Merrill Brockway: a master filmmaker who trusts the dancing.

AT THE RECEPTION Nonesuch Records held last fall to launch its videocassette series, The Balanchine Library, company president Robert Hurwitz said that producer-directors Merrill Brockway and the late Emile Ardolino trusted George Balanchine's work as Balanchine trusted the music. They had, Hurwitz said, the courage to let the work be itself. He was echoing the famous question that Balanchine, still smarting from an earlier director-driven fiasco with German television, put to Brockway on their first meeting: "Will you trust the dancing?"

In his long, much-awarded career, Brockway has had the courage and the know-how to collaborate with major choreographers in translating their visions onto the television screen (Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, Twyla Tharp...). And of the first ten tapes released in The Balanchine Library, Brockway directed seven. These include television translations of ballets for Dance in America and the first three offerings in the new and important series, The Balanchine Essays.

Starting with a first program on the arabesque, The Balanchine Essays embody lecture-demonstrations, which are led by Balanchine master teacher Suki Schorer and master dancer Merrill Ashley and cover specific aspects of Balanchine style. As the name suggests, these are essays on the distinctive look of Balanchine ballets, not sample classes. Brockway says that they were intended first of all as an archival recording of elements of style, and secondly to assist professionals who need more information about Balanchine; a surprise to the creators was the great interest the Essays also hold for a wider audience.

Schorer says of Brockway as director: "He was so easy to work with--relaxed. But when he needed to be on top of the situation, he was there. Because he had worked with Mr. B, he was very careful with the camera positions-to show the movements clearly--for example, from the [dancer's] exact front. He's so wise about the camera." It was Brockway who suggested the format in which Schorer and Ashley interact with a variety of other dancers.

Merrill Brockway and I talk in the sun-filled house in Santa Fe, where he now lives, although he makes frequent forays to New York City. A soft-spoken, warm, and lively person like your favorite uncle, he clearly feels affection as well as respect for artists he has worked with.

He is eager to talk about "the system," an analytical plan he uses for directing dance, which embodies his orderly but flexible approach to collaborating with choreographers--not rules but guidelines "for a smooth journey." He says, "It starts when you look at a dance. What is this dance about, and how can I enhance it for television? Very specific questions: What are the camera possibilities? What is its internal logic?" He shows me an outline of the system, which he is about to use in teaching a workshop in San Francisco on filming dance. It makes a pungent exposition of points to be considered, such as, "The director must learn the piece so that he could dance it, if he could dance . . . Never treat dancers like stone bearers for the pyramids! . . . Adjust the geometry; that is, from the stage rectangle to the television triangle . . . This is a plug for the necessity of translation." And for the cameras: "Frame tight but don't cut any appendage! . . . Lead, don't follow!" And so on through postproduction, involving further discussion with the choreographer.

WE TALK ABOUT HIS EARLY LIFE.

Growing up in a small town near South Bend, Indiana, Brockway began training in piano at seven. He says, "I remember the day when I was nineteen, the revelation that I was not Horowitz. But I thought about it for a while, and it wasn't devastating. I loved music. I told myself, There's a place for you in music. I don't know what it is yet, but you will find it."

After studying at Indiana University and serving three years in the army, he moved to New York City to attend Columbia College for his B.A., acquiring a broad and deep grounding in the humanities, and earned a M.A. in musicology from Columbia University in 1951. Along the way he discovered Martha Graham's work. "That had an immediate impact," he comments. "My gut understood it. I always refer to Martha's work as mother's milk."

He began touring as an accompanist to singers and instrumentalists, "which I think defined me in some way," he says, as he looks at his years of televising the arts. "I think now the mark of who I am is: I'm an accompanist. I'm not a soloist. I can support the soloist very well. It's by nature, and it's what I enjoy doing."

Restless with piano accompaniment, however, he found a job in 1953 at the CBS television affiliate in Philadelphia. He learned the television field from the ground up, and within eleven months was appointed a director. "By this time," Brockway says, "I had made a basic decision that I was not in this for money or fame. It was working with people--good people I could learn from--and what I was interested in was the performing arts: dance, music, and drama," three areas he has worked in throughout his career.

By 1968, he was producer-director for the renowned CBS arts series Camera Three, based in New York City. An important experience for him there was working with Merce Cunningham, the first of several choreographers who Brockway feels pushed him in new directions. Cunningham encouraged him to try such experiments as dividing the screen into quadrants to learn how many of Cunningham's simultaneous stage actions the viewer could absorb--about three, they decided. Brockway's work began raking in awards, including his first two Emmys. In 1975 the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts was already sponsoring a Merrill Brockway retrospective.

That same year Jac Venza invited him to join PBS as series producer for the brand-new and exciting Dance in America. Emile Ardolino became coordinating producer. Brockway took with him Judy Kinberg, who is now senior producer for the series. His programs at Dance in America were to earn three more Emmy awards (1979, 1984, 1987).

"I'm often curious why dance is so important to me," says Brockway, who has covered everything from Katherine Dunham to postmodern and Dancers of Bali. "It wasn't only assignments. What it comes down to is that at least half the world doesn't give a damn about bodies moving, but I'm with the other half that does. Watching dance is aesthetically fulfilling to me."

At Dance in America, Brockway and Ardolino determined their priorities: first, the best existing choreography (commissioning new work was not part of their mandate); second, the best performances; third, the best productions. Collaboration with the choreographers, rather than the imposition of a director's interpretation, was to be the rule. "Emile and I agreed and insisted on it," Brockway says. "He had such respect for the artists, and so did I. But we talked back to them! Because we respected their work."

THE FIRST MEETING BETWEEN BROCKWAY and Balanchine resulted in a major coup: getting the reluctant choreographer on board for the third season. The musical background the two shared presumably figured strongly in Balanchine's decision.

Brockway talks at length about their extensive collaboration. "Before I started to work with Balanchine, he said, 'How much do you know about ballet?' And I said, 'Nothing.' He said, 'Good, I teach you.' And we would sit and he would offer little essays about how a step is not a note, for example. We talked about music, because he was first trained as a musician, and I understood what he was talking about. Once you see his architecture and his logic as it relates to music--'Ahh,' says I, 'now I'm understanding something.' Balanchine confirmed the system, the preparatory questions that I had, procedures that I was doing before we ever hit the studio.

"So then we get to the studio," Brockway continues, "and he often took my breath away because he was so fast: He was always willing to address my concerns and make changes that were responsive to the problem at hand.

"We broke a piece down into short sections of dancing to protect the quality of the performance. Once the dancers got on to that, they looked for it. Even the great Baryshnikov [in Prodigal Son] would say, 'Do you think we could isolate this section?' I said, 'Absolutely.'

"Balanchine wanted the dancing perfect. What he loved about our work--and what I loved about it--was that in the studio we had complete control. No matter who the dancer is, no full performance is consistent. In the studio Balanchine could get exactly what he wanted. I think that's why these tapes are valuable now.

"He respected his dancers. They contributed to his vision. In negotiating with Dance in America he was especially tough about the principals--they had to be paid properly, because they were doing God's work, as he was. And he respected my work because it made its own contribution to the whole."

One subject Brockway and Balanchine dealt with was the height of the camera lens. Balanchine didn't want it low, as was traditional (in order to make the jumps more spectacular). "Looks like trick," he would say. Another problem was how to show a body traveling. If the camera was too close and moving with the dancer, Balanchine would point out, "See, only scenery moves"; if too far back so the figures were small, "Ants." Brockway's solution was to let the dancer, in medium shot, travel from one side of the frame to the other while the camera remained still.

Balanchine's influence on the system continued into postproduction. "Girish Bhargava, my editor from the beginning, was a secret weapon. But at first we couldn't figure out where exactly to make an edit, since you have thirty frames per second! Balanchine solved the dilemma: 'At the bottom of the breath'--just before the dancers are beginning to inhale, so that the impetus keeps going.'"

Asked what he considers the primary accomplishment of Dance in America, which established a large, loyal audience in those early seasons, Brockway points to the success of Graham's Clytemnestra in 1979 as symbolic: "From the beginning, people were willing to look at what we presented. They were curious enough to stay with the series. It was a good, healthy audience and a smart audience. By the fourth year they had seen enough, and they knew enough, that they could accept Clytemnestra."

He goes on to talk about collaborating with Graham. "I suggested to Martha that the piece was too long for television. She agreed and, rather than cutting scenes, she trimmed thirty minutes [as if] with a razor blade to maintain the integrity of the piece.

"She said, 'I don't want the traditional wide shots in this. I want this to be close-ups.' Our agreement was, if she wanted a close-up where I couldn't find one, I said, 'You make the close-up for me.' And she did. Working on Clytemnestra was a thrilling experience for me."

Of his time at Dance in America Brockway says, "I was very proud of the work that was done, very proud of it. I felt it had integrity."

Since 1980 Brockway's work on the series has been on a freelance basis. That year he became executive producer of arts programming for CBS's (now-defunct) arts channel on cable TV. During its active early days, his dance subjects included a continuing collaboration with Balanchine on Robert Schumann's Davidsbundlertanze (now part of The Balanchine Library), modern dance choreographer May O'Donnell. and Twyla Tharp's Confessions of G Cornermaker.

"I was smart enough to ask Twyla to direct Cornermaker herself," he says, "and the result was the best-directed dance for television I've seen. She really interpreted the pieces for television.

"Twyla's always fighting because, for her, life is a disappointing compromise. I said, 'Just think what you're getting, not what you're giving up.' The technology is never up to her vision. She always wants what hasn't been invented yet. You need somebody like her to take advantage of everything the technology can do. Like other choreographers I've worked with, she pushed me to be more courageous than I thought I could be."

Brockway's prolific later output has included the theatrically released George Balanchine's The Nutcracker, for which he was coordinating producer (Ardolino directed, shortly before his death). It is now available on videocassette. Brockway has also made distinguished biographical documentaries, not only in the field of dance, but in music and drama, his other ongoing interests: Balanchine and Agnes: The Indomitable de Mille for Dance in America, as well as Stella Adler: Awake and Dream, and the recently completed longtime project, Tennessee Williams: Orpheus of the American Stage, with the important credit "A Film by Merrill Brockway."

In Santa Fe he works with the well-known flamenco dancer and artistic director Maria Benitez, serving on the board of her Institute of Spanish Arts, coordinating her lively new second company of young dancers and her teaching program in schools. Educating young sensibilities to the arts has become a high priority for him: "The only thing that's going to get us through is education."

Of Santa Fe he says, "I love living here. "My life is so much less stressful than in New York.

"But I don't know how I would feel if I weren't associated with Maria--a great artist. Artists are vital to me. They lead unglamorous daily lives of discipline and routine, but their work is full of passion. Each has a vision and feels responsibility to that vision. Balanchine, Martha, Merce, Twyla, Maria: the way they approach their work is completely serious. These are serious people."

The same must be said of Merrill Brockway.

Marilyn Hunt is a senior editor of Dance Magazine who divides her time between New York City and Santa Fe.