NS: It’s November 10th, 2015, and my name is Natasha Simon. And I am sitting in a studio at the Abrons Arts Center adjacent to the original Henry Street Playhouse, with Coral Martindale.
CMA: Martindale Aubert.
NS: And we’re about set to go on a journey backwards in time. But also in the present and forward. So what I’d like to start with is actually something that we were testing but didn’t manage to record, which was Coral’s trip to Henry Street. And we started talking about the neighborhood.
What was your impression when you got out of the subway?
CMA: Well, during the day, this is during the day ’cause the last time I was down there was at night. So I saw all the different, various changes down here. I mean, like, Rosie’s is gone.[1] And that was the place that we went to eat every day. And that brought back memories. And all along Grand Street brought back memories with all the different things that were happening, so this is like -
NS: Rosie took care of you. Did she?
CMA: She took care of all of us. She fed us. Well, of course we had to pay. But I mean, but she really kinda catered to the company. That’s the way I saw it, anyway. ’Cause we were always welcome when we went in there. “Hello, darling.” “Hello, sweetheart.” She never called us by our -- she never knew our names. It was either sweetheart or darling or whatever it was. So, every-- you know, I loved her. She was really a very, very warm person.
NS: Do you know if she ever came to see any of the performances here?
CMA: Haven’t a clue.
NS: Yeah. (laughs) I guess that --
CMA: I -- I never knew --
NS: -- that it’s, --
CMA: -- because she was always working.
NS: Yeah.
CMA: And probably when she was finished she went home. I wouldn’t know.
NS: She put in long days.
CMA: She put in long days. But I really didn’t know. Maybe someone else in the company knew if she came to anything. ’Cause we had Saturday afterno-- we had a lot of different performances. And so she may have been able to just run over here one time or whatever. But I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell you. She was there, though.
NS: So you see a lot of high, tall buildings now instead of the local deli?
CMA: Yeah. Tall buildings and it’s just a lot of construction going on. Which is – means advancement and change and, you know, new times, which is good. Which is good. ’Cause the whole Abrons Theater is different in terms of being attached to the Playhouse. The Playhouse, as far as I was concerned when I was younger and in it -- it stood by itself. It was like a castle by itself.
NS: A castle.
CMA: And it was -- you see how short it is. But I mean -- but it’s all by itself.
NS: It diminishes in actual size now, but in your memory --
CMA: In my memory, it was big. It was large. It was huge. I used to love -- I loved the place. I loved the Playhouse.
NS: What -- what was particularly lovable about the Playhouse itself?
CMA: Well, the Playhouse itself, I guess it was Nik in the Playhouse and the company, and it was like the family, and all the things that we were involved in. The choreography. The dance classes. The dance theory. The notation classes that we took, the pedagogy -- The whole ball of wax was very, very exciting to me, because I had not been exposed to that. Born in the Bronx, brought up in the Bronx, and --
NS: What part of the Bronx did you live in?
CMA: -- I don’t know if you know the Bronx at all. But, by Charlotte Street?
NS: Uh-huh.
CMA: Yeah. Yeah.
NS: Of Jimmy Carter fame.[2]
CMA: Jimmy Carter fame. Right. I couldn’t even recognize the tenement building that I was brought up in because when they redid that whole area -- re-renovated that whole area, [00:05:00] there -- there were houses, not tenement buildings. So they were -- some of them were on angles and in, you know in tenements, tenements are straight. Like railroads. And when you’re building houses, a lot of times you’ll put it on an angle, a diagonal or a straight or whatever.
NS: Yeah. And you put a little yard in front of it, or --
CMA: Front of it, and -- you’re right. So, there was no way to even see where my 1507 Charlotte Street was. (laughs) The tenement building that I grew up in. So.
NS: When you say “a tenement building,” do you remember how many floors it --
CMA: Six. It was six floors.
NS: Was it a walk-up?
CMA: Yes. There was no elevators. We had to walk up. That’s -
NS: Were you on the sixth floor?
CMA: Yes. No, no. I was on the fifth floor. Well, it was like the sixth --
NS: So you don’t need one of those health apps that tells you how many stories and floors you -- you get --
CMA: I’ll tell you what it does though. You start counting, sometimes, to make sure, just to -- just to keep up with, you know, “Oh, I only have -- oh, I only have three left,” or “I only have two left, two flights left,” or whatever it is. So it’s such a habit that I never broke it, and even today, though I’m not walking up a tenement's steps, I will, -- I’m walking somewhere, I’ll walk and count the steps to the end of the block. (laughs) If it’s someplace that I had to go to every day, I will count that and I’ll know, “It’s 1,000 steps to get to such and such an avenue. Or it’s 500, or 320.” So that cuts out the boredom of just continually walking. ’Cause I walk a lot.
NS: As most New Yorkers do.
CMA: I walk a lot. Right. I do walk a lot.
NS: Do you think that that had an impact on learning choreography?
CMA: Uh, the walking?
NS: The walking and the counting steps?
CMA: No, not to me. No. That was just walking to get where I was going. The choreography to me had do with how Nik taught. To me, he taught -- he painted a picture. And that -- that to me is choreography. Painting a picture. You’re not doing it with a brush, but you’re doing it with bodies and scenery and music and lighting. And the picture in your head but as the music is playing and even the theme as you’re theorizing on what it is that you’re gonna choreograph about, all comes together as a big picture. Thanks to Nik. That’s how he taught. No, that’s how he taught. I always modeled that. And I -- I used to -- I used to really model like that. While people would be saying -- some of the critics may be saying, “It’s dehumanizing. It’s da-da-da-da.” But I never thought of it that way because I could see the picture he was painting. And that’s why I enjoyed his classes and I would’ve never, I don’t think, danced for another company. I saw his vision, and I picked it up.
NS: Now can you -- can you unpack that sentence for me, because that I think is actually the crux of what makes a Nikolais dancer -- there’s some kind of vision --
CMA: And connection.
NS: -- that -- that they have. That you as a dancer working with Nik have.
CMA: Right. Yeah. Absolutely. I did. That’s why he could make me do things that I would never have done otherwise, like, you know, we laugh about it now that we’re older. (laughs)
NS: (laughs)
CMA: About going up the wall.
NS: I love that story.
CMA: Climbing that wall. I just -- he just was talking and -- and talking, and we were… and then just saying things and I just --
NS: What is he saying?
CMA: -- I got transfixed at the wall --
NS: What is he saying to you --
CMA: He was just saying to just look at it as a floor. (laughs)
NS: Okay. So the wall is now a floor.[3]
CMA: A floor. So you just keep on going. And then he introduced it to us as going up from the side, coming out and going up the side. Just continue walking. And that’s how I envisioned it. And I locked in on his image. And then I transmit[ed] it into me and I said, “Yeah.” I could see it. I could see the floor. And that’s how I was able to do that. I was able to do that, just thinking of the images -- he was really a good image –- he provided me with images that I could take. And when I had a dance theater workshop in Brooklyn with at-risk -- what you call at-risk kids -- I could do that with them. And I [00:10:00] would see the change in them from street fighters and gangs and stuff like that, they began to do modern dance. And that, and I understood why -- how that could happen ’cause it happened to me as an adult with him. Well, I wasn’t an adult. I started with him when I was like 15 or 17, something like that.
NS: Can we backtrack to, uh, Charlotte Street, again? I am always intrigued by how one gets from Point A to Point B.
CMA: To Point B. Right.
NS: And I have this vision of you walking up those steps, and counting the steps to get home. But when you walked down the steps, and then you’re in the Bronx, but now you’re in the Lower East Side. How did you get here, from --
CMA: Oh, from the Bronx?
NS: -- from 1506,
CMA: 1507 Charlotte Street?
NS: 1507 Charlotte.
CMA: Well, I went to Morris High School. And my teacher -- my dance teacher -- I took dance as one of the subjects. I always loved to dance. So I said, being that they offered it, I took it. I met a teacher. And she really, she took to me ’cause she saw my enthusiasm about dance and she took to another student. The two of us. And she introduced us to the Playhouse. She took us down to the Lower East Side one Saturday and the rest is history because we both were hooked. ’Cause she saw it. She saw the passion that we had for dance.
NS: What kind of classes did she teach in dance?
CMA: She was a -- a modern too ’cause she had taken classes at Henry Street also. But she wasn’t teaching his [Nikolais] technique as much as just introducing us to things that you do in high school. So, the plays you have, the pageants you have, different holidays and stuff like that. So she saw our enthusiasm and our interest, so she took us personally down. And we met Nik and we took the classes.
NS: What year are we now?
CMA: It was before I graduated and before Miriam had graduated. We were like 16 or something like that. Fifteen or sixteen or seventeen. I joined the company when I was 18.
NS: And you joined the company in 1956, is that right?
CMA: Something like that.
NS: But we can backtrack if you don’t mind. And you were about four years old in 1940? What year were you born?
CMA: Thirty-five.
NS: Okay. So you were five years old then. So, then, 10, fif-- 1950, you’re in high school.
CMA: I graduated in ‘53.
NS: Fifty-three. So in ‘50, ‘51, ‘52, ‘53, you’re taking dance in Morris High School and coming down to the Playhouse --
CMA: No, not right away we couldn’t have dance. We had dance when, you have to have certain subjects, you know. But she saw our enthusiasm. I was about 16 or 17. And we -- we were just, like, all out, the two of us. The rest wanted to play around or whatever but the two of us were really serious. And she saw that we were really serious so she took us to the Playhouse.
NS: That’s a similar story. Gladys [Gladys Bailin, 1930-] talks about going to, in high school, of studying dance and the teacher there said “Come to Henry Street.”
CMA: Right. That’s what it took. But Miriam never continued and she got married early. Right after graduation, I think. Yeah. But I kept up.
NS: What did your parents think of that?
CMA: Well, my mother under-- well, I had begged my mother when I was young, real young -- ’cause I loved Shirley Temple. I wanted to tap dance, all right? She wouldn’t hear of it. She’s – from a West Indian background where you didn’t do those things. You did the piano. Everyone had to line up for piano lessons. (laughs). It was like ludicrous. I never forgot his name. Mr. Graham would come to the house. And we would line up for piano lessons.
NS: Because you had a piano in the house.
CMA: Uh-huh. And my mother --
NS: That was lugged up five stories, oh my goodness --
CMA: And my mother insisted that we all take piano lessons, and that’s what we did.
NS: Your older siblings --
CMA: Yeah, everybody lined up for those piano lessons. Yeah, so. Anyhow. So that went as far as it could go. The -- the scales -- I could sit down and listen [00:15:00] to piano, classical, jazz, forever. But not to play it. I’m definitely a spectator. Definitely. I would go to Carnegie Hall, anywhere to hear it. But not to play it. Those scales used to drive me crazy. I couldn’t do those scales. Those scales would be so boring I couldn’t -- and yet, I could do things in dance that would stretch my body and that was never, never boring. But piano scales would drive me out of my mind.
NS: Sounds like they were confining.
CMA: They were so confining. [sings a scale] Oh, they were too confining for me. Too confining. So that was my introduction. I begged my mother but she said no. It had to be like a piano or something like that.
NS: Had she studied piano?
CMA: Oh, probably. She was all into education and arts stuff, arts like that -- but, uh, you know, she had six children she had to get busy. There was no -- you know, being, taking lessons and stuff like that for her. She could give us lessons.
NS: I sneaked a peek at a census from 1940. Your siblings all begin with the letter C.
CMA: She named every child with a C. Every child’s name with a C. Now, my older brother’s middle name was a C -- because he was the oldest one, she named him after my father. So his name was Lambert. But no one ever called him Lambert. In fact, no one hardly ever knew his name was Lambert because he didn’t like the name. It wasn’t American enough, you know how that is. So Carl was fine. So it was Carl, Conway, Colleen, Clayton, Coral, and Cecile. That w-- the C’s. She was in love with C’s.
NS: She was in love with the -- with the letter C.
CMA: C. That was it.
NS: And Coral, she decided --
CMA: I was named after a cousin. One of her cousins in the Barbados was named Coral, so she called me Coral. She named me Coral.
NS: It’s a great name.
CMA: I didn’t like it when I was kid, ’cause it was not American enough. Oh, oh, so, Carol. I wanted to be called Carol. But now I just love the name. As I got older and understood the differences. But when you’re a kid --
NS: You want to belong.
CMA: You’re young and dumb. You don’t know what’s goin’ on --everyone was Carol or Cora or something like that. But I like Coral. It’s different.
NS: It’s a nice name.
CMA: Mm-hmm.
NS: So at this point, you’re hooked on Saturday classes.
CMA: Oh, God. My whole day, my whole day -- my mother used to complain about that. It was no thing like goin’ to the store or goin’… It was on the train from the Bronx to the Lower East Side, the whole Saturday. Either classes or teaching or whatever or learning or whatever. Dancing. That was my day. I was so used to it and wanting it so much that I never questioned anything. I hardly went home except to sleep. That was annoying to my mother at points because it was like she didn’t have a kid. (laughs) Kid was in the Lower East Side while she was in the Bronx.
NS: Did she ever come down to see concerts?
CMA: Oh, yeah. She did. She did. She did. When she saw the dedication and the loyalty to Nik. ’Cause I would talk about him all the time to her. And so when she saw that, she backed me 100 percent. To the point where sometimes we didn’t even have enough money to pay a lot of bills, and I could’ve been working at that time -- I was 18, 19.
NS: But she said, “Go, do the dance.”
CMA: Yeah. She wanted to be out there with me. I never -- I never forgot that about her. Really dedicated, that one.
NS: You’re very fortunate, to have somebody in your corner.
CMA: Absolutely. She was definitely in my corner. She saw how much I lo-- and she saw how much it meant to me. Because a lot of parents, even today, when their kids go out to dance –- not… Because I -- I was into all dancing. I just never could stop dancing. [00:20:00] I just loved to move. So, when I told her I would be going to a party or whatever and I came in like at 9:00 in the morning, she would just open the door and let me in. Because she knew I would’ve danced the whole night. I danced the whole night. I would dance the whole night. And so when I got home, I would lo-- so haggard she’d know nothing was happening. (laughs)
NS: (laughs) You were not up to no good --
CMA: Always.
NS: -- you were up to so much.
CMA: -- I was so tired. I was so tired ’cause I danced every dance I could dance.
NS: This is social dancing?
CMA: Social dancing. And you know what happened -- what happens sometimes? We would go -- you’ve heard of after-hour joints?
NS: Yeah.
CMA: All right. We would go after a party or something was over, we would go to a after-hour joint where there’s more partying and drinking. I never hardly drank because I had to dance. So what happened as you travel the certain routes, people begin to see you and know you, and to say, “Oh, here she is. Oh, here she is.” And they would call up their friends, and --
NS: “Coral’s here.”
CMA: -- they would have competitions. We would have competitions. So that’s why I was so haggard. (laughs) By the time I got home. They would have contests all night. When we were young. That’s --
NS: So tell me about this -- this dance circuit that happens. You get on the subway --
CMA: Oh, yeah. Whatever took you to the next place -- so most likely it was the subway. Yeah. Or a bus, or a bus.
NS: In Manhattan, or --
CMA: No, the Bronx. Once in a while it was Manhattan, but mostly in the Bronx. Mostly the Bronx. They had what they call after-hour places. And we would dance all night. And then they would bring their friends down and we’d -- everybody would --
NS: Who needs the Internet or a phone? You could always -- you knew where everyone was.
CMA: Yeah, we didn’t have Internet or anything like that. It was just word of mouth and, “I’ll meet you there. I’ll probably be there by 2:00.” That was (laughs) -- that was -- I’m tellin’ you -- those were the hours we’re talkin’ about.
NS: What kind of dancing?
CMA: Social dancing.
NS: Do you have names for them --
CMA: -- whatever the dancing was. Some of it was jazz. Some of it was Latin. Some of it was -- you know, the social dances that they have. That they had at that time, and they still have ’em. They have different names for ’em now, but they’re the same. But that’s where my interest was. I had a great time.
NS: And then you would stagger in at 9:00 (laughs) --
CMA: (laughs)
NS: -- and change and get ready to come down to Henry Street to take class?
CMA: -- no, no, no. No. Not -- I couldn’t stagger anywhere then. I would just go to bed and stay in bed like half a day (laughs). And then get up and go, that would happen at times I wasn’t at Henry Street. Maybe a -- a Saturday night or something, so.
NS: What was class like for you here? [Henry Street] When you arrived on Saturday morning for class with your teacher and Miriam? What classes did you take?
CMA: Well, beginner’s, even from the beginning, though, even as a beginner, you had to take theory. And that’s where he really grabbed you, when you took theory. That’s why the choreographers like Beverly and Phyllis and Murray, that’s -- you know, that’s where you get it from. [Beverly Schmidt Blossom 1926-2014; Phyllis Lamhut 1933- ; Murray Louis 1926-2016] ’Cause he introduces that to you really early up so it’s inside you as you’re dancing, even, going across the floor. Going across the floor is physical and you have to do what you have to do to get your body in condition and -- and things like that. But the theory is where you really start to coordinate the mind and the body. Your essence. And everyone’s essence is different.
NS: Do you have a sense of your essence?
CMA: Yeah. I do. It’s -- you know, it’s me. And as you get older, and you, like I never forgot, his teaching, what I would do is, I would translate that into my life. Period. I translated it into everything I did. And I went into business [00:25:00]: graduated and was in business. I worked in banks for 25 years. But every method, or every part of the system that he taught, I took into business. I took into my family, when I was bringing up the kids. I put it into everything. Because it worked. It worked. When I was running that theater -- dance theater in Brooklyn, for these chi--
NS: Out of the St. George Hotel?
CMA: No, that was my volunteer -- I didn’t teach them to dance. I taught them how to live. But as a result of what I had learned. That’s how I could do that. I wouldn’t’ve been able to do what I did with them. Are you kidding? No. It was more than a challenge. But when I manned that dance theater workshop in Brooklyn, the kids were at-risk, and at lot of them were gangs-oriented and things like that. And it was one kid that was really -- she was scarred. She was scarred by her mother. B-- she was scalded or something. She didn’t feel pretty at all. She was really hostile. So she took it all out on everyone. But this is where Nik’s theory comes in. So I taught them to dance. I was their dance teacher. And I would use their music. That’s how I introduced them to classical, all the time. It never failed. I would use their music first. And using their music, they now saw that I was open -- open and then I could introduce and introduce. And so the next thing you know, they’re dancing to Bach. But if I introduced Bach first, it would never have worked. I let it happen through their music. So we used to have choreography. They would break into their little things. I would give them images like Nik used to give us. And they would come back or whatever. But she came back with things that would blow your head off. That little girl that felt so inadequate, so ugly. Her choreography was outstanding. At first I thought it was like an accident, but then I kept on throwin’ things at her. And she was really a hostile type. So I even like threw images like, “Go over in that corner and come out with a dance about a feather falling and being caught in the wind.” (laughs) She’d come out -- she’d come back with a feather caught in the wind. She was outst-- she was like -- I don’t know whether -- where she is now but she was really a mind-blower. As a result of using their music and her choreography and I’m saying and bragging so much about her choreography, the other kids began to go to her. And so, after a while, she was the choreographer for the whole group. And feeling really important. But that’s what happens.
NS: And -- and that essence, you had uncovered her essence.
CMA: That’s it. So I knew it would work. So I applied how he taught to everything.
NS: What were some of the composi-- the theory -- the improvisation problems that he gave you? Aside from --
CMA: The feather. (laughs)
NS: Or -- or, uh, walk up that wall.
CMA: Wall. Wall.
NS: Run up the wall. (laughs) Besides --
CMA: They were so numerous, I really can’t, really. I -- I -- I can’t really pinpoint a lot of ’em because he would just, like -- he was a true artist. He would just say, “Do the piano.” “Be the umbrella.” All right? “What about the -- the sound coming out of the air conditioner?” “What about just being out here and just feeling and sensing things.” His images were so artistic. I’m talking about being an artist as a painter, a visual painter -- that I didn’t understand at the very beginning how you could translate that into movement, but you can.
NS: You said something in one of the interviews that I listened to, that he was adept at bringing the inside outside.[4]
CMA: That’s exactly right. You got it. You hit it on the head. Because life when I was coming up was not that easy.
NS: How so?
CMA: How so? We didn’t have that much money. [00:30:00] And a lot of times when you don’t have that -- that’s why I’m trying to tell you how dedicated I was to my mother because they were really, really pressed for -- for money, and I should’ve just stopped dancing and went to work. I went to work maybe part-time, but not enough to do -- ’cause each child as they came up -- ’cause my fa-- they had broken up and my father had moved to New Orleans. And so each child as they came into age had to work and pay the bills. And by the time I got there, I was dancing.
NS: So instead of the in-flow, instead of paying for the Con Edison bill --
CMA: Right.
NS: -- someone was paying for your dance classes.
CMA: That’s about it. So I had scholarships down there too. But sometimes Nik had to pay the Con Edison bill. (laughs)
NS: (laughs)
CMA: Oh, so, anyway, he was like -- he was like -- he was really my heart. (laughs) He was like my father. He was like my father.
NS: And very generous.
CMA: Extremely so. So that’s why I was able to stay.
So. What you had asked me talking about the images. It would be anything. “Be the mirror.” Anything he would throw at you, you had to just come out yourself. You have to go in first, because you have to take in what he said, and then you come out yourself in a movement. And you also learned by the things that he would say “yes” to in terms of: we’re in a class and you see something that somebody did and you say, “Ooh, I really don’t like that.” But he would say something to make you change your mind because of what he described he saw in it. So all that just keeps on broadening, broadening your perspective on everything. On life, on everything. He was a great teacher. He was a great teacher. I have never met another teacher like that.
NS: I think what you’re describing, too, is someone who, as you say, who can see the potential in something -- in someone, and then --
CMA: Bring it out.
NS: -- sort of pull it out --
CMA: Bring it out.
NS: -- of that person.
CMA: That’s exactly what he did. ’Cause I wasn’t feeling that great about myself when I went down to Playhouse. And, um, he -- he was able to pull that out.
NS: Well, he probably saw the --
CMA: The passion.
NS: -- the energy bug --
CMA: Right.
NS: -- inside you.
CMA: True. He did. He probably did, because I didn’t hide it. I be like, “Yeah. I’m here.”
NS: (laughs) There goes her leg.
CMA: “I’ll do it.”
NS: “I’ll do it.”
CMA: “I’ll do it.” Yeah. We had a great time. We really were like a family, a family coming up at the beginning.
NS: When you say “a family,” is it, -- the vision you have when you say “it was like a family” is that everyone was exploring the same thing, different things? Everyone had roles to play, or --
CMA: Well, everyone had their own life. But the point is, is that we all had a common goal when we came together in terms of the dance. So that kind of bonds you, you bond and bond, and then over years, you bond more and more. That’s the family thing I’m talkin’ about. That’s what a family’s supposed to be.
NS: I think also that what makes -- and this comes through in -- in all of the interviews that I’ve done thus far is that you were privileged, really, to be a part of an exploration.
CMA: Yes.
NS: At the ground floor.
CMA: Right.
NS: At the first floor, and that -- that together everyone climbed those steps.
CMA: He was considered really, back then, avant-garde. And he’s still avant-garde. (laughs)
NS: Yeah. Yeah.
CMA: Even today. So you know what it as -- back then some people would say “outrageous” or whatever. I never felt that way. I never felt that way because as you develop [00:35:00] as an artist, you begin to see that it’s only things that are outside the box that make sense.
NS: (laughs)
CMA: Isn’t that weird? But that’s…
NS: No, it’s not -- repeat that. (laughs)
CMA: Only things outside the box that make sense because the rest of it is too confining. It’s just like the piano scales. I love the piano. I love to hear it. Please, a gifted pianist, I mean, I just love hearing it. But for me, that was so confining. I had to kick past the scales. I tried to do that at church because I love the sound of the organ. I really do. That is -- the sound of the organ was -- so I wanted organ lessons. So my mother kept tellin’ me, “You’re not -- you’re not gonna do it because you don’t really want to do the piano. And the organ is harder than the piano,” la-la-la. So she kept on like that. So finally she just got tired of me nagging. I’m a nagger.
NS: You’re a nagger.
CMA: I’m a nagger. So she finally brought me to the music director.
NS: This is the music director at --
CMA: At the church. My mother explained to him -- she had been explaining to him and to no avail, he said, “Bring her in.” So she brought me in, and sure enough, when he showed me what I had to do to do the organ (laughs), oh my goodness. I said, “Thank you.”
That’s not for me. (laughs) It wasn’t really as difficult, not only the layers, you have the stops, you have the feet, oh, but I just love the sound. I wanted a shortcut. There were no shortcuts. And that was a problem. You couldn’t shortcut. You couldn’t shortcut the piano, either. But you couldn’t shortcut dance either, but I loved it. And there’s a difference. So I understood that. So I didn’t fight her after that. I mean, I just let it go. I let the organ go.
NS: And the piano go --
CMA: And the piano go --
NS: -- and then you were in the studio --
CMA: Right.
NS: -- dance, dance, dance, dance --
CMA: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Dance. That’s it. I never did get to tap. I don’t really wanna tap anymore, but, that’s what triggered me to want to dance when I was a little kid – you know, really small, say five or six. I really wanted --
NS: When you watched Shirley Temple.
CMA: Yeah. I was up there. I thought that was so cute. I like seeing it. Like Savion, the guy, with the --
NS: Savion Glover?
CMA: Yeah. Glover. [Savion Glover,1973- ] I love seeing it, uh, Gregory Hines. [1946-2003] But not to do it.
NS: I -- I’ve not seen -- I’ve only seen films of you dancing.
CMA: You have?
NS: I think that -- my impression from listening to you is that tap is too small for you. I don’t mean it in a dismissive way.
CMA: Right. I know, I know what you’re saying. True. It’s not -- it’s not -- the air --
NS: -- you can’t run up a wall --
CMA: You can’t attack the air or whatever. Strictly to that -- that’s one of the reasons I think that I could take ballet classes but I could never -- that was too limiting -- to me. Although I just love watching them. I have like a couple favorites that I just go to see all the time. But the point is, is that for me personally, that wasn’t me. Modern was it because it was definitely outside the box all the time. For everyone.
NS: And the canvas is larger.
CMA: Yes. That’s a nice way to put it. The canvas is larger.
NS: Well, certainly Nik’s was, right?
CMA: Oh, definitely. And how he’d bring in artists, like George Constant [1892-1978] and those things -- my whole time with him was a whole time of fascination. (laughs) Fascination. The way he -- what he did. How he did it. It was just fascinating.
NS: When, to use your example of George Constant, when you arrive at the studio and there’s George and Nik together and you’re warming up, or you’re talking to somebody in the company, and then what happens?
CMA: I would see his product. And see how Nik used his product. [00:40:00] I would see how he used musician’s products. I would see how he made us a product.
We would have to compose, like with drums and, whatever instruments he threw together, and come up with a piece. Everything was an adventure for me with him. Everything was an adventure. I had never been exposed like that to an adventure. I had an adventurous life with him. Everything else to me was dull. Everything else was dull. He -- he could make anything out of anything and that was my fascination with him while I was with him.
NS: It reminds me. I’ve been now twice to MoMA’s exhibit, the Picasso exhibit, of Picasso’s sculptures.[5] And I -- I walk through the galleries now, both times giggling. Just laughing. They’re so joyous in many respects, even though some of it’s quite serious. But the idea that as an artist, he would find in any material whatsoever a way to shape it in some form --
CMA: That whole box cubic part.
NS: Yeah. Or a spoon that becomes part of it. Or a saw, you know, a regular wooden saw --
CMA: A regular saw.
NS: -- becomes part of the sculpture and it sounds -- when you describe going into the studio with Nik, in a theory class, that it’s very similar, in that --
CMA: Anything goes. (laughs)
NS: Which isn’t to say that it wasn’t defined in some respect.
CMA: Oh, it was definitely defined. Definitely. And that’s what was so part of the education. It was just not flim-flam. You had to dig deep and he would talk about kinesthetics and insight and -- you know, you just don’t -- just don’t do that. You’ve got to dig. And as you dig deeper every day, as you apply it to your life that way, too. If you get bored, there’s something the matter with your life. Because there’s so much out here. So many people. So many different things out here, that if you’re bored, something’s the matter. You have to really investigate what it is. You’ve stopped really living or looking. Really stopped looking. You’ve stopped listening. You’re in a rut.
NS: It’s almost a medical condition if you’re bored, that you’re ill in some respect and you need to --
CMA: Right. You need to get a pill or something.
NS: Or -- (laughter) an energy pill. Or a curiosity pill.
CMA: Because it’s just so much out here. That’s why I’m fascinated just to look at young babies. Children, before, even before they talk.
NS: Because?
CMA: Because every single thing they see, or feel, is an amazement to them. And you just look at them as they are looking at it, before they even look at or whatever. You’re just amazed about -- that’s how we should be looking at life all the time. And there are things that happen in life. Life happens that just knock you out -- you just cannot function because something is just so, so deep. It’s so hurtful or so -- yeah. That you can’t move. But those are temporary things that should help you, when you come out of it, to be stronger. Those are like tests. You come out of ’em -- you pass that test, you’re stronger. And you’re able to, in a way, lead better.
NS: In your life, can you give me example of that?
CMA: Ohhhh…
NS: For you?
CMA: Well, for me, physically, I had cancer. I’ve had, um -- oh, whatever I had. Um. (laughs)
NS: Well, that’s enough. (laughs)
CMA: That’s enough. But I’ll tell you the truth. [00:45:00] I -- I even say that it was a blessing. I had breast cancer. Because I saw the extent of love from my family. That you’re so busy doing and doing, doing. You really know that they’re there. You know you love them, they love you, but you don’t know how much you are loved until something like that comes into your life. Because, you know, you could die. You know. I had a brain tumor too. You could die. And, all of a sudden now, you -- you get these responses from people around you that you just never, ever thought would be that deep. My sons, I know they loved me. I knew I loved them. But I did not know the depth until I had gotten seriously ill.
NS: Yeah.
CMA: And then -- then it all comes down on you. So that’s why -- life happens for a reason, too, to make you stop and look and listen. ’Cause I was in the bank, and I was career-oriented, just doing, doing, doing, doing and busy, busy, busy and, you know, God comes and says, (snaps fingers) “It’s time to stop.” “Let’s pay attention.” And, that’s why I had called that a blessing.
NS: And actually, if you want to bring it even fuller circle, it’s, that refrain, almost, “Attention must be paid.”
That the way that you describe an improvisation class with Nikolais is that you pay attention at every moment.
CMA: Every moment.
NS: So in effect, what you’re also saying is that no matter what you do in life that attention --
CMA: Has to be drawn.
NS: -- has to be paid. And that that becomes the stuff of your living.
CMA: Absolutely. Or you suffer the consequences, you know?
NS: Well, then we become stale.
CMA: -- if you allow -- stale. But that as it happens out of habit --
NS: Yeah.
CMA: -- of not listening and not seeing and da-da-da. So you begin to get, like, in a circle of that --
NS: Uh-huh.
CMA: -- and after a while, nothin’ means anything.
NS: And you need to shake it up a bit.
CMA: And you need to shake it up a bit.
NS: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
CMA: Absolutely.
NS: When you were performing with Nikolais, you were in the company for -- from 1956 through -- do you remember the dates? We could talk philosophy all we want, but we do need some specifics, too.
CMA: [I] started at ‘60 something. Sixties. Son, my second son. Right. I was pregnant. I don’t think I danced with him after that.
NS: Uh-huh. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) So it was a -- from ‘56 to ‘62 or ‘3.
CMA: It was before ‘56, I think.
NS: Well, that we’ll leave to the historians. (laughs)
CMA: Right. Right.
NS: And there were performances at the Playhouse?
CMA: At the Playhouse. The only one I had out -- we had to join SAG for a thing [The Screen Actors Guild]. He [Nikolais] was on Steve Allen at one time.[6] We had to fly up to Boston and in order to get paid you have join SAG.
NS: So The Steve Allen Show was filmed in Boston?
CMA: Pretty sure. ’Cause I had to fly back because one of my kids had gotten really sick.
NS: What was that like to perform for television?
CMA: And I think Sammy Davis Jr. was on that show, too. Yeah. It was exciting. Most everything with Nik was exciting. (laughter) For me, anyway. Even the college, but we had to rehearse. A lot of times, we would rehearse a lot. You know, New London --
NS: At Connecticut College?
CMA: Yeah. I remember being so over-rehearsed for myself one time, I felt like I didn’t have that electricity on stage -I couldn’t -- I -- and that’s when I said, “You know what? You really, really have to cut it off [00:50:00] at some point.” I just didn’t feel I had the enthusiasm I had in -- as in rehearsal. That was a first time for me that that had happened.
NS: Where the spark onstage wasn’t quite --
CMA: Yeah. Wasn’t there.
NS: -- what was in the studio?
CMA: Yeah. And I couldn’t understand it. But then after I thought about it, I said I had done too much.
NS: And it was time to move on to something else?
CMA: No. It was just that one particular time, ’cause I never let it happen again. It was scary for me. It was scary for me because I was always -- oh, you know you’re nervous. That’s different.
NS: The adrenaline, that’s different.
CMA: That’s different. But, when you’re on the stage, it was always an excitement. Like you’re in another world. And I wasn’t in that world that time. That one time. And it was scary for me.
NS: It’s a good thing it’s only one time. I mean, that -- that’s pretty amazing. There are performers who are like
“It’s over and over and ov--”
CMA: But that -- yeah, but that scared me. I didn’t think that would ever happen.
NS: I can see where with the kind of energy that you bring, not to have it would be terrifying.
CMA: Yep.
NS: And not the exhaustion that you feel after a night of dancing.
CMA: That’s different. That’s nothing. That’s like this resuscitation. (laughter) “Take some water.”
NS: Yeah. “Get her -- get the oxygen tank.”
CMA: “Or something.” But no, it was like -- I w-- it was almost like I wasn’t there. That was scary.
NS: That was a summer program at Connecticut College.
CMA: Yeah. We used to go up every summer. We used to go up to -- up every summer. So. It wasn’t the first time either, that it happened. No, it wasn’t the first event --
NS: And -- and when you were at Connecticut College that summer -- or those summers -- did you go in for the whole six weeks or --
CMA: We stayed the whole summer. Most of it anyway.
NS: And did you study with other people at that point?
CMA: We could’ve. ’Cause I met other people and other companies. I met a girl in Martha Graham. [Martha Graham Dance Company] Yeah. We used to interchange. We used to talk and have fun together as dancers. But everyone was kinda rooted and in their own technique. You couldn’t persuade them. They couldn’t persuade you. So we just had fun. We just had a lot of good fun. It was nice. The people came up for the classes.
NS: Students that were there. And a fairly rigorous program, too.
CMA: Oh, yeah. Nik used to give demonstrations, you know?
NS: So you would do lecture demonstrations there?
CMA: He would do demonstrations every time. And we would perform. Particularly as improvisations.
NS: What were -- what was the format like for a Nikolais lec-dem – [lecture-demonstration]
CMA: Well, he would speak and talk about whatever subject he wanted to. And then he would demonstrate it through us. We would demonstrate either music or subject or whatever it was. We were always ready. Because that’s one of the things that he had brought out, that we were like always ready. You couldn’t say, “I’m not -- oh, I don’t think --”
NS: No, no. You’re always ready.
CMA: We were. (laughter) Bang the drum. Boom.
NS: That’s it.
CMA: Right.
NS: Were there particular pieces of choreography that you enjoyed doing? And were there particular pieces of choreography that drove you up a wall? (laughter)
CMA: Oh, the wall dance was fun. W-- w-- that was fun, yeah.
NS: Or were there ones that irked you?
CMA: I don’t remember being irked as much. Some were more challenging than others. [00:55:00]
NS: Can you give an example of what was a challenging piece he choreographed? For you?
CMA: Well, the kaleidoscope, the disc – [Kaleidoscope, 1956; section: “Discs”] that was challenging, ’cause you had to -- you had to have that extension on your foot and also dance. It wasn’t just a clang bang dance with it. That was challenging. Then the other challenge was that the costumes were painted on us. That was different. Spray-painted. (laughter) He did things that were like, that was it. Spray-painted the costume. I said, “Oh my goodness.” Yeah. That was challenging --
NS: So one day you walk in to the studio and Nik says, “I’ve been thinking about the costumes for this particular piece.” And then he starts to shake the spray can --
CMA: (laughs)
NS: -- is what happened?
CMA: No, he might’ve done some of it. One of his art friends probably did the spraying. But he didn’t say, “I think.” He just did. But it was interesting. They looked nice. I even have some pictures here.
NS: You can describe them. So let’s -- yeah, let’s see them.
CMA: I’m tryin’ to find the one on the disc ’cause that definitely was spray-painted.
CMA: (shuffling papers) Mmm. I know I have it here. I’m just having a hard time finding it. This was spray-painted too. This was straps. Oh, I know what -- it’s probably in one of these articles. There it is.
NS: Okay. So Coral has handed me, from The Christian Science Monitor, from August 25th, 1956, a review by Margaret Lloyd, and the headline is, “The American Dance Festival in Connecticut.” And it’s a review of Kaleidoscope, in which all the dancers on the stage have these very, rigid circular discs attached to their left feet. Um, their right feet, their right foot is -- doesn’t have it, so they’re not, like, wheeling around. But can you describe the right foot.
CMA: The right foot does have it.
NS: Oh, the right foot is disked and the left foot --
CMA: Is free.
NS: So how did that affect your balance?
CMA: We had to learn how to work with it. It does affect the balance, because if you ever brought that down on that left foot, whoa.
NS: Ouch.
NS: What was the disc made of?
CMA: It was metal. And it was painted. So that it’s continuous.
NS: From the body down.
CMA: From the top all the way down to the bottom.
NS: How did it affect the way you moved?
CMA: It did, because you had to move around it. You couldn’t, like, bring your foot just down. It had to be positioned so that you could move freely goin’ around it and we even spun on it. He would make you try anything, and if he liked it, it stayed in.
NS: Did he bring those discs in one day and say, “Put these on your foot”?
CMA: I haven’t the foggiest. (laughter) [01:00:00] The way he was, he just thought things up.
NS: What is striking about the photograph is that with this cumbersome disc on your foot that all seven dancers that are in the picture now have -- are in --
CMA: Precision.
NS: -- have the same focus --
CMA: Right.
NS: -- have the same extension with their legs. They have the same arm gesture which connotes that you really worked very, very, very --
CMA: Oh, hard.
NS: -- hard together.
CMA: We did. We did. All of his dances, we -- they were all -- because of what he worked with, if you notice, it had to be -- this had to be s-- pulled out. They had to make sure it was tense. Otherwise you’d have sags. You don’t see any sags in there.
NS: This is from the, uh, Times[7] The Masks, Props and Mobiles, [1953]
CMA: I’m telling you. He was somethin’. He was somethin’ else.
NS: At the risk of opening up another can of worms, but you -- you bring in these reviews. Was there a particular critic or reviewer that understood Nik, do you remember?
CMA: Not in that time. Yet he had to be appreciated for them to have him on, like, “The Steve Allen Show.” Because you had to admire his guts. It wasn’t that, you know, like, “Accept this. If it’s not accepted I won’t do this. I won’t --” no, he just kept on persevering because he -- that was him. I didn’t say he didn’t care. He did care. Everyone cares. They don’t want to be disliked or whatever it is. But he knew that all of what was in him had to come out. And that was the beginning of him going on and escalating, and you see today, 100 years after, they’re still doing it. So he was right.
NS: I often marvel at, um, when you look at say, the Super Bowl halftime show. It’s -- it’s a Nikolais choreography there. It’s a light show that Nik did at Henry Street 50 years before.
CMA: That’s right. Unashamed. He just did what he saw. His lighting, everything was always different. That’s why I always admired him as an artist. I always thought of him as a portrait painter -- not [of] a portrait. But a painter. Canvas. He painted a canvas. On every one of his dancers, he painted a pic-- and I always admired that.
NS: That’s a very important point to make about Nikolais. His vision was not confined simply to what physically the body could do.
CMA: Right.
NS: The body was of a piece of --
CMA: It was a piece.
NS: -- of the canvas.
CMA: -- it was either paint or was -- whatever it was that he needed to complete that picture. That’s what it was. And that’s why some of the critics would say he dehumanizes them. And I just didn’t agree with that. I saw him as a artist. As a -- as a canvas artist. He filled the whole canvas. I always saw that. And I was surprised that at my age that I saw it that young. And that’s what always fascinated me about him. His ability to do that. So I said, all right -- he’s one; there’s gotta be other people that…(laughs) And that’s how he teaches. And that’s how he taught. I -- I talk about him like he’s still here.
NS: Well, we are at Henry Street. We’re sitting in --[01:05:00] but there are the echoes, definitely, of him. Can we talk a little bit more about you the person?
CMA: Okay.
NS: That one of the -- we all move throughout our life. And we all -- I mean, we -- you know, once a dancer, you’re always going have that sentient sense --
CMA: Wanna move. Wanna move. Wanna move.
NS: But artists have to also put food on the table and some people, you know, have to have a job and they don’t have older siblings to pay the Con Ed bill and --
CMA: Right.
NS: But you’re never leaving dance. You’ve never left it. It carries through in --
CMA: Everything.
NS: You’ve alluded to it when you were talking about the child, the angry child --
CMA: In the group. Right.
NS: When you were working with at-risk kids. Did you find that the work you did with Nik -- you obviously found that the work that you did with Nikolais and the Playhouse had immense -- immense appeal no matter --
CMA: What I did.
NS: -- where you did --
CMA: Right.
NS: -- or what you did.
CMA: Yes, I did. And that’s why I was not afraid to do that with them. And I’m not afraid to tackle those homeless children in that Prince George Hotel. We had them. I have like 25 godchildren. (laughter) Or more because it’s the great-grands, because the -- they --
NS: What motivated you to do that?
CMA: Well, what motivated me to do that was my sister, who’s a social worker, was coming back from -- her grad school was down by 26th and Madison. So she was waiting for the express bus at 26th and Madison. And she was swarmed by a group of about ten girls. Not teenagers. Girls. Who should be playing with dolls. They were going to mug her. She wasn’t afraid of them. But she was so mystified by what happened. The bus came and so -- ’cause they asked her questions, meaning they were ready to really take her stuff and everything like that. And she was just, like a deer in a light -- by a car light. So she got on the bus --
NS: “What’s that fancy bag you got there?”
CMA: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
NS: “Oh, and what --”
CMA: Oh. And here’s another telling que-- “Can you run?” (laughs) I’m laughin’ now, but that’s what they asked --
NS: But no, that’s scary.
CMA: -- “Can you run?” Meaning, like, “Do you think you can outrun us?” Or whatever it was. So she got on the bus and went home. She had a horrible weekend because she could not sleep because of what she had witnessed, what had happened. And so she told me, and she was crying and everything. She said, “They should be playing with dolls. They should be playing with dolls and carriages, and they were ready to mug me.” So that’s the piece that really hurt her, and it hurt her so much that I said, “You know what? Enough talk. Let’s go down and do something.” So we formed the group of adults, of women, career women. We went down and we had to find out about what went on in that hotel. And it was horrible. It was really ghastly what went on. So finally we had tried to have a Christmas party and, we got gifts and everything like that. And the guards were horrible. The security people were horrible. ’Cause we found out later, they get them ex-- ex-cons.
NS: Well, and it sounds like it was a jail of sorts.
CMA: Yes. But it used to be a fancy hotel, believe it or not. But anyway, they were gettin’ all that money for each of those rooms, with 20 kids in ’em, whatever. And so we had the party, and the man was saying -- who’s in charge of that group, “Don’t let them see the groups. Don’t let them get the presents because if they get the presents they’ll rush you and they’ll d--” We calmed him down. We had a beautiful Christmas party. And then we said, “We’re gonna try and do something here all the time.” So that’s what we did. [01:10:00] We would pick ’em up. Take ’em to see certain things. Enrich their lives, so that they saw things. And that’s how that happened. And this happened over years. And they were appreciative. We took ’em skiing. We took them swimmin’. We took them every—everyplace. I used to have ’em at my house. I had ’em, at the beginning, like two or three kids. And then I’d have to have a boy weekend and a girl weekend because, you know, once the word gets out and they behaved as a result of knowing that they were going to be catered to. So they behaved. The only problem I had was when I had to take ’em home. When I had to take ’em back there, that was the worst thing.
NS: Well, who would want to go back?
CMA: Nobody. That was the worst. They would get in arguments with one an—[another] they didn’t want to go back. But they had to. So that’s how that evolved.
NS: But you had that modeling from the crucible that was Henry Street --
CMA: Oh, yeah.
NS: -- that anything is possible, so --
CMA: Anything is possible. You just have -- you just have to do it -- don’t talk about it. Just do it. And that’s what we did, as a result of what happened with my sister. We could’ve talked about it and went down and da-da -- talked and but we did actively work with those kids for years.
NS: Do you think the fact that you’re an African American or Black -- Do you think that that contributed to your ability to connect with these kids?
CMA: Well --
NS: I’m assuming a lot of the kids were African American.
CMA: A lot of them were. But some of them were not. Some of them were just poor ’cause I still get Facebook alerts or whatever they are -- somebody updating their -- and this one blond, blue-eyed little girl that I used to have, she just loved to dance. See, you get the hook. You could make them do anything. If you get the hook. She loves to dance. I don’t know where her kids are, because she’s always sending me things. But I -- I’m trying to like just move on and move on. I don’t want to go back, back, back. Back is them sending me these Facebook things and the updates and stuff like that. And I’m happy to hear about them and that they have a beautiful life and all like that. I’m happy about that. But I don’t know if her kids are dancing or whatever. But I know their mom loved to dance. She loved to dance. And that’s how it is. You just find the hook. Like, I had boys and I was working at a place on Saturdays with young boys. And they were the same group. I mean, they were like really hard-- hardened. But the point is, is that they loved to dance. But they wouldn’t let anybody know. So what I would do is I would have them -- like when I was comin’ up, those competitions. Before you know I had 75 boys and when they saw that they closed the program. (laughs) It was too many. Too many. But, 75.
NS: That’s a lot.
CMA: That was a lot.
NS: It’s a lot to handle. (laughs)
CMA: It was. But you know what? The same thing. If you find their hook you can control them. So I had people tha-- that started to help, but the point is, [it was] getting like to be too much, too much. And you let them know it’s their place for that time and that they are to respect it. And they do, after a fashion. In fact, some of the new ones coming, the older -- the ones who were there for a while would make them leave because they wanted to do graffiti. And I said, “Nope.” No way. You see, this is clean. And it’s clean for you.” And so they understood that, and so. They themselves did it -- they took responsibility ’cause I said, “This is your place,” you know? It works. But you really ha-- it’s tiring. I’m not telling anyone that they’re gonna walk into a bed of roses because you’re not. You have to weed. You have to work [01:15:00] and be patient and it will happen. It’s not gonna be overnight. And if you think it’s overnight, don’t bother going in. It’s a waste of time.
NS: When you say that, it reminds me of a class and it has always stuck in my mind. When, at the Playhouse, taking a technique class, actually, from Murray. And Murray would critique you and say, you know, “It’s -- it -- it -- make sure that when you’re moving across the floor, you know, is -- it’s -- you’re focused. Get your -- your focus is out across the floor. But don’t worry. What you learn here today isn’t gonna show up for another year. It takes a while to integrate it --”
CMA: Yeah. Absolutely.
NS: “-- into your -- into your -- into your body -- your persona --”
CMA: Yeah. Absolutely.
NS: “‘Have patience. It will happen.’”
CMA: It will.
NS: You know?
CMA: It will.
NS: If you put the energy into it --
CMA: Right.
NS: -- it -- it will happen.
CMA: It’ll happen.
NS: Yeah.
CMA: That’s right. That’s right on. Yeah. That’s what he taught.
NS: Well the idea, too, comes through in what you’re talking about, not only with your tenure in the company, but also after you left the company, in what you did, is that there’s always a process; that nothing is ever sprung full-blown.
CMA: Right. You’re not born an adult. You have to grow.
NS: And like the -- like the -- the infant, who’s seeing things for the first time --
CMA: For the first time. Fascinating. Yes. ‘Cause they’re fascinating. So you see their fascination and your fascination.
NS: Yeah. Yeah. (laughter) And that it --
CMA: Amazing.
NS: -- becomes a -- a --
CMA: Right.
NS: -- a real, as we say, eye-opener. (laughs) All the time.
CMA: All the time.
NS: Yeah.
CMA: Well, a lot of reminiscing --
NS: Well, shall we -- shall we call it a day?
CMA: Yeah. I wanted to show you some, oh --
NS: And then, uh --
CMA: -- I brought some pictures for --
END OF AUDIO FILE
Addendum to interview
NS: Coral and I left the Playhouse and walked along Grand Street looking to grab lunch in the neighborhood. As Coral had said at the start of our interview, Rosie's luncheonette was long gone but we found something similar. The woman, behind the counter asked us, "What'll you have, doll?" At that moment Coral's face literally glowed: "That's where Murray got the expression - he always called us 'doll.'"
[1] A luncheonette on Grand Street between Clinton and Pitt streets.
[2] In October of 1977 Jimmy Carter toured Charlotte Street and the surrounding area known as the South Bronx. The presidential visit aimed to call attention to ‘urban blight’: the neglect and abandonment of city neighborhoods, primarily neighborhoods of color.
[3] Technique, theory, and composition classes were often held on the stage of the Playhouse and the plaster cyclorama at its rear was often incorporated in creative and theatrical investigations.
[4] Coral Martindale (Aubert) interview, Oct. 23, 1996 produced and interviewed by Barbara Haley, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, nypl.org.
[5] Museum of Modern Art: Picasso Sculpture, Sept 14, 2005 – Feb 7, 2016
[6] The Steve Allen Show, NBC-TV, 1959.
NS: It’s November 10th, 2015, and my name is Natasha Simon. And I am sitting in a studio at the Abrons Arts Center adjacent to the original Henry Street Playhouse, with Coral Martindale.
