Highlights from Carmen de Lavallade's Pillow debut as a dancer in Lester Horton's company in 1953, all the way through the premiere of her one woman show at the age of 83. Host Norton Owen guides us through the many spirited connections Ms. de Lavallade holds both in American dance history and with Jacob's Pillow.
[Music begins, composed by J.S. Bach, performed by Jess Meeker]
Norton Owen: Welcome to PillowVoices, a production of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, with content from the Pillow Archives. I’m Norton Owen, the Pillow’s Director of Preservation, and it’s my special pleasure to host this episode saluting Carmen de Lavallade and her deep history with American dance, especially as it has manifested here over the years. By way of introduction, I want to play a quote from our longtime Scholar-in-Residence, Maura Keefe. The occasion was a PillowTalk in 2004, when Carmen was performing here with Paradigm, the company of seasoned performers that was instigated by Gus Solomons jr. And yes, I’ll be referring to Ms. de Lavallade throughout this episode by her first name, which is no sign of disrespect, but just because she and I go way back!
Maura Keefe: I wanted to start today by recounting a conversation that I was having earlier this morning with Suzanne Carbonneau, my fellow scholar-in-residence. We were thinking about how so often in the dance world, uh, who we really spend a lot of time thinking about in discussing our choreographers and the mark that they make on the dance world and what kinds of contributions they're making to dance history and et cetera. But, uh, de Lavallade has made her mark, time and time again as a performer, an exquisite performer. She's had dances made for her by Alvin Ailey, of course, and a wide range of American choreographers such as Lester Horton, John Butler, Agnes de Mille, Geoffrey Holder. She's also reprised roles made famous by Ruth St. Denis. And this week we're gonna see her uh, perform works by Dwight Rhoden and world premieres by Richard Move and Kay Cummings. When dance writer Walter Terry first saw her perform in 1953 with Lester Horton in New York, he wrote, “The body instrument is strong, yet fluid, excellently disciplined, technically, and wonderfully responsive to musical and dramatic nuance,” which has continued to be her reputation since that performance in 1953. Ms. de Lavallade.
[Audience applauds]
Carmen de Lavallade: Thank you. Thank you.
Norton Owen: In an extended excerpt from the same PillowTalk in 2004, Carmen talks about some of her beginnings in dance and the essential personalities who formed her as an artist, starting with the pioneering ballerina, Janet Collins.
Carmen de Lavallade: She's my first cousin, and I think I, well, I, I patterned myself after Janet. Strangely enough, we're all, we're 10, we were 10 years apart and born around the same time, like maybe two or three days apart in March. It's very odd and I look more like her, like I, that we are like sisters. We’re shockingly alike. It, it's really spooky when I look at some of the photographs and um, and she was a fanta--she was like my Auntie Mame (audience laughs). Because she worked with Katherine Dunham and she was Talley Beatty's partner, and she would blow into town and, you know, Janet's coming to town and then she'd blow out again. And this, this, this mythical creature would go in and out of Los Angeles. And I wanted to be like Janet. I wanted, and she did something called the “Spring Dance.” I do not know what it was. Never saw it. I just remember. But I would always fly around the, the lawns, at my Aunt Annette's house doing the “Spring Dance.” It was my version of course. And um, while my Aunt Annette played on the piano in the parlor, I'm out on the front lawn making a spectacle of myself to the neighbors, but it, Janet was my, my guiding light.
Maura Keefe: Did, did she tell you stories about difficulty she was having as an African American dancer at that time there, you know (de Lavallade: No), were some places she couldn't perform and companies she certainly couldn't dance with?
Carmen de Lavallade: I found out about that much later in her, she, but she, and Talley (laughs). In fact, she and Talley, I think once had their, their, their duet. They did a duet, and I don't know where it made nightclubs. I don't know. It was all very murky. But she and Talley renamed themselves like, you know, with Latin names and everything was fine (audience laughs). It was very, they have these, these Cuban names or whatever, and it was fine. I didn't know about that till much later, the times that she had, but she was. Yeah, I think her one big upset was when the, um, Ballets Russes wanted her to join them as a ballet dancer, and they said that she could join the company if she would put white on her skin, you know, lighten her skin. And, and she said, no, thank you. And, and she said she left the studio and sat down on the steps and cried because she didn't want to. You know, she wanted to be who she was.
Maura Keefe: But really at that time, for an African American woman to be in the ballet world at all, to even have the possibility is extraordinary. Yeah.
Carmen de Lavallade: You know, he had a terrible time too. He would not, he was not allowed to come to class. He would get up early in the morning and somebody allowed him to, to use the studio and he would have to do his class or whatever he wanted to do before the students, you know, got there. So it was, it was a really rough time, but I, I just admire her so much because, excuse me, that was a rough time, you know, and, and, and Katherine Dunman, Talley, all the people, there are a lot more people that were working in that we don't know about, and I really admire them for it because it was tough. I came in just at the beginning, it was still little, this way. But certainly they got the brunt of it. And the fact that she became the, um, first, um, dancer of color to be the prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera, I thought was really super. Thanks to, um, Zachary Solov. You know, it was very funny. He, he told, uh, Rudolph Bing was the, was the, uh, the head of the Metropolitan Opera. Wonderful man. And Zachary said, I found a dancer, Mr. Bing. He said, yes. He says, and I want her to be the lead ballerina. Yes, he said. And he says, um, and in those days we used the word negro, but she's negro. He said, can she dance? (audience laughs) He said, yes, then hire her (audience laughs). And that was the end of that. And then eventually when Janet left there, I took her place at the Met doing Samson & Delilah and Aida. So we followed each other, you know, and so she's very close to me. We are very bound.
Maura Keefe: Why do you think Lester Horton was so open to having a racially diverse company?
Carmen de Lavallade: I think that was part of his nature. I don't think he cared one way or another, you know? But um, when I came, when I got to Lester's, it was just when they had finished, I didn't know they had a studio before. And there's that wonderful book by, I think it was Larry Warren, about, Lester Horton: Modern Pioneer of Dance is a really excellent book in case you're all interested because it really tells the really early part of the life before the theater that I had. I arrived there when they were just building the theater. It's on 7566 Melrose Avenue, the famous Melrose Avenue, which is now a bit of a body shop. And I remember them fixing the floors and building the, the, the theater. You see, that was a school and a theater, which was very unique. I don't think there's been anything like it in the world because our classroom was the stage. It was not a classroom with bars and, and mirrors. We had no mirrors and no barres. It was the stage. So immediately you were trained to be in that space. It was a small space and the audience was about 10 rows, I believe. So your concentration had to be at its peak because you got so that I didn't know who was in the front row. I, you, you would concentrate so hard, you know? So it was great, great training.
Maura Keefe: So do you think of him as your first teacher?
Carmen de Lavallade: Well, my first teacher was Melissa Blake. And then I auditioned for, for Lester when they were just opening the school there on, on Melrose and I won my scholarship and then I was there for a while and he was great friends with Carmelita Maracci, one of the great, great ballerinas of the time. I don't know if anybody remembers Carmelita. She was extraordinary. And um, he sent me, they were great friends and he sent me to Carmelita for training because he said she can give you what I cannot. And I sign, I, I find that the sign of a great master and a generous person.
Maura Keefe: But she would be teaching such a different kind of style of moving from what he was wanting.
Carmen de Lavallade: Yes. And I fit that very well for some reason. I don't, the Russian style doesn't fit me at all. It's too stiff. It's too, too, um, militaristic for me. But Maracci was soft and delicate and lovey and, and it just, it was wonderful. And she was quite a character herself. Carmelita was amazing. Between Lester’s direction and his care and his loving of his work and the people that he worked with, he was like, like our daddy and Carmelita, she was kind of militaristic, but in a, she, they were like directors. When they, when they gave you movement, they gave you imagery to work with. It was not like put an arm here or put an arm layer. It was like as if you were doing such and such. So you get this picture in your head and your body a just automatically went in that, in that direction. So it gave you something to feed off of.
Maura Keefe: So right from the beginning, you were learning about being expressive of moods and characters?
Carmen de Lavallade: Performing, immediately. So you performed your classwork. (Keefe: Mm-hmm). So when, when you got combinations, he would give you imagery for that, you know? So it became, and you, and you, and you were there in a, in a theater space with the, with like an audience there, whoever's sitting there. And so you were used to that space and that, that filling that space. And I, and Bella Lewitzky was also one of my teachers, and I remember talking about filling the space and Lester would say fill the space and horizon lines and, you know, look beyond where you are and all that kind stuff. We were getting it right away along with our technique.
Maura Keefe: Mm-hmm. Well, so in, uh, in Revelations, Alvin Ailey's autobiography, he has a chapter titled “Carmen Introduces Me to Dance.” So he was a high school chum of yours?
Carmen de Lavallade: Ohhh, Junior high and high school (Keefe: Uh-huh). I met him in junior high and then we went to high school and he got into, what do you call it, um, gymnastics. And he was doing years ago, they do the free exercise. The men used to do a very slow exercise. Beautiful. And he looked marvelous. He looked absolutely marvelous and it looked like dancing to me anyway. And I said, you ought to be a dancer. And he, and, and finally, when I got into Lester Horton's, um, um place we, I introduced him to Lester and then we all ended up there together. I stayed there the longest. I mean, he left at a time and came back. He was in and out. He was not sure what he wanted to do at the time.
Maura Keefe: Not, not so sure he wanted to be a dancer, even though you were sure he should be?
Carmen de Lavallade: Well, he was very, uh, inquisitive about other things besides dance.
Maura Keefe: Mm-hmm. He goes on to talk about, um, what, what you were like for him to work with. And he says in his autobiography “over the years, she has been a favorite of choreographers because in her own words, I'm somebody who's easy to mold. Whatever you want her to dance, she will find a way to do it. Choreographers also love her because she has a solid technique and a brilliant unsurpassable talent for interpreting a ballet.” So at what point did, did you realize that he had a gift as a choreographer? And did you wanna start working with him in that way?
Carmen de Lavallade: Well, you know, when, unfortunately when Lester passed away, it was, it was a very hard time for us at the theater because, you know, it was like our daddy left us and, and Alvin took over and we didn't know what we were doing. But I think that's good sometimes because you become fearless and we didn't know what we were doing in a way, but I think that's fresh. I think that's good. And Alvin began getting more creative and, and we were like babes in the woods, but I think Lester trained us so well. We were such a good team and he, uh, and we loved each other. And Lester always said he agreed with healthy competition between us. He said it's, it's good if you compete with each other, but in a healthy way. So we, if there were any jealousies or anything, but when you see somebody doing something, you want to, to be as good, but you never competed badly with them, you know? So we became like a family. So when we were in this situation, we were helping each other out and, and, and, um, cooperating with each other. And, but eventually Alvin and I left to go to New York (Keefe: Mm-hmm), you know, as things change, but that's how life is.
Maura Keefe: And then in New York, you're, uh, you were performing on Broadway in House of Flowers?
Carmen de Lavallade: Yes. And I met Geoffrey Holder there, my husband. And that was quite, quite a scene. I had never been in a Broadway show before, but it was Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll made her, her debut. We had wonderful people, and in that show, the choreographers were, of course, Geoffrey Holder, Arthur Mitchell (Keefe: Hm), Louis Johnson, Donald McKayle, Walter Nicks, I mean, every choreographer you think of now, they, they were all in that they were all in that show. It was an extraordinary group of people in that, in that show.
Maura Keefe: It must have been a great sense to come there and have such a strong community of dancers and creative people to work with.
Carmen de Lavallade: Yes, but also to work with people like Harold Arlen and Truman Capote. You know, I mean, you kept, you know, it was like wonderland and of course Alvin was in wonderland. He was just, went out of his mind because he read Truman Capote all the time. It was a very rich, rewarding experience and it was an experience. I was not, you know, Broadway was not my medium at the time, but it taught me a lot. And, and there were times when all of a sudden I had to get up and sing, understudy somebody, and everybody was falling out sick. And you jump from one thing to another. Well, I was used to that with nothing, you know? Challenges were not difficult for me because at the theater we were constantly doing things like that, learning different choreographers, pick, learning, learning and, and jumping from one thing to another and changing things. And, and…
Maura Keefe: You had done that already, working with Lester?
Carmen de Lavallade: With Lester. Yes. You know, we, we, every weekend on Friday and Saturday night, we had a performance. Each year we put in a new, a new program and we taught children. We, we, we had workshops, we had, oh, everything was happening in that school. So you were constantly around theater, constantly. And it was a tiny place. And I think Lester always wanted to have an academy, but you know, in that time you didn't have the money. But, you know, in a way maybe that was good, in a funny kind of way. I hate to think that way because it was so much imagination and, and, and, uh, wonderful things were going on. And the training we got, I am still using.
Norton Owen: Following the thread from Carmen's mention of how she met her husband, the multi-hyphenated dancer, actor, choreographer, designer, director, visual artist, Geoffrey Holder. I want to include a bit of his unmistakable voice here, speaking about his wife and their son, Leo, at a retrospective PillowTalk in 2002.
Geoffrey Holder: A gift. A wonderful son, his name is Leo. Gorgeous, gorgeous, her face and my long legs (audience laughs). And the beautiful thing about her, uh, is Carmen is, has great mystery. She never nags me. Right before (audio unclear), I said, Carmen, Carmen, you never nag me? She said, What? You never nag me. She said, No, I only make polite requests (audience laughs). True. Because Carmen is always involved with John Butler, performing the with Alvin Ailey with, with, with Donnie McKayle. And she concentrates on the work. And when you get married, you have to preserve your life. You have to keep that thing, you feel so alive. That, that I don't listen to Mrs., Mrs. Holder is my mother. She is Carmen de Lavallade. So you have to keep that. I don't want it. No. And she never allowed me to be Mr. de Lavallade (audience laughs). You think that's very important. When I get her, I want change it. And what happened is that she took nine months out of her dancing years to give me the most incredible son who is so well balanced because he has been exposed to what I do, where I am. He was always backstage with Carmen in Spoleto, with John Butler, with Ezra Pound…
Norton Owen: Returning to Carmen's 2004 PillowTalk with Maura Keefe, it was clear even then that Carmen's incredibly long Pillow performing career was a record breaking one. Here's how it was discussed at the time, including some wonderful shout-outs to Pillow founder Ted Shawn, and his wife and partner Ruth St. Denis.
Maura Keefe: With your own performances this week here at the Pillow, you will now hold the record for the longest performing career at Jacob's Pillow (audience applauds).
Carmen de Lavallade: I can’t believe it. Yes, Norton Owen told me that, and I couldn't believe that, I said, no, that's not true. It's not true. But you see, time goes so by and I, you know, I do things and I just move on. I don't count. I don't look back. I just move on and I enjoy my past.
Maura Keefe: Can I ask you to look back at your first performance here with Lester Horton?
Carmen de Lavallade: Yes.
Maura Keefe: Do you remember that?
Carmen de Lavallade: We drove across the country (Keefe laughs) for three days or something, in two station wagons and oh god, stuff on top of the, I think we did Salome and oh, it was really, it was quite an experience. I, I was kind of blind (laughs) by the time I got here. But there was Shawn and, and, um, and all the guys and, uh, all Jess Meeker playing piano. And I remember we used to have dinner in the main house (Keefe: Mm-hmm). You know, that, Shawn stayed there and he would invite us and we were around this table and he'd tell his tales, stories, wonderful stories about the building of the Pillow. And he was very proud of the, the calluses on his hands because those men built this place. I, I am in awe of Shawn and what, what those men did. And of course, Miss Ruth, I got to be good friends with Miss Ruth, who was really quite a wonderful…
Maura Keefe: Was she, do you remember her from your first visit here?
Carmen de Lavallade: Uh, well, you know, I can't remember 'cause I know that I, I think I really met her through John Butler because we were going to do something together. And, but we became great friends, Miss Ruth and myself, I must say. She was really a very funny lady. I remember the 50th birthday, no, 50th anniversary of, of Shawn and Miss Ruth, and they had a big throne upon the stage in there and then everybody came to give their, you know, and I look (audience laughs), she is looking very pretty. She, oh, she was so pretty. She was so pretty…
Maura Keefe: There is a picture of you in the archives, kissing her at this event.
Carmen de Lavallade: Really?
Maura Keefe: Uh-huh.
Carmen de Lavallade: Well, I did. Well, I’ll tell you about that. I kissed her and I said, oh, Miss Ruth, you're looking so beautiful tonight. She says, well, my dear Max Factor and I have been friends for a very long time (audience and she laugh). She was fabulous. She had the funniest sense of humor. And, and I learned a lot and eventually I got to, you know, dance her Incense.
Norton Owen: One of the earliest Pillow recordings that we have of Carmen speaking was made during a class that she taught on the stage of the Ted Shawn Theatre in 1987. She was on the faculty of the Pillow’s Horton workshop led by one of her fellow performers from the Horton Company, James Truitte. Here's just a minute of Carmen coaching her students, offering a vivid picture of her passion for teaching.
Carmen de Lavallade: Okay. Can I see that? Now we just came out. Yeah. Get down and see if you can get out. I know you gotta have supple hips, but get up the best, best way you can. Just put your, place your foot on there and up you go. And try to keep the angle out on that head. That's right. This arm pulling out like this. So the hand is up like that. There. All right there at an angle. Not way over, but I think you remember our diagonal up in that corner. Have the feeling being pitched in that direction. Now all the energy goes toward that back corner and over it goes. Twist your heads right or keep your head in that corner and then over here and… (laughs) Come here. Come here (continues to laugh). Give me your head (continues to laugh).
Norton Owen: That same year, 1987, a final showing from the Horton workshop was presented on the outdoor stage. Carmen talked about some of what she had been teaching while the students demonstrated, and then she concluded in an unusual way. She asked the students to sit cross-legged on the stage in small groups while she played a recording of Ruth St. Denis reciting one of her poems. Here's Carmen's intro and the short poem read by Miss Ruth herself.
Carmen de Lavallade: I thought Miss Ruth St. Denis gave me some of her poetry years ago and before I came up here, I found it. It was sitting in the bottom of my drawer someplace and I turned immediately to a page. And in that, on that one page, including a, uh, a cassette that she gave me, I found the poem. And I don't know somehow finding it after all these years and coming here, I had a feeling that she wanted to impart this message to the young people. And this is what…(audio fades out).
Ruth St. Denis: I think I have a hidden master who loves me but will not let me rest until the task I was fitted for is done. I think the full meaning of my life is not made plain by these blind rebellious days, these sobbing nights and unresolved hours. I cannot look to time to declare the purpose of all this pain. Only a word here and there a moment of beauty, an instant of love's ecstasy gives clue and faint outline of the plan that I was born to follow.
Norton Owen: Jumping forward 27 years from her teaching to her final performances here in 2014 offers us an opportunity to spotlight a theatricalized version of Carmen's history presented in the form of a one-woman show entitled, As I Remember It. We're gonna dip into various aspects of this performance, starting with the pre-show talk that I myself presented at the time. Here's some of what I told the audience beforehand.
Norton Owen: Many of you know at least the broad strokes of her life, and you'll all be able to read the biographical information in the program to learn more. But I do wanna say a couple of things about Carmen's history at the Pillow, which is extraordinary in and of itself. Part of the magic of the Pillow for me is its timelessness and walking around the grounds. It's possible to feel the sense that you're literally walking in the footsteps of our dance ancestors. Only in the case of Carmen de Lavallade, those footsteps are still fresh. 61 years after she made her Jacob's Pillow debut as a member of the Lester Horton Dance Theater, not only is she still walking among us, she's dancing. William Faulkner famously wrote, the Past isn't dead. It isn't even past. While he wasn't writing about the Pillow, that feeling of the past being present is always palpably with us here.
Norton Owen: Next, I want us to hear briefly from our former executive and artistic director, Ella Baff, as she introduces the performance in her curtain remarks.
Ella Baff: This is our 82nd season, and you're among the very, very first audiences in the world that are seeing a world premiere tonight with Carmen de Lavallade, who is older actually than Jacob's Pillow (audience laughs). She's 83. Yes. Uh, and this world Premier was Cocom commissioned by the Pillow. And we thought, what better way to bring things full circle in a sense, uh, than to open the season with this particular production. Carmen first danced at Jacob's Pillow in 1953, and I know that she holds the record of having performed over the longest period of time of any artist at the Pillow. We honor her. You honor us by being here for this experience. And I thank you very, very much for coming and hope to see you very, very often. The show is, as I remember it, a life well earned and well lived. Thank you.
(Audience applauds)
Norton Owen: The show itself was like a finely cut jewel, starting with Carmen's memories and her powerful presence as the raw materials. But honed into a performance event by dramaturg Talvin Wilks, and director Joe Grifasi. Here's a scene where she looks back on her time with Lester Horton.
Carmen de Lavallade: We worked on a stage, not in a studio. There were no bars or mirrors, and we knew our bodies. And we don't just dance. We sweep the floor. Floor vocabulary. We hang the lights. Aerial vocabulary. We fix the costumes. Dimensional toner, fortifications. And we clean the bathrooms (audience laughs). We have to learn and do everything. Yeah, we were there seven days a week, and one night we were tired and griping, and Lester brought everyone on stage and everyone on stage. Everyone. All right. Everybody together. 1, 2, 3. Kvetch!. Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy. Okay. Back to work (audience laughs). Lester was a master psychologist.
Norton Owen: The final two minutes of the performance offered the audience a wonderful summing up of Carmen's life and career ending with an excerpt from the writings of Don Marquis who created the characters, Archy and Mehitabel: a cockroach and an alley cat.
Carmen de Lavallade: (Music begins) I could never have imagined what the fates had in store for me. I remember Duke Ellington kissing me on the cheek four times and whispering one for each cheek (audience laughs). Uh, Josephine Baker pushing me forward for a second bow. And beautiful Lena Horne sponsoring me for my debut as Salome. Marrying Geoffrey, giving birth to my son Leo. And a note from Ted Shawn: “Dear Child of God, you have given me so much of divine beauty.” And I remember once upon a time, a little girl stood with her hands on her hips in a dusty, empty lot determined to do something with her life. But what? (saxophone begins) Well, yeah. Listen, Archy, I have. Well, I have had my ups and downs. Well, what the hell? What the hell? I have been so many people in my time and met so many prominent gentlemen. I won't lie to y’all, I do get my dates mixed sometimes. Well think how much a chance I had to forget. Oh, I've had adventures. But I've never been an adventuress. I mean one life up and less like down Archy, but always a lady through it all. Yeah, but what's the use of kicking kid? It's all in the game. Like a gentleman friend of mine used to say, toujours gai kid toujours gai. Yeah. I ain't got any regrets for, I gave my life to my art. What the hell? What the hell?
(Saxophone continues and the audience applauds)
Norton Owen: In the post-show talk that followed the performance, Carmen brings the conversation back around to her own inspirations, and I wanna end this tribute with her own words, speaking about the spirits that are all around us at the Pillow. And those spirits, of course, very much include Carmen de Lavallade.
Carmen de Lavallade: I really admire all those people, and I, and I love them very much. And, and Papa Shawn was, I have to tell you a story about Papa Shawn, and then I'll let you go because when, when, uh, he always, I always call him Papa. And one day he said, Carmen, would you sit on my lap? Which I did. He said, would you promise me something? I said, sure, Shawn. He says, well, when I die, would you, would you, uh, dance the Whole World in His Hands? And I said, oh, Shawn. And he says, no, I mean it. And I thought, gee, that's a lovely thing for somebody to ask. And so when he passed away, um. I didn't know what to do and I wasn't going to say Shawn said, I wanna do this. And so I got a call from Walter Terry, the dance critic, and he said, Carmen, we're gonna have a, uh, um, a service at the, um, at Jacob's Pillow, and we'd like you to be the sermon. And I said, Walter, did, did you speak to Shawn? He said, no. And I told him the story and I thought it was rather spooky because I think Shawn said, you do the, the, the, uh, service and, um, I, I always think of him because his spirit's always around here, you know, and Miss Ruth.
[Music begins, composed and performed by Jess Meeker]
Norton Owen: That's it for this episode of PillowVoices. Thank you for joining us today on behalf of Jacob's Pillow. We look forward to sharing more dance with you through the films, essays and podcasts at dance interactive dot jacobspillow.org, and of course, through live experiences during our festival and throughout the year. Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts for helping launch this podcast series. Please subscribe to PillowVoices, wherever you get your podcasts and visit us again soon, either online or on site.