San Francisco Ballet’s Insights Two, September 29, 2019

Jennifer Scholick  opened this second session of Insights discussing  San Francisco Ballet’s involvement with the Dance in America series, how Michael Smuin procured  Merrill Brockway’s interest in the company, and the productions produced in their association

Scholick brought the audience up to date on the emergence of state and national funding for the arts and humanities, saying the New York State Arts Council was incorporated in 1960;  by 1965 all states possessed some form of funding agency for artistic endeavors. If I am correct,  mention made somewhere Utah established some form of arts support back in the 1880’s. Not included in Scholik’s comments this Utah data needs to be confirmed. Perhaps and characteristic is: guess where were the Christensen brothers born and spent their formative years?

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Endowments legislation into law in 1965.  Governmental support was tied to existing private funding or foundations.
Corporations began to take advantage of a law enacted in the mid-late ‘30s;  said  law permitted corporations to spend up to 5% of corporate profits before dividends on non-profit endeavors. The Capezio Foundation took advantage of the law, incorporating nineteen years before the Congressional enabling legislation.

Parenthetically, I was in Washington when President Johnson signed the bill into law. He also had undergone surgery and handed out scalpels as souvenirs at the same time.
Somewhere in the Congressional chambers I listened to Roger L. Stevens divest his commercial interests, seated behind a worn blue curtain in a capsule sized broadcasting booth: an awesome historical moment for this country cousin.

Dance in America started its series in 1975-76 with a planned production of 4 televised programs a year. The Joffrey Ballet was the inaugural company featured, performing the Massine-Picasso 1917 Parade, The Green Table and Gerald Arpino’s Trinity, if my memory is accurate. If I am correct, there were images of Joffrey listening to Kurt Jooss or Leonide Massine, with Gary Chryst dancing Massine’s Conjurer role in Parade.

Merrill Brockway, who was responsible for the series had also produced an earlier Martha Graham documentary. He was interested in the possibilities of dancers on camera and insistent on the quality of dancing and where danced.

Brockway also got the choreographers to adapt their work to the screen and the limits placed by the use of three cameras. He utilized tape recording to preserve the integrity of the work, and shot the dances in five minute sections,

Scholick related Michael Smuin’s maneuver to interest Brockway in San Francisco Ballet. The first televised companies was focused on East Coast-based companies. Both men served on the Dance Panel of the NEA simultaneously.  At perhaps the first panel meeting, Michael arrived early enough to change the name cards so he and Brockway sat side by side. The maneuver resulted in a cordial relationship and the scheduling of Michael Smuin’s Romeo and Juliet’s taping being taped over four days in Nashville’s Grand Old Opry new facility early in 1978.

My notes read that Smuin’s The Tempest was filmed in 1981 at the San Francisco
Opera House on a mid-afternoon, followed in 1982 by Gladstein’s choreography to Stravinsky, in 1983 by Song for Dead Warriors, 1984 by Jinx and Songs of Mahler, and in 1985 by the Christensen-Smuin version of Cinderella.

Janet Flannery, current executive director of the San Francisco International Dance Film Festival, lengthy collaborator with KQED’s cultural programming and the television series Dance in America concluded first half of the program.

Flannery recounted  she switched her major and goal of being an English teacher at S.F. state to broadcasting and started volunteering at KQED. She studied ballet with Tricia Kaye, and, after becoming a staff member at the station was asked to become KQED’s first cultural officer, producing such programs for eight years.

In her producer hat role, Flannery was responsible for raising the funds for these productions, contracting virtually all the personnel, and cleaning up. She mentioned that the filming of The Tempest as a live telecast in San Francisco’s Opera House coincided with the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life. In addition to the nerves related to that national event, Flannery also acquired a portable satellite deposited on the loading dock.

Flannery was also enlisted for the television recording of three works under Helgi Tomasson’s watch: Othello, The Nutcracker and The Little Mermaid. Othello was a co-production with American Ballet Theatre featuring Desmond Richardson in the title role and Yuan Yuan Tan as Desdemona. Flannery mentioned it took her a year to raise the financing for The Little Mermaid and was aided by European television contacts.
Unmentioned was that a U.S. production required an American company for the production of a work by a European-based choreographer, even though John Neumeir is a native-born American.

Following the break, Anita Paciotti and Jim Sohm reflected on their experiences with their roles in the Romeo and Juliet production after being questioned by Scholick how their interest in ballet started.

Anita said she badgered her mother to buy her a leotard. Jim said he was drawn by watching Astaire and Rogers on Channel 2 films. Both acknowledged that The Red Shoes movie made its impact on their enthusiasm for ballet. Both artists enjoyed their first professional affiliation with Ronn Guidi’s Oakland Ballet. I can testify to seeing Anita dancing at 14 in Angene Feves’ ballet The Proposal of Pantalone. Feves, a specialist in Elizabethan and Baroque dancing, not only choreographed the ballet and danced in it with Guidi, but was responsible for the exquisite costumes worn by the entire cast.

Romeo and Juliet was quite a challenge in the 18th Avenue remodeled garage which then housed San Francisco Ballet. The filming team from New York descended on San Francisco, but actual filming occurred at the Grand Old Opry’s new auditorium in Nashville. For the production Anita was dancing Lady Capulet and Jim was Romeo. Anita remembered Leon Kalimos admonishing her , “No eyebrows, Anita.”

Jim and Anita said that the company was scheduled to perform in Hawaii so the crowd scenes were filmed first. “The funeral cortege, the street and ballroom scenes; as soon as these were completed, the dancers were flown out to Hawaii. ”

In the four days the company was there, the Balcony, Tomb and Bedroom were filmed last. Jim said, “There is a TV stage behind the main stage, good for smaller scenes.” Dancing with Diana Weber as Juliet, Jim recounted, “We decided that we would dance through the scene without stopping so that there was coherence.” Carlos Carvajal announced from a nearby table, “Jim was a natural. He was young, innocent and handsome.” The audience chuckled.

When it came to The Tempest, however, Jim became Bacchus. “It was heavy disco,” and he quoted someone who said, “Honey, we all need footlights.” Asked what his role was in Song for Dead Warriors, with an utterly straight face, Jim said, ‘Buffalo.”

Both Anita and Jim concluded their observations saying that the television exposure played a definite part in expanding not only the San Francisco audience and the company’s prominence, but the general awareness of ballet as an art form worth seeing.