Research Catalog

Title

Interview with Ruth Page [sound recording].

Author

Page, Ruth, 1899-1991.

Publication

1974.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Wentink, Andrew Mark.
• National Endowment for the Arts, 2010-2011.

Description

10 sound discs (ca. 469 min.) : digital; 4 3/4 in.

Summary

• Disc 1 (ca. 61 min.). Ruth Page speaks with Andrew Wentink about her childhood, including her mother's musical background; as a child meeting Anna Pavlova; Page's early dance improvisations; moving to New York City and studying with Adolf Bolm; Bolm as a teacher and as a dancer; dancing in East Asia and studying dance in Bali; Harald Kreutzberg, as a dancer and as a person; touring in South America with Anna Pavlova [break]; her very limited exposure to Ruth St. Denis's and Ted Shawn's work; Louis Horst as an invaluable adviser to choreographers including herself; meeting Maya Plisetskaya in New York City; Page's solo dance concerts in Cuba; an anecdote about Alicia Alonso; the [1922] film Danse macabre; her work Flapper and the quarterback; her turning away from the Russian style; turning from Americana ballets to ballets on operatic themes [break]; performing in the Music box revue in New York City; her relative lack of interest in musical comedies; more on her opera-based ballets, including her choreographing a ballet based on Il trovatore [Revanche; referred to as Revenge by Page in this recording] for Théâtre des Champs-Elysée, Paris; Camille, her work based on La traviata, with Marjorie Tallchief as Camille; her work The merry widow, with [Natalia] Makarova [gap]; briefly, [Rudolf] Nureyev's American debut, with her company [at the Brooklyn Academy of Music]; staging[ Michel] Fokine's choreography for Prince Igor starring Nureyev; meeting her husband [Thomas Hart Fisher]; joining the Ballets russes during her honeymoon in Monte Carlo; leaving to dance in Le coq d'or with Adolf Bolm in South America; meeting George Balanchine and Tamara Geva in Monte Carlo; his choreographing Polka mélancolique for her; always having been more interested in choreographing than in dancing; more on dancing in South America, in Buenos Aires [ends abruptly but resumes directly on disc 2].
• Disc 2 (ca. 36 min.). Ruth Page continues to speak with Andrew Wentink about dancing in Buenos Aires, where she performed for the Prince of Wales [later Edward VII]; tells an anecdote about Pierre Trudeau; briefly, her work Peter Pan and the butterfly; very briefly, her Creole dances; her visit to Siam [Thailand]; performing Siamese dances in Paris [break]; her work The triumph of chastity; briefly, her production of Cinderella, her husband and teaching [break]; Nicolas Remisoff and his great influence on her early works; her work Oak street beach; briefly, her work American pattern; her work Hear ye! hear ye!, with a commissioned score by Aaron Copland and costumes by Remisoff; her belief that her Americana ballets were the first to be made of this genre, beginning with Flapper and the quarterback; briefly, her work Gold standard; very briefly, her work Modern Diana; briefly, her dances based on poems; briefly, her work Harlequinade, performed with Bentley Stone; briefly, her works Susanna and the barber and American in Paris; very briefly, her collaborations with [Isamu] Noguchi; how she came to meet him; tells an anecdote about a mobile Alexander Calder gave her.
• Disc 3 (ca. 60 min.). Ruth Page speaks with Andrew Wentink about her works based on poetry; briefly, the costume designer, John Pratt; [Pavel] Tchelitchew, including his work for the Metropolitan Opera company's 1936 production of Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice; the advances in technique at the expense of expressiveness in dancers today; briefly, Blake Scott as the soldier in L'histoire du soldat; dancing in the first performances of [Adolf] Bolm's Apollo; other ballets with music by Stravinsky in which she has danced; Mark Turbyfill, including his working with Katherine Dunham very early in Dunham's career; his introducing Page to Dunham and their collaboration on La guiablesse in Chicago; briefly, Bentley Stone; [the film] Love song; her ballet Carmen; collaborating with Stone, including on the ballets Frankie and Johnny, Zephyr and Flora, and Harlequinade; Harald Kreutzberg, including as a teacher; his longtime collaborator Fritz [Frederich] Wilkins; very briefly, André Delfau and her ballet Die fledermaus; her relationship with her husband; reasons she enjoyed working for the W.P.A.; Helen Tamiris; her many years choreographing for the Chicago Opera Ballet, including some of her favorite productions such as Carmina burana [break]; tells anecdotes relating to her work at the Chicago Opera, including with respect to productions of Turandot, La traviata, and Tannhäuser; her thoughts on choreographing for opera generally; Catherine Littlefield and the Chicago Opera; performing with Bentley Stone at the Rainbow Room in New York City; more on the South American tour; choreographing Frankie and Johnny for Sergei Denham and the Ballet russe de Monte Carlo [ends abruptly but resumes directly on disc 4].
• Disc 4 (ca. 36 min.). [Extraneous hiss is loud.] Ruth Page continues to speak with Andrew Wentink about her ballet Frankie and Johnny and how it was thought shocking at the time; her ballet Billy Sunday, including Frederic Franklin's and Alexandra Danilova's skill in speaking roles; her activities in the 1940s, including choreographing the musical comedy Music in my heart; Hassard Short; briefly, her dances Tropic, Delirious delusion, and The humoresque; her work Bolero '69; the adverse response in Paris [in 1950] to her Americana works The bells and Frankie and Johnny; the response to José Limón's work, including La malinche, at that time; the great success of her work Revenge [Revanche] in Paris the following year; Boris Kochno; her production of Vilia [later revised and retitled The merry widow] in England [ends abruptly].
• Disc 5 (ca. 60 min.). [Begins abruptly. Extraneous hiss is loud.] Ruth Page speaks with Andrew Wentink about [Flemming Flindt's] ballet The lesson; the performing arts in Chicago, including her lecture-demonstrations at University of Chicago; working with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, including her ballet Catulli carmina; various dancers with whom she has worked, including Oleg Briansky and his wife Mireille [Mireille Lefèbre Briane]; Marjorie Tallchief; Flemming Flindt and Josette Amiel; her ballet Giara [The jar], in which Erik Bruhn danced; Melissa Hayden; [Alicia] Markova; Barbara Steele; Dolores Lipinsky; Edna McRae; Larry Long; Kenneth [Johnson]; Charles Schick; briefly, Rudolf Nureyev, as a person and as a dancer; briefly, Mia Slavenska; the controversy ignited by her work Chain of fools [?], performed at lecture-demonstrations; black dancers in her company and in Chicago; briefly, a co-production of Carmen with Arthur Mitchell and his company [break]; David and Anna Marie Holmes [break]; more on David and Anna Marie Holmes; Isaac Van Grove, including how much he helped her with her opera ballets, in particular Vilia; other ballets she created based on operas including The barber and Mephistofela, including her dissatisfaction with the latter; the growing acceptance of musical pastiche; Fokine's use of musical collage in Le coq d'Or [ends abruptly but resumes directly on disc 6].
• Disc 6 (ca. 33 min.). Ruth Page continues to speak with Andrew Wentink about the music for her ballets, including with respect to the composer Isaac Van Grove; briefly, Jerome Moross and [John Treville] Latouche; Isamu Noguchi, including their personal relationship; her husband, Thomas Fisher, including an anecdote about his successfully suing Henry [Robinson] Luce; more on Harald Kreutzberg and Fritz [Friedrich Wilckens] including how much she enjoyed working with them; touring, including her reminiscences about certain dancers including Henning [Kronstan], Kirsten Simone, and Job Sanders; Karl Musil and Irina Borowska [ends abruptly].
• Disc 7 (ca. 60 min.). [new session] Ruth Page speaks with Andrew Wentink about her house and neighbors in St. Tropez as well as various visitors including John Martin; Margot Fonteyn, including how they first met and Page's admiration for her as a person and a dancer; [Leonide] Massine, including an anecdote about visiting him with Fonteyn; briefly, Frederick Ashton; Frederic Franklin [break]; her husband and father-in-law; Page shows Wentink photographs, artworks, and other memorabilia in her apartment as she comments on them, including with respect to [Tamara] Karsavina; her time in London with Adolf Bolm including her visits to Cyril Beaumont's book store and studying with Enrico Cecchetti; attending a nighttime dance performance at Angkor Wat; her visits to Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico; Leonor Fini; Rudolf Nureyev; and Mary Wigman [ends abruptly but resumes directly on disc 8].
• Disc 8 (33 min.). Ruth Page continues to show Andrew Wentink her photographs, artworks, and other memorabilia while commenting on them [break ca. 1 min. into track 3; upon resumption sound quality is worse as speakers have moved away from the microphone]; Page speaks about an [unrealized?] ballet and the difficulty off pulling together all elements of a ballet; dancers she has worked with including Dolores Lipinsky, [Patricia] Klekovic, Sonia [Arova], Ellen Everett, Jeanne Armin, Orrin Kayan, and Kenneth Johnson; her ballet Carmina burana; briefly, her ballet Bullets and bonbons; her ballet Camille as one of her most popular works [ends abruptly].
• Disc 9 (ca. 61 min.). Ruth Page speaks with Andrew Wentink about some of her various unrealized ballets including a ballet about Isabella Gardner and Isadora Duncan; more on her ballet Camille; her ballet The nutcracker; her ballet Romeo and Juliet; the origin of her nickname Peter; briefly, Larry Long; touring, including its economic aspects; music and her choreography; performing shorter versions of ballets to accommodate television productions; the lack of a major ballet patron in Chicago; learning to be a choreographer [break at ca. 3:30 into track 8; resumes at louder volume]; Page shows and comments on costumes she has stored [at the building housing her school; she also introduces Wentink to Robert Bain? Robert Boehm?, their caretaker, who occasionally participates briefly in the conversation], including the costumes for Triumph of chastity, The bells, Beauty and the beast, Frankie and Johnny, and Delirious delusions; her plans for the building; Nikita Talin; more on costumes including the costumes for the Ballet russe de Monte Carlo production of Frankie and Johnny [ends abruptly but resumes directly on disc 10].
• Disc 10 (ca. 29 min.). Ruth Page continues to show Andrew Wentink costumes from her collection [Robert Bain? also is present] while commenting on them including the costumes for her ballets Tropic, William Tell, Variations on Euclid, and Zephyr and Flora [break]; reminisces about how much she loved performing, including an anecdote about a pas de deux with Harald Kreutzberg; her happiness that she was able to establish a foundation and school for dance and her pessimism that there will enough jobs for all the dance students; her interest in current choreographers and her view that Balanchine is inimitable; her hopes to have a theater as well as the school.

Alternative Title

Dance Oral History Project.

Subject

• Page, Ruth, 1899-1991
• Bolm, Adolph, 1884-1951
• Kreutzberg, Harald, 1902-1968
• Stone, Bentley
• Nureyev, Rudolf, 1938-1993
• Remisoff, Nicolas
• Tchelitchew, Pavel, 1898-1957
• Holmes, David, 1936-
• Noguchi, Isamu, 1904-1988
• Fisher, Thomas Hart
• Fonteyn, Margot, 1919-1991
• Van Grove, Isaac
• Chicago Opera Ballet
• Revanche (Choreographic work : Page)
• Camille (Choreographic work : Page)
• Merry widow (Choreographic work : Page)
• Oak Street beach (Choreographic work : Page)
• Triumph of chastity (Choreographic work : Page)
• Billy Sunday (Choreographic work : Page)
• Carmina burana (Choreographic work : Page)
• Ballet > Production and direction
• Music and dance
• Audiotapes > Page, R

Note

• Interview with Ruth Page conducted by Andrew Wentink on Sept. 9 - 13, 1974, in Page's home and school (latter part of disc 9 and disc 10), in Chicago, as part of the Oral History Project of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
• Sound quality is fair. There is a continuous extraneous hiss (relatively loud on discs 3-5, 7, and 9) arising from distortion in the original recording. The first ca. 20 sec. of the recording is almost unintelligible; the sound quality improves after that but at times the speakers' voices can be difficult to understand, in particular in parts of disc 8. There are short breaks throughout the recording, especially in disc 9.

Funding (note)

• Preservation was funded in part by National Endowment for the Arts, 2010-2011.

Call Number

*MGZTL 4-341

OCLC

44745365

Author

Page, Ruth, 1899-1991. Interviewee

Title

Interview with Ruth Page [sound recording].

Imprint

1974.

Original Version

Original format : 3 sound reels (ca. 469 min.; 1 7/8 in. per sec.; 5"; polyester, halftrack). Originally recorded in 1974.

Funding

Preservation was funded in part by National Endowment for the Arts, 2010-2011.

Local Note

For transcript of the audio recording, see *MGZMT 5-341.

Archive original: *MGZTO 5-341 no. 1-3

Local Subject

Opera ballet

Added Author

Wentink, Andrew Mark. Interviewee

National Endowment for the Arts, 2010-2011.

Research Call Number

*MGZTL 4-341