Speaker 1: As we were working on the Turning Room of Mirrors,
Speaker 1: we came across so many fascinating stories that we didn't
Speaker 1: have time for in the final series, So today's episode
Speaker 1: will sound a little different. I asked each of our
Speaker 1: team members to bring a tidbit or story that they
Speaker 1: stumbled across and working on the series that fascinated them
Speaker 1: or surprised them, and to share it with the group.
Speaker 1: So today we're all here to talk. We have Emily Foreman,
Speaker 1: our editor, James Trout or JT who sound designed the series,
Speaker 1: and Ailan Lance Lesser, who co wrote and reported the
Speaker 1: series with me. You may remember she's also my sister.
Speaker 1: You've heard from her before. So Ailen, what did you
Speaker 1: bring today? What's been on your mind?
Speaker 2: So I don't know. As we were researching the world
Speaker 2: of Ballet, one little piece that stuck out to me
Speaker 2: was something that actually Chloe Angel talked a lot about
Speaker 2: when we spoke with her, and that she also wrote
Speaker 2: about in her book, and it's point shoes. When I
Speaker 2: think of Ballet, one of the first images that comes
Speaker 2: to mind is point shoes. One could even argue that
Speaker 2: they're part of the mystery and the mystique and actually
Speaker 2: they were first developed in the eighteen thirties when a
Speaker 2: bunch of choreographers were interested in getting dancers to look
Speaker 2: like they're floating. But what's interesting to me is over
Speaker 2: time since then, well over one hundred years, point shoes
Speaker 2: really haven't changed that much. Obviously they've changed to some degree,
Speaker 2: but ultimately most point shoes are still being made out
Speaker 2: of the same materials and that's fabric, glue, and paper.
Speaker 2: They're very uncomfortable, like it's not fun to be a
Speaker 2: point shoe. They can also lead to a bunch of
Speaker 2: stress fractures in your feet and toes. They can lead
Speaker 2: to ankle injuries, they can lead to horrible blisters and bunions.
Speaker 2: And also when you're walking around day to day, usually
Speaker 2: you put about thirty percent of your body weight on
Speaker 2: your big toe. That's you know, normal day to day
Speaker 2: walking around. But when you're on a point shoe and
Speaker 2: you're on point, you're putting all of your body weight
Speaker 2: right on your big toe and also specifically on the
Speaker 2: joint next to your big toe, and that joint isn't
Speaker 2: used to that, so it's very painful and it really
Speaker 2: can lead to a lot of injury. For dancers, which
Speaker 2: first of all affects their careers or it could affect
Speaker 2: them long term, even just day to day living moving
Speaker 2: around the world.
Speaker 3: I've heard this many times. Pointes are made of fabric,
Speaker 3: glue and pater yeat. I just don't understand where the
Speaker 3: sport comes from. It sounds like a paper mache project
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 2: I think that's what's kind of shocking about it. They're
Speaker 2: not using up to date materials.
Speaker 1: Usually at least they are like really hard paper and
Speaker 1: cloth sounds not hard, but the glue turns it into
Speaker 1: this very hard thing.
Speaker 2: Dancers are often you know, whacking their point shoes on
Speaker 2: the wall or on the ground, even using hammers to
Speaker 2: try to get them softer. And then also what can
Speaker 2: happen is you finally get your shoes to the place
Speaker 2: where they're perfect, where they're just the right amount of
Speaker 2: firmness and flexibility, but then they start to go too far,
Speaker 2: they're too worn in, and then you have to get
Speaker 2: a new pair. So also a lot of dancers go
Speaker 2: through point shoes very quickly.
Speaker 3: At its best, when your point shoe is broken in,
Speaker 3: what does it feel like.
Speaker 1: The shank is bending with your arch and helping to
Speaker 1: support you, which is why it's so important that you
Speaker 1: have shoes that are not dead are overbroken in.
Speaker 2: Also, they need to be firm enough because the box
Speaker 2: on some level helps protect the joint by keeping it stiff.
Speaker 2: But if it's too stiff, that's also a problem because
Speaker 2: then it's harder to move.
Speaker 4: So like seemingly there's like another material that could just
Speaker 4: be that.
Speaker 2: Stiffness exactly JT. And it's funny that you say that,
Speaker 2: because I think if you contrast what's happened with ballet
Speaker 2: equipment against what has happened in sporting gear, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's really shocking to contrast those two. So take something
Speaker 2: like soccer. You think of shin guards back in the day.
Speaker 2: Initially they were just kind of like padding, and then
Speaker 2: over time they developed all kinds of new materials to
Speaker 2: the point where today as a player, you can pick
Speaker 2: how heavy your shin guards are, how hard they are,
Speaker 2: how they fit you, how big they are, all these
Speaker 2: different things. Or even cleats, they've changed a lot, and
Speaker 2: when turf was invented, cleats totally changed to help protect
Speaker 2: players against turf injuries. Or you think about American football
Speaker 2: helmets and how obviously those are very important for protection.
Speaker 2: But football helmets are lab tested and the NFL actually
Speaker 2: requires players to wear certain helmets that don't fall under
Speaker 2: this not recommended category by these lab tests, and it's
Speaker 2: constantly changing year to year, whereas in ballet it really
Speaker 2: isn't changing that much. Now, there have been some changes,
Speaker 2: some companies have tried playing around with material it's not
Speaker 2: like no one has tried it. For example, there's a
Speaker 2: company called Gainer Mindon that in the nineties came out
Speaker 2: with a point shoe that had a box and a
Speaker 2: shank of malleable plastic. So basically where the toes go
Speaker 2: in the shoe and kind of the sole or the
Speaker 2: base of the shoe are made of this plastic that
Speaker 2: can adjust. And the nice thing about these shoes is
Speaker 2: that they also last longer because they're built with these
Speaker 2: materials that don't wear down as quickly. They're built to
Speaker 2: last at a very specific level of flexibility. That sounds good,
Speaker 2: It does sound good, but weirdly, they just didn't really
Speaker 2: take off. I mean, there's still an existence, but they're
Speaker 2: just not popular. And actually ballet schools across the country,
Speaker 2: many of them do not allow dancers who are learning
Speaker 2: to dance on point to use Gainer Minten's. The argument
Speaker 2: is that these shoes actually make it easier to pop
Speaker 2: up on point, so some teachers argue that you're not
Speaker 2: building the muscles correctly. But the thing about these shoes
Speaker 2: is that they are much more comfortable and they're supposed
Speaker 2: to be way safer. According to the founder of the
Speaker 2: shoe company, Gainer Minden, they are quote the first and
Speaker 2: the only point shoe that was ever designed with dancers
Speaker 2: health and safety in mind. And so while there are
Speaker 2: some dancers who use these shoes, ultimately they're just not popular.
Speaker 2: And Chloe Angel argues that point shoes could be made
Speaker 2: even safer than Gainer Minden's with the technology we have today,
Speaker 2: for example, if they made the shoes straighter and more
Speaker 2: wide up until the tip of the toe. But they're
Speaker 2: just not made safer or more comfortable. What it comes
Speaker 2: down to, most likely is the ballet world's concerned with
Speaker 2: the line and the esthetic that the shoe needs to
Speaker 2: look a very specific way, and even i mean going
Speaker 2: back to balanching, he had a very specific preference on
Speaker 2: point shoe. He preferred freeds, like the old school point
Speaker 2: shoes that you typically see.
Speaker 1: I remember one of my classmates got a pair of
Speaker 1: Gainer Mendens. I remember, you're like, oh, my god, wouldn't
Speaker 1: it be cool to have comfier point shoes. But also
Speaker 1: I did feel like there is a little bit of
Speaker 1: stigma of oh, they're more comfortable, and so there's like
Speaker 1: maybe some kind of weakness if you choose to wear
Speaker 1: Gainer Mindons. So I didn't try them for that reason.
Speaker 1: And now looking back, I'm like, Erico, why wouldn't you
Speaker 1: just try them? I mean, my guess is it's not
Speaker 1: like there's been some in depth clinical study on the
Speaker 1: anatomy of the foot during ballet steps and how much
Speaker 1: the muscle is being used in these different types of shoes.
Speaker 1: I do wonder to what extent that's based on, like
Speaker 1: some scientific truths versus a fear of changing the norm.
Speaker 1: I think you do have to take a risk to
Speaker 1: try something new, to try to be safer.
Speaker 3: It's like a fine line between like this idea that
Speaker 3: it's just not it hasn't been embraced. It's kind of
Speaker 3: like suffering is a necessary part of the leadism involved,
Speaker 3: otherwise it's not ballet. It's like a fine line between
Speaker 3: that versus what I'm hearing you're saying of, Oh, you're
Speaker 3: not going to build this foundation that you need, You're
Speaker 3: not going to build the muscles that you need to
Speaker 3: do this thing. But what does that actually mean? Are
Speaker 3: they thinking about like long term outcomes? What is implied
Speaker 3: in this not being embraced.
Speaker 2: Chloe also makes that point that teachers across the country
Speaker 2: do think of it as sort of a cheat, and
Speaker 2: it is not just implicitly but kind of explicitly look
Speaker 2: down upon, and even some celebrity teachers, so teachers that
Speaker 2: are like well known in the field have kind of
Speaker 2: come out against it, and one even said, ballet isn't
Speaker 2: about health. It's an art form. And that's true. You know,
Speaker 2: ballet is an art form, but that doesn't mean you
Speaker 2: can't consider health.
Speaker 4: In that it reminds me of hockey players who refuse
Speaker 4: to wear helmets when they'd made the rule change and
Speaker 4: they like literally grandfathered in certain people that were like,
Speaker 4: I refuse to wear a helmet while I play hockey.
Speaker 4: You look back in you're life, like, one, those guys
Speaker 4: are crazy. They're playing an insanely physical game like that,
Speaker 4: And also two, I think in the same way that
Speaker 4: ballet has like it's changed over time, right, we demand more,
Speaker 4: The game is faster, the athletes train harder, just like
Speaker 4: with ballet, and I think if we're going to continue
Speaker 4: to push the speed and the style that we want,
Speaker 4: then you're going to have to make some changes to
Speaker 4: the footwear or the equipment or whatever it is. I
Speaker 4: think that's just progress.
Speaker 1: That's such a good point, JT. Because you're totally right
Speaker 1: that the technical expectations are constantly increasing for dancers. Every
Speaker 1: generation of dancers is like you're expected to be able
Speaker 1: to have your leg higher, do more piroetes at once.
Speaker 1: So it does make sense that the gear would change
Speaker 1: with that, you know, greater level of force et cetera
Speaker 1: that you're putting on the shoes.
Speaker 2: It does, I think all come back to culture. Why
Speaker 2: is that the world doesn't want to be open to
Speaker 2: these types of changes. Yeah, it's interesting how certain cultures
Speaker 2: are maybe that much more resistant to change.
Speaker 1: When we come back Tchaikovsky's Lost Potada and more stories
Speaker 1: from our team, stay tuned. I'm curious, JT, what's been
Speaker 1: on your mind coming into this conversation.
Speaker 4: So in the series, we mentioned this ballet called the
Speaker 4: Tchaikovsky PoTA Da basically this famous piece that bouncing choreographed
Speaker 4: to music by the Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky, and I
Speaker 4: realized that there's all this history behind the music for
Speaker 4: the Poda Da. I kind of went down this rabbit
Speaker 4: hole waiting between edits. So I was trying to find
Speaker 4: the specific one that Balanchine used, and I was frustrated
Speaker 4: because I was like, oh, I'm seeing that, like this
Speaker 4: might have come from Swan Lake. But then I was
Speaker 4: kind of like, why would Balanchine take a section of
Speaker 4: Swan Lake and just use it? And what I found was, actually,
Speaker 4: it is a section of Swan Lake that we have
Speaker 4: probably never heard before or seen before Balanchine used it.
Speaker 4: The story is very complex and has a lot of
Speaker 4: really complicated Russian names in it. So here we go,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna try to say them all. In eighteen seventy
Speaker 4: ish eighteen seventies, let's say Tchaikowsky gets commissioned to write
Speaker 4: his ballet and at the time, ballet music was pretty
Speaker 4: much like crap. If you were a composer in the
Speaker 4: ilk of Tchaikovsky at the time, you were like, this
Speaker 4: is just kind of repetitive garbage, right, Like you don't
Speaker 4: go to the ballet for the music essentially, So he
Speaker 4: gets this thing. He's like, yeah, cool, like I could
Speaker 4: use the money. Also, yeah, ballet is great. He starts
Speaker 4: writing Swan Lake. He writes a lot of it pretty fast,
Speaker 4: and then he sort of gets stuck on the instrumentation.
Speaker 4: Blah blah blah blah. He takes the score that he
Speaker 4: has written so far to the choreographer, Julius Rasinger, who
Speaker 4: is like this kind of like mid, like super mid choreographer.
Speaker 4: He this is like, this is like this is just
Speaker 4: what I've been reading. I'm sure he was a very
Speaker 4: nice guy. He's like, this is crazy complicated. The dancers
Speaker 4: complain about the music in the rehearsal. They're like, well,
Speaker 4: we can't chore to this and the other thing. At
Speaker 4: the time, choreographers and dancers actually had a majority stake
Speaker 4: in the control and sort of like composers were like
Speaker 4: not again, because the music was like very repetitive and
Speaker 4: kind of easier to dance to, right, It was like
Speaker 4: it was an afterthing, you know. So these dancers are like,
Speaker 4: you're making this sort of complex thing that's really fast.
Speaker 4: We can't dance to this, we can't do our normal stuff.
Speaker 4: So they don't like it. So this choreographer racinger starts
Speaker 4: chopping it. I read somewhere it's like they cut like
Speaker 4: a third of the original score out just because it
Speaker 4: was like too much. Meanwhile, this like other drama, starts happening,
Speaker 4: where the dancer that basically this whole thing has been
Speaker 4: choreographed for who's playing the lead. This name is insanely complicated.
Speaker 4: I'm going to drop it in the chat just so
Speaker 4: you can see what I'm trying to pronounce. This Prima
Speaker 4: Ballerina by Anna Sobi Shanksky, Basically, they choreographed the majority
Speaker 4: of Swan like for her then drama, she's kind of
Speaker 4: seeing this Russian aligarch who gives her a bunch of jewels.
Speaker 4: But then it's like, I'm not going to marry you.
Speaker 4: He's like see you later, my right, So they premiere
Speaker 4: the ballet with her second and everyone hates it. Right,
Speaker 4: They like there had have been a bunch of stuff
Speaker 4: that it leaked that the dancers didn't like the music. Obviously,
Speaker 4: with the change of the main ballerina. Basically, the reviews
Speaker 4: were like, this is crap. Like the music is terrible,
Speaker 4: Like we don't get it. I imagine that if you make
Speaker 4: like a really complicated score and then the choreography is
Speaker 4: struggling to keep up, like it only accentuates how different
Speaker 4: the score is, do you know what I mean? Like, so,
Speaker 4: I'm sure people were just like, what is this like
Speaker 4: hot garbage that we're watching? So somehow Anna, yes, she
Speaker 4: comes back. There's some some sort of amends are made,
Speaker 4: Like a month later, they're like, we're going to go
Speaker 4: to Moscow, and she's like, well, I got to change
Speaker 4: this really specific section in Act three. I don't like
Speaker 4: the patata that's there that was originally written. So I'm
Speaker 4: going to go to Moscow and have this ringer ballet
Speaker 4: composer Ludwig Minkus rewrite a section of Act three, which.
Speaker 1: Is understandable if you come back to this production and
Speaker 1: has terrible reviews and they're like, now we're going to
Speaker 1: go on tour and you're going to be the star
Speaker 1: of this trash production that no one likes.
Speaker 4: So Tchaikowsky gets win that this is happening, and he's like, no,
Speaker 4: I should write all the music for my composition. They'd
Speaker 4: already rechoreographed all this stuff for this new Patada that
Speaker 4: had been written into Act three. So Tchaikovsky is like, cool,
Speaker 4: I'll just write a score so you don't have to
Speaker 4: change the choreography, but like, I want to mess with
Speaker 4: like all of the notation and orchestration of the piece.
Speaker 4: So he goes in and he changes it. They do
Speaker 4: like another run of shows that's longer, and people are like, yeah,
Speaker 4: this is fine whatever, but then it goes away like
Speaker 4: it's just done. They drop it from the Balshoi. They're like,
Speaker 4: we're not going to do Swan Lake anymore, which is bizarre.
Speaker 4: Right when we started this podcast, I was like, what
Speaker 4: ballets do I know? The Nutcracker and Swan Lake both
Speaker 4: Tdchaikovsky works also, which is funny. Tchaikowski dies, so I
Speaker 4: think there's like probably some generally in his work. So
Speaker 4: they pick it back up, but they get a new
Speaker 4: choreographer hit. Actually, Tchaikowsky's brother rewrites a lot of the
Speaker 4: story of Swan Lake. They pull the Act one music
Speaker 4: back in to this Act three Potada and remake Swan Lake,
Speaker 4: and like that's the swan Lake everyone Ben falls in
Speaker 4: love with. That's like the dance of the Black Swan, right,
Speaker 4: Like that's the return of the of the original Act
Speaker 4: one music comes back in and like that's what we know?
Speaker 4: Is that? So basically there's this whole section, this section
Speaker 4: that Tchaikowsky had rewritten in Act three that wasn't included
Speaker 4: in the original score. So it wasn't until nineteen fifty
Speaker 4: three when a balshroy arkivist finds these pages that he rewrote,
Speaker 4: and that's what balancing hears, and he's like, I have
Speaker 4: to do something with this. He makes what's now known
Speaker 4: as the Tchaikowsky Potida, which premieres in nineteen sixty. It's
Speaker 4: like this lost piece that was kind of put aside
Speaker 4: because it was way too ahead of its time in
Speaker 4: the ballet composition world. Then you have this choreographer who
Speaker 4: is changing ballet and he gravitates to this piece. It
Speaker 4: was almost like Tchaikowsky was waiting for someone like a
Speaker 4: choreographer like balanching, to create this kind of thing.
Speaker 2: That's the same piece that Sophie saw decades later and
Speaker 2: was so inspired by the big movement she saw and
Speaker 2: then decided I want to dance balanching from that piece.
Speaker 2: It's just funny to think how like the legacy of
Speaker 2: one piece continues to change people's lives.
Speaker 4: The general plot of Swan Lake, like over the course
Speaker 4: of history has been like the end of Swan Lake
Speaker 4: has change so many times depending on who's putting it on,
Speaker 4: Like it seems like there's at least fifteen different endings
Speaker 4: or different sections, and people cut stuff and move stuff.
Speaker 4: You would just assume that it's such a classic that
Speaker 4: it would never be touched, especially like coming off our
Speaker 4: whole series where we're talking about how ballet doesn't want
Speaker 4: to change anything. Yeah, and like, look at this piece
Speaker 4: that had so many changes.
Speaker 1: I love hearing stories like this something that now is
Speaker 1: considered like the greatest of the great and then you
Speaker 1: go back to like when it first came out and
Speaker 1: people were like, this is crap, no one likes it.
Speaker 1: Or Tchaikovsky wrote all this amazing ballet music, but the
Speaker 1: first one he writes, the dancers are mad at him
Speaker 1: because they're like, we can't dance to this. I just
Speaker 1: find that so encouraging to not always follow the norm
Speaker 1: of what's always been done in whatever art form that
Speaker 1: you're in love it, Okay, Emily, how about you?
Speaker 3: Okay? So something I've been thinking about a lot since
Speaker 3: our series Rap is the dancer Holly Howard. So we
Speaker 3: talked about Holly in our mus episode. She's one of
Speaker 3: Balancine's first American muses around the time when he first
Speaker 3: debuted sarahnd around nineteen thirty four. She was among that
Speaker 3: first class of dancers. And what we discussed about her
Speaker 3: in the series is that she and Balanchine were what
Speaker 3: it seemed like, romantically involved, and she got four abortions
Speaker 3: by Balanchine. This is from Cursine's diaries, and we kind
Speaker 3: of leave her story there, and for us, that was
Speaker 3: like a moving anecdote that illustrates this pattern that we
Speaker 3: were noticing in lots of historians of notice in how
Speaker 3: Balanchine treated his muses. He'd fall in love, maybe get
Speaker 3: romantically involved, and then he'd inevitably sort of move on
Speaker 3: from them to his next muse. So that's where we
Speaker 3: left Holly, and I was just kind of curious what
Speaker 3: happened to her and her career and if I could
Speaker 3: glean anything more about her, and that was quite difficult
Speaker 3: to do. I think we were trying to find out
Speaker 3: if she was even still alive. That was hard to do.
Speaker 3: There's no obituaries or anything like that about Holly Howard,
Speaker 3: but yet she was one of these iconic muses in
Speaker 3: Balanchine's life. So wow, I decided to take a crack
Speaker 3: at it, just to retrace my steps a little bit.
Speaker 3: The first thing we did was enlist a friend of
Speaker 3: the podcast who happens to be a private investigator. Now
Speaker 3: that sounds a little creepy, it's not what you think
Speaker 3: it was. Basically, he directed us to ancestry dot com,
Speaker 3: which is a very commonly used resource that we should
Speaker 3: use pro tip pro tip, something we learned in recording
Speaker 3: this series. And then I also found some additional information
Speaker 3: in this book Mister b. George balan Jean's Twentieth Century
Speaker 3: by Jennifer Homans, there's a little bit more on Holly.
Speaker 3: So basically, here's what I can tell you about Holly.
Speaker 3: She was born in nineteen eighteen in Virginia. She had
Speaker 3: a twin brother named Kent. The Howards they were this
Speaker 3: big military family. Their father was a general it looks
Speaker 3: like under Patent and Eisenhower, and she sort of grew
Speaker 3: up wherever he was stationed, which was mostly in the
Speaker 3: Philippines anyway, so Holly got involved in ballet from a
Speaker 3: very young age, and I know that she spent some
Speaker 3: time training with a woman named Catherine Littlefield. And this
Speaker 3: would be years before Balanjan would show up in America.
Speaker 3: It feels like often the way we talk about Balancine's
Speaker 3: debut in this country, it's almost as if he sort
Speaker 3: of descended upon the US and just like collected this
Speaker 3: motley crew of dancers that didn't know any better, and
Speaker 3: just like delivered ballet to the people.
Speaker 4: There was this.
Speaker 3: New Yorker description of an event that they did talking
Speaker 3: about Sarah Nod where they say, quote, he was a
Speaker 3: ballet choreographer and almost nobody in the United States could
Speaker 3: dance back. He opened a school, but to judge from
Speaker 3: the photos, the young women he was able to collect
Speaker 3: were mostly rather plump and bewildered. Burn Okay, I know
Speaker 3: it's kind of exulting, and the truth was that really
Speaker 3: ballet was here. This is a point that Teresa Ruth
Speaker 3: Howard makes. We talked to Teresa Ruth Howard in one
Speaker 3: of our episodes. You have many examples of this, as
Speaker 3: early as eighteen forty six. There's George Washington Smith. There's
Speaker 3: this guy from Philadelphia. He was doing his thing. He's
Speaker 3: believed to be a mixed race man, and he danced
Speaker 3: in the premiere of Giselle. Here in the US, there's
Speaker 3: Dorothy Alexander, who founded a school in Atlanta in nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty nine that would later become the Atlanta Ballet. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: lots of examples of people doing ballet here, teaching people
Speaker 3: ballet here before balancing came. And so then you have
Speaker 3: Catherine Littlefield. Catherine Littlefield had this school in Philly, and
Speaker 3: Ballan Sheen when he was starting his company, recruited a
Speaker 3: bunch of dancers from her school, and one of those
Speaker 3: dancers was Holly Howard. So then at this point, I
Speaker 3: believe Holly's parents are divorced and Lois, Holly's mother moves
Speaker 3: Holly and her twin brother Kent to New York, where
Speaker 3: Holly ends up in Balancine's school, and Lois devotes a
Speaker 3: ton of time to her daughter's career. I talked to
Speaker 3: Holly's niece, who told me a little bit about her
Speaker 3: aunt and has fond memories of her.
Speaker 2: That's amazing nice sleuthing Emily to find her. Wow.
Speaker 3: I did call six of her nieces and nephews. These
Speaker 3: would be Kent's children. So her niece told me that
Speaker 3: basically her grandmother, Lois, Holly's mother, devoted a ton of
Speaker 3: time to Holly's career and was essentially the company cheferone.
Speaker 3: This is also backed up by Lincoln Kirstine's diaries that
Speaker 3: Lois was Holly's escort and probably spent a lot of
Speaker 3: time with Balancing.
Speaker 4: Two.
Speaker 3: It seems like Holly and Balanching were in a relationship
Speaker 3: for over a year. Her niece did mention once that
Speaker 3: Balancing wanted to marry Holly. I don't know what to
Speaker 3: make of that. This is where we hear the sort
Speaker 3: of abortion rumor. It was maybe a fourth or fifth abortion,
Speaker 3: and I was curious to a little bit about the
Speaker 3: context of what that would have been like to sort
Speaker 3: of get an abortion. In the nineteen thirties in New York,
Speaker 3: it wasn't an uncommon use of birth control. Obviously it
Speaker 3: was illegal. There were like safe hygienic options through midwives
Speaker 3: that you could get where the outcome could go well.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, because it's illegal, there's lots
Speaker 3: of like underground, dangerous options too. We don't really know
Speaker 3: the conditions that Holly dealt with or the form that
Speaker 3: those abortions took. I mean, she's also dancing all of
Speaker 3: the time and exerting her body in these ways, so
Speaker 3: I kind of wonder how that came into play too.
Speaker 3: Then Holmans writes about this other point about Holly's mother,
Speaker 3: how she blamed George for ruining her young daughter, and
Speaker 3: she threatened to have him deported.
Speaker 1: Whoa ruining because they had this romantic relationship.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and it seemed like, based on comments made
Speaker 3: by dancers, people knew about the abortions, people knew about
Speaker 3: this relationship. She felt it ruined her daughter's reputation. And
Speaker 3: I'm even hesitant to repeat this, but there is a
Speaker 3: really troubling footnote from this guy, John Terrorist. He was
Speaker 3: a former balancing dancer, and he said, they say no
Speaker 3: proof Holly is running a whorehouse in Boston. Everybody said
Speaker 3: she became a whore and it was because of him.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll have more on Holly Howard's life,
Speaker 1: plus we get final reactions from our team on this season.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned. So what's your takeaway about what we do
Speaker 1: know about Holly Howard?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know what to make of this.
Speaker 3: It sounds very messy. You have Lois potentially trying to
Speaker 3: get Balanchine deported. There is some evidence to show that
Speaker 3: an immigration agent came to question Balanchine, but ultimately like
Speaker 3: nothing came of it. And it's kind of where we
Speaker 3: left Holly in our story, which was we don't really
Speaker 3: know what happened to her career.
Speaker 4: That feels just like such a move that I wish
Speaker 4: I could say like we've outgrown as a society, but
Speaker 4: I feel like that happens all the time. If you
Speaker 4: leave some organization negatively, they're going to do whatever they
Speaker 4: can to erase you from their records.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it does feel like she's been erased. And
Speaker 3: that's not the case with all of the dancers of
Speaker 3: the time. You know, there is documentation of dancers and
Speaker 3: the careers that they had. And the niece said, because
Speaker 3: I asked her if did Holly keep a diary or anything,
Speaker 3: and the niece said, my mother was a protective person
Speaker 3: and was not a chatty kathy. She if there was
Speaker 3: such a thing, may have decided it would be better
Speaker 3: to not see the light of day. And I understand
Speaker 3: to an extent like, you know, what is the value
Speaker 3: in continuing to talk about these details. At the same time,
Speaker 3: we're sort of left at this cliff, this precipice where
Speaker 3: the abortion comment is the last thing we've heard, and
Speaker 3: it is kind of told as this like moment of
Speaker 3: I don't know, shame or tragedy or like ending of
Speaker 3: a career, a rature of her life as a dancer,
Speaker 3: And I mean the niece sort of admitted like, on
Speaker 3: the other hand, that means we don't know what happened
Speaker 3: to her. We don't know some of these details on
Speaker 3: me what we want to know. It might be a
Speaker 3: different story, it might be a different story of agency,
Speaker 3: but we can't know. But we don't know actually how
Speaker 3: Holly felt about it, like how much choice that she
Speaker 3: felt she had. And I kind of crave those details
Speaker 3: because I crave a document of that time and like
Speaker 3: how people we're thinking about that choice just to see
Speaker 3: her as more of an independent person.
Speaker 1: I'm so curious what she was like as a person
Speaker 1: and what their relationship felt like, like what was their
Speaker 1: relationship dynamic? And of course there are some power structures
Speaker 1: at play, because Balancine was her boss when they were together.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I feel like I don't I still don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know her, you know, I feel like I
Speaker 1: still don't know her.
Speaker 2: And also I just kind of wonder about her personal
Speaker 2: life after Balanchine. Did she have other partners? You know,
Speaker 2: how much did her relationship with Balancine also impact her
Speaker 2: personal life from there on out?
Speaker 3: She never married, she never had kids of her own.
Speaker 3: Who's around fifty years old when she died. She died
Speaker 3: of cancer. The niece has some at least recollection or
Speaker 3: image of her, having been surrounded by a lot of friends.
Speaker 3: The niece's take on her aunt, it's like, well, she
Speaker 3: was just Aunt Holly to me. We loved her, she
Speaker 3: loved us. It seemed like she poured a lot of
Speaker 3: affection into her nieces and nephews. She remembers her teaching dance,
Speaker 3: and she recalls one visit somewhere along the line of
Speaker 3: like visiting Holly, and she says that I remember I
Speaker 3: had learned a dance step someplace in our travels, and
Speaker 3: I was so proud to show it to her. I
Speaker 3: thought I had it just right. And she looked at
Speaker 3: me and smiled and said, no, that's not the way
Speaker 3: it goes and then she performed it for me. Oh
Speaker 3: and I'm sure with exact precision, and I couldn't quite
Speaker 3: see the difference between what I had done and she
Speaker 3: had done.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's it.
Speaker 1: I've been reflecting a little bit on this whole series,
Speaker 1: and one thing that's really struck me has been some
Speaker 1: of the responses from listeners. And we've gotten some really
Speaker 1: long emails and letters from listeners sharing their stories that
Speaker 1: have just been incredibly moving. And they've been from people
Speaker 1: with all kinds of dance backgrounds, including long term professional
Speaker 1: dancers at elite companies, as well as people who just
Speaker 1: studied a little ballet as a kid. But I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that really surprised me actually was
Speaker 1: that the episode that got the most active vocal response
Speaker 1: from listeners was episode six. And that's the episode in
Speaker 1: which Ayleen and I talk about our lives and my
Speaker 1: experience with ballet. And this is an episode that I
Speaker 1: was really nervous to put out there. I think we
Speaker 1: were not sure if we should publish it at all.
Speaker 1: When we recorded it, we were like, we probably won't
Speaker 1: even use this, but let's just record a conversation and
Speaker 1: see what happens, but we decided to include it, and
Speaker 1: we just immediately got so many notes from people who listened,
Speaker 1: who wrote their life stories in these emails and talked
Speaker 1: about crying as they listened. It was very moving. I've
Speaker 1: never gotten such a wave of response to an episode,
Speaker 1: and I think it was actually a life lesson for me.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of media there, movies or TV shows
Speaker 1: and storybooks about professional dancers, and I think for a
Speaker 1: lot of people who study ballet, it's like you feel
Speaker 1: close to it. You're like, this was a big part
Speaker 1: of my life years ago, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: you don't feel like you're part of it, and you
Speaker 1: don't think you can claim it as your own, and
Speaker 1: so you end up in this weird limbo of kind
Speaker 1: of having your history invalidated and erased because actually, like
Speaker 1: most people who interact with ballet, their story is much
Speaker 1: more similar to my story than to all of these
Speaker 1: professional dancers have often felt like a weird, lone person
Speaker 1: who it's like, ballet was a big part of my
Speaker 1: life and then I totally left it and there's no
Speaker 1: one like me. But actually there are tons of people
Speaker 1: like me. We just don't talk about it, so that
Speaker 1: blew my mind a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was exciting to hear from people and then
Speaker 2: to hear that they connected with it. And I feel
Speaker 2: like that feeling is so relatable beyond ballet, Like I
Speaker 2: feel like we all have a part of our past
Speaker 2: where we didn't see something through fully, or maybe we
Speaker 2: actually kind of did, but we don't perceive it that way,
Speaker 2: and then we just close that part of our stories.
Speaker 2: I just think that's like a human thing, And in
Speaker 2: a way, I think it was nice for you, Erica, too,
Speaker 2: to almost be validated by these listeners. I think you
Speaker 2: did have a lot of imposter syndrome going into that episode,
Speaker 2: and you did feel uncomfortable, But I think hearing that
Speaker 2: from listeners and then actually hearing their stories was impactful
Speaker 2: for you on a personal level.
Speaker 3: So one thing on that universality point that really stood
Speaker 3: out to me was this one letter from one of
Speaker 3: our listeners, and I'm just going to read a section
Speaker 3: of it. She says, this episode helped me acknowledge that
Speaker 3: I'm not as alone in choosing a path away from
Speaker 3: my true love as I thought. My passion was music.
Speaker 3: I entered the local music school at age five and
Speaker 3: By the time I entered high school, I had been
Speaker 3: playing several instruments, writing music, and singing in choirs for
Speaker 3: almost eleven years. Becoming a professional musician and or composer
Speaker 3: was my goal. It was my whole life, just like
Speaker 3: ballet was for Erica. When I turned sick, my mother
Speaker 3: took all the money out of a savings account she'd
Speaker 3: opened for me when I was ten and bought me
Speaker 3: my own instrument. Since it's a local specialty instrument and
Speaker 3: not as common as violins, flutes, etc. Every single one
Speaker 3: has to be handmade. We waited almost a whole year,
Speaker 3: and finally I got it. No more renting from the school,
Speaker 3: and then I burned out. I had been pursuing music
Speaker 3: for fourteen years and was about to choose a university.
Speaker 3: I've been planning to go to the National Music Academy
Speaker 3: to become professional, but it all went poof. I used
Speaker 3: to find unimaginable freedom when playing, and now all I
Speaker 3: felt was dread, fear, and loss of identity. I mean,
Speaker 3: I knew I didn't want to do this anymore, but
Speaker 3: I had no idea who I was without music, the structure,
Speaker 3: the lessons, the daily practices. Now I had so much
Speaker 3: free time but nothing to do with it. Erico was
Speaker 3: spot on when she said, so what is me because
Speaker 3: I'm me? And what is me because of Ballet? I
Speaker 3: still feel the same exact way when I think about
Speaker 3: the relationship I had with music. I think I've finally
Speaker 3: started to find me again. But oh boy, has it
Speaker 3: been difficult. I still have my instrument, but it's been
Speaker 3: about three years since I touched it. Maybe someday I'll
Speaker 3: pick it up again, I'm not sure. So I thought
Speaker 3: that that was pretty incredible that this person wanted to
Speaker 3: reach out because something had resonated so true to her
Speaker 3: and what she heard in your experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting. I was talking to a really
Speaker 1: good friend of mine the other day on the phone,
Speaker 1: and she had listened to the podcast. She was my
Speaker 1: college roommate, and she said a line that really struck
Speaker 1: her from that episode between Aileen and me was how
Speaker 1: we had said that it sometimes felt like Ballet was
Speaker 1: my one true love. And then Allen came back in
Speaker 1: the conversation and said, you know, I think that's how
Speaker 1: you perceive it, Erica. In other words, that it might
Speaker 1: not have actually been like my quote unquote one true love.
Speaker 1: But that's sometimes how I feel about it, and that's
Speaker 1: when I get emotional about it. And my friend pointed
Speaker 1: out that that perception might also be based in this
Speaker 1: all or nothing attitude that you have as a kid,
Speaker 1: where you have to give everything, and it's almost like
Speaker 1: when you're an abusive relationship, and the highs and lows
Speaker 1: of the abusive relationship and the way it kind of
Speaker 1: takes over your life can make you feel like it's
Speaker 1: the most intense version of love that exists and just
Speaker 1: like keeps you in the relationship and makes you feel
Speaker 1: like it's this great love. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: Ballet was like an abusive relationship, but I do think
Speaker 1: that the intensity of it and the requirement that it's
Speaker 1: a big commitment at a young age, you get caught
Speaker 1: up in it and it can turn it into something
Speaker 1: that makes the loss of it even greater and just
Speaker 1: intensifies all of your emotions around it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as humans, it's like the intense things, whatever
Speaker 2: they are, sometimes feel good, but that doesn't mean they're
Speaker 2: the only thing that can make you happy absolutely or
Speaker 2: the only worthwhile thing.
Speaker 1: The Turning is a production of Rococo Punch and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: It's written and produced by Alan Lance, Lesser and Me.
Speaker 1: Our story editor is Emily Foreman. Mixing and sound designed
Speaker 1: by James Trout. Jessica Carisa is our assistant producer, Andrea
Speaker 1: Assuage is our digital producer. Our executive producers are John
Speaker 1: Parratti and Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch. I get Trina
Speaker 1: Norbel and Nikki Etour at iHeart Podcasts. For photos and
Speaker 1: more details on the series, follow us on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Rococo Punch, and you can reach out via email The
Speaker 1: Turning at Rococo punch dot com. I'm Erica Lance. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.