Part 2: Dancing with one who danced with Pavlova

Left: Alexandra Baldina (Kosloff) was a member of the Bolshoi Ballet and later a principal dancer with the Ballets Russes, along with Anna Pavlova and others. Eventually, she came to the United States.

Photo courtesy of Susan Tyne, U.K.

Scroll to the bottom to see a video of Alexandra Baldina and Theodor Kosloff / Koslov performing.

"Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days." Ecclesiastes 11:1

Writers knead together assorted words, shape the mass into one form or another, bake it under the heat of scrutiny and revision, and -- sometimes -- release it upon the tides of publication. Most often the words are carried away -- perhaps lost in the vast ocean of words, perhaps run aground on a sandbar somewhere, or perhaps washed up on a remote shore, never to be heard from again.

But once in a very great while . . . .

In 2011, almost eight years ago, I wrote about being part of a long-ago ballet class conducted by Alexandra Baldina, then in her eighties, at a dance studio in Tustin, California. I was not-quite fifteen, growing up in an era of "Hey, Jude," "Born to Be Wild," and "Mrs. Robinson," and I only partially comprehended what an extraordinary opportunity it was.

Baldina had been one of the four principal dancers -- the other three being Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Tamara Karsavina -- who first performed Mikhael Fokine's Les Sylphides as part of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1909, in an era of radical change in art and in world politics.

Students doing floor exercises at Montmarte School 
of Imperial Russian Ballet, owned by Miss Irene Wilson, 
in the late 1960s. The wooden room in the back corner is 
where we changed into our leotards and tights. The 
seats and dais were used by the Tustin City Council 
when they held their meetings.

Photo courtesy of Paula Hoffman. 

Miss Irene Wilson, the owner of the Montmarte School of Imperial Russian Ballet where I attended in the late 1960s, had studied under Baldina many years prior, and Baldina had visited her studio on a day my class was scheduled. Quite literally, we were, in that lesson, dancing with one who had danced with Pavlova.

In the process of writing the post about the class, I searched for links to articles about Miss Irene and about Alexandra Baldina and especially for a picture of her. Eventually, I traced one to Susan Tyne, at the time a Grades Examiner for the Royal Academy of Dance, whose grandmother also had been a student of Baldina's. Susan sent me a digital copy of a photo Baldina had given her grandmother, and I included it in the blog post, published on February, 25, 2011.

And that was that. The words floated away, and they never came back.

Until July 2, 2014, that is, when an Anonymous someone left a comment on the post that she, also, had been in that class and had Baldina's signature. I responded and left my email address, but didn't hear anything further until August 2015, when the same person left another message, this time with a name: Paula Hoffman.

Hoffman wrote, "I studied and taught with Miss Irene for years, and I am still using what she taught me all the time. Had a class tonight in fact, and a chat with my teacher after the class about my training and how it intertwines with his teaching. I also had classes with Nana Gollner, also a Kosloff student, and Paul Petroff. Amazing, we were learning the real thing."

Again, I responded, but there was no further reply.

I understood. Email hackers and cyber frauds abound. Neither of us had any assurance the other was legitimately who we claimed to be.

In January 2017, out of the blue, another reader emailed me the link to the video below, which he said had just been posted to YouTube. The video features Baldina and Theodore Kosloff, who later became Baldina's husband during a short-lived marriage, in a joyful pas de deux. This time, I was the one who dropped the ball by neglecting to even thank him for sending it. The email sat there, unacknowledged, until I began writing this post.

Baldina's signature endorsement on the back of the check 

Paula Hoffman used to pay for the lesson that day.

Photo courtesy of Paula Hoffman.

This post began just before Thanksgiving 2018 when another woman, Roberta Patton, left a comment saying she had studied with Miss Irene for years and that she thought she remembered Paula. Patton also mentioned she had just been talking with someone about her past ballet experience.

Patton's comment prompted Hoffman to email me directly, as well, and to send the two images included in this post--a picture of students doing center work in the studio and a picture of Alexandra Baldina Kosloff's signature endorsement on the back of the check Hoffman used to pay for the class that day, April 27, 1968.

The cost of a lesson with one who had danced with Pavlova and Nijinsky? $3.50.

The words I wrote in 2011 had floated out into the blogosphere where at least two other people who had occupied that same place and time fifty years ago had read them. The three of us had, in the strength of that memory, reconnected and had celebrated Miss Irene and Madame Baldina. We were older than Miss Irene was at the time of the lesson, though not as old as Baldina. But still we danced, sometimes with our bodies, always in our hearts.

Such is the power of dance and of words . . . and of words about dance.

Postscript: In my searching for information about Alexandra Baldina, I also connected with Patricia Kaye Dienhart, adjunct dance faculty at BYU in Rexburg, Idaho. Dienhart's CV says she studied under Baldina from 1962-1971 and toured during that time with the Fremont City Ballet under Baldina's direction. I also discovered that my original post had been linked to a page about Baldina on The Dance History Project of Southern California's web site. I had had no idea.

Dancing with one who danced with Pavlova

Ballets Russes dancer Alexandra Baldina. Photo courtesy of Susan Tyne, Grades Examiner in the Royal Academy of Dance, U.K.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved to dance.

For as long as I can remember, I have not been very good at it.

On the inside, I'm Odette/Odile, Thoroughly Modern Millie, or part of a Chorus Line.

On the outside?

Ain't no way.

I've taken dance lessons of various types off and on over the years. Ballet. Tap. Folk Dance. Rythmic Gymnastics. Modern dance. More ballet. Square Dance. More tap. Clogging. Jazzercise.

I know an arabesque from a shuffle-ball-change and a pas-de-deux from a do-si-do.

Getting my body to cooperate fully has always been another matter.

Doesn't matter. Put music on and I start moving. On the inside, at least. I also know how not to embarrass my family and friends in public places.

In high school, my babysitting money paid for ballet lessons at a studio that was on my route home from school. In those days, the late 1960s, we walked to school. Two miles one way. No snow, because it was Southern California. Only one short uphill stretch. But I lugged a lot of books and my gym bag.

On Tuesdays, my gym bag also contained my leotard (black), tights (pink), and pointe shoes (pink satin Capezios). After school, I stopped at the studio, changed into my ballet attire, and spent an hour relevéing, pliéing, and pirouetting.

The owner was Miss Irene, a student of the Imperial Russian Ballet as danced by Tsarist era dancers. Miss Irene, in fact, had been a student of one of those dancers, and we learned to turn our legs out from the hip, to keep our hips aligned even when executing a rond de jamb en l'air, to hold our arms just so, and to turn our noses up at the mention of any of those upstart companies like the American Ballet Theater.

Miss Irene's teacher, she told us, had danced with Pavlova, with Nijinsky.

I practiced at home sporadically. Our single-wide mobile home didn't allow for much in the way of floor work, but I did my barre exercises at the kitchen sink or while brushing my teeth in the morning.

I knew I wasn't destined for a career in ballet, but I could dream, yes?

One day, Miss Irene had a guest.

"Hurry, girls," we were told as we arrived. "Miss Irene's teacher will conduct your lesson today."

Quickly we changed, then stepped onto the sprung wooden floor and took our places, facing the barre, in first position. The music began, and we slowly rose into a relevé-two-three-four-five-six-and-down-two-three-four-five-six. Behind us a stick beat time to the music.

Demi-plié. Grande plié. Second position. Turn and fifth position.

We dared not turn our heads, but we tried to look out of the corners of our eyes for a glimpse of Miss Irene's teacher, this remnant of another, more romantic, more terrible, Dr. Zhivago time.

She came behind us, adjusting our port de bras with her hands, correcting our turnout with her stick. Through each of the barre exercises, she wandered up and down among us, pounding her stick and counting.

We moved into the center of the floor. Now we could see her fully -- her face to us, her back reflected in the full-wall mirror behind her.

I don't know what I expected, but this woman was old. In her eighties, at that point. Short. Tiny almost. No longer petite, however. As do most women, she had spread a bit. She wore a skirt and blouse and shoes. But her posture was ramrod straight, her turnouts were perfect, and her bearing was . . . imperial.

At the end of the lesson, we each stepped forward and curtsied.

"Thank you, Madame," we murmured.

She nodded.

And that was it.

Still, I wondered. Really? Did this woman really dance with Pavlova? I didn't recognize the name. We only had Miss Irene's word, but why would I doubt?

Weeks later, I flipped through a stack of record albums at our local library. One was titled Les Sylphides, a ballet with music by Chopin. Idly, I turned it over and began to read about the work choreographed by Mikhael Fokine for the Ballets Russes in the early 1900s. Four principal dancers performed the premier in 1909, I read. Tamara Karsavina. Anna Pavlova. Vaslav Nijinsky.

And there she was.

Miss Irene's teacher.

The fourth principal.

Alexandra Baldina.


Postscript: Not long after my lesson with Alexandra Baldina, my school activities crowded out my ballet time. I put away my toe shoes, and joined the debate team. Occasionally, I searched encyclopedias and other reference materials, but I never found anything about her. Then along came Google. My first search, a couple of years ago, yielded a link to Larry Long, director of the Ruth Page Foundation of Dance in Chicago, who had been one of Baldina's student. A few weeks ago, another search turned up a link to Susan Tyne, a Grades Examiner in the Royal Academy of Dance in the U.K. Susan's grandmother, Dorothy Tyne, also had been a student of Baldina's -- and the photograph on this page was given to Dorothy by Baldina. Baldina married Theodore Kosloff.

Of Gifts and Talents and Proclivities

Left: Our granddaughter's interpretation of Michael Jackson's Thriller. Photo and stylization courtesy of Jane Cato Studio. What you can't see is the makeup and tousled hair of her zombie princess alter ego.

Years ago, I read one of those how-to-live-a-blessed-life kind of books in which the author spoke of the time-released capsules she believes God builds into each of our lives. Sudden discoveries and realigning of circumstances had released new and unexpected creative energies in her own life. God doesn't give everything to us all at once, she wrote. He lets us discover, in His time and as we go along, the gifts He planted in us from the beginning.

I have thought about the phenomena of implanted time-released capsules often these last few years. My husband touched clay for the first time three-and-a-half years ago, and one of those extra-fast-acting time-released capsules burst open.

For me, however, the first sense I had that I could be a "real" writer came in my 20s. But circumstances didn't align themselves for me to explore that in all of its fullness until I was in my 50s -- a slower-acting capsule, as it were.

One of our responsibilities as parents, says Proverbs 22:6,  is to "Train up a child in the way he (she) should go." Most people interpret that in terms of religious teaching. But it also speaks to paying attention to the individual personality, abilities, and talents each child has -- and to the times they are released in their lives.

One of our sons was assigned in seventh grade to write a computer program for a game. This was in the Commodore 64 era when we played Atari's Pong at home and kids played that newfangled game, Pac-Man, in arcades. I don't even have the vocabulary to describe the game he created, but it was intricate enough that we had to buy additional external memory to hold it all -- and even then I think he only scratched the surface of what he had in his mind. Today he's the IT guy at a Colorado ski resort -- where he can also make the most of another time-released capsule called snowboarding that exploded in his life a couple of decades later.

Another son absorbed everything he could learn about fishing and hunting from his father and from other people and from books. Beginning when he was about eight years old, he often fished the neighborhood ponds after school when the other kids rode bikes and played kickball. One day when he was 13 or so, my husband and I were visiting my parents in Spring Hill when he called to tell us he had snagged a barbed treble hook in the top of his foot while fishing from a bridge not far from our house in Seminole. My husband walked him through the process of backing the hook out, which he did successfully -- and then went back to fishing. He explored the professional fishing tournament circuit for a time before circumstances limited his time. Today he's our go-to guy when we have questions about Florida flora and fauna . . . and fish, of course.

A third son would spend days in character -- Huck Finn was a favorite, corn cob pipe and all -- and he also learned to love the physical labor of building things. His second grade teachers commented on his "showmanship" when they filmed him doing a science experiment. When he played the Jack of Hearts in a fifth-grade production of Alice in Wonderland, the advisor suggested he consider a theater program  in high school. He did, but turned to building sets and running lights and sound in the technical theater program instead. Today he's the go-to guy at a major corporation, responsible for maintaining much of their physical infrastructure and equipment. And he's a backstage dad for his children.

Of course, our sons explored other interests along the way. They played baseball and soccer in the local leagues. They each learned to play more than one musical instrument -- one still plays around with music quite a bit. One has learned the art of selling. Two of them still enjoy reading books. All three are good writers, when they have a use for writing. They all learned how to cook and to use hammers and saws and wrenches and what not. Sometimes they still call their dad for a how-to walk through, but sometimes he calls them for the same.

Now our children watch their children walk in particular paths, or -- for three of our grandchildren, at least -- dance down particular paths.

Our oldest grandson was two, maybe three, when he started asking to wear my "clap shoes" when he came to visit. They were just my wear-to-the-office 1-inch heeled pumps . . . but he liked the clapping sound they made on our tiled entry way and on our concrete kitchen floor. By the time he was four, all he wanted for his birthday was a pair of tap shoes. His mom, a dancer herself and married to our theater son, enrolled him in tap lessons. From his first lessons, he exhibited an innate ability to follow the steps -- and, when he made a mistake, to correct himself back into the rhythm. Last night, I got teary-eyed watching him rat-a-tat-tat across the stage . . . and also perform a very sensitively danced lyrical number.

His brother was barely two when he memorized the score and choreography from the Wizard of Oz. He couldn't articulate the words, but the on-pitch melodies and voice inflections were there. He couldn't match all the steps, but he had the timing of Scarecrow's loose moves down pat.  Before long, he followed his brother into dance classes. Last night, I lost count of the number of dances -- solos, duets, trios, group dances -- to which he had memorized the choreography and inserted his own personality.

Little sister was just four when she saw Michael Jackson's Thriller video and started teaching herself the choreography, including the moon walk. Her reaction when Michael Jackson died? "But he's still alive in Thriller." Last night, she performed a solo version (a 5-year-olds' recognizable rendition) of Thriller at the DanceMoves Studio's final program. She can turn respectable cartwheels and has a lovely toe point.

Their parents have poured lots of time and money into helping their children follow these paths to date. What does the future hold? None of us know. They could wow them on Broadway or a different time-released capsule could take them down new and unrelated paths. For now they have learned the disciplines of working hard at something, of working consistently at something, and of sharing what they have learned with others. I suspect they have learned to walk hard, walk long, walk joyfully in whatever way they find themselves down the road.

Everything else is icing on the proverbial cake.

Making a Joyful Noise! In Memoriam Interlude: 5 . . . 6 . . . 5-6-7-8

 Susan Hartley in Ireland, 2005.

Not everyone sings with the voicebox. Not everyone makes melody with the mouth.

Susan Hartley made a joyful noise with her feet. Tap-e-ta, tap-e-ta, shuffle ball change, shuffle ball change, jump down, jump down, jump down, stomp! Only a whole lot faster and a whole lot more intricate.

She must have been something when she was younger. Her bio says she started dancing when she was five, and was a demonstrator for Paul Draper in his New York studio by the time she was 12. When she was 15, she was part of a group of precision acrobats called The Hurricane.

Tap, jazz, acrobatics, ballet -- Susan danced it all on concert hall and theater stages from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

And she shared what she knew. In 1988, Susan opened Dancemoves Studio in Seminole, Florida, where she taught countless girls and boys how to cartwheel, arabesque, and Shuffle Off to Buffalo.

Nine years ago, give or take a few months, I watched Susan take my then somewhat hesitant four-year-old grandson by the hand, lead him to the center of her studio dance floor, and walk him through a series of tap steps.  

Brush forward, brush back, step. Brush, brush, step. Fl-ap, heel; fl-ap heel. Fl-ap, fl-ap, fl-ap, flap.

Week after week, month after month, year after year. Tap, jazz, ballet, lyrical, hip hop, acrobatics. First one grandson, then another, then a cousin, then a granddaughter.

It was all about developing that innate itch that makes us sway, swing, and step to music. It wasn't about perfection. It was about the kind of professionalism that drives you to keep practicing until it's as perfect as you can make it. It was about the kind of professionalism that keeps the show moving regardless of what faux pas has just occurred onstage.

Miss Susan didn't go over and over and over a step. She expected her students to watch closely and remember complex combinations almost instantly. She expected daily practice between lessons. That was part of the training. Broadway directors would be culling wannabe's who needed coddling from professional dancers who had the mental acuity as well as the physical agility to handle two-hour's worth of demanding choreography.

There was no undeserved praise awarded and no slack given. Little miss in a huff off in a corner? Pick her up, bring her back into the circle, and tell her to save the hissy fit for later. Shut the door, shut out the distractions, and carry on.

Knowing that one teacher is never sufficient, she brought in Lane Napper and other professionals from the Broadway Dance Center and other studios to conduct master classes in dance, voice, and theater. Her daughter, Elizabeth, joined her in the studio teaching musical theater and voice. She took her students to New York, Ireland, Miami, and as many places as their parents were willing to let the children go. She taught them how to conduct themselves in an audition, how to occupy themselves when it was someone else's turn to practice, how to overcome the fear of doing a round off, how to be generous with each other.

One student ended up with a part in a Nickelodeon TV show because of the connections Hartley helped her make.

Her choreography reflected Draper's melding of ballet and tap and her own acrobatic and ensemble training. Her studio boasted the only precision lines  (think Rockettes kick lines) in Pinellas County.

It can be hard on kids when their mother works with other kids. Especially when you don't quite fit in to her world, their world. That's not an excuse. It's also hard when you know you're not quite the mother your child either needs or would like to have. Either way, there are choices to be made. Choices to let go of unrealistic expectations, to accept what is and not what we wish was, and to find the perfect path our Creator has prepared for us -- and no one else -- to walk in.

Susan's son struggled with that. Susan struggled with it, too. Maybe no one knew how much until it was too late. Ultimately it cost both of them -- and all of us -- big time.

There are no guarantees of how many days we each have in this world. Or of how we will pass from this world into the next.

All we have is today. How we choose to live today is what matters for today . . . and, oddly, for tomorrow, too. Today we can choose anger and bitterness over what we perceive as unfair. We can choose to sit in a huff in the corner because the music isn't to our liking.

Or we can choose to get up and make a joyful noise to the music that is playing -- one that echoes through eternity.

With our mouths.

Or with our feet.

Did You Try the Door? Like . . . duh!

My 13-year-old grandson and I sit in my van in front of his dance studio this past Thursday waiting for his teacher to arrive.

His lesson begins at 4 p.m. and -- miracle of miracles, as they sing in Fiddler on the Roof -- we're a tad early. Usually his teacher is at the studio before we arrive. The last couple of weeks, however, she has pulled up a minute or two after us.

Today, her van isn't in front of the studio. So we continue our discussion of Lord of the Flies, which he has just finished reading, and the fourth (?) Harry Potter book, which he is currently reading.

Periodically, I check the time on my cell phone.

"Do you think the class time was changed?" I ask around 4:11. Occasionally the 4 o'clock class is canceled, and he doesn't have to be there until 4:30. "Should we call your mom to see if your teacher called?"

Around 4:20 I call my daughter-in-law and explain that the teacher apparently hasn't arrived and had there been any message about the class time changing?

"Did you try the door?" she asks.

"Her van isn't here," I answer, motioning my grandson to go check the door.

Tactful person that she is, she doesn't come back with what I would have said to her husband or his brothers not so many years ago. Namely, "Is that what I asked? Did I ask if her van was there? Answer me! What did I ask?!"

[Truth to tell, however, she might have used the same teaching tactics I used to use if it were her son placing the call! :-) ]

Instead, she merely says maybe the teacher's son dropped her off at the studio and that perhaps we should try the door. Which my grandson does and which, of course, is unlocked and just waiting for him to pull on the handle.

Like . . . duh!

How many times do we assume a door is closed to us without ever even pulling on the handle? Worse, how much time do we spend sitting in front of doors we assume are closed, locked, barred to us . . . without ever pulling on the handle?

Like . . . duh!

Totally Jazzed by "A Cinderella Story"

"The spoiled stepsisters learn to dance at an Arthur Murray studio, Handsome Hunk Charming swaggers ala The Fonz and the heroine is saved by her pet poodle? Wowza!"

That's the opening line of my review of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's A Cinderella Story, which entranced me this past Tuesday evening at Ruth Eckerd Hall. After I had decided -- twice -- that I really couldn't attend because of a previous obligation, my own fairy godmother, aka Sandy Huff, waved a free ticket in front of me and whisked me off to the ball.

I was mesmerized.

From the opening number danced by the Butler (Alexander Gamayunov) to an a cappella scat song sung by arranger and jazz band diretor Ron Paley to the poignant pas de deux near the end which featured Bob (Gael Lambiotte) and Nancy (Serena Sandford) dancing around and past each other but never touching or looking at each other, the performance was a creative melding of ballet, jazz, ballroom dancing, and theater.

Paley took Richard Rodgers' tunes from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s -- decades when he partnered with Lorenz Hart -- plus one or two later songs from his partnership with Oscar Hammerstein and turned these ballads into big band jazz arrangements that formed the score for the ballet, set in the 1950s and choreographed by Val Caniparoli. (See video below)

I hadn't a clue.

Rodgers & Hart was "before my time," after all. Even Elvis Presley was BMT. I grew up with the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and Joan Baez. I loved (still do) Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, but they were soon supplanted by Andrew Lloyd Webber's and others' works.

So I didn't recognize any of the tunes -- not even "Blue Moon," which both Ella Fitzgerald and Elvis Presley covered. 

Neither did the little girl -- maybe six years old -- who sat, enthralled, on my left. Didn't matter to either of us. We enjoyed a well-told story, creatively presented.

Other, more senior or more musically-enlightened members of the audience must have experienced the thrill of recognizing old songs transformed by the magic touches of Paley, Caniparoli, and -- why not? -- Cinderella's fairy godmother.

If the RWB hasn't produced a CD of the score and a DVD of the performance, they should. Their funny, artistically satisfying, gorgeously-danced, inventive rendition of a familiar story that never grows old in the telling deserves a vastly wider audience than just the people of Winnipeg and those few souls who catch one of their half-dozen or so tour stops.

[Photos and video are courtesy of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. See more video interviews with cast members, choreographer Val Caniparoli, and even footware manager Krystal Comstock on their Web site or on YouTube.)

All the World's a Stage

. . . and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his lifetime plays many parts." Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II Scene 7

La-a-dies and gentlemen! This Saturday, I direct your attention to Stage Right, aka R. E. Olds Park's Art-in-the-Park in Oldsmar, Fla., where, at 10 a.m. renowned Safety Harbor ceramic artist Lee Anderson presents Formed and Fired, a display of vessels from his prize-winning Pegasus and Therapeutic Pot Smoking series. Also appearing at Art-in-the-Park will be Safety Harbor writer Anne W. Anderson and her NLAPW cohorts displaying their artistic wares and reading selections from their published writings.

On Center Stage at 1:45 p.m., we present Christian and his Red Sox teammates battling the White Sox at the North Brandon Little League Field. Little brother Jackson leads the cheering from the sidelines, while parents Brian and Kristina keep things moving backstage . . . a stage within a stage, as it were.

At 3:30 p.m. on Stage Right, it's Tyler, Caleb, Raelin, and Devon with their Dancemoves friends tapping, jiving, and hip-hopping, by invitation, at the Festival of States' FamilyFest in St. Petersburg's North Straub Park, all under the watchful eyes of parents Jeremy and Jessica.

But wait! There's more!

On stage at Ruth Eckerd Hall this Sunday at 3 p.m. the 100-voice Clearwater Chorus, including alto Anne Anderson, presents Carmen to Candide: A Treasury of Musical Favorites from Opera to Broadway Musicals. It's gonna be GREAT!

Whatever stage you find yourself on this weekend, may your performance be heartfelt and full of joy.

Orange Bowl Half Time

Watch tonight's Orange Bowl Half-time show and look for 12-year-old Tyler Anderson and four of his DanceMoves Studio colleagues, ages 12-20.

He'll be in the '5' of the '75' . . . dressed in silver costume . . . shouldn't have any trouble spotting him or the others. :-)

2006 photo . . . from a standing position in a not-very-big living room.