By Ben Joravsky
Like many of these students, Bryant began his dance career despising ballet. Growing up on Saint Thomas in the Virgin Islands, he watched ballet classes at a local dance school and sneered at the dancers. “I was like many of the students I see every day, very stubborn. I didn’t think ballet was for me. It takes a lot of discipline. There’s a rigidness to ballet that we don’t have in tap or jazz. I didn’t like it. I made fun of it, I didn’t understand it. What did I know? I knew nothing.”
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But Bryant wanted to sign up for jazz and tap dance, and the owner of the school made him take ballet as well. At age 14 he showed enough potential to win a scholarship to spend the summer studying ballet at Jacob’s Pillow, the famous dance festival in Massachusetts. Afterward he moved in with a cousin’s family in Brooklyn. “I went to Erasmus Hall High School, the same school as Barbra Streisand. I wanted to be a great dancer, and I knew I had to stay in the States to make it. It was scary. I was used to being a big fish in a little pond. But everyone in New York could do really amazing things. I was in denial. Ballet was hard–ballet requires mind-body discipline, it requires you to do things that don’t come naturally. I kept saying, ‘I don’t need this. I’ll do tap and jazz.’ That was just the easy way out. But I was long and lean and strong and flexible, and my body was saying, ‘No, stick at it, work–ballet’s for you.’”
“I traveled all over the world with Arthur’s company. I started at the bottom and rose to principal dancer. It was hard work and determination. That’s what we teach our kids. You can be what you want, but you’re going to have to work hard.”
“Homer’s no different than me or Maria [Tallchief] or any other ballet teacher–we’re sergeants with kid gloves,” says Moray, who teaches in the suburbs. “Maria could be as tough as they come, and there was a side of her that’s very mothering. You have to let your students see both sides.”
Bryant makes no apologies for his gruffness. “I don’t mind if they think I’m tough. Kids need discipline every once in a while. I’m not mean. I won’t mock them, I don’t make fun of them. I encourage them, I sing their praise. But I work them. I have high expectations for them. I expect them to practice. If they don’t practice, what am I supposed to do? Should I say, ‘That’s OK, don’t practice’?
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo by Robert Drea.
