© Limelight Editions Available from Dance Books and Amazon www.paulszilard.com Renee Renouf reviews

Szilard's interests and contacts are wide and broad. His memoir enjoys an introduction by Clive Barnes, a Foreword by Judith Jamison and a Preface by Violette Verdy. Not bad, wouldn't you say? The contents indicate the whys of such endorsements.

Born in Budapest, Szilard and his sister enjoyed thorough exposure to the arts. His sister studied voice with piano training under the guidance of a Bela Bartok relative. Szilard's initial dance training, with V. G. Troyanoff over parental objection, proceeded via a work-study arrangement and the largesse of an aunt, earning Tamara Karsavina's approval. Traveling with Troyanoff and his ensemble to Sweden in 1938, Szilard left the company to avoid conscription into the Hungarian Army, made his way to the Salle Wacker in Paris where he studied with Olga Preobrajenska and Madame Roussanne. Roussanne was Nelly Guillerm's principal teacher a charming young Breton dancer now known as Violette Verdy.

Verdy is the first dancer of major importance Szilard discusses; this habit provides the reader with a feeling of closeness to those described, though sometimes subjects are concluded abruptly.

A former partner of Pavlova, Aubrey Hutchins, ballet master at the Opera Comique, engaged Szilard. In London he studied with Stanislas Idzikowsky. When auditioning for David Lichine, Georg Solti played the piano. Accepted into the Ballet Russe (the de Basil one surely) Szilard's Hungarian passport prevented his joining the company for an Australian tour, presumably the second of three. His despondency was softened by meeting Ariane Pulver, a Dalcroze exponent from Switzerland, companion and later wife.

Living a borderline existence, teaching, performing, Szilard's expired visa brought him 24 hours notice to leave England. Borrowed money took Szilard and Pulver to her parents' home in Switzerland just before Hitler closed the borders. Switzerland also asked aliens to leave. Pulver's mother had a contact with the Spanish consul, who got the pair a visa; at the border Szilard managed to escape being deported with a postcard bearing the signature of a friend named Franco. The next 1941 adventure was to obtain a visa to Portugal as prelude to America; display of wits, circumstance and timing. These engrossing paragraphs conjure remembrances of the refugees wanting to see The Statue of Liberty by whatever means possible.

 

A description follows of waiting on Ellis Island for entrance into the Promised Land; a two week visa before the couple set off, separately, for Manila, where they spent World War II. Szilard's description of the Japanese occupation and its soldiers' behavior as the Americans bombed Manila is accurate, vivid, and horrendous. Szilard and Pulver had survived by teaching. Possessionless, Szilard was asked to mount a show and dance for General MacArthur; the Army supplied him with 100 pairs of slippers and an equally generous cache of toe shoes and tights.

Szilard then opened The Blue Elephant bar for U.S. officers. Hilarious improvisations with a douche bag for Coca-Cola syrup; made scads of money. Then to get out of Manila with a legit visa to the U.S. One of two false starts, then a 35-day voyage to Seattle, then San Francisco and St. Francis Hotel in rags; shopping spree.

Szilard then relates a hodge-podge series of experiences teaching; Long Island and Texas, Ballet Arts and Katherine Dunham and auditioning: Agnes de Mille. A guest appearance in Portugal provided him with a reunion with Serge Lifar and a partner in Sonia Arova. Through her we get a thumbnail sketch of Erik Bruhn before segueing into Szilard's beginnings as an impresario. In the beginnings stages he and Nora Kaye danced with the Komaki Ballet. His sometimes raucous description of their partnership is wonderful as are paragraphs on Kyra Nijinsky, who I knew in San Francisco.

Szilard's success in Japan enabled him to book New York City Ballet in Japan in 1958 where the company was a fantastic success, in Australia where it bombed and in Manila where it nearly sweated to immobility. He devotes several pages to Balanchine and some two to Lincoln Kirstein, both with vivid immediacy.

Szilard explains why he switched from booking artists in the United States to booking exclusively outside it, but not before a few episodes. After the Le Theatre d'art du Ballet, and commenting on artists and critics, he devotes himself to the Alvin Ailey Company and their lengthy association. This portion of the memoir includes vivid portraits of Judith Jamison and Alvin Ailey plus the famed Pas de Duke which Jamison danced with Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Under My Wings is scarcely deathless prose but it is diverting, conjuring up for this reader years and events shaping the world, personal adolescence and young adulthood. It can be safely asserted this Hungarian, for all his trouble with his passport, has done the US dance world many good deeds.