I’d never break out of the chorus. I was preparing to give it all up for an acting career. Fred told me to meet him at a studio where he and Hermes Pan were working on the choreography for the show. I arrived thinking that I was there to assist. I remember being totally shocked when during one of the numbers it hit me—I’m not here to assist. He means for me to be his partner.”
“What does it feel like to dance with Fred Astaire?”
“It spoils you, Rose. I can tell you that. Fred was a perfectionist. If something was wrong with the choreography, he’d figure out a way to make it right. One time we were having trouble with a step and the next morning he came in and said, ‘I think I have it figured out. I got up last night and I worked it out.’ ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘You mean you got out of bed in the middle of the night and worked on it?’ ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I figured it out.’ He didn’t think anything of working on something in the middle of the night. That’s how he was. Not me, once I’m in bed, I might try to work it out in my head, but I’m too bloody tired to get out of bed and dance at two or three in the morning.
“There was something else Fred did that I absolutely adored. He’d talk to you while you were dancing—very quietly under his breath. If he liked what you were doing, he’d say, ‘Now you’re dancin’!’ I just loved that. It always made me feel so great. And the other thing I really appreciated about him was that he gave you breathing room. Some partners make you feel so constricted, like you’re in a vise. But not Fred. He demanded precision but within all that precision, you felt remarkably free, like you’re floating. You know how music lifts you and carries you? That’s what it was like to partner with Fred.”
“He obviously enjoyed dancing with you.”
“I’m sure that he did. He liked to describe me as ‘a mover.’ For the longest time I thought it was some subtle put-down. Why doesn’t he call me a dancer? Cyd Charisse is a dancer, and I’m just a mover? What’s that all about? Then one day I heard him tell someone that he thought horses were the best movers. Fred simply adored horses. And I thought, my God, all this time he’s been praising me and I didn’t see it.”
“I imagine the TV special got you out of the chorus?”
“Yes. After the first TV special with Fred, I received an avalanche of telegrams, phone calls, and job offers. It was unbelievable. My world totally changed after that. I even got a call from Irving Berlin congratulating me on my performance.”
“And yet you quit show business fairly young.”
“Yes, I was thirty-eight, just a few years after my last special with Fred. I felt it was time to concentrate on my personal life. I’d already had two failed marriages and didn’t want to mess up my third. Hollywood makes many demands on your private life. When the time came, I remembered something that the great dancer Nora Kaye had told me. She said, ‘Barrie, you won’t know that you’ve really stopped dancing until you’ve gotten rid of your ballet slippers and rehearsal clothes. That will be the defining factor.’ One day, many years after I had stopped dancing, I looked at my closet shelf and there were my leotards, my stockings, and my rehearsal shoes neatly arranged, just sitting there as if waiting to be put to use. Nora’s words came back to me and I thought, why am I keeping all these things? It’s time to let go of them. But it was very hard to do, very hard to do.”
“What did you do with them?”
“I arranged them in a box and put them in storage,” she said, bursting into laugher.
“So you didn’t really get rid of them?”
“Well, I don’t know where they are. They’ve probably disintegrated by now. I don’t think I could find them even if I tried. To me, that means they’re gone.”
“I was five years old in 1958 when you made your first TV special with Fred. I’d really love to see it.”
“I have all four specials on tape.” Barrie dug into a storage area under her big-screen TV, slipped in the tape, and forwarded it to the “St James Infirmary” number.
Barrie came up on the black-and-white screen—a young ponytailed beauty wearing black ankle-length tights and a tight black sweater. On her feet were the Greek-style Hermes sandals she made popular for Capezio. Fred appeared in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks with a sash around his waist.
“Wow! Look at you!”
“Yes, I was young,” she said matter-of-factly. Barrie danced the role of a seductive beatnik girl who spurned Fred’s advances. The sexual energy they exuded was palpable.
“I can’t believe he was almost sixty at the time,” I said.
“He was at an advanced age in all the specials, but it was not until our last, when he was seventy, that I realized how frail he had become. Here, let me show you that one.” She ejected the tape and inserted another one. “This was Fred’s favorite number—’Oh, You Beautiful Doll.’ I am now the age he was then, and I think he was a lot weaker than I am now. In this show he seemed to have no power.”
A more mature Barrie appeared on the screen in color. She wore a miniskirt, and her strawberry blonde hair was cut short. “Here, watch this part,” she said. “See how I’m lying on the floor? Fred is supposed to pull me up. I give him my hand, but there is no strength on the other end. I have to make it look like he is pulling me up. That move completely wrenches my abdominal muscles. There’s another section too where he is supposed to lift me—I jump it so he won’t strain himself.”
“Did he let on that he was weakening? Did he ever say anything?”
“No, we never spoke about it. I would never mention it. After our last show he developed an inner ear problem that affected his balance. He couldn’t dance any more. I knew it was very hard for him. When I retired from dancing he said to me, ‘Barrie, it’s one thing to give up dancing because you choose to. It’s another if you have to.’ I knew he was referring to himself. I found it so very touching.”
Venice, California, 2005
Considered by many to be the finest American-born male dancer in forty years, Ethan Stiefel’s technical brilliance, athleticism, and captivating presence have called into question the predominant view established by George Balanchine that ballet is woman. While Stiefel may not have set out to change the image of ballet, he and talented dancers like him have helped usher in a new era for classical dance—one where ballet is man and woman.
I taped the first of several conversations with Ethan a few months after he underwent double knee surgery, sidelining him for the entire American Ballet Theatre 2006 season. He told me that he’d been looking forward to dancing again, especially after working so hard to get back in shape from two earlier, less invasive surgeries. I asked him how he’d injured himself.
“I was in rehearsals for the upcoming season when I felt something break in my left knee. I had it checked out and was told that I had a fractured bone spur about an inch long floating around inside my patella tendon. It caused severe tendonitis. I was given cortisone injections to relieve the pain. Then two weeks later the same thing happened to the other knee.”
“What
