A Conversation with Balanchine Repetiteur, Zippora Karz

I sat down with Balanchine repetiteur Zippora Karz this past week, to talk to her about her life and staging process in the studio. Here are some select highlights from our talk:

How do you decide what part of the ballet to dissect and teach first? Do you always start at the very beginning or sometimes tackle a more difficult part first?

Just in general, as a stager, what I usually like to do is I have to cast the hardest part first. The first thing, for Serenade, I need to do is cast the Russian girl, because somebody might be perfect for the Waltz girl, but if no body can do the steps of the Russian girl then... I like to cast the most technical, challenging part first because in Balanchine ballets you’re going to have artistic moments- it's not like there’s one artistic part and one part is just technical. Even the technical part is going to require artistry. So it’s not like somebody’s losing out, we just have to find out who can technically do the challenges of certain parts that maybe have more turns or jumps, because people will be a better jumper or turner. So what I like to do of all of the people who are a potential of a certain part, I teach them all, and then I like to see and look. They might not be perfect in that moment, but you can tell who has the potential and can work on it. As far as the group corps, usually you start in the beginning, and then as you go along you see if you put people in the right stop, and maybe early on you want to shift positions before you’ve taught too.

Is it easier to teach the corps group sections or a difficult principal part?

The 20 corps dancers, for example, if there are patterns involved and they’re all doing something different, that’s more challenging than teaching a really difficult technical stuff that’s one solo. Because that’s just one thing, where as if you have 20 people and they’re all doing something different, you have to learn everyones part. That’s actually the most challenging part of being a repetiteur, is that you have to learn everyone’s part. You can’t possibly be completely perfect with it but if you have an idea... and thank god we have video taps and we have notes. That’s why you want to notate things before you come. What I did is when I first started staging ballets is I liked to talk to other people who had been staging them a long time. One of the things about these ballets is that, Balanchine, in particular, would change the part for whoever was dancing it- most likely the principals, but sometimes the corps, over time, he would change. So what I like to do is I like to go back to the last year he was alive, 1983, and I like to use that version as opposed to in the 60s. So there are some repetiteurs that do it from when they were dancing in the 70s. I like to go to the last year he was alive, so the last version he did. That’s for the corps. For a principal role, I like to look at all the different possibilities of what it was and I like to look at what fits the dancer. And maybe I'll teach the most recent but maybe if I see it doesn’t look so good I say 'hey look at this, this is what’s been done before and maybe this is better on you.’ And then we look at it.

One thing I remembered about you- you’ve very encouraging and positive to the dancers—whether it’s warranted or not— and I can only speculate, but I’m guessing the environment at NYCB when you were dancing there wasn’t as kind and as positive. The environment you create in the studio now- do you purposely do that to be the opposite of how it was when you were dancing?

I had both. I danced for 16 years, so within a 16 year career you’re going to have positive experiences and really bad experiences too. I think being a dancer is difficult, whether you’re in a positive or negative environment. We work so hard and we are some of the greatest athletes and artists and we’re workers. We’re not treated like star celebrities, we don’t get paid like star celebrities and we don’t get treated like that either. One dancer in a company I taught- it was a really big compliment- he came up to me after a class I taught and he said, 'you’re a dancer’s teacher.’ And I liked that compliment because I felt like a lot of people I saw that were dancers that became teachers, it’s almost like they forgot what it was like to be a dancer and they started treating people the way they didn’t like to be treated.

I feel like I personally I struggled a lot with my health. I was diagnosed with Type I Diabetes my third year in the company, and so I lost a lot of the physical athleticism I once had. So even though I was still seen as a very artistic dancer I struggled, and because of that I was treated as somebody that didn’t have the talent in certain ways that I once did. I remember teachers saying, ‘What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just do it?’ And it’s like, ‘ok come inside my body and feel what this feels like. It’s not that I’m not trying to do it.’ But I feel like sometimes dancers are treated like you don’t want to do it and therefore you’re not doing it. But no, we’re actually trying and because it’s such a physical art, you're only as good as what your body can accomplish in that moment. I feel like maybe I have patience with the physical challenge of it. And still- as directing a ballet you have to make difficult choices, but what I like to do is communicate. And that’s something that I think is an issue and it’s not just in the dance world, it’s in the world at large. You talk to the person. People are afraid of confrontation, they avoid difficult conversations sometimes because they don’t want to hurt the person, but you’re going to hurt them in the end anyhow if you don’t talk to them. So what I like to do is say, ‘Look, I really like you and you’re dancing really really well and I see your potential. You’re just not ready at this moment, so we’re going to have to replace you...’. I like to explain something why. I think I have empathy in the challenges of it and I can see when somebody’s trying. So I appreciate the trying it just doesn’t always mean you can do it. But what I experienced is that support and encouragement and inspiration can take you further than where you think you can go. So before you give up on somebody, I like to give them a chance. And I like to say, ‘Here, try it and show me what you can do’ rather than just axing somebody before you gave them a chance to actually work on it. The truth is that sometime some people can do it right away and other people may need some time to go work on it. Their brains might take longer, their body might take longer and then once they work on it its like ‘You did it!’ So I like to work that way, where if somebody shows me the work that they can do, you get more out of dancers. I’m not Pollyanna in that way, but I do understand. When you don’t have the encouragement and you don’t have the belief and you get depressed, it really does change the way you go at your work and the way you dance. You can't solve everything to have the encouragement, you know, you’re only as good as your muscles really are, but it does do something, it really does.like to be a dancer and they started treating people the way they didn’t like to be treated. I feel like I personally I struggled a lot with my health.

Balanchine dancers are known for their speed and a certain ’sparkle.’ Even dancers at Royal Ballet don’t dance Tchaikovsky pas de deux the same as say, Tiler Peck. You only have a limited amount of time in the studio, is there anything you harp on to help dancers capture that essence?

It’s really about opening up, I like to use the word being energetically generous. I like to teach the dancers how to be as expansive and generous as they can, both in their energy and their physical body. So that’s part of what the Balanchine technique is- the turnout, the legs might be a little more turned out, the leg in arabesque might be a little bit more rotated, the arms, instead of being square, the shoulders may just be a little more open and the chin just a little more up instead of pulled in. The explanation is in the technicality, so literally technically in the shoulder, but also in the energy of giving. I feel like as dancers, because we’re always next to somebody you can think that you’re doing a lot, and you can think you’re giving, but you can do more. And so you need some body to say, ’No, no you are giving, but you can do more.’ So you have to kind of push them because dance is so hard. It’s already hard, and you have to push them to do more and more and more. But I always find the more you give, the more you have to give. The more energy you give it's like you hit that second wind, like a cyclist will find or something, hitting the momentum. So I just like to push them to give a little bit more, to open up, expand a little bit more physically and energetically I would say. Balanchine loved uninhibitedness in movement and in energy. His big saying was ‘What are you saving for?’

You were one of the last dancers Balanchine himself picked for the company and you were among greatness from an early age- Peter Boal, Jerome Robbins, Heather Watts just to name a few— what was it like to be around those pillars of the ballet world? Did you know it at the time how special of a time it was?

Well, my story is I didn’t know you could be a ballet dancer for a career, it didn’t really register and I really only went to New York at 15 because my teacher's enthusiasm and she pushed me and I didn’t have a good home life so I was happy to get out of the house anyhow. So I went to New York and I hadn’t really even seen a live performance. I was really scared. Being the in summer program was really scary because all the people had the dreams and everybody was so competitive and my personality was like, ‘Ok, you want it so bad, go ahead.’ I would hear people be like ‘Why is she in that level?’ I wasn’t a strong turner and I wasn’t a good jumper. I didn’t have any one thing you could pin point. I remember walking into SAB for the first time and there was this girl, 12 years old doing fouettés and I was probably 15 like, ‘I can’t do that.’ And I was really scared. So the summer program freaked me out and when I stayed for the winter program, what happened was Balanchine. Balanchine was there, and the dancers were taking class with us and Peter Martins was taking class with us, Suzanne Farrell was teaching me. I actually felt like I was having a spiritual religious experience. It’s corny to say, but I actually felt that way. I couldn’t sleep at night before going in to the studio. I mean, everyday was that (incredible). Balanchine was walking the halls, and he was coming in and watching us, and Peter Martins was taking class with us and all the company could take class with us. And Nurevey was there all the time and Baryshnikov was there all time, and he and Peter Martins would be competing with each other. And the truth is, anybody who was there, whether they ended up dancing or not, it still changed their life. I have friends from SAB who never even became dancers, and they all went on to do something great, something meaningful. Their lives were meaningful. This is what I feel. If your life is touched by genius and greatness, it changes you forever. You know what that is and you know what that felt like. It can be depressing if you don’t have it, because you know what that was, but it’s also why we’re here. You just know what it is to be part of life itself. I feel like I was lucky to feel that. When Balanchine died, it was devastating. And the grief of not having him for my career was devastating. And I remember feeling like, ‘What an awful time. Why did I get here at the very end?’ And now I look back and think ’thank god I got the end.’ After that, nobody got him at all. For me, it was tragic. I remember being with Peter Boal and hysterically crying. It was just so awful. But now, people can ask me questions now and I can be grateful now that it happened. I went to the funeral and I stood in the back, and Joe Duell, who was a principal in the company and kind of looked out for me, saw me and he took me by the hand and he brought me to the front. And Karin von Aroldingen was in the front, who was Balachine’s main person, and they held my hand in the funeral. I still get choked up by it, because I felt like they understood what this meant for the future generations. I was just so touched that they saw me as an important part of the lineage.

You memorize names so quickly in rehearsal - any tips or tricks for the rest of us?

Yeah, but I forget them so fast! That’s funny you say that! You know what I do, is when somebody tells me their name, I try to identify who they look like and who they remind me of!

Written by Caitlin Calligan-Chasser

About Caitlin Calligan-Chasser:

Caitlin Calligan-Chasser danced with Ballet Tucson for nine seasons, and is a current member of the Ballet Tucson Bravo League. She retired from professional dancing in 2019, and currently lives in Marana with her husband, Joe, and two little girls, Evelyn and Alice. She is ever inspired by the world of ballet and the dancers themselves, and hopes to open up a portion of their world through this blog.