Research Catalog

Interview with Nancy Zeckendorf

Title: Interview with Nancy Zeckendorf, 2020 / Conducted remotely by Marina Harss on September 23, 2020; Producer: Dance Oral History Project and the Cecchetti Heritage Project.
Author: Zeckendorf, Nancy
Publication: 2020

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections Dance to submit a request in person.	Moving image	Supervised use	*MGZMT 3-3549	Performing Arts Research Collections Dance

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Description

1 streaming video file (approximately one and 29 minutes) : sound, color. +

Summary

Streaming file, September 23, 2020 (approximately one hour and 29 minutes). Nancy Zeckendorf speaks with Marina Harss about her first dance classes, beginning when she was around 13, in St. Petersburg, Florida; continuing to take ballet class in Tidioute, Pennsylvania; when she was 17, spending three weeks at Ballet Arts in New York; in 1952 matriculating at the brand new dance program at the Juilliard School after auditioning for Martha Graham, Antony Tudor, Margaret Craske, Martha Hill, and Louis Horst; Tudor's selecting her as one of 12 students (out of a total of 50) for an advanced group taught by him and Craske; taking class with Graham as well as Craske and Tudor; Craske's disapproval of her taking modern dance class, in particular the malign influence of contractions on plies; the location of the Juilliard ballet studio at the International House Gymnasium; Craske as a teacher including her "mother hen" persona and her strict approach to practice clothes; Craske's short warm-up exercise; Craske's working one on one with individuals after class; the fact that, to her knowledge, none of the dancers who studied with Craske ever had hip surgery; Craske's insistence on the dancers' not pushing themselves in unnatural ways; Craske's teaching the students to move with the music rather than based on how they looked in the mirror; Tudor's classes compared to Craske's including the fact that both Tudor and Craske were deeply spiritual people; Craske's spirituality as manifested in class by her love (albeit "tough love") and honesty; Zeckendorf's meeting Baba (Meher Baba) in New York and respecting his birthday by fasting and silence; Craske's devotion to Baba including her time at his ashram in India; reasons she left Juilliard after a year and entered the Metropolitan Opera ballet school including her desire to dance in opera ballets; reasons she does not regret having passed up an opportunity to join Ballet Theatre [now American Ballet Theatre]; after about two and a half years at the Metropolitan Opera ballet school, going on tour (with Agnes de Mille) as Zizi Jeanmaire's understudy in The girl in pink tights; successfully auditioning for the Metropolitan Opera ballet; the ballet evenings at the Metropolitan Opera with choreography by Zachary Solov and Tudor including why they were not popular with the Metropolitan Opera's audience; some of the operas she danced in; Solov as the choreographer for the opera ballets when she was in the company; after Solov and his successor Alicia Markova left, the erosion in the role of ballet and the ballet company as an integral part of opera productions at the Metropolitan Opera; Craske's classes at the Metropolitan Opera as fundamentally the same as her classes at Juilliard; Craske's pointe class; the congruity and uniqueness of fifth position as taught by Craske and Tudor (and Cecchetti) with the fifth position shown in Muriel Stuart's and Lincoln Kirstein's book [The classic ballet: basic technique and terminology, 1953]; the studio at the Metropolitan Opera; classes she took at the school in addition to technique including Tudor's "production class" and character study with Yuri [Yurek] Lazowski; [Zeckendorf reads aloud from the remarks she wrote for a memorial for Craske in which she shares her reminiscences of Craske]; she speaks about the mutual devotion of Craske and her students; Tudor's and Craske's advice to her to "read mysteries", perhaps because they thought she was too serious; Craske's approach to correcting her students; the higher level of the dancers (including such professionals as Yvonne Chouteau and Nora Kaye) at the Metropolitan Opera ballet school compared to the students, including herself, in her class at Juilliard; the many modern dancers who studied with Craske including Carolyn Brown; the dedication expected from even the students who were not destined for careers in dance; Craske's eagle eye and very effective use of her hands to demonstrate; Craske's common sense approach to teaching; Craske's barre as lasting about 30 minutes; in contrast with Cecchetti's method, Craske's exercises being more or less the same everyday albeit with changes introduced from time to time; Craske's emphasis on holding the arms and hands in a natural manner and avoidance of overly-complicated exercises; Zeckendorf attempts to explain the exercise Craske gave her to strengthen her metatarsals; Craske's arch-strengthening exercise; Zeckendorf speaks about Craske's of humor in class, for example telling her that her arms looked like those of a taxi driver; Craske's and Tudor's relationship; after barre, placing the students in rows and groups for center work; Craske's adagios as "normal"; her particular problem, due to her late start, with learning combinations; Craske's and Tudor's intuitiveness with respect to their students, particularly in the case of Tudor; Cecchetti as the most "honest" technique she knows including what she means by "honest"; her admiration for [Alexis] Ratmansky's The sleeping beauty as exemplary of an older style she prefers to the more exaggerated style she sees today; taking it for granted that one does not "travel" during fouettes; modern dancers and Craske's classes; Cecchetti style as simple, clean, and focused on the essence of the movement; life and career lessons she learned from Craske; her difficulty remembering steps; her gratitude for being included in this project.

Alternative Title

Dance Oral History Project.
Dance Audio Archive.
Cecchetti Heritage Project

Subject

Genre/Form

Video recordings.
Oral histories.

Note

Interview with Nancy Zeckendorf (in Santa Fe, New Mexico) conducted remotely by Marina Harss (in New York, N.Y. ) on September 23, 2020 for the Dance Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and the Cecchetti Heritage Project.
For transcript see *MGZMT 3-3549
Sound quality is good overall.
The video recording of this interview can be made available at the Library for the Performing Arts by advanced request to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, dance@nypl.org. The video files for this interview are undergoing processing and eventually will be available for streaming.
Title supplied by cataloger.

Access (note)

Transcripts may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.

Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3549

OCLC

1395562182

Author

Zeckendorf, Nancy Interviewee.

Title

Interview with Nancy Zeckendorf, 2020 / Conducted remotely by Marina Harss on September 23, 2020; Producer: Dance Oral History Project and the Cecchetti Heritage Project.

Imprint

2020

Playing Time

012900

Type of Content

spoken word

two-dimensional moving image

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

video

computer

Type of Carrier

online resource

volume

Digital File Characteristics

video file

Restricted Access

Transcripts may not be photographed or reproduced without permission.

Event

Recorded for for the Dance Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and the Cecchetti Heritage Project 2022, September 23 Santa Fe, New Mexico and New York (N.Y.)

Connect to:

Added Author

Harss, Marina, Interviewer.

New York Theatre Ballet.

Research Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3549

*MGZDOH 3549

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