Ana Eustace, interviewer, May 17, 2017
BAE is honored to welcome guest choreographer, Margo Sappington. Her piece, “DUKE-IFY” will premiere at the BAE Studio Showing, February 21-23 at the Ailey Citgroup Theater.
Where did you receive your primary dance training?
I grew up in a small town called Baytown Texas. My ballet teacher didn’t live in my town, so she would come, first once a week, then twice a week, and we would dance at the roller skating rink, holding on to a chair. For a number of years she didn’t have her own studio, so we were in meeting halls, and roller skating rinks, and places like that. Houston was about 45 minutes to an hour away, and there were some other dance teachers there. Whenever ABT, Ballet Russe, or the Royal Ballet would come through town to dance at the music hall in Houston, the ballet masters would give master classes at someone’s studio. Those of us who were advanced or the ballet master felt were good enough, would get invited to come take company class on stage. You got to rub shoulders with company members, which was very exciting.
Mr. Joffrey invited me to New York at 17. I graduated high school on the 2nd of June, did a dance performance with my teacher on the 3rd, on the 4th I packed, on the 5th I left, and on the morning of the 6th I was in company class at the Joffrey Studios in New York City. I was in the company for almost two years, and I had an achilles tendon injury that really debilitated me, and at the time, there was no floor barre, or physical therapy, it was all about “sitting still.” I didn’t sit still and it didn’t get better. I ended up having to stop dancing, so I moved on to Broadway.
How did you discover your passion for choreographing?
When I was a senior in high school, we had a creative writing class, and I actually choreographed to the words that my friends and I wrote. So, I actually choreographed to words before I choreographed to music. It was my calling. You have choreographed for a number of companies around the world. What are some unique experiences you’ve encountered? In Venezuela, the studio was in an apartment building, and it had a walkway from one building to the other where people would walk through, sometimes with guns, and there were these people watching us the whole time. It was very odd and bizarre and interesting.
In Kazakhstan, the dancers were strictly Russian trained. Some were afraid of new movement, afraid to experiment. Some of them really embraced it. They were like sponges; they wanted to learn. The ballet masters would stand in the wings and scream the steps at them. I was there for two months and realized that they weren’t retaining the movement because they were expecting that someone was going to stand in the wings screaming the steps at them. So, I would play games with them. I would make them turn around, so they couldn’t follow each. They did all eventually come out of their comfort zones.
When choreographing a piece, how do you approach the creation process?
It depends upon the piece. Most of my pieces have an undertone of a story that is not necessarily important for everyone to know, but for me, I make a story or a theme that gives the piece cohesiveness. The biggest joy is to have a commissioned score. That way I can make a scenario and it can change when I need it to change. I really enjoy working directly with the composer. It’s very satisfying. In the “Caravan” section of “DUKE-IFY”, I knew that I wanted a smoky, mysterious mood, with people coming, going, coming, going, with little variations going on, and not everyone doing the same thing together.
Choreographer Margo Sappington rocks Dallas-Fort Worth
Manuel Mendoza, Dallas News, March 26, 2013
Margo Sappington has been choreographing ballet to rock and pop music since she first started making dances in the 1970s. Now 65, the Baytown native and former Joffrey Ballet company member has created a new work on pointe for Ballet Ensemble of Texas, a pre-professional student group based in Coppell.
Called Plaza del Fuego, the piece, which premieres this weekend, is set to songs by the rock band Santana. “The guitar is like a voice,” Sappington says in a phone interview from West Palm Beach, Fla., where she is working on another project with high school dancers. “It creates a counterpoint in such a fantastic way.”
She should know. Her first ballet, Weewis, from 1971, was set to rock. Since then, Sappington has collaborated with artists as diverse as the Indigo Girls and William Shatner on pop-fueled dance pieces. She was one of four choreographers of Billboards, the Joffrey’s 1993 evening-length work to the music of Prince.
Even before she started choreographing for the concert-dance stage, Sappington designed movement for the 1969 rock musical Oh! Calcutta! The scandalous show, which she also starred in, broke ground in its use of nudity and media.
For Ballet Ensemble of Texas, a teenage troupe of 12 girls and two boys run by fellow Joffrey alum Lisa Slagle as an offshoot of her ballet school, Sappington devised a scenario built around a swelling urban plaza.
“It’s twilight, the beginning of the evening,” she says. “You’re walking out in the street on the plaza, passing people, looking at people, looking at who you find interesting, who you don’t. And it progresses to camaraderie and ritual. So it has no story. It has a flavor.”
Q&A: Choreographer Margo Sappington
Choreographer Margo Sappington on her new rock ballet Plaza Del Fuego, part of the Spring Performance for Ballet Ensemble of Texas, kddance, March 26, 2013
Native Texan Margo Sappington returns to her home state for the Ballet Ensemble of Texas’ Spring Performance where she will premiere her new rock ballet Plaza Del Fuego to music by Carlos Santana. The Ballet Ensemble of Texas’ Spring Performance takes place March 29-30, 2013, at the Irving Arts Center and will also feature George Balanchine’s Walpurgis Nacht, Gordon Pierce’s An American Portrait to music by Copland and No Pressure by Tammie Reinsch.
Margo Sappington began her professional dance career when she joined the Joffrey Ballet at the age of 17 and her choreographic career at the age of 21. She has created works for the Joffrey (New York/Chicago), Pennsylvania Ballet, Houston Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet, Carolina Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and Ballet Jazz de Montreal.
Sappington is most well-known for using popular music on the concert stage, including songs by Prince, William Shatner, Indigo Girls and now Carlos Santana. Her opera credits include Live from the San Francisco Opera, La Gioconda, Samson and Delilah and Aida. On Broadway, she was the dance captain in the original Promises, Promises and has choreographed revivals of Pal Joey, Oh! Calcutta! and Where’s Charley!
She currently contributes works yearly to the Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach, FL.
TheaterJones asks Margo Sappington about working with the students at the Ballet Ensemble of Texas, her inclination for popular music and the inspiration for her new ballet Plaza Del Fuego.
TheaterJones: How did you get involved with the Ballet Ensemble of Texas?
I knew Lisa Slagle when she was dancing with the Joffrey Ballet. When she left the company I happened to be choreographing an opera in San Francisco and she auditioned for me and I hired her and that’s how we met.
Margo (“Oh! Calcutta!”) Sappington: No More, I’m Glad It’s Over
Opinion, The New York Times, September 8, 1989
To the Editor:
Frank Rich’s Critic’s Notebook on the closing of ”Oh! Calcutta!” (Aug. 8) was completely honest and of particular interest to me. The original ”Oh! Calcutta!” that opened at New York’s Eden Theater in 1969 was my first professional job as a choreographer. I was 21.
Long before workshops became the norm in developing musicals, we had the luxury of a two-month rehearsal period and a month of previews before opening night. The musical that I helped create played at the Eden, and on Broadway at the Belasco, until 1972. It was a very high profile show. In addition to being on the cover of Time, I was invited, along with other female performers of the day, to write an essay about nudity in theater for this newspaper.
Four years after we closed, the producer Norman Kean called in the creators and announced plans to revamp the show for a national tour with a smaller cast. The slimmed-down revival was never meant to play New York City. It opened at Miami’s Coconut Grove Playhouse, and then, for whatever reasons, Mr. Kean did not place the show anywhere in the United States. He proposed to the creators that it play at the Edison Theater in New York four performances a week, in repertory with ”Me and Bessie,” until the proposed tour panned out. Within six months, though, ”Bessie” was gone, and ”Calcutta!” – much to my horror and embarrassment – stayed on.
Mr. Kean, who committed suicide in early 1988, was a shrewd and disarming businessman who decided it was for the good of the artistic staff that we not receive our due percentages. Through contract machinations, the creative parties got what amounted to cab fare from a show that, according to Variety, netted around $350 million.
I was always perceived as being rich (”Calcutta!” has stood in the way of my being considered for grants).
Yet since the revival opened at the Edison in ’76 – and I was resigned to its everlasting presence – I couldn’t set foot inside that theater. I knew it had become a shabby hint of what we created in the original production. For years it pained me to see the show’s loud advertising, which led out-of-towners to believe that it had run continuously for 20 years, even though the slogan read ”20th international year.” ”Calcutta!” played in other countries between 1972 and ’76!
Mr. Rich calls the most recent ”Calcutta!” a ”naughty embarrassment.” For my career, it has alternated between a bane and a boon. It took 10 years for people to stop writing about me as Margo (”Oh! Calcutta!”) Sappington. Yet all the time I hear, ”Gee you have a show running on Broadway,” as if I were collecting royalties.
Then again, I am proud of my association with the original musical and the famous pas de deux I choreographed and performed in 1969.
I’m glad it’s over. I’m glad I did it. I’m glad it’s behind me. And, hey, who do you know who’d forfeit $1 million to have her picture on the cover of Time? MARGO SAPPINGTON New York, Aug. 18, 1989
