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The telling gesture: on his centennial, companies rediscover the subtle power of Antony Tudor.

Article Excerpt
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The first time I encountered Antony Tudor, he was sitting in front of the rehearsal studio of the Joffrey Ballet. He was overseeing the reconstruction of his Offenbach in the Underworld, the underbelly of and antithesis to Massine's frothy Gaite Parisienne. Dressed in a crisp white shirt and black tie, with a ram-rod back and piercing eagle eyes, he suddenly jumped to his feet to demonstrate a semicircle of flitting, flirtatious piques in arabesque. For 30 seconds he channeled the essence of the ballet's Operetta Star. Then he returned to his seat, ram-rod back in place, and stared forward with an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile as if to dare anyone not to take in what he had demonstrated. It became apparent that still waters run deep.

Later in my career, when I danced Tudor's Continuo, choreographed to Pachelbel's Canon in D Major (before it became the public domain of funeral parlor television ads), the movement spoke clearly, even without Tudor's direct coaching. Requiring tough weight changes, subtle musical phrasing, and off-balance turns, the choreography demanded technique secure enough to be concealed for the larger artistic picture. We were, after all, supposed to evoke images of angels gliding through the ether.

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This year marks the centennial of Tudor's birth, and companies around the world are heralding that fact. Seldom has a choreographer been so simultaneously revered, misunderstood, and questioned. Some people--even die-hard ballet aftcionados--don't get him at all. Or they think the ballets look dated. Others (like me) hail his genius. This year,...

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