American With Her Own Ballet Company

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31030, 9 April 1966, Page 2

American With Her Own Ballet Company

(By

ROBERT RICCI]

A wealthy American woman has built what is generally acknowledged to be the first complete dance centre in the United States.

Mrs Rebekah Harkness converted a 35room limestone mansion just off upper Fifth avenue in New York into the centre at a cost of about £350,000. It is known as the “Harkness House for Ballet Arts.”

One of her associates said that “Europeans are fascinated to hear a woman can have so much money and have her own private dance company.”

Mrs Harkness, who is in her late forties, is separated from her third husband and has reverted to the name of her second husband, the late investment banker, William Hale Harkness. She is president of a medical research foundation established by her late husband as well as director of the Harkness Ballet Company, which is now on a foreign tour. A composer herself, Mrs Harkness is the granddaughter of the late Thomas West, founder of a big trust company in St. Louis, Missouri, her birthplace. Asked why she built the dance centre here, she replied: “I never figured it out I just did what I wanted to do.”

She is still concerned, howb ever, that there should be more communication and coordination among choreographers, designers, and composers.

She is determined that better production and more creative ideas be exchanged by these groups, which tend to function as separate enti-

ties; hence, Harkness House. Mrs Harkness has provided a privileged setting for the dance, unmatched in the United States. The Mediter-

ranean-inspired town house has four big studios, smaller practice rooms, costume and fitting rooms, conference facilities where choreographers, designers and composers meet, a film library and screening facilities, a library of recorded music for the dance and an extensive collection of reference books. Facilities also include marble-tiled locker rooms and showers for dancers and trainees, a self-service cafeteria and dining lounge. The carved and painted ceilings, the ornamental plaster work, sculptured marble fireplaces, and the grand-scale central staircase with its iron balustrades reflect the beauty and refinement of the interior. Mrs Harness was mainly re-

sponsible for the interior decoration of the mansion. Salvador Dali’s golden chalice symbolising “life transformed by art” is in a glassencased display on the main floor.

Braque, Picasso, Matisse, and other painters whose works reflected the Diaghilev influence in ballet are represented in the house’s gallery. The gallery will rotate exhibitions of works devoted to or inspired by the dance. ‘This is a school—do not applaud after classes,” a notice on a bulletin board reminds the dancers. Two Groups Two groups study at the house—the Harkness Ballet which Mrs Harkness formed in 1964—and the trainees of Harkness House. The trainees are advanced dance students from the United States and other countries who are selected at open auditions to become participants in a special scholarship programme. The trainees, about 25 young men and women, usually are given renewable one year scholarships which come up for review every three months.

The scholarships, worth about £3OO entitle the trainee to a £l4 a week maximum living allowance and a meal allowance of 355.

Harkness House is the latest achievement of this woman who established the Rebekah Harkness Foundation in 1961 to encourage and promote American culture. Mrs Harkness studlies ballet and is up at 6 a.m. for one and a half hours’ daily practice.