 I'm Gladys Balen Stern, that's my married name, and I am a former faculty and director of the School of Dance at Ohio University. You know, to have done the thing you wanted to do is a gift in a way, a gift for my life, and it introduced me to places and people that probably would never have experienced or met, and I'm very grateful because now I look back on it and it was really kind of wonderful to feel as though one does not have regrets. I was so fortunate when I was a kid. I lived in a great neighborhood of lower New York where there were lots of immigrants, there were lots of available opportunities, and my parents who were not immigrants but never had much money took advantage of many of the available arts activities that were there. I had music lessons, dance lessons, theater lessons. It was all within walking distance. I guess my first really good experience was with a marvelous teacher who somehow introduced dance through games. She just had a lovely personality and made everybody comfortable. I don't know if there was anything formal in the training, but I know I had a wonderful time. There were simple things like skipping and running and you know, nothing complicated. Her name was Mimi Kagan. Fortunately I had terrific parents who encouraged what I wanted to do and didn't have to fulfill their dream. It was they made it possible for me to do what I wanted to do and that's pretty nice. I think my mother was very happy that I did it as a matter of fact, maybe high school, late high school years, where she said, well I know you want to dance, but how are you going to make a living? That was always the question and she thought, well then what else would you like to do and I would say not much else than the truth. When I was a student I did get to the Motha Graham School and I did go to classes with Anasakalo. These were the well-known people at the time and I went to Jose Limone's classes whom I liked a lot and Nikolai, those were sort of the primary techniques at the time. You were a Graham dancer or you were Nikolai dancer, a Limone dancer or Humphrey dancer. Those were pretty much the four big modern dance names. When Nick came to Henry Street that first year, that was a life-changing experience. It wasn't just going to dance class and then you forget about it. This was like a commitment. He never actually said it that way, but you felt that you had to make that kind of commitment if you were going to do anything with this man. So those classes in the early days were invaluable. It somehow made dance a real art form because it now had a structure, it had ideas behind it. It wasn't just something you did because it felt good and now there was a real program in a way, a real set of principles and a set of ideas that you can start to deal with and once that happens it opens up all sorts of creative possibilities. He managed somehow to bring a group together, a unit of people focused and dedicated to what he was trying to build. It was fantastic actually. We were the very early group, you know, doing the stuff for children. They weren't always in stages. We would take it to schools. It would be in a gymnasium or set up some kind of place as long as there was a separation so an audience could sit around. And the things that he made were so charming. I can't begin to tell you. Some of them had voiceovers. Some of them we had speaking roles. Sometimes it was just music. One was the lobster quadril from Alice in Wonderland and then others are the things that he made up. But they were acting and dancing. They were both parts. They brought the community in and little 15 minute stories and you'd put three of them together and you'd have a little intermission in between. For Nickel it was a great afternoon entertainment and the parents liked it more than the kids. They were very successful and there were people who came out to see what was going on in this little theater in downtown New York. Those, not only were they charming plays, they were performing experiences. We had to tour them after a while and I remember he was getting a truck and we had scenery and things like that too and we took it out and played in some schools and that was our little tour of the city schools which was a nice way to get it out. Anyhow there were some fun stories about places we went to and with the children being so unruly sometimes they'd throw chewing gum and they'd throw all sorts of thing at it. I mean they would just badly behave children in these young ages and it was great training to be very adaptable to whatever the circumstances required and then we sort of outgrew it and then he started to do more concert work. Basically he was waiting for us to grow up and you know become more trained so that there could be other things. I treasure those early years. They were incredible training ground. He knew from the start that you cannot be a dancer just as a studio person. That you have to have performing opportunities in order to use what you learn in the classroom. So he made performing opportunities which was also part of his mission of the Henry Street playhouse. The bedrock in a way of his teaching is that you would explore time in myriad ways. You could expand space or decrease the space or make the space tense or make it loose or make it elastic and to play around with those ideas and they were ideas and that is what blew my mind. There was a daily class and technique followed daily by what he called theory but the theory class was either he took an idea from the technique or since he had another idea and we would have improvisation. It was just so exciting to be a part of this men's world. I had never met anybody who was so creative who had so much to give and give it so easily and freely. He had classes where we actually had to do our own work. That's what we call the composition classes or the choreography classes. At every level whether your work was very simple and it lasted for 10 seconds or you know whether it lasted two minutes it didn't matter. It was the idea that you created it and that you put the effort in and that it's yours. He always valued uniqueness in the person so that you have to find out what was your way of doing things not someone else's way to do it. That was a very valuable lesson and I saw that even in people who didn't stay with the field they became very creative people in other ways. It was tapping into something that made your own work valuable. Nick often featured you know featured me and gave me some terrific you know solo roles or duet roles with Murray especially and when the work that Nick was doing became very popular for after a while people actually came down to the Lower East Side. When we were students with Nick and we had a couple of years of training Nick would say okay Murray Gladys we have a date get a concert together I mean can you imagine teachers saying to you here's your date you've got the theater I'll do the lighting get your work together and so we got busy we made our solos and our duets and we had our own concert you know what a great thing for a teacher to do. There was at that time something called music concrete. These were people who made sounds out of whatever they could find and Nick did a lot of that he would make his own sounds that he would gather from a variety of places and things and somehow assemble it via tape so he had to have a new fresh response to sounds that were totally new unfamiliar just as the visuals had to be unfamiliar. If you're using an already set piece of music you're bound by its form and you can't necessarily ignore it whereas if you're making something it sort of takes on its own life it's always nice to have something that's made specifically for that particular thing rather than something you have to fit to a form that's already done but it takes work for the two people to come to a meeting ground. For the most part his work was so visually beautiful it was so different almost everything happening at the time was of a narrative nature people were storytelling basically through movement whereas Nick's was not narrative in any way it didn't have a translation you could not put a word to it and say it was about this and when Nick got the call to go to Hollywood do this on the Steve Allen show I mean it was pretty exciting and they flew us out there and that was very exciting for us. It was thrilling for Nick to be noticed especially on you know big TV like that and by that time I was already in my 30s and my husband and I decided to adopt and once you make a commitment you're going to have a family I didn't have the freedom to go romping around the world you think you're going to travel and go to Europe and do all that you don't see anything you're just in the theater all the time or you're nursing your body in the bathtub because it hurts and you got a sore back or you got a sore knee and you got a terrible splinter you know it's not glamorous. Got a call from Shirley Wimmer out of the blue I didn't even know how she contacted me but I found out the dance world was pretty small and I liked her enormously she had a lovely manner it was very inviting and without too much push I said I would come out and visit I think we came out in March at some point students were just marvelous I taught a class then there were enough students around where they sort of interviewed me and we sat around and chatted for a long time so there was something about this place that it just seemed like an okay idea my husband said let's give it a try and he said we'll give it three years and if it doesn't work out we'll move on then Shirley called me during the week and she said you have the job if you want it this is pre-Putin where we had studios up above the Walgreens and a little office it was pretty primitive I would say it reminded me of New York City of some of the places that I had you know taken class so it didn't feel far and at all and one of the things that I rather liked were the students and I thought wow you know they'll do anything I asked them it was the openness that attracted me and the fact that Shirley was so willing to let me do my thing that was very freeing for me and so I said okay and I looked at the setup and I said we have to change the curriculum if it was going to be a major it had to have a little more substance to it it was too scattered so I said well you know they have to have technique every day and they need to have this and they need to have that and she was willing to adjust the curriculum I had so much to teach and so much to give at that earlier time that I couldn't wait to get to the next thing I kept a notebook of what ideas I wanted to communicate and we could explore all aspects of that subject which was very fulfilling to do I remember my reaction when I first came it was exciting as all get out to teach here they were like these incredibly intelligent sponges you know they were so excited to receive it and they could give it back in their own way I was very taken by the creativity because it didn't look like anybody else they were really themselves OU was accredited very early because Shirley Wimmer who was the first director was involved in the accrediting association and then when I became director I became a member of that organization there were lots and lots of programs that turned out good movers you know good dancers technical movers we could make a name for ourselves that way it would attract certain kinds of students who wanted to have their own creative work encouraged there were tons of technical dancers I mean they were everywhere and that was not unique the fact that we had creative work as part of the curriculum rather than just an extracurricular activity I thought was something to sort of encourage you know it doesn't mean that you're going to be a choreographer but you're going to tap something in yourself that is going to open up other doors it's the idea of thinking creatively but if you become a creative thinker you can use this in every aspect of your life at some later point in my life I became an evaluator of other schools and I got to visit schools pretty much all over the country and what we were doing was very unique one of the things that I brought which was not here before were the workshops it was an opportunity to show what they were doing in class to other people and if they didn't have exposure to that it became too precious and it became too frightening Friday three to five for the workshop became sacred we would not do anything to you know to interrupt that particular low of the training I was pretty stunned telling the truth and I never made a big deal of it and I never thought of it as a big deal it was I just did what I did and those things sort of came to me I never asked for it and I suppose if you just stick to what you know and you do it other people notice no I just I really love being a performer to me that was fun it was always exciting there were always challenges you know different stages different surfaces different people that you work with you learn to adapt but that's what we do in our everyday life you know when you meet people you adapt you pick up things from other people to me it was just another way of living my life it didn't seem extraordinary I look back on my life and I think how lucky I was it was a charmed life in a way to get to do what you love to do is pretty special how many people have that opportunity to fulfill a sort of a dream in a way