September 2024 Featured Artist
Dance Can Change Lives
The Professional Journey of Dancer and Beloved Educator
Diana Byer
Diana Byer in Antony Tudor’s Judgment of Paris
Photo Credit: Richard Termine |
Diana Byer is the founder and artistic director emerita of New York Theatre Ballet (NYTB) and director of New York Theatre Ballet School. A former professional dancer, she was a long-time pupil and colleague of Margaret Craske, who was director of Ballet Instruction at New York Theatre Ballet School until her retirement. Diana is a répétiteur for The Antony Tudor Trust, education director for the Dance Notation Bureau, and is the senior advisor to the Clive Barnes Foundation. She has also served on the Dance Portal Advisory Board of The Children’s Museum of Manhattan and on the Bessie Awards selection committee. She has staged the ballets of Antony Tudor for American Ballet Theatre (ABT) and The Hartt School, and the ballets of Agnes de Mille for the Alabama Ballet and ABT. She also coached the principals for the Columbia Pictures film, Center Stage.
In 1989, Diana founded NYTB’s community LIFT program, providing dance classes, scholarships, and services to homeless and at-risk New York City children. She has received the Helen Wieselberg Award from the National Arts Club, a Humanitarian Hero recognition from Good Housekeeping Magazine for her ongoing work with LIFT, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Martha Hill Dance Fund. A feature-length film, documenting Diana Byer’s journey of LIFT was featured at the 2022 Tribeca Festival and has been nominated for a 2024 News and Documentary Emmy Award. "Under Ms. Byer’s leadership since its creation in 1978, NYTB, the most widely seen ‘chamber’ ballet in the country, has proven itself to be one of New York’s greatest assets...its reputation is well deserved." ~ Jerry Hochman, Critical Dance |
By Dawn Lille
Many decades ago in Trenton, New Jersey, a chubby three-year-old was enrolled in an interpretive dance class because a doctor told her mother she would be an obese adult unless she started exercising. The slim, quietly elegant and forceful dancer, educator, rehearsal director, artistic advocate and humanitarian Diana Byer is the outcome.
She says that the rebellious, determined, risk-taking career that followed resulted because she knew dance was to be her life from those first moments, and she never wavered. She fervently believes that dance can change people, especially children, and action is her mantra.
She says that the rebellious, determined, risk-taking career that followed resulted because she knew dance was to be her life from those first moments, and she never wavered. She fervently believes that dance can change people, especially children, and action is her mantra.
A Dancer’s Journey
Diana slimmed down after her tonsils were removed and convinced her parents to enroll her in ballet classes with a local teacher who truly loved dance. She studied only two days a week; they really wanted her to be a teacher or a secretary. But, as a natural mover, she felt completely at home in pointe shoes and was good enough to become a charter member of the Princeton Regional Ballet, which rehearsed on Saturdays. Weekend evenings were spent with friends entering the competitions in popular dance held at local community centers.
Diana slimmed down after her tonsils were removed and convinced her parents to enroll her in ballet classes with a local teacher who truly loved dance. She studied only two days a week; they really wanted her to be a teacher or a secretary. But, as a natural mover, she felt completely at home in pointe shoes and was good enough to become a charter member of the Princeton Regional Ballet, which rehearsed on Saturdays. Weekend evenings were spent with friends entering the competitions in popular dance held at local community centers.
Having done her own research on further dance education, Diana auditioned for and was accepted into the dance program at Juilliard in 1964. It offered ballet classes taught by Antony Tudor and Alfredo Corvino, and modern in the techniques of Martha Graham and Jose Limon. She had little interest in the academic courses required for the BFA degree and never went to class on Friday because she was busy preparing for the weekend dance competition in New Jersey. She was asked to leave at the end of the year!
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Unfazed, she returned the following September via the extension division at Juilliard, which allowed her to take any course she wished, but did not grant a degree. She attended for two more years, studying with Tudor and Corvino, and “hung out” with the modern dancers. She says the two greatest influences on her life and career were Tudor and Margaret Craske, who preserved and taught Enrico Cecchetti’s approach to ballet.
One of the first things she did after leaving Juilliard was to take class with Craske, an English teacher who had studied with the Italian Cecchetti and preserved his method for the dance world. He had developed a set of exercises for six days of the week that emphasize balance, poise, strength, elevation, elasticity and musicality. In Cecchetti class the aim is to explore with each unique student how to control their body so it can express ideas, feelings and emotions in pure, unmannered and fluid musical movement. To Diana, this becomes artistry. To Tudor, an English choreographer and former student of Craske who was brought to America by Agnes De Mille and became a major figure in the development of American Ballet Theatre, the purpose of movement is to indicate a character’s inner emotions. He once said that if one member of the audience did not understand what he was saying on stage, he had failed. It is the gesture that creates artistry. Diana says that her first three classes with him left her puzzled. Once he sat the students in a circle. Then, having them face away from him, he told a story and asked them to express the characters with their backs. She was terrified.
While at Juilliard she performed with the Juilliard Dance Ensemble and afterward with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Manhattan Festival Ballet and the New York City Opera. She was also part of a group of dancers who called themselves Kaleidoscope and created programs that they toured for three years. |
Diana Byer
Photo Credit: Zachary Freyman |
The New York Theatre Ballet and the school attached to it were founded by Diana in 1978. The real purpose of both was to keep the Craske approach to teaching alive and to perform the dance masterpieces Diana loved – by Tudor, De Mille, Jerome Robbins, Frederick Ashton, Richard Alston – and to commission others. The foundation of the company was Tudor’s statement that he did not want to see dancers trying to be people, but people who happened to dance.
There were eight dancers in this unique troupe, whose meticulously rehearsed performances were known for their perfect costumes designed by Sylvia Taalson Nolan, resident costume designer for the Metropolitan Opera House, embodiment of the live music accompanying them and seamless flow through space. One critic referred to them as “an exquisite gem” of a chamber ballet. They also presented special one-hour programs of Nutcracker, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Mother Goose, choreographed especially for very young children.
There were eight dancers in this unique troupe, whose meticulously rehearsed performances were known for their perfect costumes designed by Sylvia Taalson Nolan, resident costume designer for the Metropolitan Opera House, embodiment of the live music accompanying them and seamless flow through space. One critic referred to them as “an exquisite gem” of a chamber ballet. They also presented special one-hour programs of Nutcracker, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Mother Goose, choreographed especially for very young children.
Diana’s Philosophy as an Educator
Diana started teaching by accident. Craske asked her to teach another student some of the advanced Cecchetti combinations. That person brought a friend who brought another pupil, and before she knew it, she was teaching a class (for $1.25 a session) in the Tribeca loft in which she then lived.
Her approach is the same, regardless of the age of her pupils. She believes in the mechanics of ballet, which should result in a relaxed control of the body. Hands reflect natural gestures, the eyes are part of every movement, and the breath is allied with the music. Everything proceeds together and everything improves simultaneously.
To her, dance training should develop a sense of musical rhythm and space. Both can be seen in graphic arts and sculpture, which is why her students are taken to museums as well as dance and opera performances. She is a passionate believer in the role and value of the arts in education, not to produce artists, but to change lives. A strict teacher, she points to discipline, organization, independence and self-expression as outcomes of dance training.
The children under her develop strong bodies that they learn to control with ease. In the intensive summer program, they also start to choreograph, encouraged by the introduction of specific themes. One year this was mythological heroes, another household items. There is also a program called “Dance On A Shoe String” in which the older children create choreography for the younger ones, choosing the music, lights and costumes and writing the programs for their studio performances.
Diana started teaching by accident. Craske asked her to teach another student some of the advanced Cecchetti combinations. That person brought a friend who brought another pupil, and before she knew it, she was teaching a class (for $1.25 a session) in the Tribeca loft in which she then lived.
Her approach is the same, regardless of the age of her pupils. She believes in the mechanics of ballet, which should result in a relaxed control of the body. Hands reflect natural gestures, the eyes are part of every movement, and the breath is allied with the music. Everything proceeds together and everything improves simultaneously.
To her, dance training should develop a sense of musical rhythm and space. Both can be seen in graphic arts and sculpture, which is why her students are taken to museums as well as dance and opera performances. She is a passionate believer in the role and value of the arts in education, not to produce artists, but to change lives. A strict teacher, she points to discipline, organization, independence and self-expression as outcomes of dance training.
The children under her develop strong bodies that they learn to control with ease. In the intensive summer program, they also start to choreograph, encouraged by the introduction of specific themes. One year this was mythological heroes, another household items. There is also a program called “Dance On A Shoe String” in which the older children create choreography for the younger ones, choosing the music, lights and costumes and writing the programs for their studio performances.
Diana and Eight-Year-Old LIFT student Shara Overton
Photo Courtesy: Diana Byer |
Supporting At-Risk Youth
One winter, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs initiated a program in which children from homeless shelters were given intensive training in the arts over midwinter break and asked Diana to participate. For most of the day, she exposed these students to dance and creative arts programs and realized how they benefited but felt that it was too brief. So, in 1989, she started the LIFT Community Services Program that included two classes per week, performances, and scholarships for up to thirty homeless or at-risk children. She chose not only those with talent, but others she felt could develop from the training. This has become a national model. Since every child was brought to class by a parent with whom Diana met privately, no one was aware of which children were on scholarship or were given the required ballet slippers, tights and leotard or T shirt to meet the dress code, plus transportation costs if needed. Eventually computers were acquired for some and tutoring for others. She raised the money to cover all of this and arranged for several talented students to attend private schools. She took Victor Abreu, who once created a wonderful dance using garbage bags, to the School of American Ballet (part of the New York City Ballet) because he said he wished to dance with a large company, and he received a scholarship. On the last day of the original city program, a shy seven-year-old made a dash across the room, clutched her leg, and refused to get on the bus to go back to the shelter. So, she offered Steven Melendez a scholarship, told him she would see him in class the next week, and guided him through private schools as his talent emerged. He became an outstanding performer, dancing with her company at age fifteen and in Europe and South America before taking over an extensive program for teaching children in New Mexico. |
A film writer and director named David Petersen heard about the LIFT program and spent nine years making a documentary of the same name. Featuring Diana, Victor and Steven, it was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival, has won several awards, including the Chita Rivera for outstanding direction of dance in a documentary, and has been nominated for an Emmy. Victor Abreu is now dancing with the New York City Ballet and Diana gave over the artistic direction of the New York Theatre Ballet to Steven Melendez in 2022.
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Diana’s Plans Moving Forward
At seventy-eight Diana Byer is finally able to rest from all those years of ceaseless fundraising and numerous projects. She feels Steven Melendez must run the company his own way, and beginning in January 2025, the direction of the school will be assumed by Melissa Sadler, a teacher she has chosen with care. Diana views emerging dancers and choreographers by searching for artistry, not gymnastic technique. She would like to continue teaching on a regular basis; stage ballets, as she has done at American Ballet Theatre among other companies; dance small roles on occasion (she has never stopped performing); curate performances, as she did last summer at Tanglewood in conjunction with Jacob’s Pillow; and work with the Dance Notation Bureau to advocate a method for writing a dance score. She also anticipates projects with the Jerome Robbins Dance Collection at the Library of Performing Arts. She muses, “What about a dance company of artists over sixty?” And when asked where she finds sanctuary, Diana responded, “This is a hard question for me. I'm such a workaholic. I guess I get some peace and a little time to reflect when I'm with friends in Brigantine, New Jersey. I have three friends who each have a condo in the same complex just steps from the beach. I usually still do paperwork and Zoom when I'm here, but I also get to walk on the beach alone in the early evening, and I reflect on my life and the world.” |
Diana Byer
Photo Credit: Kyle Froman |
Dawn Lille, Ph.D., trained in ballet, modern dance and Laban analysis, and has worked in dance and theater as a performer, choreographer, director, teacher and writer. She taught at Brooklyn, Barnard and City College/CUNY, where she wrote and headed a graduate program in dance, and at Juilliard. Dawn’s many publications include articles in journals and encyclopedias, chapters in eight collections, and two books. Her interest in the social ramification of the arts was seen in the 1996 exhibit “Classic Black: Black Dancers in Ballet Prior to DTH,” which she researched and curated.
