Anna Spelman, about whom Elena Tchernichova writes admiringly in our book, (and deservedly so), called me from Houston. She’s visiting there from Chicago, a guest teacher at the school owned by Robert Underwood, another talented ABT alum, (he went on to become a principal dancer in Germany) whom I got to know during the 1980s. She loves our book! She said we had captured exactly what ABT was like during the ’80s.
That meant a lot to me. Anna and Robert are two people who love and understand ballet at least as much for what it is as for what it’s given them. (Someday I’m going to write up the terrible story of how Spelman was ejected from ABT’s revival of Tudor’s Dim Lustre in the mid-1980s, AFTER receiving a glowing review from Tobi Tobias in New York Magazine.)