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- [00:03]
A
President of the Juilliard School, artistic director of the Vail Dance Festival, and former principal dancer with New York City Ballet, Damian Woetzel is a visionary and arts advocate, bringing together today's most creative voices and unlikely pairings in dance and music. Damian's experiences as a dancer and arts administrator paved the way for his current role, where he is shaping the next generation of artists and emphasizing the importance of art in society.
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My goodness, when the idea of Juilliard was raised, I thought, isn't that the place where it all comes together? Isn't it? All of it? It's the future of the arts. It's the future of what art can be. It is giving the next step to young people. It's arts policy. It's how a school, how art fits into its. Into its surrounding, into the world.
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A
You're listening to Moving Moments, the podcast that explores the dance world's most accomplished and groundbreaking artists. I'm your host, Alicia Graff, Mack Dean and director of Dance at the Juilliard School. During each episode, you'll hear me talk with some of my closest friends and most trusted colleagues as we sit down to hear about their creative process and how they are changing the dance world on and off the stage. Well, good evening, everyone. Thank you. Thank you to the Hear It Here series at Lincoln center and to Artful Narratives Media. And thank you, Damian, for being here in conversation with me today.
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B
Thank you, Alicia. Good to see everybody. Nice to be here.
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A
I think it's really fitting that we are sitting here in the Lincoln center campus, as you are a former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, the current president of the Juilliard School, and the artistic director of Vail Dance Festival, I imagine that this place, this campus, our home, holds so many moving moments for you. So before we get started talking about our shared histories and your vision for the school and for the dance world, I just want to know a little bit more about your beginnings, where you're from, and how you fell in love with dance.
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B
You know, proximity is sort of everything. How close we are to things, how we enter things. And sitting here in this particular place, it's just filled with ghosts. It's filled with things that I remember from my first time actually walking through here. There was a sense of thoroughfare between the stage entrance of New York State Theater, where City Ballet is, has been since the theater opened to all of the connective things years ago. I remember there was a gym downstairs. And my first season at City Ballet, I was still going. Yes, I'm going to Go to the gym, because I need to make sure I'm strong enough for the partnering and all these things. I remember kind of growing up essentially in these blocks here. So it's great to be sitting here with you to get to talk about all the things. So but your question is, you know, where did it come from or start? So I was very lucky. I have a brother, and my brother and I both had a lot of lessons growing up of various kinds. Grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. When I was four, I ended up going down the street and taking my first ballet class in Auburndale, Massachusetts. I also played the flute, played the guitar. There were other things. And I pretty quickly segued from Newton to Boston to the Boston Ballet. And by the time I was seven, I was performing in the Nutcracker. And I did Fritz and the Nutcracker a long time. They kept letting out the pants. And there was just something about being on stage. And it was the first experience of being on stage. And that would keep me going throughout the year for the once a week of ballet class, which I understood I was thinking about before this conversation. You know, I remember doing my first tour jete. I actually remember, like figuring out which way it went, which was complicated for like a 7 year old, but I really enjoyed what I thought it was. And then a few years later, I started doing it a little more and I realized, oh, this is my thing. This is my thing. I was 11 and I said, I'm going to be a dancer.
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A
I have so many memories like that. Those are these formative memories of being in motion and getting those steps and feeling that aha moment. And I think this is what carries us through even to today in our respective roles at Juilliard. Remembering what that felt like, remembering what it felt like to get the step and how those small victories build on each other and create what it is that you understand your excellence to be. And what brought you to New York City. How did you make it here?
- [05:08]
B
So we're going to both talk about this, right? We got to talk about how we all got here. By the time I was 15, my family had moved to Los Angeles. There was a company called Los Angeles Ballet. There have been many, but this was that incarnation. And I ended up dancing in New York for the first time. The Joyce Theater had just opened. It's 1983, and I had my New York debut at 15 at the Joyce Theater. And that was a real turning point. That was where it suddenly, this is now not theoretical, this is real. And I took my first class at School of American Ballet. On that tour, I remember I went and took 5, 30 intermediate meds as a guest. It was the first time I stood outside the Juilliard School. I looked up the first time I really spent a good amount of time standing outside on the plaza here at Lincoln Center. I'd been to see City Ballet and ABT many times by then, but it was the first time I really spent time. And I was looking at it, and I thought, this could be home. And then pretty shortly thereafter, I ended up at SAB and then joined New York City Ballet just after my 18th birthday, did the workshop, SAB workshop in Juilliard Theater. And I remember that very clearly. I always think about that when I go there and I watch the performances of our Juilliard students, or I'm involved myself in some way. And I remember that being such a crucible, because that's what happens. There are these moments that propel you forward. Some of them are about a performance. Some of them are about just meeting somebody who gives you that. What you said, the aha moment. That thing where you realize, oh, there's a next step. And to me, that's the most. That's the thrilling thing of it all, is just that sense of possibility. For me, it was always about what might happen. It wasn't about nailing it down, really. It was about what could happen. That's how I got here. What about you?
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A
Well, I'm originally from Columbia, Maryland, which is not so far. We used to drive up on the weekends. I would come up and take class at Broadway Dance center, and I would have private lessons by David Howard when I was preparing for competitions and things like that. But I spent two summers at School of American Ballet, and I remember driving through the Lincoln Tunnel feeling like, ooh, when I get to the other side of this tunnel, I'm in my city, New York City. It felt like where I belonged, where I should be. And, you know, I think what's so beautiful about the field of dance is that it's passed on through people. The history lives in us, the information lives in us, and then we pass it on. And I think we've had some of the same teachers. So I studied with Stanley Williams and Richard Rapp and Crammy and, yeah, I believe you may have had those same teachers as a young person. What did they teach you? And what was it like to be in this legacy of the house of Balanchine and Jerome Robbins?
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B
It was just thrilling is what it was. I mean, so we could spend the rest of Our lives, talking about teachers, about the roll call of people who opened the door to the next thing. And, you know, you mentioned three of the teachers. Those were actually my three teachers at sab, at School of American, mostly, I had Andrei Kramerevsky, who is affectionately known as Krame, who brought just larger than life sense of Russian scale, movement, all the big steps, the things that you kind of dreamt about doing when you thought, I'm going to be a leading virtuoso, essentially. And I loved Krami just no end. I thought he was just the heart of goodness and the most enthusiastic and thrilling kind of presence in a room. And then Stanley Williams was, to my mind, the greatest teacher of ballet, of ballet, sophistication, of musicality. It was church, right? It was like you walked into that class and you stood silently and with a sense of purpose. Stanley's very presence kind of elevated you, and it was mysterious and it was asymptotic. You never knew where you would get to, and you'd wait and you'd try. And over the years, occasionally Stanley would say something like, that was good, dear. And it was just like, wow, we're there. He was the teacher of teachers, I will say. You know, being in Stanley's class was a. It was a place where dancers came, it drew dancers of distinction. So it was not uncommon that, you know, Rudolf Nureyev would walk into class and take his Rolex off and put it on the bar, and Jackie O would be sitting in the front watching. It was serious, it was amazing. It was thrilling. Misha would be there, all the City Ballet stars, and, you know, a few ballerinas would be allowed to take that as well. Importantly, my, at that point, future wife, Heather Watts, who I'd see in class. And so Stanley's class, to me, was the transformational possibility. So, yes, we shared those people who were the formative influences of dance in America, and we, in many ways, are standing very clearly on all of that.
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A
That reminds me of someone who I hold very dear, Arthur Mitchell, who is also part of the New York City Ballet family, as someone who was also a principal dancer in the company and then founded Dance Theatre of Harlem. And that's where my professional history started. I joined dance theater at 17 years old under his direction. And something he would always say to me, because I like to put my legs up and I always like to use my extension, and I loved feeling my length. But he would say, don't give it all away, Alicia. He would say, you have to make them think that you're Working really hard for it. So he taught me the pas de deux in agon and I loved performing this work. But he would say, you can't just throw the leg up. And the coaching, that really fine tuned, intentional coaching, I'm certain that he learned through his time at School of American Ballet. Working with Balanchine and musicality was also something that he concentrated on.
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B
Juilliard brings it all together for me because it brings together the full possibilities in music and dance and in drama, which was always a part of my sense of purpose around being an artist, around society, supporting a culture that knits us together. But Mr. Mitchell, who was such a hero in so many ways as a dancer, as a pioneer, as a black male dancer in America during the civil rights era, it's just an extraordinary sense of strength and purpose and knowledge. And through it, when I hear you talking about it, I had a few experiences with Arthur, Mr. Mitchell, particularly in Slaughter on 10th Avenue, which Mr. Balanchine revived for him and Suzanne Farrell. And he coached me in it. And he just brought it all. He brought the sense of vaudeville, he brought the sense of about what it meant. And you know this story because we've talked about it before, but there's a particular moment in it where the hoofer walks flat across the stage to greet the stripper who's at the bar. And it's not easy to walk flat across the stage. It's like, you know, it's like you're in ballet, you're going to walk sideways. That's no good. You don't want to walk straight like this. That's no good. And Arthur said, no, your cheekbone has to hit the light. And it was just like an old vaudeville trick. It was fantastic. And to watch him do it was just thrilling.
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A
I wonder, for you, learning to dance, understanding the practice is the true definition of what I call grace and grit. Because we're working towards perfection, whatever that means. And working through those small details often is difficult. The days are long, sometimes they're painful, sometimes you're still trying to figure things out. We work collaboratively with others, and sometimes, as you know, those conversations can be difficult until we start to speak the same language as dancers. But then there's the high of performing. What does that high feel like to you? And was that important to you when you were dancing?
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B
The performance was. That was what I came for. I enjoyed rehearsal. I enjoyed the camaraderie of it. I enjoyed the elbows kind of knocking out the things that were in the way of it all and things Like Stanley's class, which had just a sense of kind of higher calling. I loved. But in the end, it was about going on stage. Just like from the beginning in the Nutcracker, there was like this sense of. I don't know if they still say the word ham, but I think I brought a little of that in the beginning, and then I had to kind of find my way to actually channel that. But what I loved about performing in itself, and I see this even clearer now that I've been off the stage, retired for a number of years, is that you just don't get to do that. It's a special world. I mean, there are things that go on in there that are just in another plane. And there's the thrilling parts, the sense of danger and trying something that could maybe go wrong. And you're going to push that, push that. And then there's simply the kind of profoundness of, you know, I remember I danced, dances at a gathering. Jerome Robbins. Great masterpiece. Virtually my whole career, and in my last season doing it. Curtain goes up and you walk out downstage left, and you survey the stage. Quiet, quiet. Sh. Curtain goes. Whoosh. Feel the air. You walk out, you stand. The pianist is waiting for you to take three steps. On your third step, he's going to hit the first note. And you don't get to do that in life. It's an amazing thing. And then it unfolds, and you feel the wind in your hair, and you dance with your colleagues and you have intimate kind of scenarios unfolding through dance, through music that are truly otherworldly. How about you?
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A
I mean, that's the whole reason why there is this sense of freedom. I always say that I know that I hit the high note, hit that high C, when I completely lose myself. And that's where profound technique meets the artistry, so that you can lose yourself. I'm looking over at the stage door of the Koch Theater and I'm thinking about one of my most profound performance moments or moving moments. I'd actually stopped dancing. Well, I've stopped dancing a couple times, but really, the last time I stopped dancing, I'd had a back injury, and I was living at home in St. Louis with my husband, and I was pregnant. And Robert Battle, the artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at the time, asked Alicia, would you come back and take your final bow? With Ailey performing the umbrella girl role in Revelations, we're doing a live recording for Alvin Ailey at Lincoln Center. Not knowing the toll that having a baby would take on your body? I said, yes. How long will I have? He said, you'll have eight weeks after the birth of your son. And I thought, okay, I'll be fine. I'll be back in eight weeks. I have a picture of myself standing out there with Ms. Jamison, with my son in the stroller, thinking, well, this is a moment. I grew up watching Revelations on a VHS tape, thinking, what would it feel like to embody this, to hold this history in my body? And you think as you get older, you lose some of the technical brilliance or you lose something. But actually having had now the responsibility of a child, understanding the weight of what that means to be a mother, holding that umbrella, and then ushering this young couple through their baptism into the next stage of their life, I got it. And I thought, this is the moment. This is why we have to keep going, or else we'll never understand what it means to embody something and to refine something beyond the technical aspects. So I'm so grateful for those things, because you're right, they don't happen in life just walking down the street. Most of the time, you cultivate it until at some point, it unleashes free. Before you retired, you were starting to think about next steps. That's such a hard thing, I think, for someone who's dedicated their life to the one thing to achieving that dream, and you've made such an incredible transition, and then you've created transition for others. How did you begin thinking about what your next steps would be?
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B
And I'm going to turn this right back around on you very quickly, because there's lots of stories to talk about that we share in a way. So I come from a family where my mom was a program officer in unicef. My dad was a professor of international law. My godfather helped my father with the foundation trying to create an international criminal court. I grew up going to conferences around the world, and the sense of how everything fit together was part of my upbringing. It was a time of certainly the growth of everything, from certainly the founding of the United nations, binding the world in a common purpose of peace, which is, you know, that aspiration dashed over and over again. But that sense of purpose around what we can do together, that we can't do by ourselves. Essentially, my sense of purpose about being a dancer, as I said at 11, was clear. This is it. But I quickly returned as I made my way advanced at City Ballet, became a principal dancer, and I started becoming someone who did more than simply perform. I choreographed, I led groups. I became someone who went to conferences myself and talked about the arts. And at a certain point, it led me to going to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard to advance my education. I was very fortunate to be able to do that while I was still dancing. And it was setting the table for a life of possibility. I worked on the Obama campaign on arts policy. I ended up, after I retired from City Ballet in 2008, having a program on arts policy with the Aspen Institute. I was fortunate to be able to give away money after the 200809 financial crisis for ballet through the Jerome Robbins foundation, which was an amazing thing to do. I was teaching at certain points. I ran a school for New York State. I was tireless and I was greedy, and I wanted to do a lot. And my goodness, when the idea of Juilliard was raised, I thought, isn't that the place where it all comes together? Isn't it? All of it? It's the future of the arts. It's the future of what art can be. It is giving the next step to young people. It's arts policy. It's how this, how a school, how art fits into its city, into its surrounding, into the world.
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A
And as the president of the Juilliard School, what is your vision and what the school means to the rest of the world?
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B
So, for me, I'm tremendously excited just to think about that sense of possibility, that sense of what these young artists are going to do. And it's not just performers, obviously. It's composers, it's choreographers, it's directors, it's playwrights, it's teachers that are being created there in those rooms every day, just like they have been for over 100 years. And you can see that lineage. When I learned that the Juilliard String Quartet's motto was, play old music like it's new and new music like it's old, I said, this is my place. This is it. This is the thing I believe in. But I also took a step back, and by the time July 1st rolled around, which was my first official day and yours, because I got to hire you, during that year, I had a belief that what Juilliard represented and what could represent and what our path was, was the path of excellence through creativity and inclusivity, that you cannot be truly excellent unless that education encompasses that sense of curiosity and creativity. And it's not training, it's actually education. It's a higher goal. And that sense of inclusivity that all who could achieve there, that all who had the sense of talent and purpose and drive have the access to that level of education and that has maintained over these years. We started the Creative Enterprise program that first day. We started our Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging program that very day. Building on the things that existed, the great work that had been there, we picked up and we said, now is our chance, now is our moment. Now is our new frontier, our chance to take this step forward. It has been quite a ride. Five years and some months in, through a pandemic, through massive social changes and upheavals and culture has brought us through. That sense of drive and purpose, of returning to the bar, of returning to your scales, of returning to your Shakespeare has taken the school forward. And in our deepest, most challenging moments, five weeks into the pandemic, putting together our first kind of all school project, Bolero, bringing together the dancers, the actors, the musicians, alumni, we knew that again, it's what we can do together was going to be so much greater than what any one of us could do. So when you ask me that question, I think about that, I think about three divisions and I'm kind of going to take a whack at that word because it's prescriptive saying division, that's not good, right? There's dance, there's drama and there's music. Together make sure it's working for you. Saying, oh, are we taking advantage of this opportunity for our students, for our field? Because that will be the field. That is the field to come. That's our mission. And twin with that is that everybody who can do has the opportunity to do it. And in this moment, that's become just a battle for affordability, A battle to be ever more tuition free with an ultimate goal of having a tuition free Juilliard. These are what I stay up all night thinking about going, how are we going to do it? How are we going to have those creative aha moments? And honestly, when I think about that, I think, and that's why it has to be affordable, because it's not right to push something to be that excellent, that forward thinking and then say it's only for people who can afford it. That's not okay. So that's the kind of thing I know that you and I stand tall and along with all of our staff, all of our artistic leaders, your fellow deans and directors in music and drama and in our preparatory division and in our extension division, there's so many ways that Juilliard actually intersects and connects. But I think those through line principles are what I dream about and what I push for. And I think that's the future.
- [25:02]
A
Damian, as I listen to you, I think about all the things that I admire about you. And one of the key things that I always say, how does he do that? Is just you have this boundless energy. And I think when you're a leader who is in service of others, in service to young people, our culture, the world, you have to cultivate that in yourself. And my last question to you is, how do you do that day to day? How do you hold on to that North Star? How do you hold on to your energy? How do you hold on to your joy as you walk through the hallways of the Juilliard School and the hallways of these incredible spaces of culture, music, drama, dance in Lincoln Center?
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B
So I think we are in community. We're in community. I am blessed with an extraordinary partner in life. My wife, Heather, who is my thought partner. All the possibilities and the ideas and the things that come out of our life together, bless me. And that sense of circles that are ever expanding and the people you get to talk to and the inspiration. My friends, my colleagues, my partners, both in Juilliard and outside of Juilliard City Valley, used to have eight shows a week. Some of you may remember that. Two on Saturday, two on Sunday. I wanted them all. I loved to dance. And if I didn't dance that much, if I only danced three times a week, I just didn't dance as well. It just wasn't as good. So I need to remain active. I need my brain to move, and that's where it comes from. The last thing I'll say about that is the idea that what we get to do is passed to a new generation gets realer and realer. So in a funny way, the energy is building. We talk about just now, before this, we were talking about the graduating class, about where they're going, how they're doing, where they are going to land. And that is primary. And it's even more primary when we think about what it could mean. When I see what they can do, when I see how they go out and they create their own futures with the foundations that we are able to provide, that is what it's about. That's what we get to do.
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A
And I see that made real every day, which gives me the energy and the hope and actually the idea that I achieved my dream, this idea that we worked so hard to make it to some point and actually fulfill it is so affirming. Everything else from here is like icing on the cake. And why not share it?
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B
Hear, hear.
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A
Thank you, Damian. So much for this conversation. I have loved working with you and I've loved having this conversation.
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B
Thank you, Alicia. Right back at you.
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A
Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Moving Moments. If you like what you heard, please tell your friends about it. Spread the word. Be sure to follow the show, rate us, and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. To keep up with future episodes, follow us on Instagram at Moving Moments Podcast and Visit us at artfulnarrativesmedia.com Tune in next month as we hear another inspiring artist's moving moment.