Showing 'Grace' Under Fire

About a dozen taut and nubile bodies are standing in a circle, deeply engrossed in something called “humping practice,” and running around in varying degrees of nudity.

“I give you permission next time to run past them or push them,” yells Emily B. Stoeckel ’07, a ballet mistress for the Harvard Ballet Company (HBC). “Just take the person in front of you and push them. I don’t care if they fall down. I really don’t care.”

This is not boot camp. This is not Broadway. For the dancers holed up in a windowless Harvard Dance Center studio, this is an ordinary Friday night.

It’s the start of another weekend of rehearsal for “American Grace”—a Loeb Mainstage production celebrating the best in 20th century American dance choreography. Some of these dancers will spend a total of 17 hours practicing their steps over the next three days, and they will watch themselves in the wall’s full-length mirrors as they endlessly refine every nuance of their movements.

The rigorous rehearsal schedule makes it seem like crunch time. But in mid-October, the “American Grace” dancers still have nearly a month before the curtains go up.

The stakes are high for the HBC. The company has performed in the Loeb only twice before—usually, they dance in the Quad. Hundreds of hours of work have gone into the production, and “American Grace” is proving to be an expensive one: its rising costs have spurred a dancer date auction and an alumni fundraising event.

“It’s hectic,” says Sarah C. Kenney ’08, who co-directs the show—and the HBC—with Raymond W. Keller ’08. “It’s going to get even more hectic in a couple weeks.”

The show, which is being co-presented by the HBC and the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC), opens this Friday. But preparations started as far back as May, when Kenney and Keller began the long process of procuring the performance rights for an ambitious list of pieces that included works by acclaimed choreographers Twyla Tharp, Martha Graham, and Bob Fosse.

It’s a giant step for the company, which typically produces more modest shows. “We would focus on one big thing, like the rights to one piece,” says Kenney. “American Grace” boasts a total of ten different pieces, and she adds that she’s not used to operating “on such a big scale.”

“American Grace” also will prove a test for the company’s newly-minted freshman members and the handful of non-dancers set to perform in it.



OF BALLERINAS AND “BALLERINOS”

There are 20 spandex-clad undergraduates working on Mark Morris’ “Polka,” a ring-around-the-rosy piece. And who’s that bundle of flailing musculature smiling at center stage?

That’s Kevin Shee ’10, a self-proclaimed “Ballerino,” hailing from Sacramento, California. A former tap and jazz dancer, he began taking classes at age five and moved on to perform professionally with the Bay Area Peninsula Ballet Theatre when he was 16.

Spunky, limber, and slim, Merritt A. Moore ’10 is Shee’s partner in Tharp’s “Sinatra Suite.” Moore is a textbook ballerina, immediately identifiable by her impeccable posture and the way she elegantly executes even simple gestures like unwrapping a candybar.

This poise, she assures you, is strictly a façade. “I’m a little stressed,” she says.

Relatively new to the dance world, Moore began dancing at age 13 after an injury barred her continuation of gymnastics—though other perks motivated her decision to start.

“My mom said I could get my ears pierced a year early if I did one year of dance,” she recalls.

Not all of the dancers have the experience of Shee or Moore. HRDC’s participation in the production means that all the performers in “American Grace” were selected through this semester’s Common Casting program. As a result, some of the show’s dancers are not, in fact, dancers.

Take, for example, Zachary B. Sniderman ’09. “I had no idea what I was doing,” he says of auditions. “I asked if I could leave and was told to stay.”

His enforced perseverance paid off with a role in the Fred Astaire piece, which takes its music and choreography from the 1936 movie, “Swing Time.”

Of course, Sniderman isn’t new to the stage. He’s an accomplished actor who performed in and worked on several HRDC productions last year. But inexperience isn’t necessarily a weakness.

“There’s definitely a camaraderie,” Sniderman says, referring to the bonds between non-dancers. Indeed, they often end up pushing harder than other participants in the show. “The bunch of us will either look at each other, shrug and try to fake it, or we’ll schedule extra rehearsal time.”

Keller was pleased with the results of Common Casting, and stresses that experience wasn’t a factor in the selection process.

“There definitely were a lot of faces that showed up that I didn’t recognize and ended up getting cast,” he says. “There are freshmen in the company and non-company people in the show, and I can’t tell the difference.”

Sniderman describes dancing as a “lot of fun,” but it’s hard to say if he agrees with Keller’s assertion that the inexperienced dancers are indistinguishable from their peers in the company.

“I’d like to think I’m doing well,” he says. “But we’ll find out if I’m actually doing well once the show starts.”

MOVIN’ OUT

James C. Fuller ’10 spends most of his time in the Dance Center, rehearsing with the HBC. It’s a commitment that he’s used to, and one that almost cut his education short.

“I took a year off to decide whether to come to college,” he says. In the interim, he earned an apprenticeship with a Portland, Oregon ballet company and applied—successfully—to Harvard.

“If I hadn’t told the artistic director I had gotten accepted into Harvard I could have probably stayed with the company,” Fuller says. But he doesn’t regret his decision.

He’s not the only one. Before coming to Harvard, Moore had also performed with well-known companies throughout the world, including the American Ballet Theatre in New York, the Royal Ballet in London, the Salzburg International Ballet Academy, and Ecole Supérieure de Danse Cannes Rosella Hightower in France. After graduation, she turned down a contract to dance professionally in favor of pursuing academics.

“My poor toes!” she exclaims when contemplating what her professional dancing career might have been.

Here at Harvard, Moore is convinced that ballet and studying would now be impossible to separate.

“It’s good to be busy. I always found I dance better when I also pursued academics, and my grades dropped when I wasn’t dancing,” she says.

Shee made a similar decision. Now a freshman pre-med, he says that even with the success of his already blossoming dance career, he found the idea of attending a conservatory or dancing full time after high school too risky.

“Injuries and things are sometimes really tough to get over. There’s no guarantee in dance, and you have to be pretty much the best to make a good living,” he says.

Shee was accepted to other institutions with more well-known dance programs, such as Duke, but he says he chose Harvard, “mostly because of the name.” Upon arrival, he was still unsure about the role of dance in his future.

“I didn’t expect the dance program here to be as good as it is,” says Shee.

Coral R. Martin ’10, who was originally cast as a principal in “American Grace,” agrees that her expectations have been exceeded. A dancer since age two, Martin says she couldn’t have predicted what awaited at Harvard.

“I was really optimistic, I thought there was a lot here and a lot of opportunities, but I wasn’t expecting as much as I’ve run into,” she says.

“I really, really want to dance. That’s partly why I chose Harvard,” she says. “They have a leave of absence policy so if you come here for a year, you can leave and still come back. I figured if I got a job, I could go dance for five years, ten years. I felt the option was open.”

BALANCING ACT

Going to both academic and dance classes can pose a challenge.

When asked about scheduling rehearsals around midterms, Shee laughs and looks away.

“It was a little more intense than I’d hoped. We had some tough times. I was stressed, obviously,” he says. “For me, having dance to fall back on after a long day or a stressful day is really comforting.”

For Moore pursuing a physics concentration while dancing as a lead in the HBC’s main stage production certainly has had its low points.

“It was really stressful, especially during midterms. I actually broke down at rehearsal. I had to cram studying, but I was not able to study as much as I had wanted,” Moore says. “We were working six straight hours with one five-minute break. I think I was in the studio over 23 hours in a matter of three days.”

The schedule wasn’t the only challenge she faced in rehearsals. Tharp’s choreography has petite Moore flinging herself both across the stage and into the waiting arms of Shee, who, prior to rehearsals, she had never met.

The show has benefited from educational assistance by a number of professional dancers from New York, some of whom have charged significantly reduced rates for their time.

When it comes to the guest directors, the dancers have mixed reviews.

“It was maybe kind of harsh,” Shee recalls.

Moore hesitates when asked for her opinion of them. “How do I say it...You’re kind of used to it in the dance world,” she says. “It sounds like abuse, but in the dance world it’s just a matter of practice.”

Shee gives a milder treatment of one director. “He knew what he was talking about. We respected him as a choreographer. He got angry and was pretty harsh sometimes about the corrections,” he says. “He was a tough choreographer. If there was a minute thing that went wrong he would hit on it, and he didn’t hold anything back. I liked that.”

While also physically draining and demanding of his time, involvement in “Polka” offers a different kind of challenge for Shee. Its decidedly abstract and modern style offers Shee something he’s had little contact with before.

“[‘Polka’] was fun. I wasn’t familiar with the choreography,” he says. “I’m having a lot of fun with that one. I prefer things that are more technical, but it’s nice to have a change. Diversity is always a good thing.”

Martin’s peers will be performing without her come Friday, due to an injury she sustained shortly after being cast in the production. After observing rehearsals for several days with the intention of performing, Martin was eventually forced to drop out of the show altogether.

“It was the worst experience so far,” she says of being cut. “What I was pleased about was that I wasn’t pressured to dance before I was ready to. Sometimes you have to dance on injuries, but I feel the [HBC] is really supportive. I missed an entire week of rehearsals, which was potentially a big deal, but didn’t turn into one.”

Fuller, who was Martin’s partner in the Tharp piece, is also affected, since the injury meant they had to be cut from the number.

“It wasn’t particularly anybody’s fault, it was just a series of unfortunate events. Things conspired against our being able to do it,” he says. Fuller estimates he put in over 30 hours of rehearsal on his Tharp part alone.

Moore shares frustration with the pacing of rehearsals. “We had to slow down sometimes, it felt like we weren’t getting anywhere,” she says.

However, studio setbacks are not nearly enough to squelch Moore’s overall enthusiasm about the show. She insists that her involvement with “American Grace” has been the right move. As to why the dance is so important to her, Moore can’t exactly explain it.

“Ninety percent is the music, the feeling, the emotion you feel that you wouldn’t get in everyday life,” she says.

Struggling for the words to describe what’s behind the other 10 percent of her motivation, Moore tries to express herself another way.

“If I could dance it—what I feel,” she says, her attention visibly wandering back to the stage, “maybe then you’d understand.”

PULLING IT OFF

Concerning “American Grace,” Martin is confident in the quality of the performances, but harbors some reservations about the show’s overall cohesion.

“My one problem is that I can’t understand how many pieces that they’re doing. It seems like it’s going to be a really long show,” says Martin.

To put on such a show, HBC needs money. Fundraising efforts so far have included the “Date-A-Dancer” date auction, which was held Oct. 28 in the Quincy Cage.

“American Grace” cast members paraded before a costumed audience composed mostly of friends and fellow dancers. The auction raised around $400, much of which came from people involved in the production.

That sum will only make a dent in the production’s total operating expenses. “We’re always right on the edge of being over budget,” says Keller.

HRDC provided a large portion of the money the show required, and HBC has fundraised to help pay for the rights to pieces—an estimated $8,000, according to Keller.

Getting the rights was also a difficult process. Keller had an especially hard time getting the Fosse estate’s blessing.

“I started looking for the rights at the end of last year, and there was basically no information whatsoever about how you obtain the rights,” he says. “Most people in the dance community say it’s just impossible.”

But Keller persisted, enlisting Library of Congress researchers to help track down the executor of Fosse’s estate. Eventually, Nicole Fosse, the legendary choreographer’s daughter, gave “American Grace” the okay.

Fuller says he was “amazed at the list of pieces” when he first learned about the show.

“My first reaction was, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to audition for all of these,’” he says. “I’m glad I didn’t because it would have been quite literally impossible.”

As it is, it’s almost too much already. “It certainly has been a lot of work,” he says.

But he remains hopeful. “It’s quite a difficult process, putting these pieces together simultaneously and finding places to rehearse,” says Fuller. “But I think HBC is perfectly capable of pulling this off.”

Keller agrees. “We’ve had obstacles, and people have really come together,” he says. “I think the cast is really excited about the show, and they’re ready to do what it will take.”

—Staff writer Jake G. Cohen can be reached at jgcohen@fas.harvard.edu.