Agnes De Mille

AGNES DE MILLEentered the world of ballet the hard way. Her parents were opposed to her dancing, so she came to her training later than most people. In London she studied under Marie Rambert, and after fifteen years of frustration she danced into fame at the first performance of her own ballet RODEO.Following that success, she did the ballets for OKLAHOMA!and was soon recognized as a most exciting and original American choreographer. This essay is drawn from her new book, TO A YOUNG DANCER,which will he published by Atlantic-Little, Brown next month.

Dancer, choreographer, and writer, AGNES DE MILLE originated the famous ballets for the Rodgers-Hammerstein musicals, danced the lead in her own colorful RODEO,and is the author of two books describing the resurgence of the dance in America, DANCE TO THE PIPERand ANDPROMENADE HOME. In this paper she addresses herself to a young aspirant who is on the point of entering a professional career of dancing.

Can a women be both wife and artist, and if so at what cost? The question reused to be a theoretical one for AGNES DE MILLE in 1943, when at the height of her success as a choreographer she married Walter Prude, a lieutenant in the air force. Then the demands from Broadway began to rie with her responsibilities as an army wife, a conflict she has pointed up in her new book, AND PROMENADE HOME.

“We inherited from Puritan forebears the persuasion that all arts are unnecessary and somewhat frivolous; that the theatre is, more than any other art, luxurious and morally suspect; and that of all branches of the theatre, dancing is the least worthy.”

Dancer, choreographer, and writer AGNES DE MILLE has brought to the ballet an Americun idiom and impetus which were responsible for her first great successes, Rodeo and the dances she designed for Oklahoma! She is today recognized as one of our most original choreographers, and in this article she shows us the drives and aspirations which set a dance in motion. In its recent tour of South America, Ballet Theatre presented two of her most popular compositions, Rodeo and Fall River Legend, and both were received with enormous enthusiasm.

Dancer, choreographer, and author, AGNES DE MILLEis the granddaughter of Henry George and comes naturally by her respect for ideas and those who proclaim them, especially the teachers. Among the honors which she takes seriously is that of being a Trustee of Sarah Lawrence College; in this capacity, at gatherings in Washington, Buffalo, and elsewhere, she has had occasion to pay tribute to the teaching profession in words which other eager students will take to heart.

Alicia Markova is an English-born ballerina and perfectionist who seems to defy time. Ten years ago John Martin called her the greatest living ballet dancer, and the praise she has received from the press this year as the guest star of the Ballet Theatre rises to same superlatives. She and AGNEES DE MILLE met in England in 1933; since then they have danced on the same bill and each has respect for the ether’s talent. With the warmth and professional appraisal which made her book, Dance to the Piper, so illuminating, Miss de Mille here analyzes the secret of Markova’s perfection.

This is the fourth installment of the Atlantic’s abridgment of AGNES DE MILLE’S autobiography, Dance to the Piper. Our serial comprises only about a third of the rich and spirited book which is to be the February selection of the Literary Guild. The granddaughter of Henry George and the daughter of William de Mille, the playwright, Miss de Mille had a long but not inglorious fight as she struggled to establish herself first as a dancer and then as a choreographer of American ballet. Pavlova started her on her course; she studied at the Kosloff School, composed her own dances before she was twenty, made her New York debut (but could get no steady backing), worked for six years in England under Marie Rambert with Hugh Laing as her partner. Then, with her European reputation made, she came home to renew her efforts on the American stage. With her ballet Rodeo, she scored the first of what were to be a series of successes in Oklahoma!, Bloomer Girl, Brigadoon, and Allegro.