She calls herself Bette Midler en pointe, and when she opens her mouth, you
know why. Pat Neary is as loud as she is slender. She’s a New Yorker who
tells it like it is. “Are you doing some other ballet here?” she quips to
one graceful member of the corps. “Honestly, tell me what is it because it’s
certainly not Balanchine!”
She instructs the girls from Scottish Ballet in sharp, jazzy twists of the
hips, laughing: “I guess they don’t do that in the clubs these days ...
Okay, darlings, rock’n’roll as I say! Don’t tell me how you’re feeling. I
know how you’re feeling. Showtime!”
Neary was one of the principal dancers with George Balanchine’s New York City
Ballet in the 1960s. The Russian-born choreographer, who died in 1983, was
the father of American ballet and the single most important influence on
dance today. His work is so strenuous and demanding that any company wishing
to perform it must prove to the Balanchine Trust that it has the required
skill. If it passes that test, it needs a teacher from the trust to take its
dancers through the moves. That is where Neary comes in.
Sitting in this bright, contemporary studio, listening to the American
instruct her “girls and boys”, it’s easy to imagine you are in Manhattan, at
the Lincoln Center, where Balanchine was based. But this is the southside of
Glasgow, at Scottish Ballet’s purpose-built new premises at the Tramway. The
company is enjoying the premises in its 40th birthday year and will
celebrate the anniversary by touring Balanchine’s Rubies, along with William
Forsythe’s Work Within Work and Krzysztof Pastor’s In Light and Shadow.
Rubies was created for Neary. She danced in the premier at the New York State
Theater in 1967. It is one part of the three-segment work Jewels, the others
being Diamonds and Emeralds, which was scored by Balanchine’s friend and
long-term collaborator, Igor Stravinsky. Inspired by the fabulous display of
gems at Van Cleef & Arpels, it is generally considered to be the world’s
first abstract ballet. There is no fairy godmother or swan princess to
complicate the narrative. In fact, there is no narrative. It’s all about the
dancing.
When Time magazine profiled the New York City Ballet in 1964, they quoted
Balanchine as saying that all of his dancers could be a prima ballerina in
any other company.
At that time, he was causing a stir by replacing his experienced soloists with
much younger girls, and Neary was one of those profiled. “A tall (5ft 7in),
long-stemmed native of Miami, she is known as The Technician, and has
excelled in an extremely wide range of roles in her year as soloist,” said
Time.
“Her precise, whippet-quick movements are best showcased in Four Temperaments.
She spends all her off-hours baking brownies and cakes — ‘Oh, they’re sooo
tempting but I can’t touch them’ — for the theatre’s canteen, which is run
by her mother, a former vaudeville hoofer.”
Neary remains a technical perfectionist to this day, as is very clear from the
Tramway session in which Ashley Page, Scottish Ballet’s acclaimed artistic
director, sits in reverential silence along with the ballet master and
mistress.
“You shouldn’t be jetéing then! You were late!” she will cry, before injecting
warm words of encouragement such as: “That was wonderful, sweetie. Mr B
would have loved it!”
Space is a problem. She explains that the New York theatre where Rubies
premiered has a vast stage. Sadler’s Wells in London, where Scottish Ballet
opened last week, is so bijou that some of the jewels are at risk of
spilling onto the heads of the musicians in the orchestra pit. “The
principal boy is jogging into the pit!” exclaims Neary. “You’re in the wings
again, kids! I need to see you all!”
It’s hard to believe she is in her late sixties and has already had a hip
replaced. She spends much of the rehearsal demonstrating en pointe, and says
the constant movement helps her arthritis. Still tall and effortlessly
elegant in woollen leg warmers, she wears a customised sweatshirt bearing
the slogan Hurricane Pat. It was clearly gifted to her by another
appreciative company, and the dancers have all signed it with special
messages.
Her closeness to Balanchine, who encouraged her to become a teacher, makes the
rehearsals particularly special for the dancers.
“I tell stories about him and I also try to create an atmosphere and tell them
what he would correct them on, because that makes them feel what he would be
like in the studio.
“He was quite a taskmaster and very critical and also gave a lot of
corrections. He liked movements to be bigger.”
Balanchine was responsible for pushing classical ballet in a more athletic
direction.
“He was trying to get those split extensions,” says Neary. “Everybody was
like, ‘Oh, it’s vulgar, it’s too much.’ But it’s what’s taken over the
world. Now nobody ever says, ‘Oh, their legs are too high!’
“He wanted bigger jumps, he wanted more pirouettes, he wanted higher legs, he
wanted everything ... he used to say, ‘I can’t see it, it has to be bigger,
you have to make it larger.’
“I loved that — it was like ballet in 3D.”
The atmosphere inside New York City Ballet in the 1960s was very different
from what would be permissible today, when sexual harassment laws demand
that a clear distance be maintained between a boss and his workers — in this
case, a choreographer and his dancers.
Balanchine loved women, married five of his ballerinas and had affairs with
others. During Neary’s time there, he fell in love with one girl in the
company, Suzanne Farrell, who eventually rejected him and married another
man. During their relationship, his infatuation affected everyone around
them. Neary left because of it, and has confessed in the past that she was
“extremely jealous”. Many other dancers were unhappy, as Balanchine focused
all his attention on one “muse”.
Leaving New York City Ballet proved to be a blessing for her career, however.
She was assistant director in Berlin at the age of 27 and went on to spend
20 years in Europe, teaching and staging Balanchine ballets. Often the great
man came to help, sometimes as artistic director.
“He was always sitting next to me, telling me what he thought and correcting
the dancers. I still feel his presence.”
The Russian maestro loved tall women. Today, the solo part in Rubies created
for Neary is danced by Vassilissa Levtonova, a beautiful auburn-haired
Muscovite who has the stature Balanchine preferred and endless limbs the
colour of milk. Levtonova, who was promoted to coryphée last year, attracted
a lot of attention recently when she played the part of the gypsy in Carmen.
The other main parts today are taken by principals Sophie Martin and Adam
Blyde. During the rehearsal, Martin and Blyde run through their dance
together without a hitch. The speed, precision and height demanded by
Balanchine demonstrates why these young people are athletes as well as
artists. After they finish — to the applause of their colleagues and the
quiet satisfaction of Neary — Blyde and Martin collapse on the floor and
spend 10 minutes stretching the muscles they have just punished so severely.
It is a revealing insight into the pain and effort behind the glitter of
opening night.
The anniversary tour will arrive in Scotland after London. In the Rubies
performance, the dancers wear exact copies of the bejewelled scarlet
costumes designed for the original American production. All Balanchine
ballets must be staged exactly as he wanted. Neary has worked with Scottish
Ballet on several occasions — they performed Rubies at the Edinburgh
Festival two years ago, to great acclaim.
“They’re really a lovely company,” she says. “I’ve done several works here and
I’m very happy always to come back, because I feel like I’m coming to
my family or something. The kids are lovely to work with. They work hard and
love it: they’re intelligent, they’re musical. It’s just super. Ashley’s
done a terrific job. I’m proud to be a part.”
Coming from The Technician, this is praise indeed.
Scottish Ballet’s anniversary tour opens in Glasgow’s Theatre Royal on
October 8, then tours the rest of Scotland. See www.scottishballet.co.uk
for further details
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