Associate Professor of Dance Leslie Norton was interviewed for a New York Times article "Glad to Dance And Eager To Talk About It" (1/13/08) about legendary ballet dancer Frederick Franklin. She is the author of Frederic Franklin: A Biography of the Ballet Star, written with Franklin (McFarland, 2007). Norton was appearing with the 93-year-old Franklin at New York's Guggenheim Museum on Jan. 13-14 for its Works & Process series.
According to the Times article "Asked to describe her first interview for Frederic Franklin: A Biography of the Ballet Star, Professor Norton said with a chuckle: 'I pressed 'play.' He went for six hours without stopping. Once in a while I was able to interject a question.'"
Norton goes on to say in the Times article: 'The past 30 years has been in many ways, ironically, the most important part of his career because of all the stagings that he's done... Referring to his recent staging of 'Giselle' in Chicago for the Joffrey Ballet, she added: 'For some of these classics, like 'Giselle,' his version goes right back to Nicholas Sergeyev, and these versions come from the Petipa version. What Franklin stages is as authentic as you can get. It was passed on to him when he was a very young man in 1934. No one can match that depth of knowledge about the ballet.''
According to the Times article "Asked to describe her first interview for Frederic Franklin: A Biography of the Ballet Star, Professor Norton said with a chuckle: 'I pressed 'play.' He went for six hours without stopping. Once in a while I was able to interject a question.'"
Norton goes on to say in the Times article: 'The past 30 years has been in many ways, ironically, the most important part of his career because of all the stagings that he's done... Referring to his recent staging of 'Giselle' in Chicago for the Joffrey Ballet, she added: 'For some of these classics, like 'Giselle,' his version goes right back to Nicholas Sergeyev, and these versions come from the Petipa version. What Franklin stages is as authentic as you can get. It was passed on to him when he was a very young man in 1934. No one can match that depth of knowledge about the ballet.''
