Antony Tudor

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Antony Tudor in “Gala Performance”, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1941

Antony Tudor (4 April 1908 – 19 April 1987) was an English ballet choreographer, teacher and dancer.

Biography

Tudor, born as William Cook, discovered dance accidentally. He began dancing professionally with Marie Rambert in 1928, becoming general assistant for her Ballet Club the next year. A precocious choreographer, at age twenty-three he created for her dancers Cross Garter'd, then Lysistrata, The Planets and other works at the little Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, and his two most revolutionary, Jardin Aux Lilas (Lilac Garden) and Dark Elegies, before the age of thirty, himself dancing the main roles.

In 1938, he founded the London Ballet with Rambert members, including his future life partner, Hugh Laing^[1], Andreé Howard and Agnes de Mille, but, with the onset of World War II, in 1940 was invited with them to New York, joining Richard Pleasant's and Lucia Chase's reorganized Ballet Theater. Chase's company was later to become the American Ballet Theatre, with which Tudor was closely associated for the rest of his life.

He was resident choreographer with Ballet Theater for ten years, restaging some of his earlier works but also setting the new works, his great Pillar of Fire, Romeo and Juliet, Dim Lustre and Undertow, on that company by the end of the war. Retiring from dancing in 1950, he headed the faculty of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, taught at the Juilliard School recurrently from 1950 onwards, and was artistic director for the Royal Swedish Ballet from 1963-64. He choreographed three works for the New York City Ballet. Tudor continued his teaching career as Professor of Ballet Technique at the Department of Dance, University of California, Irvine from 1973 (work curtailed by a serious heart condition), while rejoining American Ballet Theatre in 1974 as associate artistic director, creating The Leaves Are Fading and Tiller In the Fields, his last major work, in 1978. With Laing, he continued seasonal residence in Laguna Beach, California.

Boston Ballet dancers perform Antony Tudor's Dark Elegies (2008)

The production was staged by one of Tudor's pupils, Donald Mahler, who has garnered a reputation for directing Tudor works with ballet companies throughout the world.^[2]

Tudor was awarded a creative arts medal by Brandeis University, the Dance Magazine and Capezio awards, New York City's Handel Medallion, and both Kennedy Center and Dance/USA National Honors.^[3]

Antony Tudor is generally accepted to be one of the great originals of modern dance forms. Along with George Balanchine, he is seen as a principal transformer of ballet into a modern art, but of a genius that uses, rather than proceeds from, ballet forms. His work is usually considered as modern “psychological” expression, but — like their creator - of austerity, elegance and nobility. Mikhail Baryshnikov stated: "We do Tudor's ballets because we must. Tudor's work is our conscience."^[4] A disciplined Zen Buddhist, Antony Tudor died on Easter Sunday in his residence at the First Zen Institute of America, aged 79.^[5]

Major works^[6]

References

1. ^ Re: Laing (1911-1988), see his entry in The Encyclopedia of Dance & Ballet, Mary Clarke and David Vaughan, eds (New York: Putnam, 1977), pp. 202f; and William Como, "Editor's log: Hugh Laing", Dance Magazine (July 1988), p. 32
2. ^ Douglas Sonntag (2009/Vol. 2). "Full Exposure: Ballet East Brings Modern Dance to East Austin". National Endowment for the Arts Journal. http://www.nea.gov/about/NEARTS/story.php?id=p05-full&issue=2009_v2. Retrieved August 12, 2009. 
3. ^ For these and other cited facts, see the obituary statement by Gary Parks, "Antony Tudor, 1908-1987", Dance Magazine 61 (August 1987): 19; Tudor's entry in The Encyclopedia of Dance & Ballet, Mary Clarke and David Vaughan, eds (New York: Putnam, 1977), pp. 341f; and On Point (Friends of American Ballet Theatre) 13, no. 1 (Fall 1986): pp. 3-4
4. ^ On Point 13, no.1, p. 3
5. ^ For an essay interpretation of the man and his art, see Olga Maynard, "Antony Tudor: A Loving Memoir", Dance Magazine: 61 (August 1987): pp. 18-19, illustrated. For closer interpretation of Tudor's work through the 1950s, see Olga Maynard, The American Ballet (Philadelphia: Macrae Smith Company, 1959), 'Antony Tudor', pp. 127-38
6. ^ A listing of Tudor's works and important dates is available at "Dancepages: Antony Tudor" (14 November 2005) [1]

See also

• Marie Rambert
• Agnes de Mille
• Maya Deren
• American Ballet Theatre
• New York City Ballet
• Broadway theatre

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