Black Ritual (Obeah) Fall River Legend The Four Marys The Harvest AccordingThe Informer The Other Rib of Eve Rodeo A Rose for Miss EmilySebastian Tally-Ho, or The Frail Quarry Texas Fourth Three Virgins and a DevilThe Wind in the Mountains |
When Agnes de Mille was born
on West 118th Street in
Manhattan, close to
Morningside Park, it was a
pleasant middle class residential
neighborhood. Later it became
the heart of the most dangerous
section of Harlem. That
change is somewhat symbolic
of Agnes' life. Lovingly
safeguarded in comparative
luxury -- her father, William
Churchill de Mille, was a
famous and successful
playwright -- Agnes later plunged
into turbulent and dangerous
currents when she embarked, alone
and unaided, on her long journey
through the world of theatre and
ballet.
When Agnes was very young, her
father followed his brother, Cecil B.
de Mille, to California, to try for
work in the new gold field of
motion pictures. He went for a year's
stay and remained for the rest of his
life.
Agnes' early schooling in California
was at the small private Hollywood
School for Girls. Later she attended
the University of California at Los
Angeles (UCLA), where she
graduated at nineteen cum
laude.
About this time her mother and
father divorced, and her mother
came back to New York to start a new
life with Agnes and her sister,
Margaret. Margaret went to Barnard
College and Agnes started her long
search for success as a dancer.
Unable to find employment in the
theatre, she composed dances for
herself -- also arranging the music
and designing the costumes -- and
gave a series of solo dance recitals.
She was hailed by the critics but lost
considerable money, so she
departed, with her mother, to
London. There she gave her recitals,
again with critical praise but no
financial gain. However, Marie
Rambert and Arnold Haskell were
sufficiently enthusiastic about her
progress to persuade her to return to
London the following year to study
and continue her
recitals.
At that time, at the Ballet Club at the
Mercury Theatre, which was
Rambert's creation and where she
taught, there were as pupils Frederick
Ashton, Antony Tudor, Hugh Laing
and later Margot Fonteyn, as well as
a dozen others of high excellence.
So, although she did not make
money and gained little fame, her
ambience was of the very best and
she learned a great deal of creative
theatre.
During one of her returns to the
United States, Miss de Mille was
engaged to choreograph the dances
for the film, Romeo and
Juliet, starring Norma Shearer
and LeslieHoward. The dances were
very lovely and brought Agnes some
attention, but she says the custom at
that time of cutting dances to pieces
assured short lives for
them.
Then in 1940, Ballet Theatre (now
American Ballet Theatre) was
formed and Miss de Mille was a
charter member, creating for the
company her first ballet, Black
Ritual, with black dancers, the
first time this had been done by a
serious ballet company. Black
Ritual (Creation du
Monde -- Milhaud) was not a
success, but in the following year
Miss de Mille created Three
Virgins and a Devil for the
Company, which was a tremendous
hit and is still given today to greatly
appreciative audiences and critical
acclaim.
In 1942 she was asked by the Ballet
Russe de Monte Carlo to create a
ballet for that company and her
world-famous Rodeo was
the altogether sensational result. She
herself danced the leading role at the
Metropolitan Opera House on
October 16, 1943, and received
twenty-two curtain calls and standing
ovations. This triumph, with its
Americana setting, led Richard
Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein to
select her to create the dances for
their musical, Oklahoma!.
The tremendous success of these
two works made American dance
history.
On June 14, 1943, Miss de Mille was
married in Beverly Hills to Walter
Foy Prude, a Texan. Mr. Prude at
that time was an officer in the Army
(Aviation Ordinance) and was
stationed in Hobbs, New Mexico.
He was shortly sent overseas for the
duration.
The wedding and
Oklahoma! were followed in
rapid succession by choreography
for the musicals One Touch of
Venus, Bloomer Girl and
Carousel. Also the ballet,
Tally-Ho.
In the Fall of 1945 Miss de Mille
went to London for work on the film
London Town, but actually
she had arranged the trip so that she
could meet her husband, who was
stationed in Germany, and they had
the good fortune to be together for
two-and-a half weeks. Then in
August of that year the war was over,
her husband was sent back to the
United States and she was pregnant.
Eventually she, too, returned to this
country and in April their son,
Jonathan de Mille Prude, was
born.
Brigadoon, with especially
lovely dances and another great
success, was her next achievement,
and in that same year she began
rehearsals of Allegro, acting
as stage director as well as
choreographer. This was the first
time any dancer had attempted such
a feat. She had to keep people busy
at the same time in three theatres,
one for the actors, one for the
dancers and one for the singers. It
was a gigantic undertaking, with a
cast of nearly one hundred. But the
score, by Richard Rodgers, was
weak, and the book, by Oscar
Hammerstein, was unfinished, with
a poor second act. No amount of
hard work could make it the kind of
success they were used to and in
spite of the show having a
respectable run of over a year, it was
a bitter disappointment to
them.
After Allegro her work was
continual: The Rape of
Lucretia, of-which she was the
stage director, in 1948; also in 1948
the great ballet Fall River
Legend; Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes in 1949; Out of
This World, as stage director in
1950; Paint Your Wagon in
1951; and a lovely ballet, The
Harvest According in, 1952.
Then in 1953 came the filming of
Oklahoma! of which she
was the choreographer and which
was the first film to cost over a
million dollars. But Miss de Mille
says that in spite of its cost, she
never considered it first rate and did
not like it anywhere nearly as much
as she did the original stage
version.
Her reputation as a speaker also grew
through the years as she spoke across
the entire nation on the part of
government subsidy for the arts,
resulting in her appointment by
President Kennedy to be a member
of the National Advisory Committee
on the Arts, the forerunner of the
National Endowment for the Arts, to
which she was appointed as a
member of its National Council by
President Johnson when it was
activated during his
administration.
In 1974 she inaugurated the Agnes
de Mille Heritage Dance Theatre,
founded at the North Carolina
School of the Arts in
Winston-Salem. The company made
several cross-country tours with great
success, but this project, which was
so close to her heart, was cut short
by the cerebral hemorrhage which
struck her, on May 15, 1975, as she
was about to go on stage for her
famous lecture, Converstions
About the
Dance.
Her return from near death to an
altered but extraordinarily active life
is outlined in her book Reprieve,
one of the three books she
wrote after her stroke, the other two
being Where the Wings
Grow and America
Dances. She also is the author
of Dance to the Piper,
Promenade Home, To a Young
Dancer, The Book of Dance, Lizzie
Borden: Dance of Death, Dance in
America, Russian Journals, and
Speak to Me, Dance with
Me.
Her awards include New York City's
Handel Medallion, which is the most
distinguished honor the city can
bestow on its citizens, the nationally
prestigious Kennedy Center Honor,
seventeen honorary degrees from
colleges and universities coast to
coast, two American Theatre Wing
"Tony" Awards, as well as many
other awards, including an "Emmy"
in 1987 for Agnes, The
Indomitable de
Mille.
The Other was Miss de
Mille's last ballet for American Ballet
Theatre. She died in New York City
on October 7,
1993. |
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