Peter Boal

A 30-Year Arc, From Star Student to Principal Dancer and Revered Teacher - New York Times

This is from a Jennifer Dunning story in the NYT. "One of the most revealing comments Mr. Boal made to me in a 1997 interview had to do with his teaching at the School of American Ballet. There he had taken over most of the classes of his own mentor, Richard Rapp, when Mr. Rapp retired. Mr. Boal talked of his teacher's insistence on meeting technique head-on. It was painful and humiliating, he recalled, but once you learned something, you never forgot it, and the experience was almost religious.

"Mr. Rapp teaches you to draw perfectly," Mr. Boal said. "He makes a draftsman out of you. There wouldn't be anything without the drawing underneath."

I don't expect to blog newspaper articles here very often, only - as here - where there's a quote that plays off some of the issues I've been talking to myself about. I've started another weblog Dancelab where I'm weblogging dance features.