Why We Need Art: And Agnes de Mille

By Victoria Looseleaf

What Lindsay Lohan needs is some real art in her life. She should also serve her jail time – for real – and learn how the other 99.9% live (or at least how those who break the law exist behind bars). OK, now that we have that out of the way (and don’t get us started on the Michael Jackson trial), we can get on to the more serious business of celebrating dancer/choreographer/writer Agnes de Mille.

Nearly forgotten today, this formidable talent created countless works of art. In 1942, Rodeo (at left, Aggie, herself, and at top, ABT‘s Erica Cornejo and David Hallberg, the first American to join the storied Bolshoi Ballet), was a commission by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. With a score by Aaron Copland, it received 22 curtain calls at its premiere and announced the arrival of a major choreographer. Rodeo is also probably de Mille’s most performed work. (Copland, on the other hand, would go on to collaborate with Martha Graham and win a Pulitzer Prize for his score for Graham’s Appalachian Spring two years later, his music a staple of orchestras worldwide.) But we digress: Rodeo was a kind of precursor to the ground-breaking de Mille choreographed musical, Oklahoma, one that would forever change the genre after its 1943 opening.

And while it’s a pity that more of de Mille’s works aren’t regularly revived (kudos, though, to Diana Beyer’s New York Theatre Ballet, a troupe that has helped keep the de Mille legacy alive – hello, Fall River Legend, de Mille’s 1948 terpsichorean telling of ax murderess Lizzie Borden), we now have a new collection of Aggie’s writings, Leaps in the Dark: Art and the World, edited by Mindy Aloff. Published by University Press of Florida, it’s an absolutely marvelous read.

De Mille (1905-1993), the daughter of screenwriter/director William deMille and niece of Cecil B. DeMille (yes, that CB – cue elephants and the parting of The Ten Commandments‘ Red Sea), was a brilliant artist with acute powers of observation.  And although she published 11 books, a review of the London premiere of Balanchine’s 1929 Prodigal Son, and a monograph (Russian Journals), only her stellar biography of Martha Graham (1992), is, alas, still in print. (Click here for our coverage on the magnificent Martha.)

Happily, Aloff has assembled an intriguingly eclectic array of de Mille’s writings. They run the gamut from juicy portraits of her uncle “Ce” (the bit about Aggie choreographing his film, Cleopatra with Claudette Colbert, left, is priceless), ballerina superstars Anna Pavlova and Alicia Alonso (we had the pleasure of interviewing Dame Alonso at Havana’s International Ballet Festival; click here for more on the 90-year old diva), to exquisitely crafted essays and reviews. We also adored de Mille’s tale of Oklahoma’s development, not least of which was her first official meeting with librettist Oscar Hammerstein – by chance, she tells us – in a New York City drugstore.

Of course, Aggie began her career as a dancer, though her unconventional looks perhaps precluded her from landing more coveted roles. At right she can be seen as Venus in Antony Tudor‘s The Judgment of Paris (1938), photographed by the esteemed Carl Van Vechten. Among her many dance-making achievements, then, was choreographing 1945’s Broadway fare, Carousel, though not the film version, which featured New York City Ballet’s Jacques d’Amboise. (Click here to read our recent LA Times feature on d’Amboise; click here for our blog coverage of the erstwhile New York City Ballet star and founder of the National Dance Institute.)

Indeed, de Mille became one of the most in-demand choreographers in the country, with numerous concert works and a dozen Broadway musicals to her credit (1943’s One Touch of Venus, 1947’s Brigadoon and 1949’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, to name a few more). It was during that fertile period that then New York Times dance critic, John Martin, proclaimed the era the “de Millenium.” How cool is that!

What a triumverate! From left: Aggie, Martha Graham and Mary Martin

And talk about indefatigable: When she was 70, de Mille suffered a stroke that paralyzed her right side. But did she give up? No, she actually wrote five more books, including one charting her ailment, Reprieve. Providing extraordinarily detailed descriptions, Leaps in the Dark should be required reading for all serious dance students. In the book’s Preparing for Performance excerpt, de Mille wrote that a dancer must, “join forces with the waiting audience in high anticipation. You are out of yourself – larger and more potent, more beautiful. You are for minutes heroic. This is power. This is glory on earth. And it is yours nightly.”

All hail to Agnes de Mille: Goddess of dance and pristine purveyor of the written word.

Lindsay Lohan being taken away in handcuffs. If only she’d followed the path of a true artist – or at least did her community service in exchange for having lifted a necklace. Quel dommage!