The Way They Were.

How well do we really know another person? It surprises me still that we know only pieces of the lives of other people, even those to whom we may be close. But it's especially true of those who have a prominent public persona that we may regard as a kind of possession, if not an obsession. For someone to project and maintain that kind of public image--whether it is intended to reflect, say, an aggressive business person, a good parent, a self-confident ballerina, or a determined dance pioneer--can become the work of a lifetime. But the person beneath that facade is usually far more complex, more human, than we may ever know. For example, George Balanchine, who never had children of his own, reportedly believed his ballerinas should have the experience of having children--and yet, paradoxically, he opposed their having husbands, who (he felt) reduced a female dancer's audience allure. Complex, yes--but that is my point. The public persona doesn't always reflect the more complicated truth.

This topic--how well we don't know other people--came poignantly to mind recently when two friends passed on within days of one another; women who had encouraged and helped many people in the dance world over their long careers. Reading their obits in The New York Times, I got to musing over just how much most of us might know about them, years after their reputations had reached their zenith.

Sonia Arova died February 11 at age 74. Who was she? What would you answer if someone asked you, right now, to summarize Arova's life?

"Oh, yes. She was the Bulgarian-born ballerina who studied with Preobrajenska and Lifar in Pads, fled to England during World War II, and danced with de Basil, Rambert, the Met, Ruth Page, London Festival, and Ballet Theatre, among many. She may be remembered most for having been Nureyev's partner in Don Q. when he made his U.S. debut in 1962 at BAM. Oh, yes, and she almost married Erik Bruhn, a dear friend and partner, just before he met the alluring young Nureyev. She was the first woman to direct the Norwegian State Opera Ballet in Oslo in a day and age--the mid- to late 1960s--when women had an impossible time of it in the male-dominated world of company directors."

You'd be right, of course. But, like all brief biographies, this one leaves the woman out of the encyclopedic listings, the Sonia out of the Dame Sonia Arova. And that is to leave out the most important aspects of this very gracious, giving, and loving woman who spent a lifetime in kindness and sharing her extraordinary talent.

Pauline Koner was 88 when she died February 9 after a long illness that had not--because of determination--prevented her from teaching modern dance at Juilliard until a year or so ago. How many choreographers, dancers, and students can tell us what she did?

"Oh, yes, Pauline Koner--petite, stylish, energetic--she was the modern dancer who never studied modern dance, on whom Jose Limon created one of the four roles in his masterpiece The Moor's Pavane in 1949. She was one of the first American dancers invited to teach and perform in the Soviet Union in the mid-1930s, was a pioneer in TV dance, worked for thirteen years with Doris Humphrey, and was married to a conductor named Fritz Mahler who is said to have been a cousin of Gustav Mahler."

Good. Two years ago I agreed, at her request, to help Pauline, who was concerned with preserving as much as she could of her sixty-some-odd years of choreography. She wanted nothing more, she said, than to set the solo work she considered her best, called The Farewell (done to the last movement of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde in memory of Doris Humphrey) on Baryshnikov for his White Oak Dance Project. I thought it was a good idea. But at age 86 Pauline was afraid to call him, she told me, because "he might not know who I am." So I called for her, repeatedly, leaving long messages. There was no reply. What Pauline feared was confirmed by silence. Despite her teaching at Juilliard, which made her flush with pride and feelings of usefulness and accomplishment, her time had passed. In that terrible awareness, she was not alone.

Pauline had written her autobiography, Solitary Song, published in 1989. Sonia, at the time of her death, was in the process of writing hers, but a lack of interest in her long, international career, and a lack of funds for dance books in general, may very well result in Sonia's story never being published. Nobody wants to be forgotten in their own lifetime. Our legends (and what qualifies a person as a legend?) need recognition at a time when it will help them continue to do, and to pass along, what it is they do so well. We risk losing the heritage of a life spent in the service of dance, vulnerable to extinction through neglect. What can we do about it? There are indeed solutions; this issue's Presstime News [page 38] tells how Katherine Dunham's home state took the initiative in keeping her heritage alive.

All of us, through awareness and sensitivity, can prevent feelings of uselessness in others to some degree. "I'm old and I'm fat and I'll never dance again," said Vanessa Redgrave as Isadora Duncan near the end of her life in the 1968 film bio. None of us wants to feel that way. Good and great works--ideas and methods, as well as choreography--can be preserved and renewed, but only if we take the time to value them. And to do that, we need to remember that the work and the person behind it are inseparable, that true appreciation of a dance heritage demands understanding the heart and mind that created it. In the endless cycle of things, old lives can be renewed, and made useful, just by our paying attention. Our reckless disregard for the past carries a very high price. We are who we were. Forgetting that, we pay dearly.

Richard Philp, Executive Editor