Speaker 1: Just a heads up. This episode includes descriptions of an
Speaker 1: alleged sexual assault. I mean, I knew, we all knew
Speaker 1: that once he was gone, things we're gonna change. There
Speaker 1: was a feeling in the air in Wilmina. Frankfurt visited
Speaker 1: Balancing in the hospital. She was on edge about the future.
Speaker 1: I felt protected by Balancing. He would just always take
Speaker 1: care of me. I knew that, and I knew that
Speaker 1: when he was gone, that that was not going to
Speaker 1: be the case. Balancing Lee, weak and confused in a
Speaker 1: hospital bed, that he hadn't left for weeks and that
Speaker 1: he would never leave. At seventy nine, he was dying
Speaker 1: of a rare neurological disease. He would have to hand
Speaker 1: over the company to a success user, but the topic
Speaker 1: of succession didn't seem to interest Balancing. He'd say, after
Speaker 1: he died, he wouldn't be there, so they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: his ballets. He had no expectation that the New York
Speaker 1: City Ballet would survive his death. He seems to absolve
Speaker 1: himself from the decision except for one point. Whoever his
Speaker 1: successor would be, he said, it could only be a
Speaker 1: man who loves women. Peter had become the acting director,
Speaker 1: and you could feel the shift coming. Peter Martin's was
Speaker 1: a principal dancer in the company, Originally from Denmark. Peter
Speaker 1: was striking, with full blonde hair and wide set blue eyes,
Speaker 1: six two inches of muscle. He was known for his technique.
Speaker 1: His movements were steady and precise. His body cut through
Speaker 1: the stage at elegant and crisp angles. His dancing could
Speaker 1: be emotionless, his expression never changing. The whole package suited
Speaker 1: Balancing and his plotless abstract ballets. You know, I had
Speaker 1: lots of good times with Peter. I had lots and
Speaker 1: lots of fun with him, and I loved his dancing.
Speaker 1: It's a little boring, but it's what a beautiful technician
Speaker 1: and balance she made incredible parts for him. Peter had
Speaker 1: already been involved in day to day operations. He was
Speaker 1: casting parts now and running rehearsals. Maybe he would be
Speaker 1: in charge after Balancing died. Whoever Peter loved, they were
Speaker 1: starting to dance more. But Wilhelmina says, if he didn't
Speaker 1: like you, you might be shut out. I was on
Speaker 1: that list for a number of reasons. People Peter didn't like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not that he didn't like me. It's just that
Speaker 1: that I knew too much from my heart podcasts and
Speaker 1: Rococo Punch. This is the turning. I'm Erica Lance, Part five,
Speaker 1: The Prince. I don't know that you can have a
Speaker 1: ballet company without a certain kind of hierarchy, the same
Speaker 1: way orchestras usually have conductors and movies have directors. A
Speaker 1: complex piece of art involving a lot of people and
Speaker 1: moving parts needs a north star, and that's what Balancine
Speaker 1: was to his dancers. He controlled the artistic vision and
Speaker 1: a cadre of dancers who are willing to give everything
Speaker 1: to be part of it. I think a lot was
Speaker 1: codified when Balancing created his school, then company, aspects that
Speaker 1: have been institutionalized around dancers, work ethic, and body aesthetics.
Speaker 1: Whoever a successor would be, they wouldn't only inherit the company,
Speaker 1: but also the culture, a culture that sucks you in
Speaker 1: from the moment you enter Balancing School of American Ballet.
Speaker 1: But I lived without my family. I moved out from
Speaker 1: my family, so my grow up school was fast and furious.
Speaker 1: That's where Wilhelmina first encountered Peter Martin's It was nine
Speaker 1: she was thirteen years old. In the boarding house for
Speaker 1: the School of American Ballet. There were sixteen of us,
Speaker 1: kind of like little Maiden saw in a row. Right away,
Speaker 1: Wilhelmina admired one of the older girls who was sixteen,
Speaker 1: and she was a very big influence on me because
Speaker 1: she was California girl, like really California dream and hip you.
Speaker 1: She had lots of clothes, she was a really good dancer,
Speaker 1: and I was awe struck. Someone else was interested in
Speaker 1: Wilhelmina's friend too, Peter Martin's the tall blonde star in
Speaker 1: the New York City Ballet. He wasn't a student, he
Speaker 1: was a professional dancer already in the company. Peter had
Speaker 1: trained and danced at the Royal Danish Ballet, but in
Speaker 1: nine he started to perform as a guest artist at
Speaker 1: New York City Ballet. His first role was Apollo. He
Speaker 1: played the role of the young god to his three Muses.
Speaker 1: Soon after, Balancine invited Peter to join the company as
Speaker 1: a principal, the highest rank a dancer can reach. Peter
Speaker 1: asked Wilhelmina's friend out on a date. He was twenty
Speaker 1: three and she was sixteen, which is you know, a
Speaker 1: little I know, but but oh well she was allowed
Speaker 1: to go. So we all fifteen of us helped her
Speaker 1: get dressed and we were all excited little ballerines. And
Speaker 1: he came and he wasn't allowed about the second floor
Speaker 1: and we all looked out the window, and off she
Speaker 1: went with him, and he was already, you know, big
Speaker 1: global star. So it's like she landed the big star
Speaker 1: at a young age. It felt exciting. Yeah, yeah, very
Speaker 1: soon Peter and Wilhelmine's roommate became a couple. We used
Speaker 1: to go over to Peters and play poker and hang out.
Speaker 1: It was fun. We were like very young couples, right,
Speaker 1: I was like fifteen sixteen. It felt special to be
Speaker 1: a dancer in New York. At that moment. The dance boom,
Speaker 1: great dance of all kinds swirled around them. They could
Speaker 1: catch the performance any night and they were a part
Speaker 1: of it. What was that time, like, did you kind
Speaker 1: of feel like unsupervised teens or what was that sort
Speaker 1: of period like, Um, I didn't feel like unsupervised teens.
Speaker 1: I think we felt like we were grown ups. It
Speaker 1: was like sort of glamorous in a way, you know,
Speaker 1: even though we had like crummy apartments and not really
Speaker 1: any money or anything. It was fun. And how much
Speaker 1: time did you spend with your fellow dancers, Like in
Speaker 1: and out of the classroom all the time, all the time.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any other friends. It was just you
Speaker 1: go from class to lunch to the apartments you shared.
Speaker 1: You were always just with dancers. Your experience with them
Speaker 1: is so deep, and your children together, and so it
Speaker 1: carries through for the rest of your life. You're not
Speaker 1: really call workers your family. Did it ever, do you
Speaker 1: ever feel like it led to like warped relationships where
Speaker 1: you know, lines get blurry, or was there ever a
Speaker 1: flip side where that went too far? Do you feel
Speaker 1: like when it comes to the closeness or just how
Speaker 1: you're like constantly in each other's lives. Well, I wasn't
Speaker 1: conscious of that, so I don't know. I don't really
Speaker 1: know anything else to wil Amina. It just all felt normal.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an until later that I knew there was
Speaker 1: a dark side. I was always a little afraid of him,
Speaker 1: even before I witnessed anything, and I think that dates
Speaker 1: back to my own instinct with my own father. And
Speaker 1: my dad was an alcoholic and so there was just
Speaker 1: that avier, and that's a specific behavior. There's an anger
Speaker 1: that occurs that's different from other anger. Wilhelmina says they
Speaker 1: all drank a lot and could lose control, herself included,
Speaker 1: but there is an edge to Peter that made her nervous.
Speaker 1: Even if there's not a violence that occurs, it's violent.
Speaker 1: It crosses a line. First I started seeing Uh. While
Speaker 1: I can talk about the public arguments, it's been publicly
Speaker 1: documented that Peter and Wilhelmina's friend had a turbulent relationship.
Speaker 1: They've both used the word tempestuous to describe it in
Speaker 1: the past. Neither of them wanted to comment for this series.
Speaker 1: The l A Times quoted her saying Peter and I
Speaker 1: did not have a physically vie relationship, But after a
Speaker 1: long silence, she adds, that is not to say that
Speaker 1: I have not pummeled him in the arm more than once.
Speaker 1: And if I pushed Peter hard enough, if I shrieked
Speaker 1: and yelled and cried and screamed and caused a scene
Speaker 1: and he couldn't take it anymore, he would restrain me.
Speaker 1: In those days, there was like a lot. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is now, but there was a lot
Speaker 1: of drinking that went down a lot, a lot and
Speaker 1: a lot of messy stuff because of it. And then
Speaker 1: Wilhelmina says there were times she'd pick up her friend
Speaker 1: and she'd see marks on her body or a black eye.
Speaker 1: For people who are are kids, what do you do?
Speaker 1: When Wilhelmina was in her late teens, her father came
Speaker 1: to visit New York, My very angry father. He was
Speaker 1: in town, and I was having a birthday party. Willomina
Speaker 1: threw a birthday party for her boyfriend. It was at
Speaker 1: Peter's house, a mix of dancers from the comp then
Speaker 1: he attended. One of the guests was the renowned ballerina
Speaker 1: Gelsie Kirkland. Years later, Gelsie would famously write about this
Speaker 1: party in a memoir, It's a true story. It is
Speaker 1: a true story. There were all kinds of people there.
Speaker 1: Gelcie was having an affair with Peter, my boyfriend was
Speaker 1: seeing somebody else, and everybody was like kids and screwing around,
Speaker 1: kind of like college, right very college. Wilhelmina was downstairs
Speaker 1: in this duplex when suddenly her dad came in. My
Speaker 1: dad comes and grabs me and says, you have to
Speaker 1: leave now, and I said, well wait, you know, like
Speaker 1: threw me in the cab. Wilhelmina's friend, Peter's girlfriend was
Speaker 1: in the cab. Peter was on the ground. My dad
Speaker 1: knocked Peter out, knocked him out, apparently. Wilhelmina says her
Speaker 1: dad had come outside for a smoke and he'd found
Speaker 1: Peter there in a rage hitting his girlfriend. My dad,
Speaker 1: who was also physically abusive to my mother all the time,
Speaker 1: drunk there. He was seeing himself right, and that was bad.
Speaker 1: We reached out to Peter Martin's multiple times for comments
Speaker 1: on this and the other details on this episode, but
Speaker 1: we received no response. When I hear Willelmina tell this story,
Speaker 1: it just strikes me how messy all this was. According
Speaker 1: to her in Gelsie Kirkland, there was a far more
Speaker 1: senior dancer in the company dating a woman much younger,
Speaker 1: and here he was allegedly getting violent outside a party
Speaker 1: full of people they worked with. And then there's will
Speaker 1: Almina in the middle of it all. Her dad, who
Speaker 1: himself has a history of being abusive, gets aggressive. It's
Speaker 1: strange to think how it must have felt for everyone involved,
Speaker 1: But It's also strange that it took someone from the outside,
Speaker 1: someone not in the company, someone not linked to its hierarchy,
Speaker 1: to intervene in that moment. At seventeen, Wilhelmina was a
Speaker 1: member of the Quarterballe. Her ambition at this point was
Speaker 1: to gain strength as a dancer move ahead in the
Speaker 1: company land more roles. She says, you didn't care about
Speaker 1: fame or being well known. She just wanted to dance
Speaker 1: the parts of her idols like Patricia McBride and a
Speaker 1: Leger Kent. Meanwhile, Peter Martin's was still a prince of
Speaker 1: in the company. He had relationships with numerous danswers, but
Speaker 1: Wilhelmina says she didn't feel he was interested in her.
Speaker 1: I never thought he was really attracted to me. I wasn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't his body type. He didn't like my dancing,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It was like I was
Speaker 1: just not his cup of tea. We wound up sitting
Speaker 1: next to each other on the plane he was going
Speaker 1: back to New York, and we were talking and and
Speaker 1: he said to me, I'm intimidated by you. And I
Speaker 1: said why, and he said, because you're just so much
Speaker 1: woman you're so feminine, you're so much of a woman.
Speaker 1: Peter had one specific type, and that was like a
Speaker 1: boyish body, which is not my body at all. But
Speaker 1: Wilhelmina says something changed when she was about twenty. She'd
Speaker 1: been in the company for four years. This one summer,
Speaker 1: I was really anorexic and he started coming after me.
Speaker 1: He kept trying to get with me right now. I
Speaker 1: kept pushing me away and saying, you know, come on,
Speaker 1: you have a girlfriend and she's my friend. He just
Speaker 1: didn't let up. He was trying to corner me, corner me,
Speaker 1: corner me, and I kept saying, no, you know, stop,
Speaker 1: come on stop. It was flattering because he's this big, beautiful,
Speaker 1: handsome star. At the same time, it was just unnerving
Speaker 1: to have to handle it. One day that summer, Wilhelmina
Speaker 1: says she was performing Balancine's Stars and Stripes. It was
Speaker 1: a high energy piece, rash and silly and technically difficult,
Speaker 1: and said to music by John Philip Susa. Valentine directed
Speaker 1: the dancers to prance and jumped in a large moving circle.
Speaker 1: They walk on their toes on point, flirt with each other,
Speaker 1: high kick, and do the splits in mid air. They
Speaker 1: even salute the audience. He called the ballet an applause machine.
Speaker 1: Will Almina wore a tutu and a bodice that looked
Speaker 1: like an American flag. I was on the side of
Speaker 1: the wing watching Wilolmina had a couple of movements to
Speaker 1: wait through before as she went back on stage for
Speaker 1: the finale. Suddenly Peter appeared. He came into the wing
Speaker 1: in his robe and he said, come with me. I
Speaker 1: was like, now, okay. And his dressing room was on
Speaker 1: the side of stage, and I went in and he
Speaker 1: opened his rope just like that. He exposed himself, she says.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I'm in the middle of a vallet.
Speaker 1: I know, it's like I was like Peter. Then Wilhelmina
Speaker 1: had to go back on stage. She joined the twenty
Speaker 1: six other women and fourteen men in the grand finale.
Speaker 1: She saluted and kicked, lined and pirouetted and marched. She
Speaker 1: jumped in formation while a giant American flag the size
Speaker 1: of the entire backdrop unfurled behind her. She lunched for
Speaker 1: the final pose. And I just kept it to myself,
Speaker 1: you know, I kept it to myself. I think if
Speaker 1: you've never experienced that kind of pressure or that kind
Speaker 1: of someone stepping over the lawn, it might be hard
Speaker 1: to understand, you know what I mean. It's embarrassing. And
Speaker 1: also I wanted to try to keep the peace, so
Speaker 1: she didn't tell anyone. She didn't know who she would
Speaker 1: tell anyway, there was no hr, there was nobody to
Speaker 1: go to, and if you were going to go to somebody,
Speaker 1: it was going to be somebody that also wanted to
Speaker 1: keep their own job, and we're loyal to them. Do
Speaker 1: you feel like that's something you could have gone to
Speaker 1: balancing about. No? Uh uh, I think it's that you
Speaker 1: just I feel like a victim. Act like a victim,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like that kind of I'm easy prey
Speaker 1: that way, and you don't want anybody to know. You
Speaker 1: always feel like what do what? What have what did
Speaker 1: I do to cause it? That's just where you jumped to.
Speaker 1: Other people may have gone to him about things that
Speaker 1: happened to them and and I don't know who they
Speaker 1: are or what that would have been, but um, yeah
Speaker 1: I didn't. I it was I didn't feel like I
Speaker 1: could go and bother him with that. Yeah, m hm.
Speaker 1: I went to him more with you know, dancing problems,
Speaker 1: life problems, money problems, you know, and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: but not abuse stuff. And I don't think anybody did.
Speaker 1: As years went on, I talked to some people who
Speaker 1: were younger after me, and uh, I was telling that
Speaker 1: story and she laughed. She said, oh yeah, she said,
Speaker 1: that's what he did. You know how many people have
Speaker 1: that story? That's what he did. We spoke with the
Speaker 1: one dancer she's had. Her friend who has since died,
Speaker 1: told her that Peter exposed himself to her like this.
Speaker 1: At the time, Wilhelmina mostly blamed herself. When someone steps
Speaker 1: over the line with you, you wonder what you're doing
Speaker 1: to make that happen. You wonder what have I done?
Speaker 1: You don't look at that person should just not be
Speaker 1: doing that, I mean, and that's what you do with
Speaker 1: your abuser. Wilhelmina says, Peter Martin's left her alone for
Speaker 1: a couple of years after that Stars and Strikes performance. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: he gained power in the company Balancing held private coaching
Speaker 1: sessions with Peter in the seventies. Like most male dancers,
Speaker 1: Peter didn't know a lot about the mechanics of dancing
Speaker 1: on point balancing, and Peter would took away in an
Speaker 1: empty rehearsal room for hours with a female dancer. They're
Speaker 1: balanching showed Peter how to choreograph on a woman. He
Speaker 1: talked about balance, placement and the female body. By there
Speaker 1: was a lot of speculation about whether Peter would be
Speaker 1: the one to step into balancing shoes someday. A New
Speaker 1: York Times magazine article from that year wrote about the
Speaker 1: first piece Peter choreographed. Quote, the boys first entrance expresses
Speaker 1: all of Martin's frustration and fascination at being a man
Speaker 1: working at an art made for women. The boy walks
Speaker 1: across the stage with his toes curled under his foot.
Speaker 1: He experiments and steps on the tops of his toes,
Speaker 1: testing what it feels like trying to climb up on point.
Speaker 1: The critic wrote of Peter, He's an extremely intelligent and
Speaker 1: promising choreographer, but he's not found himself yet. The headline
Speaker 1: read Peter Martin's Prince of the Dance. That same year,
Speaker 1: Peter Martin's got promoted to ballet master in the company.
Speaker 1: Three months after the story ran, the company went on
Speaker 1: tour to Fort Worth, Texas, Wilhelmina was. There was a
Speaker 1: party one night. Wilhelmina says, you know, one of those
Speaker 1: fancy dinners. And it was in the hotel and I left.
Speaker 1: He got in the elevator with me. He followed me
Speaker 1: to my room. He was drunk. I had a few
Speaker 1: glasses of wine. I was not drunk, but you know,
Speaker 1: and he stood at the door and then I said
Speaker 1: to him, do you want to come in? And he
Speaker 1: said yes, and so he came in. I said to him,
Speaker 1: you want me to get some room service and get
Speaker 1: some coffee or do you want to talk? What's wrong?
Speaker 1: Peter said he didn't want coffee. Wilhelmina says, instead, he
Speaker 1: came toward her. He attacked me. I didn't think I
Speaker 1: was going to get out of it. First he shoved
Speaker 1: me up against the wall. You know, there was a
Speaker 1: built in desk. He shoved me up against the wall.
Speaker 1: He he pushed his body weight against me. He ripped
Speaker 1: up my dress. I pushed him off and he grabbed
Speaker 1: me again, kind of rough, and he threw me down
Speaker 1: on the bed. You know, he got on top of
Speaker 1: me and he was out of control. The guy was
Speaker 1: out of control, and I think he probably figured since
Speaker 1: I asked him in that you know he was gonna
Speaker 1: fuck me. I said, Peter, get off, get off, get off.
Speaker 1: You know, I was just screaming at him like that,
Speaker 1: get off. I remember at one point feeling like I
Speaker 1: wanted to bash him head with a telephone. I remember
Speaker 1: thinking that I got it was like I got like
Speaker 1: an exorcist voice, and I said, get the fuck off me, motherfucker,
Speaker 1: the fuck off me. So I fought my way and
Speaker 1: sniggled my way out from underteath it, and then I
Speaker 1: very firmly said to him, Peter, get out of here,
Speaker 1: and he finally pulled himself together. He stood up. He
Speaker 1: looked at me. He said, you mean you're turning me down?
Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, turning you down one of the
Speaker 1: few I remember. I said that. I said, one of
Speaker 1: the few, huh, And then he left. It was horrible.
Speaker 1: Right after I was I was shaking. I don't even
Speaker 1: know if it's so much that he wanted to like
Speaker 1: to have, if it was the sex as much as
Speaker 1: the the violence of overpowering me so that I I
Speaker 1: was helpless, physically helpless. That was really nervous about seeing
Speaker 1: him in class and in rehearsal and it was so awkward.
Speaker 1: But I remember the next day just walking into class
Speaker 1: and looking at him and thinking, uh, it was it
Speaker 1: was horrible. Will Almina wasn't a daze for a while
Speaker 1: after that, like she couldn't make sense of it. Yet.
Speaker 1: You leave your body, for sure, you get lifted off
Speaker 1: your body in a way, you know, and out of
Speaker 1: your head in order to handle it. I think, just
Speaker 1: because you're so wounded and you're trying to recover and
Speaker 1: deal with what happened and did that happen? How did
Speaker 1: that happen? Did I really live through that? You know?
Speaker 1: I felt like I had to cover it up and
Speaker 1: let it go. Will Almina says she told two friends
Speaker 1: about this incident at the time. We spoke to one
Speaker 1: of them, who says she couldn't remember whether Wilhelmina told
Speaker 1: her about it. She says, you remembers the tour and
Speaker 1: that tours could be wild times with people running up
Speaker 1: and down the halls drunk. She says it could have happened,
Speaker 1: and she can't think of a reason that will Almina
Speaker 1: would invent the story, But she says it was several
Speaker 1: decades ago and she couldn't remember a conversation like that
Speaker 1: with Wilhelmina. Mostly Wilhelmina continued in the company as if
Speaker 1: nothing had happened. She kept it to herself. Before this interview.
Speaker 1: She told a reporter at Salon it was something so
Speaker 1: big she couldn't talk about it. I didn't say anything,
Speaker 1: went the next day into rehearsal, didn't say a word,
Speaker 1: and didn't say a word for thirty years. He didn't
Speaker 1: talk to me really for a little while after that.
Speaker 1: We stayed away from each other after that. That's why
Speaker 1: I knew that when Mr b died, my days were numbered.
Speaker 1: After Balancine died in three the board of the New
Speaker 1: York City Ballet made an announcement Peter Martin's and the
Speaker 1: choreographer Jerome Robbins would run the company together. They'd be
Speaker 1: co ballet masters in chief. Those are terrible shoes to
Speaker 1: have to step into, no matter who you are. Even
Speaker 1: though she felt for Peter, she was wary of him too,
Speaker 1: and right away she noticed a difference in his approach
Speaker 1: compared to balancings. Will Amina says Balantine was tough but fair.
Speaker 1: He pushed dancers but never yelled, But Peter was volatile.
Speaker 1: It was taking this new direction of lack of respect
Speaker 1: to the dancers. You know, anger, any moment, this rage
Speaker 1: could occur, and that's scary. It is scary. After this
Speaker 1: one performance of a role in Western Symphony, he took
Speaker 1: me into the hallway and he was screaming at me,
Speaker 1: screaming at me. He was angry with me about the
Speaker 1: way that I danced. How dare I perform like that?
Speaker 1: How dare I take advantage of that ballot, this ballot
Speaker 1: that balancing had coached me in the role, and I
Speaker 1: knew what I was doing for a year. It was
Speaker 1: just a way of ripping me out of it. It
Speaker 1: was just a way to get rid of me. I
Speaker 1: talked back to him when he was screaming at me
Speaker 1: like that, When I stood up for myself, I said,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? You're gonna hit me? Because
Speaker 1: he was looking like he was going to hit me,
Speaker 1: and he caught himself and I just ran off crying.
Speaker 1: Valchan never yelled at us. Never. You knew if he
Speaker 1: didn't like it, But there was no screaming. As will
Speaker 1: Amina sees it, balancing was chivalrous, a gentleman, and balancing
Speaker 1: is definitely known for that. All of the dancers we
Speaker 1: spoke to who trained there balancing spoke of him with
Speaker 1: great affection. We've heard stories of kindness and humor. I
Speaker 1: get the impression that balancing dancers, at least the ones
Speaker 1: we've encountered, feel protective over him and his legacy. Wilhelmina included.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting is that you hear about other sides
Speaker 1: of balancing too, That he could be cruel, that he
Speaker 1: sometimes did yell or seemed to purposely humiliate people. One
Speaker 1: danswer said, quote, balancing used to scream the same thing
Speaker 1: day after day. I thought you were better. Come on,
Speaker 1: come on, what's wrong with you? Are you stupid? In
Speaker 1: The l A Times reported that when Peter Martin's took over,
Speaker 1: company members actually saw Peter as quote less despotic than
Speaker 1: his predecessor balancing, Basically that Peter was a little more relaxed,
Speaker 1: easier to work with, nicer than balancing. A dancer we
Speaker 1: spoke to talked about how much Peter encouraged her, that
Speaker 1: he mentored her to me. It brings home that different
Speaker 1: people can have very different experiences of the same person,
Speaker 1: whether that person is George balancing or Peter Martin's. So
Speaker 1: much depends on who you talked to. Wilhelmina says, the
Speaker 1: way she saw it at the time, there was no
Speaker 1: chance for her once Mr B was gone and Peter
Speaker 1: was in charge. I've known him too long and it
Speaker 1: seemed too much and it was very easy for him
Speaker 1: to use that like I've been there too long. He
Speaker 1: didn't like my dancing. He wanted to see other dancers.
Speaker 1: You know. It was his way of forcing me out.
Speaker 1: Wilhelmina says she started losing rolls. Her upward trajectory was
Speaker 1: changing direction when he started to take me out of
Speaker 1: everything that I danced, which he did. Mr B was
Speaker 1: barely cold in the ground. I was very unhappy and
Speaker 1: I was just collecting a paycheck and that's not what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. And my daughter's dad, who was
Speaker 1: with at the time, he said, well, if I don't
Speaker 1: like working with somebody, I just leave. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: it's a little different for you to just leave with
Speaker 1: what you do than for me to just leave. The
Speaker 1: only place or thing that I've ever known. Ballet was
Speaker 1: her whole world. But she felt she couldn't stay. I'm
Speaker 1: in a situation where I'm really unhappy, and it's my
Speaker 1: mental health, or it's my mental health, not just or
Speaker 1: it's my mental health. It's the only home I've known,
Speaker 1: if you count from the school for you know, eighteen years.
Speaker 1: So it is leaving your home, leaving your family, leaving
Speaker 1: your friends, leaving your whole life as you've ever known it,
Speaker 1: and leaving your art form for the unknown. So it's terrifying.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely terrifying. Wilhelmina wrote Peter a long letter. She
Speaker 1: says she was too heartbroken to show up and tell
Speaker 1: him in person. I used the excuse of that I
Speaker 1: was having a baby, you know, God, I got pregnant,
Speaker 1: But it was really that he he made it untenable
Speaker 1: for me to be there, like almost right away, and
Speaker 1: she left. It would take years for Wilhelmina to tell
Speaker 1: the full story of what happened between her and Peter,
Speaker 1: but her account is not the first time we've heard
Speaker 1: Peter's name associated with alleged violence and sexual misconduct. Back
Speaker 1: Peter was married and headed the New York City Ballet.
Speaker 1: One night, his wife called the police. She told them
Speaker 1: Peter physically attacked her at home during an argument that
Speaker 1: he hit her repeatedly. She said there were cuts and
Speaker 1: bruises across her body. Peter's wife was a big deal
Speaker 1: dancer in the company at the time, almost twenty years
Speaker 1: younger than he was. They had started dating when she
Speaker 1: was a teenager. After the domestic violence arrest, Peter's wife
Speaker 1: dropped the charges, and the board of the New York
Speaker 1: City Ballet supported him. One member said, quote, it has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with his competency or his support in
Speaker 1: the ballet community. He was still running the company in
Speaker 1: when someone sent the company an anonymous letter. The story
Speaker 1: ran in the Washington Post. Peter Martin's was under investigation.
Speaker 1: The letter was never made public, but the School of
Speaker 1: American Ballet announced that it contained quote general nonspecific, allegations
Speaker 1: of sexual harassment in the past by Peter Martin's at
Speaker 1: both New York City Ballet and the school. Peter took
Speaker 1: a leave of absence, and the School of American Ballet
Speaker 1: hired a lawyer to conduct an internal investigation. One former
Speaker 1: New York City Ballet dancer we spoke to, Shelley Scott,
Speaker 1: recalls a time when she was fourteen or fifteen years
Speaker 1: old and a student at the school before she got
Speaker 1: into the company. She says, Peter, who was in his
Speaker 1: early thirties, would follow her and a friend around when
Speaker 1: they were out and about in the city, or hang
Speaker 1: out at the school studios at night and try to
Speaker 1: coax dancers into the men's dressing rooms. Almost immediately after
Speaker 1: the Washington Post story, articles started pouring out of major
Speaker 1: newspapers about Peter Martin's history. Dancers came forward to discuss
Speaker 1: violent experiences they said they had with Peter. The New
Speaker 1: York Times ran a story with the headline five dancers
Speaker 1: accused City Ballet's Peter Martin's a physical abuse. One dancer
Speaker 1: told reporters that Peter once slammed his fists into the
Speaker 1: wall about an inch from his head. Another said that
Speaker 1: Peter grabbed the backs of dancers next to position them
Speaker 1: during rehearsal, and another that he grabbed them by the
Speaker 1: neck to throw them out of his office. A former
Speaker 1: student said Peter Martin's grabbed him by the neck during
Speaker 1: class and yanked him back and forth and what he
Speaker 1: calls a death block. The dancer was twelve years old
Speaker 1: at the time. He'd been horsing around on stage when
Speaker 1: Peter suddenly grabbed him He said it felt like Peter's
Speaker 1: fingers were piercing his neck muscles. He felt assaulted. Another
Speaker 1: dancer told The New York Times that when she asked
Speaker 1: Peter about a promotion she wanted, he told her she
Speaker 1: needed to find a way to stand out in his eyes.
Speaker 1: To her, it felt like a sexual proposition. He denied
Speaker 1: these allegations. A few weeks into the investigation, Peter announced
Speaker 1: that he had decided to retire, effective immediately. He wrote
Speaker 1: in a letter, I have denied and continued to deny
Speaker 1: that I have engaged in any such misconduct. I cooperated
Speaker 1: fully in the investigation and understand it will be completed shortly.
Speaker 1: I believe its findings would have indicated me in the end.
Speaker 1: The internal investigation into sexual harassment lasted two months, and
Speaker 1: in February it concluded the abuse could not be corroborated.
Speaker 1: Will Almina watched the news unfold and she didn't like
Speaker 1: what she was seeing. It's documented that his hands on
Speaker 1: actions were too rough at times, just too rough, and
Speaker 1: people were afraid to talk about it. He was hurting people.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're teaching Valley, you have to be
Speaker 1: very careful. I always asked the students, Is it okay
Speaker 1: if I touch you and adjust you here? Because they're kids,
Speaker 1: you know you can't. That wasn't always the case, you know,
Speaker 1: old world dance, they would just grab you and they
Speaker 1: do it like this and push you around and pull
Speaker 1: your body this way that way. But you really can't
Speaker 1: do that anymore. And that's a great thing. Even now,
Speaker 1: her feelings towards Peter are complicated. At times, she feels
Speaker 1: bad for him. You know, I applaud him for the
Speaker 1: way that he kept that company going financially. I applaud
Speaker 1: him like nobody could raise money like that guy, and
Speaker 1: the fact that he did it, that he was there
Speaker 1: and he was working and completely devoted to it. And
Speaker 1: she had always loved Peter's dancing. He was a beautiful
Speaker 1: dancer and he could be like a really fun and
Speaker 1: funny person. But when he was put in charge of
Speaker 1: New York City Valley, there there was nobody saying, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you know, we need to all be
Speaker 1: here and talk about this together. It frustrates wil Almina
Speaker 1: that people don't want to talk about these things, even
Speaker 1: if he understands it. It's a tight, tight, tight world,
Speaker 1: and people are scared people are still afraid to talk.
Speaker 1: From the beginning, Balancing asked his dancers to take risks,
Speaker 1: to put everything on the line when they danced. In
Speaker 1: a way, that's what Wilhelmine is doing, because she says
Speaker 1: some people are furious with her for talking publicly like this.
Speaker 1: You know, like my brother said to me, is that
Speaker 1: all you want to be remembered for? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if that's what happens, if that's all they
Speaker 1: remember before, well yeah, okay, that's okay with me. People
Speaker 1: my age think it's still not appropriate. You don't air
Speaker 1: your garbage, you don't, you know, because they don't see
Speaker 1: the importance of standing up for younger generations. And that's
Speaker 1: really the whole thing. That's the whole thing. I mean.
Speaker 1: I had have a daughter, I have a granddaughter, daughter
Speaker 1: in law, you know, and sons. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: I was willing to talk about things was so that
Speaker 1: things would change and become safer for young people. Gone unchecked,
Speaker 1: bad things can happen, and and they did. And then
Speaker 1: the tragedy of it was that there was talent that
Speaker 1: got caught up in it, and I didn't get to
Speaker 1: come to its full potential because the trauma of the
Speaker 1: experience was too deep. You're scared when you're young to
Speaker 1: raise your voice. You're afraid to say you know, this
Speaker 1: is happening to me, and even then you face being
Speaker 1: shunned like by others. I mean, it's it's it needs
Speaker 1: to be constant, and I think constantly talked about. I
Speaker 1: think so I think it. You know, it can't be
Speaker 1: allowed to go back under Peter Martin's resigned five years ago.
Speaker 1: Balancine has been dead for forty So what does this
Speaker 1: all have to do with Balancine? Listening to this, you
Speaker 1: might think the connection is obvious, or you might be
Speaker 1: angry that I'm bringing these two men together at all
Speaker 1: or talking about them in this way. I've encountered all
Speaker 1: kinds of reactions to this story. Everyone has an opinion,
Speaker 1: and often they disagree. I've been thinking about just like
Speaker 1: kind of cultural norms, or the creation of culture in
Speaker 1: which things become normalized, and so I just wanted to
Speaker 1: run something by you because I guess I've just been
Speaker 1: thinking about different ways in which balancing is present even now,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I think that it's like he normalized a
Speaker 1: culture that blurs professional and personal life and normalize this
Speaker 1: idea that you can elevate a single man to such
Speaker 1: a place of power that he becomes anipotent in a
Speaker 1: way in this ballet world, and makes it acceptable for
Speaker 1: Batman to then pursue dancers who work for him and
Speaker 1: to sort of eroticized company life so that sex and
Speaker 1: power and art and relationships all get entangled. Hm, I'm
Speaker 1: curious what you make of that. Well, I think it's true,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it has been true. When that's
Speaker 1: allowed to have been without any oversight, then it becomes
Speaker 1: a norm. We are hoping now that that's going to change.
Speaker 1: The Turning is a production of Rococo Punch and I
Speaker 1: Heart Podcasts. It's written and produced by Allen Lance Lesser
Speaker 1: and Me. Our story editor is Emily Foreman. Mixing and
Speaker 1: sound designed by James Trout. Jessica Carissa is our assistant producer.
Speaker 1: Andrea Swahey is our digital producer. Fact checking by Drea
Speaker 1: Lopez Crusado. Our executive producers are John Parotti and Jessica
Speaker 1: Albert at Prococo Punch, I Get Trina Norvelle and Nicki
Speaker 1: e Tour at iHeart Podcasts. For photos and more details
Speaker 1: on the series, follow us on Instagram at Rococo Punch,
Speaker 1: and you can reach out via email The Turning at
Speaker 1: Rococo punch dot com. I'm Erica Lance. Thanks for listening.