FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.qns.com august 18, 2016 • DANCE • The Courier sun 29 Sports Dance for Boys turns 8 There I stood on the dark stage; bowlegged, thumbs tucked behind my belt buckle, Stetson rakishly tilted to one side, butterflies swooping around in my stomach. The sound of Copland’s score drifting like heat waves out of the pit. I remember saying to myself: I did it, I am a real ballet dancer! Eight thousand hours of tendus lead me to this place. Rodeo was the kind of ballet I loved. The swordfighting wise-guy Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, the plucky gas attendant in Filling Station, the wacky Jester in Swan Lake, Puck, Bottom, Billy the Kid, and countless pirates and Nutcrackers - those were MY roles. My mentors were Freddie Franklin, Paul Sutherland, Flemming Flindt, and Jacques d’Amboise - men who could bring characters to life on stage- not just jump and turn. Men who could act and love and completely inhabit their character in that night’s ballet -- all while supporting and framing some of the most beautiful, strong women who ever danced. Those were my heros. I did a lot of other stuff to get to that first Rodeo. I grew up in East Texas and I didn’t see a ballet on stage until I was in one. I was a street clown, a musician, a break dancer, a soccer player- you name it, I tried it- but no ballet until I saw Mikhail Baryshnikov in White Nights. He opened that movie with the final solo from Young Man and Death, and I remember sitting there and saying I want to do that. I said this to my father and he notified me that starting ballet at 19 was the equivalent of being 5’8” and wanting to join the NBA! But because I was 19 , I thumbed my nose at him and left my home town for Dallas. I don’t think I could have gotten luckier in finding my teachers. The first was Natasha Krasovska. A great ballerina with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She led me to Flemming Flindt at Dallas Ballet. I didn’t know it at the time, but the Bournonville style of ballet is one of the best male ballet techniques and I soaked it up. Natasha’s Russian character style Bournonville, my first taste of Balanchine with Bill and Ann at Dallas Metropolitan Ballet, Ann’s crazy partnering and Bills pirouettes and double tours were everything to me. My first company was Tulsa Ballet Theatre. Roman Jasinski Senior saw on my resume that I had been a street clown and asked me to stay after the audition to do a funny walk for the character called Milk Toast in Lew Christensen’s ballet Filling Station. I made him laugh and to my amazement he gave me a job with the stipulation that I rehearse all day and come back at night and take the kids classes. My feet ached so bad after the first week I remember thinking I am not going to make it! I can’t walk much less dance. I persevered, standing in trash cans of ice water; starting late I didn’t have the bone density of the other dancers and had to endure the growing pains of the ballet dancer in fast forward. My ballet vocabulary was so bad I had to watch the others do the combinations and then mimic them. Then Freddie Franklin came along to teach Coppelia and cast me as Doctor Coppelius. Freddie loved that I could break dance and clown. He took me under his wing and taught me great roles like Johnny in Frankie and Johnny and the Peruvian in Gaite Parisienne. Freddie was the original Roper in Rodeo. I know what you are saying: What does this have to do with Sports Dance turning 8 and what the heck is it anyway? Well, I came up with the name Sports Dance for Boys after a friend of mine in New York asked me to teach her son ballet. I saw the scowl on the boy’s face and the groan of desperation and I thought I can’t call the class ballet for boys because even in New York City the boys have a seemingly built- in prejudice. So I called my class Sports Dance for Boys and I decided to teach a mixture of dance styles and sprinkle it with ballet. Sure enough, the boys loved it. Those little classes turned into Long Island City School of Ballet in Long Island City, NY. We are just across the east river from midtown Manhattan where I ended up after 25 years of dancing in ballet companies all over the world. We have two hundred or so young ballerinas, and thanks to Sports Dance, around 40 boys. You ask any ballet school and they will tell you that is a lot of boys! Now they don’t all go into the ballet program, mind you, but I do choreograph ballets on them. We have been gladiators, jedi’s, pirates, tomb raiders, zombies, and of course cowboys. We use stories that I make up or we make up together -- things that are from their life perspectives and experiences. I teach them how to partner the girls and do split jumps, coffee grinders, pirouettes, double tours en l’air, tour jetes, even the occasional tendu. Of course, I might not call the movements by their french names, but I didn’t know what those steps were called when I started. It doesn’t really matter to me if they become great ballet dancers. Some may, as there are about eight crossovers to the Graded Level Ballet program. I love this! If they have the bug for the technique and precision, it makes me very happy to give them a head start toward where ballet can take them. That brings us back to that dark stage. The long gaze out over the imagined plains of Oklahoma. Morning sunlight in our eyes. Eight strong, agile men starting the long day of cattle herding. We ride off the stage, sliding side to side with the rhythm of that great music. That is what ballet is to me: not an abstraction of life, but life itself, personified, to music. I want those boys to learn they can be whatever they want to be in this life they are not stuck with any stereotype. “Mom, I don’t take ballet, I take Sports Dance,” I hope will change to “I take ballet and I am proud of it”. Eric Ragan Director and Coach, Long Island City School of Ballet ADVERTORIAL
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