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:34:57]:
So what is your favorite ballet?
Jennifer Homans [00:35:00]:
Oh, I don't have a favorite ballet.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:35:02]:
Pick a few.
Jennifer Homans [00:35:02]:
We let people pick a few.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:35:04]:
People think they're getting away with murder when they say jewels because they get three in one.
Jennifer Homans [00:35:12]:
Look. It certainly was balancing. That is the reason that I danced. That's the reason I danced. So most of the most important works for me are his works. Some of them are Robbins. So I guess off the top of my head right. Saranad Fortes agon violin concerto. You can see where my taste lies. Yeah. Symphony and sea. I mean, I'm going to forget everything right now. So the cage a lot of good ones on. Yeah.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:35:48]:
What lost ballet would you want to bring back for today's audiences?
Jennifer Homans [00:35:52]:
Opus 52. Balancing.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:35:56]:
That's a balancing ballet.
Jennifer Homans [00:35:58]:
Balanchine Schornberry.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:35:59]:
Oh, okay. What year was that made? I'm going to have to look that's so good. I mean, I always say seven deadly.
Jennifer Homans [00:36:06]:
Sins, because that's well, that would be another high contender.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:36:10]:
I even looked into it a few years ago. I was so this is sidetracked. I found out that San Francisco Ballet had done it with Lou Christensen. I guess doing some of the and Cynthia Gregory did the allegra cantroll. And I was like, okay, that means there are two sets of people in this world that know this ballet.
Jennifer Homans [00:36:26]:
Did they do it around the same period?
Michael Sean Breeden [00:36:27]:
It must have been just a few years later. I think they use the sets.
Jennifer Homans [00:36:31]:
I didn't know that.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:36:31]:
Seems and everything. Yeah. I had a moment where I really looked into this, but to no avail.
Jennifer Homans [00:36:36]:
No one remembers it.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:36:37]:
I guess not Allegra remembers her part, but for some reason and it was confusing. If it was, like, lose choreography as well as Balanchine, it was vague. I know. They sent, like, maybe Vita Brown or someone to help. I don't know. It was confusing. So something to consider.
Jennifer Homans [00:36:55]:
Yeah. I mean, look, to me, the whole issue of reconstructing valleys is really fraught because I'm not even sure that it's possible to do that. We do it, but really what we get is not the old ballet, but we get a contemporary interpretation of an old ballet, and we don't even know what the text we're working from looked like.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:37:18]:
All right, this is the last one. Your dream program for the center. If you have no budget at all, sky's the limit. What's the number one thing you would do here?
Jennifer Homans [00:37:26]:
I think we're doing what I would want to do. Yeah, sure. If we had tons more money, maybe we'd get into other we'd be able to give more of it away. And that would be good because I think artists need time and they need space to think and to work, and that's what we're trying to give them. That's great.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:37:46]:
Well, thank you so much for your time.
Jennifer Homans [00:37:47]:
It was so great to chat with.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:37:48]:
You here in your beautiful center. It really is beautiful. Thank you so much.
Jennifer Homans [00:37:52]:
Well, thank you for coming. Thank you for having me.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:38:00]:
Conversations on Dance is part of the Acas creator network. For more information, visit conversationsondancepod.com