A Postscript to Meylac

My computer doesn’t always oblige me with providing the full draft and the Meylac review is missing comments about Anatol Joukowsky and Tatiana Stepanova. I include them here, even though there is some repetition about Joukowsky. I might intrude a personal opinion here that he deserves any and all that he could get. His and Miss Yania’s were major spirits, if understandably ballet history has not celebrated them in the measure their San Francisco State students felt they deserved.

We were enthralled by Joukowsky’s powers of observation. He would mimic behavior at social gatherings, the skittering, blushing behavior of adolescent girls, and the bluff admiration of the fellows demonstrating their dancing prowess. He showed up with his head tied in a bandana, usually red, one end trailing slightly, short-sleeved sport shorts, dark wide legged trousers and there would be a rush of energy outward to the assembled students as he would exhort us, “Let’s we not have arms like spaghetti.”

The second evocative Meylac interview was with Tatiana Stepanova, who won the first ever international ballet competition grand prix – The Queen Elizabeth Prize in Brussels, Belgium, May, 1939. Stepanova lent her pink tutu to the Ballets Russes Celebration exhibit in June, 2000 in New Orleans, which I curated. With it the exhibit was graced with an enlarged photo of her in front of Diaghilev-era costume trunks, a favorite image of her husband, George Peabody Gardner.

After enabling her to acquire several copies of the Dance International report on the Celebration, she sent me a thank you and invitation to lunch should I visit Boston. The opportunity materialized when I visited the Harvard University’s Houghton Library in search of images relevant to the “Dancing Through History” 2003 symposium in New Orleans, sponsored by the New Orleans International Ballet Conference.

At that lunch Tatiana Stepanova Gardner invited me to write her memoir. Accepting the task, her amazing history occupied me until her death in 2009. In 2006, an editor was engaged to complete the draft I had submitted. Since her death, the two Gardner daughters have thus far not authorized completion of their mother’s memoir, originally designed for private publication and placement in libraries with special interest in dance.

In Meylac’s account, page 152, Tatiana states having met George Gardner in Buenos Aires. It actually was Mexico City. George Gardner had been stationed in the northern Pacific Theatre; he never mentioned to me having fought in the Philippines. Tatiana also mentions having married Gardner in Mexico City. The wedding took place June, 1947 at the Gardner farm in Brookline, Massachusetts; it was her father-in-law who was concerned about her dancing in Europe. Isabella Stewart Gardner was George Peabody Gardner’s grand aunt. Gardner’s father was the favorite nephew.

Behind the Scenes at the Ballets Russes is not a cheap book. However it is a wonderful investment in nostalgia and the history of some very courageous and gifted individuals who have given us great moments in ballet, whether in person or solely on these wonderful pages.