Chancellor Emeritus Alex C. Ewing Pens Book
UNCSA Chancellor Emeritus Alex C. Ewing
Pens Book About His Mother, Lucia Chase,
Long-time Artistic Director of American Ballet Theatre
“BRAVURA!” now available through University Press of Florida and other booksellers
Alex C. Ewing didn’t exactly set out to write a book about his mother, Lucia Chase, but that’s exactly what he did.
As founding member, principal dancer and artistic director of Ballet Theatre (later American Ballet Theatre), Lucia (pronounced LEW-shu) Chase (1897-1986) was the reigning queen of American ballet for more than four decades.
“I tried to write about one or the other, and couldn’t,” said Ewing, chancellor emeritus of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA). “But Ballet Theatre was so totally connected with and dominated by Lucia Chase.”
He likened it to writing the history of Ford Motor Company and not having Henry Ford in the book.
“I could write about Ballet Theatre,” explained Ewing, who had worked there and now serves on the ABT board of directors. But he found that “you can’t write about Ballet Theatre without writing about Lucia Chase. She was there at the very beginning and she was there for the next 40 years.”
Chase was a founding member of Ballet Theatre in 1940 and became a principal dancer with the company. In 1945, she became artistic director – a position she held for an unprecedented 35 years. It was Chase who brought Rudolph Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, Fernando Bujones, Gelsey Kirkland, and eventually Mikhail Baryshnikov to ABT. Under her leadership, the company worked with such legends as Agnes de Mille, Anthony Tudor, Jerome Robbins, Eliot Feld and Twyla Tharp. Her drive, ambition, tenacity and money kept the doors open even during the lean years.
Ewing has combined his unique personal insights as Chase’s son, along with experience gained from his own professional dance and administrative career, to offer the definitive story of one of the true pioneers in the world of dance.
“BRAVURA! Lucia Chase and the American Ballet Theatre” is a 368-page book illustrated with 23 black-and-white photos. Available now from University Press of Florida, it is already a “DM Recommends” pick from Dance Magazine. And among the many testimonials included is this by Baryshnikov, whom Chase brought to ABT and who succeeded Chase as artistic director in 1980: “She was a realist, but she lived like an idealist, and in the darkest time she could force the sun to shine. She stood by us all with love and a will of iron and a heart like a lion. … When Ballet Theatre dances, it dances for Lucia.”
Of the book, Feld said: “Lucia Chase, an American original, is made vivid on these pages.” And the late Irina Baronova said: “A book that should be read by historians, ballet artists, ballet lovers, and book lovers in general. It is a fascinating story not only about the growth of ballet in America but also of the courage and persistence of a Great Lady.”
In addition to his work with ABT, Alex C. Ewing, along with Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino, revitalized the Joffrey Ballet during his tenure as general director in the 1960s. Ewing established the Lucia Chase Endowed Fellowship for Dance at UNCSA in 1988, when he was chair of the school’s Board of Visitors, before he became chancellor in 1990. He served as chancellor for the next decade, and retired in 2000.
Ewing said writing the book was a challenge, because he knew he had to be objective or he wouldn’t be taken seriously. The book is part family chronicle because, as he said, family was critical to Lucia Chase and to Ballet Theatre.
Despite her public persona, Chase was a very private person. Ewing believes that the public has no concept of her as a person. “They have no idea of the tragedy of her private life,” he said.
Ewing said some may have written her off – perhaps for her less-than-perfect ballet technique – but he is certain that “if you’d put anybody else in those shoes, I think Ballet Theatre would have closed in a year or two. … She was not a Balanchine-type director who could choreograph,” he continued. “And she was not an impresario-type like Diaghilev. What she was was the indomitable spirit and optimist.”
If it were not for Lucia Chase, Ewing said, there would have been no Pillar of Fire, and it would be hard to pick one work that has had more influence on the ballet world.
But what compelled him to write in the first place? “I sort of felt that I had to,” he said. “I think Ballet Theatre is distinctive and important in this country. What other dance company has been around for 70 years, toured to 29 countries overseas and 230 cities and towns in all 50 States, and performed in New York in front of more than 5 million people?”
And, remarkably, no one else has ever written a book about Ballet Theatre, he said, with the exception of Charles Payne, who created a coffee table book in the ‘70s.
Ewing said the entire process of writing BRAVURA! and getting it published took about six years. “Of course I made all the mistakes,” he said. He sent his very first draft to Random House and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, two major book publishers. They politely turned him down. Ewing did finally get an agent in New York to shop his book around, but he found University Press of Florida, which had published five dance books in the past year, on his own. He worked with two editors to polish his manuscript.
“I thought (writing a book) was a private thing you did in a room,” he admitted.
Would Lucia Chase like “BRAVURA!”? “I think she would,” Ewing said. “But she would probably say, ‘You didn’t have to include that.’” She never discussed money or her age, he noted.
Ewing echoed the great Baronova: “It is a fascinating story.”
“BRAVURA!” is available for $36 at the University Press of Florida online (www.upf.com/book.asp?id=EWING001) as well as other outlets such as Barnes and Noble, Borders and Amazon.com.