Ron Walker
In the late ’50s, my time in the Navy is up. I’d done my two years and return to Hollywood. I have saved my money well so there is no pressing need to get a job. Without any work life or social-life, I ping pong from one ballet studio to another. No longer do I follow my parent’s dictum to go to college and join the NROTC. I am on my own. It is time to “get going” and dancing seems the way to go. I have just been promoted to the rank of Lt.’Jg and secretly am very proud of my achievement. I am not flustered or confused; I just don’t have any idea of what I should do for the rest of my life. “Roll the dice, Charley, you’re up.” Out comes my tights, ballet shoes and necessary undergarments.
There is a plethora of dance studios in Hollywood. At Michael Panieff’s ballet studio, I share a ballet barre with Leslie Caron, but Panieff never gave a suggestion or dance correction in his life. He charms his way through class. His classes are social events.
Then I hear that Bronislava Nijinska is giving classes. She should be able to give me the training I am looking for. Niiinsky, her brother, and she electrified Paris in the early 1900s with their exotic art. Nijinsky did physical feats that no one else has been able to duplicate. Done. I sign up for classes with Bronislava Nijinska hoping some “Nijinsky-ness” will rub off on me.
Nijinska’s classes are in a vast studio above a movie house in the Wilshire district of Hollywood. A ritual is followed before each class. While Madam is conferring with her pianist regarding the music she will use for class, her favorite male students congregate around her, bow reverently, and give her hand a peck. These are students from olde Russia. Of course, I never impose such intimacy on Madam and immediately go to the barre and start stretching.
Madam’s classes do not start with many mundane exercises, as other classes do. Soon we move to the center of the room for lengthy combinations. Her regular students excel in this approach. Their minds are used to connecting complicated ballet movements in rapid succession. They welcome the challenge to soar, do complicated turns and then with lightening-like speed beat one foot against the other until finally land like a leaf fluttering on the wind to the floor.
Madam Nijinska becomes one of my many guides who show me the ways of ballet, but show business has many other tangents for me.
The other night, Orllyene and I watch a Cold War movie starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines, titled “White Nights.” It is from the Cold War days. When Baryshnikov and Hines are alone in an empty rehearsal studio Hines bets Baryshnikov that he can’t do 13 pirouettes at one time. (“Pirouettes” means the dancer spins around on one foot while the other foot touches his knee). With surgical like precision Mikhail winds up and turns in absolute perfection 13 times. I would love to have the opportunity to recapture my ballet-days and have a try. Perhaps in another lifetime
Ron Walker can be reached at walkover@gmx. com
