“I’m lucky if 5 or 6 people understand what I’m taking about.” -Willy Burmann
It’s been many years since I had taken Willy’s class.
At the time I first started leaving Chicago for New York City, former teacher of Steps on Broadway, Peff Modelski, had relocated to Chicago. Before leaving, she gave me the “golden ticket” of dancer recommendations: “take Willy’s class.”
Like everyone who showed up to his class the first time, you were left in the dust. It didn’t help that I immediately felt out of place in a class of New York City Ballet principals, but I also couldn’t understand his blasé rundown of fast combinations. I spent most of the first couple classes with my head down and eyes glued to everyone else’s feet.
I was so confused I felt like it would have looked more appropriate to be in class dressed as Bozo. At least I wouldn’t have been recognizable as myself!
Sketch by Andrea Selby
In every class I was in my chosen spot at the barre, in front of New York City Ballet soloist, Antonio Carmena. He was so sure of himself and he was often used to demonstrate some concept of Willy’s. I was his polar-opposite; the fumbling idiot falling behind in his shadow. But this was the first spot at barre I landed at in my first class, so it felt like the safest place to struggle in. Obviously, standing behind Maria Kowroski or Alessandra Ferri and running the risk of ruining their careers because of my stupid errors didn’t seem like a better option! So I committed to being paired with Antonio (much to his dismay, I’m sure).
After I got my bearings and was able to decipher Willy’s flippant execution of his combinations, he eventually started paying me much attention.
“Is it a petrifying experience?” Just taste of what it was like to receive attention from Willy. Thank you to dancer and artist Andrea Selby for catching these moments
He would adjust me, he’d prod me, he’d explain his philosophies to the class in grandiose simile but I never quite felt that I “got it”.
The kicker was when I had apparently and unbeknownst to me, performed a petit allegro, quick jump combination, to his liking. He commanded me to demonstrate for the class.
IMPOSSIBLE! I could have died.
It was hard enough being in this class and FEELING watched, whether you were or not (as a dancer, I can tell you we have a habit of gawking at the competition in the room), but being asked to demonstrate to a class of dancers of this caliber seemed laughable to me! I couldn’t have done something right to enough to warrant showing THESE dancers.)
I took to the center of the room and the pianist played me in…
My feet went “tombé, pas de bourrée, ballotté...”
“No,” he bluntly said and turned away and looked for someone else.
Times like this left me frustrated and confused. I had executed it correctly at SOME point but not THIS time. And it was never clear for me what I had done well or had forgotten to do.
It wasn’t until now that I understood a little more.
Hearing of his passing was devastating. It feels like a literal cornerstone was ripped out of the building at 74th and Broadway.
But in his passing, it was so inspiring to read all the dancers mourn online, posting their favorite revelatory moments or stories from outside of class.
One such person posted this interview from Indianapolis City Ballet, which finally cleared up some of my confusion
The interviewer asked Willy to go back and examine his time at New York City Ballet (because certain dancers have a thirst to know what it was like to work with Mr. B! [with the hope that someone will reveal what REAL Balanchine technique is])
He recalls his studies with Balanchine and another revered teacher, Stanley Williams. When he described his experience I laughed out loud to myself
“They would tell you to do something, but they wouldn’t tell you how to do it!”
“Both of them were not verbal,” says Willy in the interview. They would always tell you to jump higher, but they wouldn’t tell you how to do it.
Burmann in rehearsal with Balanchine by Martha Swope
Instead he recalled that there’s was always a dancer in the room who could demonstrate what they wanted, it was up to you to figure out what it was, because Williams and Balanchine weren’t deciphering it for the class.
Again, when I listened to this, I laughed, because it’s exactly how I felt in his classes. I couldn’t help but wonder, “did Willy model his teaching after these teachers?”
Willy DID do a fair amount of explaining, but sometimes his corrections were, and I quote many a dancer when I say this, “cryptic”. Even the times he looked at me with approval, in a very fast tendu or frappé combination (I cling to these moments very dearly), I wasn’t entirely sure what I was accomplishing.
As a late starter, it was very frustrating. I was desperate for “perfect” technique and I starved desperately for the ability to recreate it. Because that’s a dancer’s job, to learn the technique, but to have the ability to apply it outside of the class, in choreography.
But I never felt that. Maybe it’s my fault that I didn’t stick with it long enough.
As I continue to take class with other great teachers, his wisdom still rings through my head, still trying to make sense of it, picturing demonstrations of Wendy Whelan and Alessandra Ferri in my mind.
When I first came to New York, I was able to take from David Howard, too, who was pulling the weight of his very own legacy. But once he passed, I didn’t realize how much would be missing at Steps without seeing David and Willy talking outside Studio 2 on that wooden church pew.
Even though I haven’t taken from Willy in a few years, he would ask where I had been. I won’t forget coming back from one of my European tours and telling him that I had just been to Essen, Germany, the largest town near his home of Oberhausen.
He was confused why I would ever go there!
After the virus passes by, when the dance studios are ready to receive us dancers again, it will be too eerie going back to Steps on Broadway without the ability to see him on that church pew after class. Or even in Hell’s Kitchen, catching him on the street for a smoke or through the window at 9th Av. Saloon!
While we’re all quarantined and with all of our jobs and gigs being ripped out of hands, our biggest concern is how will arts organizations survive this. And now, after a master’s unfortunate passing, we also have are worrying, who will carry on his wisdom and legacy?
Well, it’s no different than all the dance that has existed centuries before now. Dance only exists in the moment it is performed; passed down from master to student.
Even in India, where the mythology of classical Indian dance is carved into temples from Before the Common Era, it’s not the dance. It’s only an image. The tradition of dance demands that a guru must tell the dancer how to connect those chiseled, stone images into the dance.
His memory will live on solely through those great dancers that he taught (and who hopefully understood him). So even I, who didn’t entirely grasp all his concepts, hope to see a dancer carry on the legacy of this teaching master. As someone who taught for 40 years, it was a lifetime of work that he brought to the studio and the hallway of Steps every day.
I look forward to seeing his name on a bronze plaque right next to David Howard’s on that wooden, church pew.
David Howard and Willy Burmann