1965-1967 Classical Ballet at the Dance Academy of the ROTTERDAM CONSERVATORY 

‘You’re walking more upright than when I last saw you', director Nel Roos remarked. On my way to pay my very first ballet teacher Joke Bruins a surprise visit, I happened to bump into Madame Roos in the hallway of the Rotterdam Dance Academy. Proudly I answered I’d been accepted by Karel Poons of the Scapino Dance Academy in Amsterdam. ‘Well, then he probably sees more in you than I do', was her snide answer.

Auditioning for her Academy some months before she had rejected me. Whereupon my teacher, Joke Bruins, advised me to call Karel Poons. Yes, I was welcome, Karel Poons told me in his dark baritone voice; tomorrow he and co-director Ine Rietstap would be tidying up last bits before the summer holidays and they both could audition me by myself. The following day I skipped school and secretly sneaked off by train to Amsterdam, the city I dreamed since childhood to be living in one day.

The Scapino Academy was housed on the sixth floor, up in the attic of the ATVA building in the Marnixstraat no. 266, a big lodging house for working class men, which already in 1967 had a significant share of immigrants of Moroccan, Turkish, Spanish or Italian descent.

The girls in the Academy were told to never look left or right, when climbing the many stairs and walking the long, hollow hallways, because men could be found hanging in the doorway of their room hoping for a romantic interlude with one of these young, long-legged dance goddesses passing by, firmly clutching their little ballet suitcases. And also we young balletboys were at times ogled with keen interest.

Nothing of the sort however happened while I climbed the stairs to my solo audition on that for me momentous warm 1967 summer day. Karel welcomed me warmly, easing somewhat the jitters of this tall lanky boy of 17. In an odd way I relaxed during the audition. I had come home. This was my world, the world I belonged in. The world I had always been part of from before my physical birth.

Whether I did some barre and center work, I must have, yet I do not remember. I do remember Ine Rietstap manually checking my physical potential with professional thoroughness. She didn’t look me in the mouth, but while remaining friendly and humorous throughout, made me feel like a horse at the market.  

Lastly Karel had me do an improvisation. Wandering through a museum hall, I was to let the impressions the paintings made on me guide my physical expression. Ten years hence I would be teaching dancers, professional and amateur, how to create language gestures inspired by their specific inner images in dialogue with the basic 3-dimensional unity of time-space-weight, in short improvisation and choreography. 

But four years -plus one doubled- of rigid 1960’s pre scientific education and little more than two years of amateur ballet training on the sly, hadn’t exactly prepared this introverted bullied gay boy of 17 for on the spot expressive dance improv. In my imagination I saw it all, clearly drawn and in full colour, and my body must have shown some response, but I wasn't yet capable of letting it blossom into full fledged expression. Hindered by shyness, my body felt like an obstacle, a still unwilling instrument of expression and and after some meagre posturing, trying to mirror the figures I saw on the paintings, I eventually sank to the floor, gazing up cross legged in silent admiration for a large impressive portrait.

In his tiny office in the back under the attic beams, Karel told me I could never become a dancer. Maybe a teacher, maybe eventually a choreographer, but never a dancer. If I could live with that, I was welcome to start in September.

All I heard was that this holy hall of dance would open its doors for me in a mere two months time.

1967-1971 Professional training at the AMSTERDAM THEATRE SCHOOL 

As guinea pig in the early founding years of the Amsterdam Theatre School, with the support of visionary director Jan Kassies (1920-1995), I was granted to follow an individual curriculum of my own choosing (!) and race daily on my bike to and fro between the following institutions:

SCAPINO DANCE ACADEMY (Dir. Karel Poons, Ine Rietstap) 

Classical Ballet (RAD; Cechetti, Vaganova) - Modern Dance (Graham) - Composition - Jazz Dance - Tap Dance - Dance and Cultural History – Pedagogy - Music (Solfeggio and History)

MIME SCHOOL (Dir. Frits Vogels)                                                            Etienne Decroux Technique – Mimography – Pantomime - Acting - Modern Dance (Graham) - Martial Arts & Tai Chi 

ACADEMY OF DRAMATIC ART (Dir. André Verdoner)                              Singing (Belcanto)

DANCE STUDIO PAULINE DE GROOT (extra-curricular)                        Hawkins Technique

As a firm believer in education permanente, during my ongoing career as dancer choreographer-teacher, I studied in

LONDON, SAN FRANCISCO, LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK with a.o.:

Ruth Currier (NY, Humphrey-Limón Technique and Composition)

The Place, London School of Contemporary Dance (Graham Technique; Limón Technique; Composition)

Nicholas Gunn (LA, Taylor Technique)

Mary Hinkson (NY, Graham Technique)

Lucas Hoving (Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Limón Technique and Composition)

Margaret Jenkins (SF, Cunningham Technique)

Pearl Lang (NY, Graham Technique)

Daniel Lewis (NY and Amsterdam, Limón Technique)

May O’Donnell (NY, O’Donnell Technique)

Aaron Osborne (SF, Limón Technique)                        

Doris Rudko (NY, Composition)                                     

Paul Sanasardo (NY, Technique Graham based)                               

Anna Sokolow (NY, Composition)                                                                     

Ernestine Stodelle (NY, Humphrey Technique) 

Clay Talliafero (NY, Limón Technique)