Hi dance friends. I’m Margaret Fuhrer, editor and producer of The Dance Edit newsletter and podcast, back with another interview episode. Please pardon my froggy voice—it’s definitely cold season.
This week’s conversation is about the great choreographer Agnes de Mille, whose narrative works, which celebrated a distinctly American spirit, really changed the whole course of American dance. And women, strong female characters, were often right at the center of the stories de Mille chose to tell.
You never really need an excuse to talk about Agnes de Mille; her influence is so profound. But this is perhaps an especially good moment to reflect on that influence, since Rodeo—probably the work with which she is most closely associated—recently celebrated its 80th birthday, and we are also approaching the 30th anniversary of de Mille’s death.
We are very lucky to have not one but two experts joining us in this episode to talk about the enduring relevance of de Mille’s work, and in particular about her groundbreaking female characters. Kathleen Moore, a former American Ballet Theatre principal, danced in many of de Mille’s ballets and worked with her directly, which you’ll hear more about; Linda Murray is the curator for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Both Moore and Murray will be part of an upcoming program at the Library exploring Agnes de Mille and the female narrative in dance.
And they were also just the dreamiest podcast guests—they have such deep knowledge of de Mille and her work and life and personality. Here they are.
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Margaret Fuhrer:
Kathleen and Linda, hello. Welcome. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Kathleen Moore:
Thank you.
Linda Murray:
Thank you for having us.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Actually, before we begin, would you mind just each briefly saying hello and your name so listeners can put names to voices?
Linda Murray:
Hello, my name is Linda Murray, and I am the curator of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library.
Kathleen Moore:
And I’m Kathleen Moore, and I was a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre who had the privilege of dancing several of Agnes’s ballets.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yes. We’re of course here today to talk about the inimitable Agnes de Mille. Actually, I’m wondering if you could start by each describing your relationships to de Mille, either personal relationships—Kathleen, I know you worked with her directly—or through research and scholarship.
Kathleen Moore:
My first introduction to Agnes was actually seeing, hearing her speak at Lucia Chase’s memorial service. I believe it was at City Center. And I was new to American Ballet Theatre’s big company. I’d been in their second company before. And she blew me away with her articulation and her humor and just even her posture as she was speaking of this longtime friend, nemesis, supporter, detractor. They had a complicated relationship from what I could tell, but there was a lot of respect there. That was when I met her. And then in 1987, I believe, Misha had commissioned Agnes to do a new work after he had worked with her in Three Virgins and a Devil in ’83. She was pushing to do a new work, not just set Rodeo again or another of her former works. And so, they worked it out and she brought in some of her dancers that she had been working on, this idea of pulling dancers from a failed work.
And she had been working on stuff. She came in, they came in and we began to put together The Informer. Then after The Informer, I was given the privilege of dancing The Cowgirl. And then later on I was in Fall River Legend, both as young Lizzie’s mother and then as Lizzie herself. And I did work with Agnes on all three, Informer of course being the most collaborative as she sat in her wheelchair and gave direction. And then, personally, I think at the time that she was creating this, it was a time in my life where I think she saw some similarities. Well, first she saw that we both had red hair and blue eyes, and we had not had the traditional ballerina kind of career. Even though I was at ABT and did classical things, I was more in the contemporary and the dramatic and the character parts, so I think she felt an affinity about that.
Then I was about to get married, and she, I think always a romantic at heart, loved that. And I would go to her apartment occasionally, and she would be… Usually, she was just in bed on the times I went there. And she would tell me stories of her grandfather, Henry George, and she gave me a book and talked a lot about her husband Walter, who had recently passed away and how devastated she was from that. And she gave me a wedding veil to wear for my wedding, which I unfortunately couldn’t wear because it was the wrong shade, and I was not returning the wedding dress. But just always was someone demanding but positive to work with. She didn’t crush you. And then she was just fantastic to work with. That was a very long answer. I’m sorry.
Linda Murray:
Wait, I think it’s fine that your answer was long! You knew Agnes, which I’m very jealous of, because Agnes is one of my absolute favorite people to read writing about dance. She was an absolutely incredible writer and describes the process of dancing better than almost anybody else I can think of. But I have had to experience her humor and her wish and her intellect secondhand. Although the wonderful thing about archives is that it’s been in her own voice. It’s her letters, it’s her notes for choreographic ideas sketched by herself, so you do get a window into her mind.
But my professional relationship with Agnes is through being the curator who takes care of her archive, which is placed here at the dance division. And I did not see any of her ballets until I was an adult because I grew up in Ireland. My only window into her choreography until I was in my twenties was the film Oklahoma!. I came to her work much later in life than I think most people in America would. I think many people experience Agnes in early life because she defined Americana, certainly for a generation. And although many of her works have fallen out of repertory, I think there’s still a DNA of how Agnes de Mille defined America that we see in ballet today.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Actually, that’s essentially my next question, because there has been a lot said about how de Mille helped create a new “American” form of ballet, of dance, narrative ballet in particular. Can you each talk a little about why her work is seen that way, and then how she herself described her goals in that vein, since that’s something she talked and wrote about quite a bit?
Linda Murray:
Well, I think both Agnes and Martha Graham with Rodeo and Appalachian Spring respectively, which were both obviously composed by Copland—and it’s interesting that Justin Peck has just recently revisited that same music. The third ballet that’s hanging out there is Eugene Loriˆ’s Billy the Kid. But I think with Appalachian Spring and Rodeo, there was a vision of America that both of those women were aspiring toward that was about freedom and expanse and possibility. And the Cowgirl in Rodeo is also, I think in a way, it’s Agnes entering a man’s world as a female choreographer, as somebody with agency within the field of ballet, rather than somebody performing the repertory of somebody else. I always look at when she mounts the horse and she stumbles around and then she gains mastery of it—I always feel like that’s Agnes trying to tell us, “I’m finding my footing and I know my way around here.”
I think Agnes was aspirational about what America could be and the opportunity it could provide. And of course, she was choreographing alongside a lot of immigrant artists in those early years in Ballet Theatre. She was alongside a lot of displaced Russians who had fled World War II. America was a haven. America was a space where immigrants could come and start their life anew. There was this sense of America providing this creative space and this opportunity for people to reinvent themselves and to forge the life that they wanted. And I think she found that exciting artistically, and it gave her propulsion into some of her choreographic ideas. But Kathleen, she probably voiced much of this to you in the room in more direct terms.
Kathleen Moore:
I was always given the sense that it was about this American ideal. I know she talked about, and she does in her books as well, about the time period, and where her original idea for Rodeo was based on her experience as going to a dance in Colorado in 1935 on a ranch and seeing this life, this sense of community, this working hard, and being able to achieve things because many of those people were, as you’re saying, immigrants. Then with the war, there was a quote about her creating Rodeo as, it was about Walter, love, and Texas, and the expanse and all of that, and what people were going to war to fight for was this freedom of this way of life and this very American thing. Yeah, she did, because infusing that, just standing in the beginning of Rodeo, how many hours where she talked about how to push the brim of your hat up and really look and really see, really, really see, going for miles and miles, and the sunset, and the feeling and the weight of the power of the land, what it can do.
Then she had figured out with 14 years of working and so much failure, I think too, there’s a sense of possibility and never giving up. Many people have commented the Cowgirl really was Agnes. She was spunky. I have a quote that Morton Gold that I recently saw, and it said, “Agnes gave the Cowgirl an edge. She never became too coy or arch. You felt sympathy, liked her, and smiled with her, were sad with her.” And I think that’s true. You get into this love for this little character who’s so plucky and won’t take no, and just keeps trying.
She’s trying, she’s with all those men, and there she was in a choreographic place, like you had said, Linda, and it was all male choreographers, and now here was this voice.Through that sense of determination—and I get from the story she told me she was so proud of her family, but I can tell you it was competitive, whether they were playing tennis or they were competing in Hollywood with the de Milles and the Mayers, and she went to school with those other kids. There was competition. She was competitive. And now I think that kept her righted as well on her horse and keep trying to find this new voice, this new way where ballets could come from emotion and be displayed with gestures that everybody could relate to, so therefore you could be a part of it in a different way.
Linda Murray:
There’s a wonderful video clip of her years later where she’s in an evening dress and she’s on a television show, and she’s talking about the gestures of Rodeo and how she made the cowboys. And all of a sudden she starts to inhabit the cowboy, and she swings back her shoulders and she puts her legs apart. And so, she goes from being this very elegant woman in an evening dress to very, very quickly you start to see a cowboy just emerge in front of you. And then she uses contractions in her stomach when she’s doing the horse movement in order to get that forward propulsion and sense of urgency. And then she breaks out the same step but removes the contraction, to shift the idea. She also told a funny story about when they went to Russia, and the Russians didn’t know that the dancers were on horses, they had no frame of reference for Rodeo. [laughter] They didn’t get it. She had to tell the Russian audiences afterwards like, “Oh, these were cowboys and they were on horses.”
But I also think I love the moment where the Cowgirl is completely still as everybody else passes by behind her. I feel like that’s a real power moment to make the character stand still. There’s a certainty in that non-movement, and there’s an owning of the space that comes with that non-movement, like she’s come into her own. I always really like that moment in the ballet.
Kathleen Moore:
I love that moment as well. And also when the girls… Agnes to me, she was brilliant at using spatial patterns. She used a lot of circles, I think took a lot from folk dances, and they’re around for centuries, so something must have worked. I think she worked with that. But there’s that one moment where one of the western ladies just had to run in and do a little turn and then be there, and then just breathing and her hands close together. And Agnes worked so much with the girls who would do that moment of how to capture and how it was so much bigger than just run, turn, down, breathe, breathe, breathe, move your hands like this and walk off. But how it became that stillness of night and adding layers to, as you’re saying, the Cowgirl being there and moaning, moping, having her little pity party for a moment, and the wash of people going behind and then that breathing. It’s just, I think it’s powerful. Whether you saw it in 1940s, 1970s, or I think Ballet West just did it, and I’m sure it was a poignant moment. Yeah.
Linda Murray:
Well, it’s rare to see a ballerina standing still. The only other big example I can think of it is another female choreographer, Nijinska in Les Noces. The bride is very, very still. It’s unusual to have the ballerina be still, it subverts the expectation of the audience. And it’s interesting that two female choreographers chose to use it in a very powerful way within their work.
Kathleen Moore:
The only other aspect I can remember is just MacMillan having Juliet sit on the bed as all that music rages about. She’s just sitting there, but it’s quite a long time. And how powerful stillness and simplicity can be.
Linda Murray:
The other thing, of course, that moment does is it gives you different kinds of women in the same scene, which is also a rarity in ballet. It gives you—and they’re not women who are archetypes. It’s not like that there’s the good and the bad. It’s just different types of personalities of women inhabiting the same space, which is, it’s also quite a novel thing to see in ballet. And that’s another thing that I really appreciate about Rodeo and what de Mille does is the variety and the complexity of the narratives that women are given within her work.
Margaret Fuhrer:
It’s like a ballet that passes the Bechdel test, in 1942. [laughter]
You two are making my job so easy. I had a whole string of questions about Rodeo that you have answered in a very comprehensive way. But let’s talk about the other female characters that she created too, because there are many of them. Can you talk a little about what de Mille’s female characters have in common, and how they differed from the other women on ballet and Broadway stages at the time especially?
Linda Murray:
Well, I think the one that obviously comes to mind is Fall River Legend, because it’s an anti heroine that we’re rooting for. We all know the story of Lizzie Borden, and it’s not that Agnes condones. In fact, she said in an interview with Morton Gould, she talked about why they changed the story because Lizzie Borden was acquitted, but in the ballet, she is hung. And that’s because Agnes believed that Lizzie Borden was guilty.
Kathleen Moore:
Oh, I thought it was because Morton Gould couldn’t compose “acquitted” music! [laughter]
Linda Murray:
Agnes told him he was better at that. But no, they both agreed that it made for a better ballet, that it was hard dramatically to choreograph and compose around acquittal, and it was much easier choreographically and compositionally to work around a crescendo of some sort of act of justice being served. But what I find really interesting is despite the fact that Agnes makes the ballet thinking Lizzie Borden’s guilty, there’s incredible empathy in the figure of Lizzie that she provides. And she said something really profound about… It was an Oliver Smith set. Well, she both loved and hated the set, because she said the set gets in the way of the dancing like that there’s an obstacle to a lot of choreographic movement happening. But she also loved that for what it dramatically brought to bear on the choreography.
And particularly she talks about the gallows receding into, becoming part of the house, so that the gallows is foregrounded at the beginning of the ballet, and then it recedes into the house. And so, Agnes said, it’s like Lizzie’s destiny is already set right from the beginning. There is this inescapable sense of what’s going to unfold, which is really powerful and very, very poignant.
What I really appreciate about Agnes taking on that part is it’s not Lizzie the villain or Lizzie the victim who’s accused and is innocent. It’s a very complex female character with layers that we can feel lots and lots of things about. But our empathy with her and her journey is never lost through the choreography. I know Agnes wasn’t in love with her choreography overall. She felt that there wasn’t enough variety in the actual vocabulary of that particular ballet. But I do know she was very pleased with the dramatic qualities of that ballet. And I think she really did succeed in on a narrative and on a journey for Lizzie through the work. But Kathleen, you’ve danced that role. You’ve danced multiple roles in that ballet, but I indelibly think of you as being Lizzie in that ballet.
Kathleen Moore:
Oh, that’s very kind of you. I loved doing that character. I would have to say I think you have make a really great point about, if you look at the Cowgirl and you look at Lizzie, that Agnes was able to create an empathetic character in both instances, despite how disparate those actual characters are, as one in adolescence, another out west, another in a very stuffy New England place. They’re both vulnerable, they’re both misfits, and they’re both looking for happiness. One manages to achieve it, and the other clearly, clearly doesn’t. I think too, when Agnes created… This is slightly off-topic, but when Agnes created Rodeo, she was in a pretty hopeful place. She was going to be married. She had had that least that mini success with Three Virgins and a Devil with ABT three years prior. She was starting to, I feel, really feel comfortable and come into her own.
Somebody recently told me that when she was making Fall River, she wasn’t in as good a place. I’m not sure. I would have to look at the years, and I’m not the historian, but I know when her son was born, he was quite ill. They didn’t know if he was going to make it. Maybe it revolved around a personal life issue like that, I’m not sure. But she was in a more chaotic—and you can see in choice of story chosen and music defining that as well. When she got to The Informer, however, I feel that character was not a misfit, and Agnes was no longer a misfit. She was successful, but she was a courageous woman who had just overcome so many obstacles after her stroke and was able to come back to it and into the character of the girl was this strong community person, who then is faced with this terrible dilemma of what to do in choosing love over community.
Linda Murray:
Again, it’s a very complex figure and a very sympathetic figure, but also a figure with a flaw at the center, which is interesting dramatically. It’s much more interesting than a purely good or a purely evil character, is to have somebody complex on stage that you’re trying to unravel as everything’s unfolding.
Kathleen Moore:
Don’t you think all of her important women were flawed? She just made the men so wonderful and perfect and—
Linda Murray:
Nobody cares about them. [laughter]
Kathleen Moore:
But these girls, they all had something happening.
Linda Murray:
Well, it’s a reversal of centuries of dramatic work where the men are always these central figures with deep inner lives, very complex, emotional, deep inner lives, and the women are just surrounding satellites to serve the central narrative of the male protagonist. And with de Mille, we get the reverse, which for us as audience members is a really refreshing change. And as women, it allows us to see ourselves fully expressed within an art form that women predominantly work in and support.
Kathleen Moore:
Agnes’s background, her history of this extraordinary family that she grew up in, and then being in Hollywood, having these Sunday dinners where all these incredible people would come… It would just be, if you weren’t Charlie Chaplin or of that level, you weren’t the actor invited over. But she was privy to hearing incredibly articulate people talking about all sorts of very important human stories. And how, from that, who was telling all those stories? Again, it was men. But her great-grandmother was groundbreaking, just formidable from everything I read about. And how many times did Agnes get to see the women in her life—her mother, with the energy of a titan—making things happen? But she had no role models as a choreographer. She was such great friends with Martha, but Martha was doing something different. And Martha knew it wasn’t Agnes’s gift and pushed her and pushed her to find her own way, but she didn’t have somebody before her making it.
Linda Murray:
Although to your point, Agnes’s grandmother was one of the founders of Paramount Studios. She had somebody who taught her how to carve out a career. Although I absolutely agree with you, she didn’t have a roadmap for how to express herself choreographically. There weren’t many precedents for any woman working in ballet. There were not many precedents of female choreographers who had proceeded. I mean, I guess you had Madame Placide in 1792 was the first female choreographer that’s documented in the United States for ballet, and then you have a gap. And then in the early 20th century, you have Bronislava Nijinska comes, and you’ve got Agnes de Mille. And then we’re still asking today, where are all the female choreographers? If you are a female choreographer working within the medium of ballet, there are still scant examples of how to forge a career and how to express to yourself there. There’s not a substantial amount of work to build upon. Men are at an incredible advantage in that regard.
And so, it is extraordinary what she accomplished, even though she did come from a family of privilege, and there were definitely people in the wider performing arts industry that could help her and guide her. But she did figure an awful lot out on her own. I completely agree with you, Kathleen.
Margaret Fuhrer:
In some ways, de Mille’s ballets do feel of a particular time, but in other ways, her work still feels keenly relevant today. What do you think her ballets, and in particular the female characters in her works can express in a contemporary context?
Linda Murray:
Well, I think women are still fighting their corner and still looking for platforms to speak on their own terms. And so Agnes’s characters remain relevant for us because even though they’re set in different times, and quite frankly, when she was making the work she was setting in her work in different times. Rodeo, Fall River Legend, The Informer, all of those ballets are set in previous time periods than the time that she was contemporaneously living in, which actually lends her work quite a timelessness. The fact that she didn’t make it of the moment of when she was choreographing gives the work a longer life because it’s not of that particular zeitgeist. It lives outside of that moment and that zeitgeist, so it has relevance both before and after the moment in which it was made. I think there’s that to her work, but also just we are still searching for complex, fully inhabited female characters on our stages. And so we still need Agnes’s work because we do not have enough of them, particularly within the field of ballet.
Kathleen Moore:
I think those are really beautiful and relevant points, Linda. I agree 100 percent. The only thing I would add to it is that when you look at, I’ll just take the Cowgirl, it’s about a time and a place, but it’s about also… I think everything Agnes did came from emotion. And so, that feeling of being human, of not fitting in, of reaching for connection and a sense of community, those are just four things that jump out at me always with the Cowgirl, with Rodeo. And every single one of them is relevant in 2023. I mean, listening to Beethoven, Bach, composers who are centuries old on the radio, I don’t find it irrelevant. I’m reading books—I’ll go read a Jane Austen novel, and I don’t expect everything, but you have to take it in the context. I mean, when Agnes created even Rodeo, if you didn’t have a husband, you weren’t going to have land, you weren’t going to have security. You may not be able to put food on the table. So much was away. And today you can basically be anything you want to be. And I think she pushed for that. I mean, in the Cowgirl, she’s being what she thinks she wants to be, or she’s trying and she can try anything, and so I do think that makes it relevant.
Linda Murray:
I love those points. I think the other thing I’ve just been reflecting on is it’s very much psychological terrain. The world of her ballets, in as much as it is specific to a location and a particular moment in time, the entire ballet often plays out in a way we’re inside the mind of the female protagonist. Particularly if I think of Fall River Legend. It’s a memory, it’s a memory play. It’s a memory ballet. I mean, from the moment she does that hand gesture, and also the foregrounding of, we start at the end and then we work our way back. We’re in a psychological landscape in as much as we’re in any real landscape. And that also gives the ballet’s longevity and gives them continued relevance today because we’re inhabiting a mind rather than inhabiting a moment in history.
Margaret Fuhrer:
I was reading a piece that Joan Acocella wrote a few years ago, and it described de Mille’s work at its best as achieving “artistic justice.” And I think she was specifically talking about Dance to the Piper, about her memoir, but I thought it perfectly captured both something larger and something smaller about her gifts. She was making work that righted wrongs, and she was also getting in some good digs at people and systems too. Would you agree with that idea of de Mille meting out artistic justice?
Linda Murray:
She does in her way, yeah. And as I said at the beginning, she’s one of my favorite writers, and I’m sure Joan was referring to Dance to the Piper, which is, I mean this memoir is a very entertaining read. But yes, she does mete out her own version of social justice.
I’m always very, very entertained by her friendship with Martha Graham. Their letters to each other are fabulous. There’s a sense in their letters to each other that they’re both quite aware that they are of a stature where it’s likely someday people beyond themselves will read their correspondence. There’s a full performance in each letter that they write to each other. It’s over the top, like, “My darling, mwah mwah.” [laughter] But there’s always this cattiness underneath it all. I love it. It’s wonderful.
But no, she does. Certainly on behalf of women, I think she tries to write the wrong and carve out a space for women to hold on stage where their own stories can be told on their own terms rather than through the lens of a male choreographer. I have never danced Agnes’s work like Kathleen does, but when I look at Agnes’s work, I imagine it must be very liberating to inhabit some of those roles in a way that it would not be in other works.
Kathleen Moore:
Yeah, it’s very freeing. And I think Agnes wasn’t shy about her opinions, and I think she didn’t tolerate fools easily. And so yes, she would meet out some artistic justice in the role she created as we’ve already spoken about creating not two-dimensional, but very three-dimensional women, whether they’re heroines or anti heroines. And that is a bit of justice for women to have such meaty roles and complex ones.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Well, thank you both so much for coming on, for giving us this excellent preview of the upcoming panel discussion at the library, which I’m really looking forward to. And you’ll be in great company there too. What a lineup for this panel. My goodness.
Linda Murray:
It’s quite a lineup. We have some wonderful dancers coming in as well to perform excerpts. There will be archival film, a fabulous panel that I’m moderating, which includes Kathleen, and then some young dancers who are very graciously giving their time so that we can experience some of Agnes’ work live as well. We’re very excited about it.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Listeners, in the show notes will have links with all the information about that.
Kathleen Moore:
Great. Thank you so much.
Linda Murray:
Thank you.
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A big thank-you again to Kathleen and Linda. Really looking forward to that upcoming event at the Library, which, as promised, you can find out more about in the show notes—it’s happening on Monday, April 3, and if you’re in or around New York you should definitely make your way to it. Hopefully I’ll see you there.
And thanks as ever to all of you for listening. We’ll be back next Thursday with a new episode discussing the top dance headlines. Until then, keep learning, keep advocating, and keep dancing.