Tudor in Gala Performance, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1941
Born
William Cook
4 April 1908
London, England
Died
19 April 1987(1987-04-19) (aged 79)
New York City, U.S.
Resting place
Ashes in Woodlawn Cemetery
Antony Tudor (born William Cook; 4 April 1908 – 19 April 1987) was an English ballet choreographer, teacher and dancer. He founded the London Ballet, and later the Philadelphia Ballet Guild in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., in the mid-1950s.
Early life and education
Tudor was born William Cook in East London, and grew up in the Finsbury area.[1] He discovered dance accidentally. Tudor's first exposure to professional ballet was in his late teens when he first saw Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. He witnessed the dancer Serge Lifar of the Diaghilev Ballet in Balanchine's Apollon Musagète in 1928. Later, the Ballets Russes would introduce him to Anna Pavlova, who further inspired his journey into the world of dance. Tudor reached out to Cyril W. Beaumont, the owner of a ballet book shop in the Charing Cross Road district in London, to seek advice regarding training and was instructed to study with Marie Rambert, a former Diaghilev Ballet dancer who taught the Cecchetti method.[citation needed]
Career
He began dancing professionally with Marie Rambert in 1928, becoming general assistant for her Ballet Club the next year. A precocious choreographer, at age twenty-three he created for her dancers Cross Garter'd, then Lysistrata, The Planets and other works at the little Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, and his two most revolutionary, Jardin aux lilas (Lilac Garden) and Dark Elegies, before the age of thirty, himself dancing the main roles.[citation needed]
He was a resident choreographer with Ballet Theater for ten years, restaging some of his earlier works but also creating new works, his great Pillar of Fire (1942), Romeo and Juliet, Dim Lustre and Undertow, on that company by the end of the war. Retiring from dancing in 1950, he headed the faculty of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, taught at the Juilliard School recurrently from 1950 onwards.[citation needed] He mentored dancers of color and offered weekly classes at the Philadelphia Ballet Guild, which he established in the mid-1950s.[1] Among others, he taught Carole King, who went on to found the predecessor to the NAISDA Dance College for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students of contemporary dance in Australia.[3]
From 1973, Tudor continued his teaching career as professor of ballet technique at the Department of Dance, University of California, Irvine (work curtailed by a serious heart condition), while rejoining American Ballet Theatre in 1974 as associate artistic director, creating The Leaves Are Fading and Tiller in the Fields, his last major work, in 1978. With Laing, he continued seasonal residence in Laguna Beach, California.[citation needed]
As a teacher, Tudor was known for focusing on physical and psychological details to strip away the ego allowing the dancer to be pushed outside their comfort zone and extend their potential. In an interview with Dick Cavett, Tudor said, "You've got to get rid of the personal mannerisms to get to the character in the ballet and dancers don't want to let go. Breaking down a person isn't hard. But you cannot break them down unless you are willing to pick up the ashes right away and turn them into the Phoenix. That's the tough thing. You're terribly tempted to lay them flat and walk on them."[citation needed]
Tudor is generally accepted[according to whom?] as one of the great originals of modern dance forms. Along with George Balanchine, he is seen as a principal transformer of ballet into a modern art, but of a genius that uses, rather than proceeds from, ballet forms. His work is usually considered as modern "psychological" expression, but – like their creator – of austerity, elegance and nobility, remarkably primarily using only classical forms. Mikhail Baryshnikov said, "We do Tudor's ballets because we must. Tudor's work is our conscience."[6]
Thirty of Tudor's dances have been documented in Labanotation[7] by the Dance Notation Bureau. The scores' introductory material contains history of the dances, cast lists, stylistic notes, background on Tudor, and information needed to stage the works (costumes, sets, lighting, music).
Trust
The Antony Tudor Ballet Trust was established to continue staging Tudor's works. His will appointed Sally Brayley Bliss as the sole trustee of his ballets upon his will submission to the Surrogate's Court of the State of New York in 1987.
^Re: Laing (1911–1988), see his entry in The Encyclopedia of Dance & Ballet, Mary Clarke and David Vaughan, eds (New York: Putnam, 1977), pp. 202f; and William Como, "Editor's log: Hugh Laing", Dance Magazine (July 1988), p. 32.
^"Carole Johnson"(Audio (1:11:21) + text). Delving into Dance. 17 September 2017. Retrieved 29 August 2022.
^For these and other cited facts, see the obituary statement by Gary Parks, "Antony Tudor, 1908–1987", Dance Magazine 61 (August 1987): 19; Tudor's entry in The Encyclopedia of Dance & Ballet, Mary Clarke and David Vaughan, eds (New York: Putnam, 1977), pp. 341f; and On Point (Friends of American Ballet Theatre) 13, no. 1 (Fall 1986): pp. 3–4.
^For an essay interpretation of the man and his art, see Olga Maynard, "Antony Tudor: A Loving Memoir",
Dance Magazine: 61 (August 1987): pp. 18–19, illustrated. For closer interpretation of Tudor's work through the 1950s, see Olga Maynard, The American Ballet (Philadelphia: Macrae Smith Company, 1959), 'Antony Tudor', pp. 127–38.