TIME FRAME 

    The Mural, DANCERS AT THE BAR, that hangs in O'Neals' Lincoln Center restaurant, evokes a bygone, golden era in ballet. And where are the subjects now?

    The late sixties and early seventies: love beads, platform shoes, bell-bottoms, sit-ins, Woodstock, and – as a welcome antidote for those aesthetic abominations – the ballet boom. “It was a golden time, says one time New York City Ballet soloist Carol Sumner, who is now teaching privately. “When I look at that picture, I think, what a good time it was. Because... we thought, this ballet boom will never end; it's established now, and it's the way it's always going to be. We had a feeling of confidence, and that we were doing something that was important for the world. And that we were the dancers of the New York Cry Ballet coming to O’Neals’”

Carol Sumner’s fond reminiscences are sparked by the mural Dancers at the Bar, painted by artist Robert Crowl on a wall of the then-popular Lincoln Center restaurant, O'Neals' Baloon, over a period of about a year sometime in the late sixties or early seventies. The picture grew gradually, there was never an official unveiling. Sumner is one of thirty-three people, mostly ballet dancers, portrayed. Stars of New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Stuttgart Ballet, and Royal Ballet along with the O'Neal family, the restaurant's manager and maitre d', and the great ballet conductor Robert Irving, are immortalized. The idea for the painting came from Cynthia O'Neal, an actress, designer, and in those days, self-confessed "ballet nut," married to the noted stage and screen actor Patrick O'Neal. Patrick, his brother, Michael, and their wives were co-owners of the Baloon (originally Saloon – a now-rescinded blue law caused the name change) and several other New York restaurants at various times.

    Cynthia O'Neal knew the artists and the dance world well: "The dancers were always there: I was insane about them, and I just got the idea, Wouldn't it be fun – since they come here all the time – to do a mural? The original intention was just to keep going with it; there could have been fifty more people in that picture. But the momentum went off, and it was wonderful the way it was; it didn't feel unfinished. But we could have kept adding dancers. We could add dancers to this day, for that matter, if Bob Crowl would be willing to do it... It just sort of felt like the Baloon was the dancers' restaurant. There was this big wall, and what do we do on it? It just seemed like a logical and really wonderful thing to do. It's just as simple as that.

    Bob Crowl could (usually) only work in the mornings before the restaurant was open, and I know that it was particularly hard for him because he was somebody who worked slowly and had many sittings. And we knew that the most sittings we could ask anybody for was two. Actually, the truth of the matter is that it was great for Bob because sometimes he immediately did 'got it.' Sometimes when he fussed, he'd lose it. So some of the people he did in one sitting are just right on. He just got them completely. It's fun to look at everybody looking so young, isn't it? So it was done over some months, and then the restaurant got busier and it was harder to do the painting in the morning ... I got an awful lot of the people that I really wanted to have in. There was a moment when Rudolf Nureyev said he would do it, and then, for whatever reason, it didn't happen.

    "The cute waiters – well it was a dream. You know, I was one of those little girls who saw The Red Shoes twenty-seven times. To suddenly find yourself one of the owners of a restaurant where the dancers would just walk in all the time. I mean, there they were! I had died and gone to heaven! It was such a romantic time. I remember that Rudolf and Margot were dancing at the Met, and Erik and Carla were dancing at BAM, and I remember Patrick and me going alternate nights. We would see Rudolf and Margot dance Giselle and then we would see Erik and Carla dance Giselle. It was astounding ... all going on at the same time, and everyone would come together for dinner afterward."

    Although they weren't portrayed in the mural, many of the most celebrated dancers of the Bolshoi, the likes of Maris Liepa and Yuri Vladimirov hung out at O'Neals' after performances, of course under the watchful eye of the KGB in those pre-glasnost days. Cynthia remembers particularly one after-hours, vodka-laced party that went on until very late. Shortly after everyone had left, a car pursued by the police crashed into the restaurant, demolishing the large round table that a couple of hours previously had seated the cream of the Bolshoi stars. She still shudders at the carnage that might have been. And the group portrait of dancers, hanging just above, looked calmly down over it all.

    Michael O'Neal, contemplating the mural, recalls that the picture re-creates the bar at the Baloon. After closing that restaurant, he eventually moved the mural to its present site in O'Neals' Restaurant, just a short distance away. There are a few cracks in the picture, giving it a somewhat antique patina that adds to its charm:

    "This is a picture of the bar at the old Baloon,” he says. “In the back, through the glass, you would see the New York State Theater and the fountain to the right. The artist didn't draw that in; it would have been distracting ... It's funny, but I do not mention Robert Crowl's name in any of my brochures. He never signed the painting. You notice that there are some cracks in the mural. The reason is that when we took it down from the Baloon , we did it in haste. The Riese brothers bought the restaurant, but then I guess at some point they lost the lease and said that they were going to throw the picture away, so my brother and I and the maintenance man – the three of us went over there and we just ripped it off the wall and it tore; it was a pretty clean tear, and we tried to keep it together. It was painted on canvas glued on pieces of plywood, so it came off fairly easily.

    “Bob Crowl did the dancers one at a time ... It took probably a year – sometimes between '68, '69 —maybe ‘70—in that era. Balanchine wrote a song about the girls at the Baloon. About them sitting on their behinds and getting lazy and drinking and flirting with the bartenders.”

    Carol Sumner recalls that social life: "And you know what was really fun about the place too, because a lot of us were very young and had just moved into the City after living with our parents in New Jersey or Brooklyn and we were on our own? We were serious, good kids working at a career. We were level-headed, but at the same time it was wonderful to go into O'Neals’ and sit at a bar for the first time. Be a woman who could sit at a bar and be safe and understood! There would even be stagehands from the Met and the ballet. You didn't have to worry. You could even flirt a little bit if you wanted to. And everyone knew who we were and that we were in showbiz and that we were the up-and-comings of Mr. B. We were filled with emotion. If I could tell you the crushes on various waiters who were young and handsome! Mr. B knew everything but he would let us do it because it was part of our development as people ... I remember him taking me over there occasionally. We would be walking out the stage door together, and he would say, ‘Let’s go to O’Neals!’.' And we would have a drink and chat. He loved the place.

    “Peter Martins had a lot of good times in O’Neals”. He looks about twelve there ... Not all performances were great, and if we had a bad performance, Gloria Govrin and I would sit in O’Neals’ and essentially cry in our beer (even if we were drinking Coca-Cola). We'd hash it all out, whatever it was.”

    O’Neals’ Baloon was a thirty-second hop across Columbus Avenue from the New York State Theater. It was, Carol says, “perfect because it was informal and had food that was affordable. It was something to see all these skinny dancers running over there in their miniskirts. Many soloists and principals spent a lot of time there. While the poor corps was working away, we would be over there. It was nice to sit and talk to (lighting designer) Ronnie Bates or one of the stage crew of the Metropolitan Opera. We were all building Lincoln Center together, and were having fun while we were doing it... And of course, Mike O'Neal was great, and Patrick O'Neal was great, and they put up with us. I mean, we would be racing in after rehearsal, and everyone would be ordering burgers at the same time. 'The kitchen was probably going crazy, but they thought we were fun.

    "I remember coming in the afternoon and leaning on a pole. I remember it was a sunny afternoon, and I would come in, in between rehearsals and I would just stand there and pose. And I remember that I wore my hot pants because that was the 'in' outfit. Posing was very painless; I think that there weren't more than three times. It was always in between rehearsals, in the afternoon. People ran in and sat. It was very quick, and, boom, there it was on the wall. At the time, who knew that this would become such an important thing? A landmark."

    The eight-by-sixteen-foot mural was enough of a landmark to have been the subject of a "Talk of the Town" segment in the April 6, 1992 issue of The New Yorker. The writer mentioned Sara Leland's miniskirt and Patricia McBride's midi-and boots outfit, thus cementing the picture's place at a dubious point in fashion history. Shortly after the piece appeared, a reunion was held in connection with a large donation that had been made to the Balanchine Trust. Everyone remotely connected with Balanchine, whether in the painting or not, was invited. Mike O'Neal says that he would love to have another such reunion and photograph everyone in front of the mural.

    A few years ago, a couple of dressers for the Royal Ballet helped Mike O'Neal to identify everyone in the picture, and a flyer was printed with each person labeled. Unfortunately, some of their identifications were inaccurate, and recently Cynthia O'Neal gave the proper names for some erroneously designated dancers. It's not surprising that, in view of their eminence at the time, a large number of the subjects continue to be at the top of their profession: Peter Martins now heads New York City Ballet; Edward Villella, Miami City Ballet; Anthony Dowell, Royal Ballet; Helgi Tomasson, San Francisco Ballet; Dennis Nahat, Cleveland San Jose Ballet; and Wayne Eagling, Dutch National Ballet. Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and Patricia McBride, husband and wife, now direct North Carolina Dance Theatre as well as the Chautauqua, New York, summer ballet program,

    Among former RB principals, Monica Mason is now an assistant director of that company; David Wall is ballet master for the English National Ballet; and Ann Jenner has been director of the National Ballet School in Melbourne, Australia, since 1988. Lynn Seymour is still active as a performer and recently danced the role of the Queen in Matthew Bourne's hit London production of Swan Lake. In the New Yorker article Cynthia O'Neal quoted Nureyev, who said of Seymour, "Lynn – she Genius!") Deanne Bergsma made guest appearances with RB until fairly recently. Soloist Peter O'Brien now lives in Switzerland.

    Closer to home, Sara Leland is a ballet mistress for NYCB, and both Karin von Aroldingen and John Clifford stage ballets around the world for the Balanchine Trust. Former American Ballet Theatre superstar ballerina Cynthia Gregory is active as a master teacher and coach and works with Career Transitions for Dancers. Kay Mazzo is a teacher and the director of curriculum at the School of American Ballet; Anthony Blum, a former ballet master for NYCB, now lives in Saratoga Springs, New York; and Mimi Paul is retired and living in Washington, D.C., the wife of a doctor. Soloist Marnee Morris, memorable for her performance in the "Rubies" section of Balanchine's Jewels, hasn't been tracked down as of this writing, while her fellow soloist, John Prinz, though elusive, has been spotted teaching in the Seattle area and also in London.

Of the two former Stuttgart stars, Heinz Clauss, formerly the director of the John Cranko School of ballet, has been retired since 1990 and is leading "an active and restful life in Stuttgart. Egon Madsen was assistant director of Stuttgart Ballet under Marcia Haydee until her retirement in 1996. He has spent the past year as guest ballet master with variety of companies and as of 1997-98 season will be first ballet master for Leipzig Ballet under Uwe Scholz.

    It is saddening to record that legendary NYCB principal conductor Robert Irving died in his native England in 1991, and actor-restaurateur Patrick O'Neal in 1994. Patrick O'Neal's widow, Cynthia, is the founder and director of Friends in Deed, a privately funded social service organization. Michael O'Neal, married to Christine, is still the genial owner-operator of the restaurant that bears the family name. At the time of the painting, Dick Harvey and Speed Stone were the manager and Maitre d', respectively, of O'Neals, Baloon.

    Certainly, ballet is still healthy, although not as "booming" as it was in the days of the mural. Perhaps the public has come to take the major ballet companies for granted more than it did when the team of George Balanchine, one of the twentieth century's major creative artists, and Lincoln Kirstein, possibly the most visionary ballet impresario since Diaghilev, were in charge of the New York City Ballet. The drying up of NEA and other touring grants may also contribute. It may be that NYCB, though technically brilliant and not without capable choreographers, does not fire the audience's imagination as it once did; that the company, larger and in some ways more polished, is not the close-knit, rather paternalistic, organization of old.

    Mike O'Neal: "Edward Villella comes in here a lot when he's in town; I guess he likes to see his picture." Reached at the offices of Miami City Ballet, Villella concurred, saying that he likes the restaurant for itself as well as for the mural: "It's one of the most consistent restaurants. It's almost like my office when I'm in New York, be it for lunch, dinner, or after the theater...(The mural calls forth) such a rush of memories ... it was a golden period; it gives a wonderful point of departure to the past. It was such a glorious time for dance. The Royal Ballet and New York City Ballet were very compatible. We partied together, went to clubs together, even went bowling!" There was more a sense of camaraderie, rather than competition, among the companies. Villella also says that having Balanchine, Ashton, Robbins, and Tudor, all twentieth-century giants, active at the same time was an experience unlikely ever to be duplicated.

    Carol Sumner: "It was like a family. We used to meet people from other companies when they were performing at Lincoln Center. After the performance we would go over to O'Neals and have our hamburger before going home to wash our tights and sew our toe shoes ... It was a classy place – informal but classy – because of the clientele and people the O'Neals had hired ... And if Mr. B went there, you knew it was okay!"

Doris Perlman, a New York-based writer, was Web site editor of DANCE MAGAZINE when this piece was written in 1997. She is currently writer and editor at Manhattan School of Music.

Reprinted with permission of Dance Magazine.