Fort Wayne Ballet celebrating the beautiful and tragic career of choreographer Eddie Stierle in an historic recorded performance.

Dancers, Albert Einstein once observed, are the athletes of God.

And amid the artistry and discipline that is ballet.

There was a dancer of transcendent talent.

Edward Stierle was a gifted Joffrey Ballet dancer and a promising choreographer.

He saw his dancing and his choreography, as, in his words, a service to whatever we see as God.

In his brief but brilliant life, Edward Stierle composed three original ballets, each one receiving critical acclaim.

And in May of this year, Fort Wayne Ballet devoted an evening to Edward Stierle.

It would be the first time that all three of his works would be performed together.

PBS Fort Wayne cameras were also in the Art United Center that night so that this station could share Fort Wayne Ballet's production with you.

Next Friday night at nine and will preview Fort Wayne Ballet Dancers Legacy - Edward Stierle .

On this week's PrimeTime .

And good evening, I'm Bruce Haines.

With us today is Karen Gibbons-Brown.

She is the artistic director of Fort Wayne Ballet and has a lot of additional context to share about how all of this wonderful work came together.

Karen, thank you for being here.

Thanks so much for having me and offering us this opportunity, this terrific.

Let's start with a little bit more about who was Edward Stierle.

And is Stierle a brilliant dancer, as you mentioned.

But I think he was such a kind and giving person that everything he knew, he wanted to make sure that he shared with other people, whether it was himself as a dancer in front of an audience or whether it was through his choreography.

And he created three works that stand alone on their own, that it was wonderful to put them all together first time ever.

And I think that each of them have a different message to share.

And Eddie was very conscientious about his work and the work he shared with other people and his expectations of the other dancers.

So it's they're brilliant pieces.

And in his own coming of age, through this profession, height was an issue.

Well, that was the time when things were you know, it sounds like it was 800 years ago, but it was not that long ago when dancers had a prescribed height and physique that was expected.

Nowadays, it's a little more forgiving, a little more of this is what people look like and this is what they look like when they dance.

So he was a bit on the short side.

But what he made up, what he lacked in height, he made up for in virtuosity.

And his we keep using the word brilliant, but his turns, his jumps, his passion, his energy and his emotion also through his work.

And you couldn't take your eyes off of him.

Apparently, that was the case with Robert Joffrey, who was one of the judges I believe in a special competition earlier.

Actually, Mr. Joffrey was rather short himself.

I'm not sure if people are aware of that, but he and Eddie were close to the same height.

Mr. Joffrey was actually a judge at an international ballet competition, so it's like our Olympics and they happen every four years.

And this one was in Europe and he saw Eddie and said, Please, will you come and dance with the company?

So when Eddie went into the Joffrey Ballet, he went in as not a court of ballet, which is where you generally start that as a soloist and quickly became a principal.

And it was good to see this is this is the exceptional route that that that few cars take a bypass like that in their career.

Lots of roads to the mall get there safely.

He actually took a very short path and gratefully because I think he was offered opportunities both as a performer and then as a creator of choreography that he may not have had the opportunity to do.

Had it been a slower track.

One of the critics for The New York Times had described his work as a stunning talent, delving unabashedly into images of emotional turbulence.

That's a compliment.

That's and that is it.

Exactly.

That captures his work in a nutshell.

That nutshell came open, of course, to, as we say, critical acclaim across the country, but particularly here in Fort Wayne, and additional appreciation for Edward Stierle.

How did that all come to be?

Well, I had friends in the Joffrey Ballet when I was a dancer.

I was not there.

I was in a different company that we all sort of knew each other and stayed in touch.

And years ago, when I first came to Fort Wayne, I saw one of Eddie's pieces on a different company, the Lacrymosa , a piece.

And I thought, Oh, if I could just bring this to Fort Wayne, if our dancers were strong enough and we had this many capable dancers to do this choreography I'd love for our community to see it and our dancers to experience it.

Fast forward, good company, get stronger.

We have a professional corps now.

It was it was a student company and now we have a professional corps of 18 professional dancers, and then we have about 12 more apprentices and trainees.

So it's a larger company with professional capabilities.

And I reached out to Annie Sister Rose Wharton, which is how you reach out to get the works that you want to do.

They're protected with a family trust.

So Rose said, I'd love to see you do it.

And if Kim Sagami, our repetitio And here is the picture.

You're smiling.

Tell it.

Tell us what we have there.

So in the back is Eddie as a youngster, of course.

And his sister Rose.

She was about ten years older than he and was actually the one who nurtured and inspired his career along the way.

They were from a large family and she took Eddie under her wing and made sure that he got the training that he needed.

So while he started in a school that taught mostly jazz and tap, he was very good at that.

He had a lot of razzmatazz, as we would say, which you saw in his other works as he started performing professionally.

But they said that he needed more ballet training, so his sister made sure he got into a strong ballet school.

He was there a very short time, started doing these international competitions, and was recognized for his talent quite quickly.

Like as people have said in approaching his work, that this is not beginner's choreography.

No, not at all.

We you know, he started his professional career at 16, so he performed and had this professional career for about five, six, seven years.

And then he died quite tragically and quite suddenly.

And so we all felt like we lost a terrible talent when he passed.

But again, each of his pieces, his first piece was Concerto Con Brio.

And you see the work and the music is fabulous, but it's very complicated, the choreography in regards to the patterning that the dancers do.

He started into some intricate partnering with the guys or lifting the girls, but just the steps and the composition of the work was certainly at a more advanced level.

And this is when he is 19, I believe.

Yes, this this comes together and that each of the pieces presented in the program, we'll see next Friday night.

I'm told that each piece has an intent.

It does.

What do you mean?

So generally, a choreographer will start out with something that they want to say through their movement or through the work that they're creating.

Eddie had just won the competition of which we spoke a moment ago, and he had been a student at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

So he'd won this competition, and the school asked him back as a luminary to come and create a work for the students of the school.

And of course, it was the upper level students and this is a piece of pure joy.

Dance for dance sake.

I just want you all to have fun and do things that are amazing to do that feel good as a dancer.

And so with that in mind, let's take a look at a small portion of the first of three works.

You'll see next Friday night at 9 choreographed by Edward Stierle.

This called Con Brio Very athletic and yet very graceful.

And those would not be words you'd necessarily use in the same sentence.

Not at that point in time.

Nowadays, it's not so uncommon that you'll notice that many dancers intermingled and interspersed and wove themselves together in the patterning that you saw.

Yeah, and a lot of lifting.

Just wait.

We're just getting started.

Some for the sheer joy.

I mean, he seemed to take this as the charge of how to process through the moves.

And in this first piece with Lacrymosa , he says, in many ways, this was about me.

It was not coming from a mental place, but from a real deep soul place.

Right.

He had just been diagnosed with AIDS.

He and you didn't tell people that at that point in time because they weren't sure about a lot of things about AIDS.

So oftentimes your career as a dancer was cut short.

You had to leave the field as opposed to being able to dance as long as you could.

And while his life was cut short, he had created the solo from Lacrymosa for this competition that Mr. Joffrey saw him and offered in this contract.

So the solo was done there.

And when Mr. Joffrey saw that and offered him the contract as a dancer, the company had Joffrey had a second company, which was students that they were grooming to move into the company.

And he asked Eddie to expand the ballet to do more of Mozart's Requiem, to create a ballet for the second company of Joffrey.

And it was so beautiful and so successful that the main company took it into its repertoire, and they performed it often well.

And we have two selections from Lachrymose to Tell.

Tell us about what it is that we'll be seeing in this piece.

We're going to be seeing a lot of lifting and a lot of complicated lifting.

Please notice how the men have to move their hands and change their wrists specifically to make sure that they make the shapes and not just make the shapes with their partner.

All the couples have to do the lift at the same time, on the same note in the music.

So that's something that's really complicates and makes it a little more complex.

Okay, let's take a look at this first excerpt from Lacrymosa by Edward Stierle and of Edward Stierle's Lacrymosa.

A second excerpt coming and that will focus on he himself in this lead role in this next piece.

The ballet has a lot of religious connotations.

He was very spiritual and you'll see reference to a lot of artwork from the religious times, and you also see a lot of movement that you go, Oh, like the men that are upside down on their shoulders.

He begins the work, I believe, and ends the work upside down.

Yes, he didn't feel worthy, as was at St Thomas St. St Peter, I'm so sorry that was asked to be crucified upside down because he did not feel worthy.

The same with Eddie.

So it's amazing.

with all that in mind, let's enjoy the second excerpt from Lacrymosa .

(Music) An excerpt from Lacrymosa , choreography by Edward Stierle.

You will see it and two other pieces together again for the first time anywhere, right on a special presentation on PBS Fort Wayne next Friday night at 9.

And it is something to keep in mind, even in the short program tonight, that we're really serving a what has been called a brief but brilliant career.

I mean, this was not like, oh, good, that was nice.

What else can you do?

These are also ways of peering into where he was developing.

Right.

His last piece, which I'm sure we'll get to here in a moment.

He was creating this as he was literally dying.

He was leaving the hospital during the day to finish the choreography.

Rose was taking him, carrying him up the stairs, into the studio to finish the work.

And this is a piece of hope.

And I think that it's important to note that when he finished this work and he made it to the premiere, it was touted as the next greatest choreographer.

He was going to replace the not too long before that passing of Balanchine, George Balanchine, who was going to take that mantle.

And his his name was as the one who was going to be the next great choreographer.

Sadly, a few days after the premiere of this piece, where he was touted as the next hope for choreography, The New York Times ran his obituary.

And were 22-23.

Just 23.

Just 23.

The potential is there, but it it is it ties it all together, too, doesn't it?

It does.

And the work will speak for itself.

We have the whole company, it seems, almost concluding.

Not quite, not quite.

And I think this is his piece of hope.

He was leaving.

This is his legacy.

Empyrean Dances .

And what you will notice if you watch is quite often in dance you have geometrical patterns that people run in or the shapes they make with their bodies, square circles, triangles vs whatever it's going to be.

And these patterns were created from costume applications that rose his sister was sewing while she was in the hospital with him.

So the patterns were fascinating to Eddie.

So in rehearsal process, now you run to the waterfall where there is no waterfall in classical ballet or contemporary ballet.

So that's an example of the patterning that he was creating with the dancers bodies.

Let's all watch together.

This is Empyrean Dances , an excerpt of choreography of Edward Stierle and and how is your experience of that experience as an artistic director?

Joyful.

It was wonderful to be able to have these pieces for the dancers.

Sorry.

That's quite all right.

It's quieter.

He was such a genius, and I feel that we've really lost something in losing him.

Is something that is also implied as we share the these pieces and so look forward to next Friday night at 9 is that it takes a very special ballet company to be able to perform and deliver the messages that are conveyed in these pieces.

And 14 Ballet is the longest running professional ballet company, an academy in the state of Indiana, and I think somebody should be applauding it.

Well.

Thank you.

It's been wonderful to be here doing this.

And the company has grown.

And I was thinking as I was watching this last clip of Empyrean Dances , dance transcends languages and barriers.

And in our company, we have people not only from the United States, but all over the world.

So you saw a true collaboration of cultures and talents and skills in the last piece, specifically will all of them.

But the last piece really showcases that I think.

Well and borne of the empowerment of a community vision from more than 66, 67 years ago.

What a tremendous sense of perspective to have then to know that this is a need to fill.

I think there is a patron that we have an older patron who was there at the beginning of the ballet, actually was a dancer with the ballet company.

And she often says, we never thought we'd do this.

And I think that's great because look at what we can achieve together.

Mm hmm.

You describe at one point the idea of learning to dance, of growing through the movements in the imagery of a bamboo system.

The bamboo theory I love.

Tell me about the bamboo theory.

So I think in this day and time, it's a really important theory to bear in mind.

You know, we want immediate gratification quite often, or we want our children to be wonderful and excel at something right away.

And the bamboo theory is the bamboo grows underground for the first two or three years to develop strong root systems so that when it grows up out of the ground, it's flexible, yet strong.

And that's what we try to do.

And so this is not instant oatmeal here.

This is not a four minute baked potato.

This this is something that helps to I think is another descriptor was was shared being able to complete the circle of life in the life cycle of dance.

I think we should be able to have an opportunity to connect with it.

And we're also in and around that time of year where folks connect to it at a most popular level, the doors are going to swing open again on Nutcracker any minute now.

In a skinny minute.

You know, not the big fat one.

Right here before we know it.

Hard to believe, but here we are again, so grateful that we do this.

You know, we're a community tradition for so many families and it's lovely to be a part of their holiday tradition.

Tell me a little about the season to come.

The season to come.

Well, I always think Nutcracker is magical just because I love Nutcracker.

Our full performance is full of amazing works by competitors that we've not seen in our community.

Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, and then an Arpino piece, a Gerald Arpino piece, actually, as he may have been in that piece at some point in his career, then we have Nutcracker , then we have our smaller programs called Love Notes and Pints en Pointe and Wine Barre.

And then we have Romeo and Juliet in the spring with the orchestra.

Just a small little number.

Fabulous.

And also very moving, which we hope you will explore further through the magic of the Internet.

You see the contact information there.

What is it you have asked, been asked and you asked this of Rose, I think, to prepare.

He asked of you, what do you want viewers to take away from watching Edward Stierle's work?

Joy, the joy of movement, the joy of community and the joy of look what we can do together.

And in an amidst that joy, there is one additional thought that had not occurred to me until this project.

And I think it was from the journalist Diane Solway who said, when we lose an artist, we're really losing two people.

The person and the artist.

Right.

And never that never hit me like that.

But there's so much to be said in so many ways.

And dance is one of those.

And yet through Academy's companies such as Fort Wayne Ballet, every time these pieces are performed, every time George Gershwin's music is performed, every time you there, they're there in the wings, if not front row center.

Right.

Exactly.

And we're seeing those who are participating now in in the activities, the rehearsals.

You're located just across the street, I believe, from the Arts United Center And we are great location, but we have beautiful studios.

People comment on them that come from everywhere.

So please come by, visit.

If you even if you don't want to dance, please come watch the dancers at work.

You'll be at least tapping your toes.

And that's a start.

And we're doing a Bernstein piece coming up.

Are you?

Yes, we are.

He's still with us.

Also, great fun.

You.

I left rehearsal today to come here humming the piece.

Can't help it.

We hope that you will find something to take with you from not only this show, but also next Friday night, 9:00 Dancers Legacy Edward Stierle performed by Fort Way Ballet.

Karen Gibbons-Brown is the artistic director of Fort Wayne Ballet.

Thank you so very much.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us as well.

For all of us with prime time, I'm Bruce Haynes.

Take care.

We'll see you again soon.

Good night.

Fort Wayne Ballet celebrating the beautiful and tragic career of choreographer Eddie Stierle in an historic recorded performance.