Contact: Mel Schierman
[email protected]
917-817-2354
PATRICIA WILDE TO TAPE VIDEO SERIES FOR THE GEORGE BALANCHINE FOUNDATION
New York City — Patricia Wilde will work with NYCB dancers Lauren King, Kristen Segin, Indiana Woodward and Daniel Applebaum for the cameras of The George Balanchine Foundation's Interpreters Archive (IA). The recording will take place on Monday, April 10th, 2017, at the New York City Ballet studios in the Rose Building, Lincoln Center, New York.
Nancy McDill, solo pianist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, will accompany the session, and Mary Cargill, New York based dance writer and critic, will interview Wilde at the conclusion. The filming will be supervised by Paul Boos, the IA's Project Associate, and assisted by Nancy Reynolds, former film professor Virginia Brooks, and filmmaker Gus Reed.
The aim of the Archive series is to document the insights of principal dancers who originated parts in important Balanchine ballets as well as those with whom he worked closely on his major roles. Its mission is to preserve this knowledge and pass it on to dancers, scholars and audiences of today. GBF Video Archives are available world-wide through many public and university libraries. In addition, the interview components are publicly available on the Balanchine Foundation’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/blnchn).
Patricia Wilde is remembered for her technical virtuosity and particularly for her split-second brilliance in jumps, beats, and turns.
When Swan Lake premiered on November 20, 1951, Miles Kastendieck reported in the New York Journal-American that Wilde “created a sensation.” Adding perspective to Balanchine’s tinkering with Petipa’s beloved classic, Wilde’s biographer Joel Lobenthal writes: “Surprisingly, Balanchine’s re-worked Swan Lake was well received by the tradition-conscious British critics,” of which Caryl Brahms in Ballet Today, wrote: “To Ivanov’s tired old swans, Balanchine has brought a new urgency. In particular I found the pas de trois, with Wilde in startled flight from the smooth waters of the lake, and the final flurry of disturbed doom-driven swans, dramatic and exciting.”
Caracole premiered in 1952 and was restored and retitled Divertimento No. 15 in 1956. This ballet jewel box showcased NYCB’s finest dancers’ distinctive gifts. The first of six brilliant variations was given to Wilde. She soon inherited and conquered Maria Tallchief’s breakneck coloratura sixth variation, which now is the standard for all succeeding ballerinas. Wilde recently coached Tallchief’s variation for the IA and now will be seen instructing her original variation.
In response to Wilde’s 1952 Scotch Symphony premiere, P.W. Manchester in Dance News described her as a “sonsy Scotch lassie” who “spurs the ground with her steely points or flies above it as though the laws of gravity have ceased to apply as far as she is concerned.”
PATRICIA WILDE’s sweeping career in dance encompassed seasons with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, which she joined as a teenager in 1945, and continued when she became a long-standing NYCB principal dancer who inspired Balanchine throughout the 50’s and much of the 60’s. He created several ballets to showcase her forceful allegro dancing, in two of which, Square Dance and Raymonda Variations, she has coached principal roles for the cameras of the Balanchine Foundation Interpreters Archive. Among other choreography he created on her are principal roles in Western Symphony, Pas de Trois (Glinka), Waltz-Scherzo, and Native Dancers. Wilde retired from the stage in 1966. In the 70’s she became a committed dance advocate and educator, and from 1982 to 1997 was Artistic Director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. Her biography, Wilde Times: Patricia Wilde, George Balanchine and the Rise of New York City Ballet, written by Joel Lobenthal, has recently been released.
LAUREN KING’s dance training began in New Hyde Park, New York where she performed briefly with the Eglevsky Ballet Company before enrolling in the School of American Ballet in 2001. King joined NYCB in 2003, and launched her career cast as one of three featured soloists in Michel Fokine's Chopiniana. Since then, her repertory has steadily increased and in 2013 she was named soloist. In 2011, King was filmed being coached in La Source for the Interpreters Archive by Suki Schorer.
KRISTEN SEGIN, a member of NYCB's corps de ballet, began dance training in her home state of New Jersey, and went on to study at The Rock School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She enrolled full time at SAB in the fall of 2005, became an apprentice with NYCB in August 2008, and a member of the corps de ballet in August 2009. Segin has been coached in Raymonda and Midsummer Night’s Dream by Suki Schorer for the Interpreters Archive.
INDIANA WOODWARD, born in Paris, France, began her dance training at the Yuri Grigoriev School of Ballet in Venice, California and continued her studies at the School of American Ballet. In August 2012 she joined NYCB and was promoted to soloist in February 2017. Woodward has previously contributed to the Interpreters Archive dancing the role of Marzipan from The Nutcracker®, coached by Wilde in November 2016.
DANIEL APPLEBAUM’s early ballet studies began at Maryland Youth Ballet. He furthered his studies at the School of American Ballet, where in 2004 he was a recipient of the Mae L. Wien Award for Outstanding Promise; that same year he became an apprentice with NYCB and then joined the corps de ballet in 2005.
MARY CARGILL has been writing about dance for more than twenty years and her articles have appeared in DanceView, Ballet Review, Dance Magazine, and danceviewtimes.com.
NANCY REYNOLDS, a former dancer with NYCB, has been director of research for The George Balanchine Foundation since 1994. She conceived and continues to direct the Video Archives program. As an author, her most recent books are No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century (co-authored with Malcolm McCormick) and Remembering Lincoln. In 2013 she received a "Bessie" award for "outstanding service to the field of dance."
PAUL BOOS, since 2015 the Interpreters Archive Project Associate, is a former dancer with NYCB and répétiteur for the George Balanchine Trust. He teaches abroad and locally.
VIRGINIA BROOKS, Professor Emerita of Film at Brooklyn College/CUNY and director of several dance documentaries has been an editor of the Balanchine Foundation's Video Archives since its inception in 1994.
GUS REED, a New York City-based filmmaker, specializes in creating video for and with dance. He has served as an editor of the Balanchine Foundation's Video Archives since the fall of 2014.
The George Balanchine Foundation (www.balanchine.org) is a not for profit corporation established in 1983. Its mission is to create programs that educate the public and further Balanchine's work and aesthetic, with the goal of advancing high standards of excellence in dance and its allied arts. Among the Foundation's major initiatives are the Video Archives (https://balanchine.org/03/gbfvideoarchives.html), in which dancers who worked closely with Balanchine teach and coach their roles to the dancers of today (Interpreters Archive) or recreate Balanchine ballets that are rarely performed and in danger of disappearing (Archive of Lost Choreography). Legendary dancers who have taken part in this project include Alicia Markova, Maria Tallchief, Frederic Franklin, Alicia Alonso, Melissa Hayden, Allegra Kent, Todd Bolender, Merrill Ashley, Suzanne Farrell, Rosella Hightower, Marie-Jeanne, Violette Verdy, Edward Villella, Patricia Wilde, Yvonne Mounsey, and Helgi Tomasson, working with leading dancers from such companies as New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, and The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, among others.
In 2007 the Foundation announced the completion of another major initiative, the online publication of the Balanchine Catalogue, a fully searchable database giving first-performance details of all known dances created by Balanchine, supplemented by lists of companies staging the ballets, a bibliography, a videography, reference resources, a database of roles Balanchine performed, and additional related materials (https://balanchine.org/03/balanchinecataloguenew.html). The project was made possible by a leadership grant from The Jerome Robbins Foundation.
