Feld Forum: An Interview with Eliot Feld
By Tony Phillips

Eliot Feld is a man of distinction. He has the cache of being one of the first ever to dance at Lincoln Center. Feld starred as Baby John in the film version of West Side Story. Those opening dance sequences were shot on the ruble that was to rise into the largest cultural compound in the world. He almost single-handedly revived an old porn palace on 8th Avenue, turning it into a world-renowned dance venue, The Joyce Theater, years before Disney made this kind of gentrification de rigueur. He also helms one of the tightest and most innovative dance companies in the US called Ballet Tech.

Eliot Feld Photo: Jim Varriale

Last week, Mr. Feld took some time out from putting the finishing touches on a repertory piece called “Circa” that the company will be performing as part of their Summer Preview season over the next two weeks to talk to DanceArt.com. During the rehearsal, Mr. Feld sat above the dancers in a high chair. He used a cane to tap the floor in emphasis when he spoke. If the overall effect was regal, the overall impression was that of a fair king. And one that’s not afraid to crack a joke or two. Here’s what he had to say about his upcoming season, the state of dance and the return of two former dancers.

 
DanceArt: Tell me about your school.

Eliot Feld: The school began in 1976. We had just moved into this very ample space. We had a small company and we started a school. We hung out a shingle like everybody does. And really there was very little talent that came. I mean, there were classes, but people were not going to become dancers. And I despaired at that because that’s not I wanted to do. I mean, if you’re going to just try and make a living, do something where you can make a living.

I was coming to work on the subway one day and there were a group of children, second to fourth grade children on a field trip. They were so animated and excited to be going somewhere. I said, there are a billion children in the city in public schools and almost none of them have an opportunity to find out if they’d like to be dancers, to discover if they have the talent for dancing. I mean, none of that. That was really the genesis of the idea and then we approached the board of education. We assured them we wanted to audition and look at third and forth grade children. We assured them that we would not charge them either at the beginning or at any point in their training and that our desire was to find children with a talent and a passion for dancing and give them the opportunity where they had hitherto had no opportunity. So that’s really the genesis of it.

When it started it was much, much smaller and now we audition about 35,000 children each year. We visit 220 to 230 schools each year. A group of five people goes to each school so it’s very big, the logistics are enormous. And we select roughly 1000 for a beginner course, which is seven classes, and they’re driven here during the school day in the morning by school buses, they have their class and then they go back to their schools. By the time they get to the sixth grade they’ve studied probably three years. Those that really have a desire to be dancers and the ability are invited to attend our public school, which is right here on the seventh floor. We have a public school that goes from sixth to twelfth grade. The students do their academics in the morning and they’re in this building with all the dance studios and their teachers. They study dance from twelve until four or five or six depending on their age.
 

DA: And that’s what your company comes from?

EF: Largely, almost exclusively.
 

DA: Well, that covers the school, what about your theater?

EF: (Laughs) In 1977, the then executive director and I were very aware that New York performances were terribly difficult for us. You played a very large theater very briefly and took an enormous risk because the overhead was just incredibly exorbitant. There was no theatre where you could just perform and the dancers were so nervous because you only danced a week or two and it was AHHHH, it was just crazy. So the financial risk was enormous with no artistic benefit was for the dancers.

You know, you have to be comfortable to dance. If you’re hysterical and you get just two chances, it’s awful. So we decided that there was no venue was appropriate and that the plight that we found ourselves in was shared by other companies. Everybody but the very largest companies had this problem. So we saw the Elgin theatre, which is now the Joyce Theater. It was an art house that had been closed down for showing gay porn. Now, of course, it would just stay open and we wouldn’t have a dance theater (laughs).

We purchased it for, I think, $250,000 and tried for several years to raise the money to renovate it and finally we were successful. And so the Joyce Theater, I think it must be home to 30 dance companies a year. We perform there nine weeks a year, ten weeks a year maximum. It’s become really a principal dance venue in New York for the very companies it was designed to serve.

 
DA: Do you like the business end of running a dance company?

EF: Well the hard part is just raising money, I mean, you know, that’s what that’s about.

 
DA: Do you think dance is under-funded in this country?

EF: Well yeah, it is. The nature of funding in this country is very much a kind of patchwork of different entities. It’s some government, federal, state, local, city, private foundations, family foundations, corporations. It’s this whole strange patchwork quilt of different funding sources.

On the upside is that if the government doesn’t like you, there are other people who might like you. So there’s enormous variety within our system because power is shared. On the other hand, we have to struggle enormously because there isn’t a central source that, once you have received their imprimatur, you’ve got it made. Here it’s very much how can you survive and each year you have to survive anew.

Here you don’t get credit for what you did the year before. That was last year, so what are you going to do for us now? What have you done for me lately? I like the nature of the American system. I wish instead of Federal or government sources giving, I don’t know what the number is, but if it’s 10% or 6% of our budget, that they gave 15% of our budget. That difference would be enormous. If the endowment had instead of 100 million dollars, I think they have a little less than that, if they had 600 million dollars. I mean it’s a big country. It’s a big budget in the trillions. You’re talking about a tiny, tiny bit. If their share was a couple of percentage points greater for a good number of organizations, I think it would make life a lot easier.

 
DA: Tell me about Ballet Tech’s upcoming summer season.

EF: We started doing the summer season almost ten or eleven years ago. It had been traditional that The Joyce was closed in the summer because the wisdom was that nobody dances in the summer. One spring I said, You know, if nobody dances in the summer then people who want to go to see dance have nothing to see. Why don’t we dance in the summer?

(Laughs) And now the summer is pretty much at the Joyce all the time. We call it our Preview Season. Really our year is geared towards our long spring season, which is five or six weeks. When we do that and the contract year is over for the dancers, we’re kind of starting again. Building new repertory and sometimes choreographing new ballets and sometimes not. This season I’m not, but we’re reviving ballets. The ballet you just saw is a ballet called “Circa,” which probably hasn’t been done in five years or so. So we’re starting.
 

DA: How does a piece make it into repertoire and do they change?

EF: There are many reasons why something comes back. First of all, some sense that the dancers that are here presently will be good in it. It’s a mutual service, it serves the dancers and the dancers serve it. These are the best kinds of relationships.

Another aspect might be what does the repertoire look like this year? Are we going to have a balanced diet both for the dancers and for the public? And sometimes you just do things because you say, I want to do it. I don’t care about any of that, I just want to do it.

And then it varies, the question about do ballets change, they do change. They just change. Sometimes you’ll actually say, I don’t understand how that sits on the music. That doesn’t look good on your body. Let’s look at the videotape again. Well it looked good on them, but it doesn’t look good on you so let’s find another step or gee, it didn’t look good on them either so let’s certainly find another step. So it really varies from ballet to ballet and dancer to dancer.

The thing that I don’t think is well enough understood is that when you choreograph a dance, the dancers that you make it on and with have an enormous input. The only thing that makes it into the ballet are the things that seem to look right. Well, that has a lot to do with the dancer who’s doing it. The dancer who it’s made on and for and with, they are partly responsible for the choreography.

No two dancers are the same in their physiques or their attitudes so sometimes it just doesn’t quite work on the next dancer and you have to give that person some of the leeway that the first person had. When you revive a ballet you try to get it. If you’re convinced that something is wonderful and they’re not doing it, well then that’s why we rehearse. But if you look and say, Oh, you’re kind of doing what I asked and it just doesn’t look right or I hate what I did, you then get up out of your chair and try and improve it.
 

DA: You have two prodigal dancers returning this season. How did that happen?

EF: The two dancers that are returning for the summer season are Buffy Miller and Mucuy Bolles and they were both here quite a long time. Buffy was here

Buffy Miller in Paper Tiger Photo: Lois Greenfield

about 11 years and Mucuy left once after about four or five years and then came back for another couple of years. It’s a great pleasure for me, and I think for them too.

First of all, they’re both very mature dancers now. I mean they really are (makes exploding noise). They’ve gone through all of their learning curve, they’ve done all that. They also wanted to come back here because they have an appreciation, I believe I’m not putting words in their mouth, of a kind of integrity of the work and they’re really liking it.