THE N.C. ESSAY
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DANCE SPECTACULAR SCHEDULED IN APRIL
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Agnes DeMille
An American Heritage
Everyone of the readers of this article know her name,
and probably quite a few of you stand in awe at the
sound of it (for example the people who have rehearsed
eight and nine hours a day with her). Probably none of
you know her purposes for spending thousands of dollars
to bring her ideas here to this school, though, and very
few of you have any idea as to what the show really
consists of.
Agnes deMille’s forthcoming extravaganza had its
beginning twenty years ago when she created the
choreography for such Broadway favorites as
“Oklahoma,” “Rodeo,” “Brigadoon” and “Paint your
Wagon.” Between the creations of these shows, she also
formed two professional touring Dance Theatres which
brought both her dances and her person into contact
with not only a large part of America but Europe and
also other countries around the world. The unifying
factor in all these productions has been her feeling and
creative interpretation of the dance indigenous to the
American Culture. She loves America; not the America
of governments at war, or social programs, but the
American heritage which so few people in this country
ever look at. How often do you think of the beauty of
America: the cultural history we all have taken part of
yet have never tried to show anyone else? People like
the square dancers or the log rollers from northern
Maine; the wild frontiersman who formed the whole of
the Western Coast of America as a result of one fortune
hunter crying “Grold! ” Miss deMille has thought of these
things and for years has been making other people think
of them through the creative medium of dance.
Now, she hopes to begin here at the School of the Arts
her third professional touring company. This sounds
simple, but it is not. First of all, there is the money
problem. Being state subsidized we students rarely
think of this problem; we just pay our enrollment fee
and the administrators take care of the rest. But deMille
is on her own. That sounds scary if you really think
about it: she is on her own. Almost all of the money for
this production must come from grants and theatre
owners around the country who want the show to tour to
their theatre. In other words, she has to convince a
hundred very big and extremely business minded people
to “buy” a show that hasn’t even been created yet!
Her second purpose here, which makes getting money
incredibly hard, is to decentralize Broadway. She wants
to show people that it doesn’t matter in terms of your
ability to dance and put on a “Broadway scale”
production whether you are a professional or a student,
and it can even be done in a city that no one who hasn’t
smoked “Winstons” or “Salems” has ever heard of!
People that would normally give her large sums of
money will not give her anything because it is “too much
of a financial risk” to use “immature” students in a
production of this scale. She, on the other hand, has an
incredibly great admiration for what we, as students,
are doing here. She has become a part of our world, and
is trying to open closed doors so that we may become a
part of hers. I know of no other great artist who has
come into our environment that has come with the sense
of dedication to our principals as she has.
In creating her production with the dancers,
musicians and technicians of this school, she is giving
all of us the chance to put forward our American
heritage to the rest of America and the world. The fruit
of our labors will be the recognition of a unified prin
cipal: professional is a part of the mind, not the
pocketbook.
- Rick Shoenberger