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From: "Peter McCrae" <>
Subject: [US-OBITS] TETLEY: Glenford Andrew Tetley 26/1/2007
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2007 04:20:45 -0800


Glen Tetley
Last Updated: 2:20am GMT 01/02/2007
The Telegraph.co.uk



Glen Tetley, the American choreographer who died on Friday aged 80,
pioneered a hybrid modern style of ballet that was considered by some the
art's salvation, and by others its ruin.

Tetley became a major international choreographer at his first attempt,
though he had not intended to do more than give himself, as a performer, a
good role to dance. With the atmospheric commedia dell' arte trio Pierrot
Lunaire in 1962, he created a modern ballet that crossed the fragile bridge
between contemporary dance and classical ballet, and became a defining force
in the reinvention of Ballet Rambert and the Royal Ballet.

His occupation of both the contemporary and the ballet worlds made him a
favourite choreographer for major stars seeking to branch safely into
modernism, among them Rudolf Nureyev, Anthony Dowell, Natalia Makarova and
Darcey Bussell. But his work was also divisive: some hailed him for
modernising classical ballet at a critical point, others criticised him for
polluting it with glib technical compromises.

Tetley was an unusually late starter in dance. He was an impoverished
medical student of 19 when he went to a Broadway theatre to borrow money
from a friend and was hired by Jerome Robbins at the stage door to perform
in On the Town. While completing a Chemistry degree, he took four dance
classes a day, and within three years became a sought-after soloist. He told
The Daily Telegraph in 1997: "I came in with a strong body because I had
spent two years in the US Navy doing combat and obstacle courses."

His fine feet and exceptionally light jump caught the eye of Martha Graham,
who insisted he join her company and then made him play the Snake to her own
Eve in her creation Embattled Garden, rehearsing the Snake's rape of Eve
repeatedly until she found it satisfactorily physical.

Tetley then switched to ballet and joined the classical American Ballet
Theatre and Joffrey Ballet. "I have always existed in both [dance] worlds
and have never felt them to be anything but one world," he later said.

Such an approach was unwelcome in New York, where ballet and contemporary
dance were firmly separated; but it led Tetley across the chasm between
American and European dance. Though never as original a figure in
international choreography as his compatriots Merce Cunningham and Paul
Taylor, Tetley became, in the 1960s and 1970s, the pioneer moderniser of
European ballet, combining balletic pirouettes and arabesques with the
earthy floorwork and acrobatic flexes of contemporary dance.

Critical recognition was instant when he made Pierrot Lunaire in 1962 to
launch the Glen Tetley Dance Company in New York. Set to Arnold Schoenberg's
disorientating half-spoken, half-sung cantata, it showed a moonlit pierrot,
danced by Tetley himself, swinging like a child on a steel play frame before
being lured into the adult world by a courtesan and a man in black. The
central role became a favourite of Rudolf Nureyev, and the ballet remains
popular to this day (the Royal Ballet performs it this season).

England particularly welcomed Tetley's style, finding him the most
approachable of the American modernists. Mounting Pierrot Lunaire for Ballet
Rambert in the late 1960s was the contemporary shot in the arm that the
company needed and was followed by two further successes: a Stockhausen
work, Ziggurat, and the T'ai-chi-inspired Embrace Tiger and Return to
Mountain, which, like Pierrot Lunaire, emphasised a timely new prominence
for modern design and electronic music.

Tetley gained notoriety with a ballet for Netherlands Dance Theatre,
Mutations, which featured nude dancers for the first time, and was then
invited by the new Royal Ballet director Kenneth MacMillan to give the
Covent Garden repertoire a shock too. This he did with two starkly
unclassical ballets: a 50-minute Stockhausen work, Field Figures (1970),
exploiting the flexible physique of the tall Deanne Bergsma; and the
torturous Laborintus (1972) for Nureyev and Lynn Seymour, using a difficult
Luciano Berio score.

Tetley's later ballets for Covent Garden took more digestible paths: the
1997 Amores and a restaging of La Ronde in 1995 honoured Darcey Bussell's
statuesque beauty in a bland, worshipful style. Tetley said of Darcey
Bussell: "[She] just has to lift her body up into an arabesque and it's
spiritual, it's physical, it's something that makes you believe."

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on February 3 1926, Glenford Andrew Tetley Jr came
from an old Shropshire family which had brought its Roundhead sympathies to
America after supporting the execution of Charles I. Glen's upbringing was
Baptist, and though he later preferred Oriental religions, a devotion to
spiritual search frequently found its way into his ballets.

After service in the navy, he took a BSc in Chemistry at New York
University. Thanks to a brilliant natural ability allied to iron
self-discipline, when he took up dance he made astounding progress very
rapidly. He alternated between classical ballet tours, Broadway and major
contemporary companies before, at 36, going solo with his own company.

Pierrot Lunaire was the first of some 60 ballets he was to make for
companies as diverse as Paris Opera Ballet and Dance Theatre of Harlem -
though America liked him much less than Europe. For the Royal Ballet, as
well as Field Figures and Laborintus, he created Dances of Albion (1980).
For the Royal Ballet's Anthony Dowell and the ex-Kirov ballerina Natalia
Makarova he created the duet Contredances in 1979. For the then London
Festival Ballet (later English National Ballet) he made Pulcinella in 1984,
and ENB and the Royal Ballet performed further Tetley ballets, such as
Voluntaries and Sphinx.

He became artistic director of the Netherlands Dance Theatre (1969-71), and
after his friend John Cranko's sudden death took over Stuttgart Ballet
(1974-76). He was also artistic associate of the National Ballet of Canada
(1986-89).

Glen Tetley lived between his New York base and an estate in Umbria. His
companion of more than 40 years, the dancer Scott Douglas, died in 1996.




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