CITRON o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-04-11 published
Visionary performer waged war on trivial art
Her trademark was a experimental process that embraced dance,
music, text, mime, clown, ritual and mask
By Paula CITRON
Friday,
April 11, 2003 - Page R13
Canada has lost a powerful force in experimental theatre and
dance. Director, dancer, actor, writer and choreographer Elizabeth
SZATHMARY died last month in Toronto.
While she will be remembered as a dynamic figure, her artistic
life will remain a contradiction. At the beginning of her career,
Ms. SZATHMARY was one of the gilded darlings of Toronto's burgeoning
experimental theatre. At the end, she was seen by some as a marginalized,
religious eccentric who put on plays in church basements.
To her long-time Friends and loyalists, however, Ms.
SZATHMARY's
life was a spiritual journey in which art, religion and morality
were inextricably intertwined in a nobility of purpose.
Ms. SZATHMARY was born in New York on October 12, 1937, to Jewish-Hungarian
parents. Her mother was an unhappy former opera singer and vaudeville
performer and her father was a composer and arranger who wrote
the theme for the popular television show Get Smart and who abandoned
his family. Ms.
SZATHMARY attended New York's High School of
Performing Arts and later performed with the Metropolitan Opera
Ballet under choreographer Antony
TUDOR.
A ravishing beauty with masses of long, jet-black curls and compelling
light-coloured eyes, Ms.
SZATHMARY attracted followers throughout
her career. She was, says Toronto choreographer David
EARLE,
a powerful, mysterious presence and a charismatic performer.
Another admirer was Canadian Robert
SWERDLOW.
Mr.
TUDOR's piano
accompanist, he fell in love with the beautiful young dancer
and followed her to France where Ms.
SZATHMARY danced with such
companies as Les Ballets Classique de Monte Carlo and Les Ballets
Contemporains de Paris. He was the first of many artists to be
inspired by Ms.
SZATHMARY.
"Elizabeth was a theatre philosopher who wanted to save the world
through the beauty and truth of her art," Mr.
SWERDLOW said.
The couple relocated to Montreal in the mid-sixties where Mr.
SWERDLOW got a job with the National Film Board. One assignment
brought him to Toronto, and it was Ms.
SZATHMARY who persuaded
him to settle there because of the city's "happening" dance scene.
Performing under the name Elizabeth
SWERDLOW, she first worked
with Mr. EARLE and the future co-founders of Toronto Dance Theatre.
In 1969, Mr.
SWERDLOW took an unexpected windfall of $30,000
and built his wife a performing venue of her own. In this way,
Global Village Theatre emerged from a former Royal Canadian Mounted
Police stable and the couple went on to became synonymous with
a new wave of provocative, political, issue-oriented theatre.
Mr. SWERDLOW provided the words and music, and co-wrote the shows
Elizabeth co-wrote, choreographed, directed and was the featured
performer. Importantly, she was the visionary who came up with
original concepts and her trademark, multidisciplinary theatrical
process embraced dance, music, text, mime, clown, ritual and
mask.
Among their better-known collaborations was Blue.S.A., an indictment
of the "American empire," and Justine, the story of a young
girl who gains wisdom through the vicissitudes of life. A huge
hit, Justine went to New York where it won off-Broadway awards
and enjoyed a long run.
Its success meant Global Village became a stopping place for
others. Gilda
RADNER,
John
CANDY and Salome
BEY represented just
some of the talent that passed through. Later, when Ms.
SZATHMARY
founded Inner Stage Theatre, she helped propel the early careers
of Antoni CIMOLINO and Donald
CARRIER of the Stratford Festival,
Jeannette ZINGG and Marshall
PYNKOSKI of Opera Atelier and Native
American performer Raoul
TRUJILLO.
In the mid-seventies, Ms.
SZATHMARY experienced a religious conversion
and became a devout Christian.
For Mr. SWERDLOW, it was the last straw in an already turbulent
relationship. After the couple split up, Ms.
SZATHMARY founded
Inner Stage, a name that expressed her desire to produce art
that would transform and heal through spirituality. To better
strike out on her own, she also shed the
SWERDLOW name. Until
the 1990s, the main work of Inner Stage was a series of acclaimed
morality tales -- or modern fables as Ms.
SZATHMARY called them
which toured schools from coast to coast. She also explored
the storytelling power of Native American myths and turned to
such themes as the plight of street youth or to the Holocaust
from a teenager's point of view. Her final project, No Fixed
Address, attempted to air the true voice of the homeless by both
telling their stories and casting them as actors.
By all accounts, Ms.
SZATHMARY was a true eccentric who personalized
everything. Her computer, for example, was called Daisy. Her
home was a living museum dominated by a family of cats who occupied
their own stools at the dining table, held conversations and
sent out Christmas cards to the pets of Friends. Spiritual sayings,
religious art and theatre memorabilia covered every scrap of
wall and floor space. On an even more personal level, Ms.
SZATHMARY
kept a journal of religious visions and dreams written in ornate
calligraphy and illustrated in Hungarian folk-style art. What
is more, she described ecstatic events and augurisms, including
a personal affinity with bison, as if such occurrences were as
routine as the weather.
In her work, Ms.
SZATHMARY demanded perfection, which meant she
often proved impossible to work alongside. Friends and colleagues
Robert MASON,
Julia
AMES and Peter
GUGELER all talk about Ms.
SZATHMARY's middle-of-the-night phone calls -- and the fact that
she brooked no criticism or contrary opinions. All the same,
their devotion never lessened.
"She was a queen and we were her subjects," said Mr.
GUGELER.
"Elizabeth never left you once she got ahold of you."
Guerrilla theatre, grass-roots theatre, shoe-string theatre,
theatre against all odds, a "let's-make-a-show" mentality --
that was the brave, artistic world in which Ms.
SZATHMARY waged
her war against what she saw as frivolous or commercial art.
In 1989, Inner Stage lost its operating grant and from that time
on she financed her own productions. During the last year that
she was able to work, she earned a pitiful $5,000.
Ms. SZATHMARY continued to perform in all her productions, turning
more to straight acting as her dancing powers declined. Even
so, she never gave up the stage to anyone.
Elizabeth SZATHMARY died of rectal cancer in Toronto on March
28. A memorial service will be held at the Church of the Redeemer,
162 Bloor St. W., Toronto, at 3 p.m. on April 27.
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CITRON o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-08-06 published
Linda STEARNS: 1937-2003
As ballet mistress and artistic director of the esteemed Montreal
company, she nurtured personality, flair and a risk-taking approach
to dance
By Paula CITRON
Wednesday,
August 6, 2003 - Page R5
In the cutthroat, competitive world of dance, Linda
STEARNS was
an anomaly. As artistic director of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens,
she never played games or held grudges. Whether good or bad news,
she bluntly told her dancers what they had to hear, and in return,
her open-door policy allowed them to vent their own feelings.
National
Ballet of Canada artistic director James
KUDELKA, who
spent almost a decade as a member of Les Grands Ballets, likens
her approach to wearing an invisible raincoat upon which unhappy
dancers spewed their venom. At the end of their tirades, she
would serenely remove the garment and say, "Now let's talk."
Linda STEARNS died at her home in Toronto on July 4, at age 65.
She was born into privilege on October 22, 1937. Her father,
Marshal, was an investment broker; her mother, Helen, was heavily
involved in charity work. The family lived in the posh Poplar
Plains area of central Toronto, where Ms.
STEARNS attended Branksome
Hall.
Despite their wealth, the
STEARNS children (Linda, Nora and Marshal)
were expected to earn their own livings. Helen
STEARNS had studied
dance in her youth, but a career was never an option. When eldest
daughter Linda showed a strong talent, history might have repeated
itself had not Marshal Sr. set aside his reservations after seeing
his daughter perform.
After graduating from high school, Ms.
STEARNS went to London
and New York for advanced training. It was the great Alexandra
Danilova, one of Ms.
STEARNS's
New
York teachers, who pointed
the young dancer in the direction of the upstart Les Grands Ballets
Canadiens. Ms.
STEARNS joined Les Grands in 1961, and was promoted
to soloist in 1964. In a Who's Who of Entertainment entry, Ms.
STEARNS was once listed as joining the company in 1861, and she
liked to joke that, at 103 years, she held the record for the
longest time spent in the corps de ballet. In fact, one of Ms.
STEARNS's hallmarks was her sense of humour, much of it at her
own expense.
Les Grands was known for taking dancers who did not necessarily
have perfect ballet bodies, but had personality and flair, a
policy Ms.
STEARNS continued during her own administration.
Although Ms.
STEARNS had very unballetic, low-arched feet, she
was a fine classical dancer. She excelled, however, in the dramatic
repertoire: Mother Courage in Richard Kuch's The Brood, or the
title role in Brydon Paige's Medea. In later years, while teaching
and coaching, Ms.
STEARNS wore high heels to conceal her hated
low arches -- while showing off her attractive ankles.
Her performing career was cut short in 1966 when artistic director
Ludmilla CHIRIAEFF recognized that Ms.
STEARNS would make a brilliant
ballet mistress, and by 1969, Ms.
STEARNS was exclusively in
the studio. In fact, giving up performing was one of the great
disappointments of her life, although she did in time acknowledge
that she had found her true destiny. Ms.
STEARNS's astonishingly
keen eye allowed her to single out, in a corps de ballet of moving
bodies, every limb that was out of position. She could also sing
every piece of music, which saved a lot of time, because she
didn't have to keep putting on the tape recorder. Because of
her intense musicality, Ms.
STEARNS also insisted that the dancers
not just be on the count, but fill every note with movement.
Ms. STEARNS loved playing with words -- she was a crossword-puzzle
addict, for example -- and gave the dancers nicknames, whether
they liked them or not. Catherine
LAFORTUNE was Katrink, Kathy
BIEVER was Little Frog, Rosemary
NEVILLE was Rosie Posie, Betsy
BARON was Boops, and Benjamin
HATCHER was Benjamino, to name
but a few. One who escaped this fate was Gioconda
BARBUTO, simply
because Ms.
STEARNS loved rolling out the word "G-I-O-C-O-N-D-A"
in its full Italian glory. The dancers, in turn, called her Lulubelle,
Mme. Gozonga and
La Stearnova or, if they were feeling tired,
cranky and hostile -- and were out of earshot -- Spoons (for
her non-arched feet) and even less flattering names. As reluctantly
as she became ballet mistress, Ms.
STEARNS became artistic director,
first as one of a triumvirate in 1978 with Danny
JACKSON and
Colin McINTYRE (when Les Grands and Brian
MacDONALD came to an
abrupt parting of the ways;) then with Jeanne
RENAUD in 1985
and finally on her own in 1987. She retired from Les Grands in
1989. Both Mr.
JACKSON and Mr.
McINTRYE still refer to Ms.
STEARNS
as the company's backbone.
These were the famous creative years that included the works
of Mr. KUDELKA, Paul Taylor, Lar Lubovitch, Nacho Duato and George
Balanchine. Les Grands toured the world performing one of the
most exciting and eclectic repertoires in ballet. It was a company
that nurtured dancers and choreographers, many of whom reflected
Ms. STEARNS's risk-taking, innovative esthetic.
She also had time to mentor choreographers outside the company,
including acclaimed solo artist Margie
GILLIS.
Her post-Grands
career included writing assessments for the Canada Council, setting
works on ballet companies, coaching figure skating, and most
recently, becoming ballet mistress for the Toronto-based Ballet
Jörgen. When she was diagnosed with both ovarian and breast cancer
two years ago, she continued her obligations to Ballet Jörgen
until she was no longer able, never letting the dancers know
how ill she was.
Ms. STEARNS loved huge dogs -- or what Ms.
GILLIS refers to as
mountains with fur -- and always had at least two. Her gardens
were magnificent, as was her cooking. Her generosity was legendary,
whether inviting 20 people for Christmas dinner, or hosting the
wedding reception for dancers Andrea
BOARDMAN and Jean-Hugues
ROCHETTE at her tastefully decorated Westmount home. After leaving
Montreal, whether, first, at her horse farm in Harrow, Ontario,
or at the one-room schoolhouse she lovingly renovated near Campbellville,
northwest of Toronto, former colleagues were always welcome.
She continued to keep in touch with her dancers, sending notes
in her beautiful, distinctive handwriting. Her love of sports
never left her, and after a hard day in the studio, she would
relax watching the hockey game. Religion also filled her postdance
life, with Toronto's Anglican Grace-Church-on-the-Hill at its
epicentre. Ms.
STEARNS was very discreet in her private life,
although another disappointment is that neither of two long relationships
resulted in marriage or children.
Ms. STEARNS was always ruthlessly self-critical, always striving
for perfection, never convinced she had rehearsed a work to its
full potential. As a result, she never made herself the centre
of her own story. Her homes, for example, did not contain photographs
glorifying the career of Linda
STEARNS.
Only at the end of her
days, as she faced death with the same grace with which she had
faced life, was she finally able to appreciate how many lives
she had touched, and accept her outstanding achievements with
Les
Grands
Ballets. Linde
HOWE-
BECK, former dance critic for
the Montreal Gazette, sums up Ms.
STEARNS perfectly when she
says that she was all about love -- for her Friends and family,
for life, but most of all, for dance.
Paula CITRON is dance critic for The Globe and Mail.
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