One by one they enter the studio--these West Coast acolytes of the late George Balanchine, with every hair neatly pulled into sleek little chignons, faces smooth and scrubbed, attention taut, thoughts silently composed. Regimen-bound, each one takes a place at the barre.
It is a special, chaste, insular world they inhabit. A stranger would never know that on the Santa Monica street just outside the Westside School of Ballet, other teen-agers streak their hair with purple and wear rings through their noses and come in all shapes and sizes. Here, everything complies with the dictates of a Balanchinian brand of ballet.
Yvonne Mounsey, \o7 materfamilias \f7 of this Western shrine and former acolyte/ballerina herself, is here to ensure the master's legacy in the 10th anniversary of his death. Not only by holding forth as teacher--so successfully that three of her recent protegees have won places at the prestigious New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre--but also by passing along the gospel according to "Mr. B."
His imprint is indelible.
"We didn't know it at the time," Mounsey recalls, before giving her daily company class, "but those early days were a golden era. It was 1949 and the beginning of New York City Ballet, and we were the dancers Balanchine taught and coached. To think he made his wonderful works on us, and that it all became major dance history, is mind-boggling."
Indeed. The Russian-born choreographer--who defined American ballet in terms of speed and musicality and modernism--has been all but deified since those beginnings. And this anniversary, which Mounsey celebrates with her company's performance May 29, is being honored everywhere.
Mounsey is just one of many preaching the message across the land. At 72, however, an age when most retirees from the stage content themselves with their scrapbooks, she is going full-tilt. Tall, slender and still absurdly lithe, she exemplifies "the Balanchine look"--a physique that features the longest of narrow limbs, with a minimum of torso and a small head.
It's easy to see why Balanchine cast her as the Siren in "Prodigal Son," a role she made famous. But it's not easy to keep Mounsey on the subject of her own past glories; she prefers giving credit to others.
You don't hear her invoking Balanchine's name, yet she perpetuates his aesthetic and, like him, wants merely to illuminate the art of dance, not personalize its sponsorship.
