Table for TwoDamian Woetzel’s rise to the top of the ballet world seems straightforward. From his childhood in Boston he demonstrated an aptitude for ballet; by his late teens, he was touring nationally as part of the Los Angeles Ballet; and in the mid-1980s, at 18, he eschewed college to pursue a career as a dancer in New York City. Over the following two decades, Woetzel climbed the New York City Ballet’s ranks, first becoming a principal dancer, then a household name. In his mid-30s, with the prospect of retirement looming, Woetzel decided to head up to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he graduated from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2007 with an M.P.A., a distinction that, a decade later, led to him becoming The Juilliard School’s seventh president. On this episode of Table for Two, Woetzel joins host Bruce Bozzi for lunch at IRIS in New York City, where they discuss his early years in New York, former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Gifford’s role in motivating him to return to school, and his plan for leading an arts conservatory into the modern age.
Hey, everybody, thanks for pulling up a chair today on Table for Two. We're not in Hollywood. We're actually just a little south of Lincoln Center. And if you didn't know this, Lincoln Center is my favorite place on earth.
What's going to be a good thing to eat while being interviewed by Bruce.
Yes, Today we're having lunch with a gentleman who was the principal dancer for the New York City Ballet from nineteen eighty five to two thousand and eight. Do you understand the magnitude of that He's one of the greatest living ballet dancers ever and he is currently the president of the most prestigious arts school in New York, Juilliard.
What if I hadn't tried dancing?
Great?
What if I don't know, I was very argumentative. I guess I'd be a lawyer or something.
You know, we're having lunch with Damian Wetzel.
So sit back, grab a glass of rose, enjoy this beautiful afternoon in New York City with me and Damian Wetzel. I'm Bruce Bosi and this is my podcast Table for Two. We're having lunch with I didn't realize the length of time that you were at New York City Ballet, and that you were a principal dancer dancing your ass off in nineteen eighty five.
It's two thousand and eight.
Yeah. I moved here in eighty four to go to the school American Valley, which was City Valley School and kind of in an early full circle that used to be in Juilliard. It was like the school was housed in Juilliard. So when people ask did you go to Juilliard, I'm like, kind of because SAB was on the third fourth, Yeah, and it was its own like school within a school, but we shared a cafeteria and it was like I was around all the musicians and actors and dancers that were part of Juilliard. And so I was eighty four and then I joined City Ballet, you know, May eighty five. Ballet was sort of one thing among many. Definitely not the intention like this is going to be a dancer, No, no, no. I think it was literally that I was bouncing off the walls and there were some choices to be made about how to spend time, and that seemed like a culturally kind of exciting way to maybe try.
Yea, I know, the amount of physical work.
I don't know it because I've never done it, but I appreciate it and I feel like that going to school and then studying ballet, like you guys are athletes in a way that nobody else was an athlete, and our culture doesn't even actually categorize you as athletes.
I feel so. I remember once being an eighth grade science class, and I don't know how this happened, but the science teacher was talking about sports and put up a picture on the projector of Edward Vallella so Vera. Villella was one of the greatest male dancers America has ever produced. He and Jackdams were like their initial principal dancers for balancing at City Ballet. So this is my first kind of exposure. In some ways, I knew who Eddie Vellella was. He's definitely an idol, you know, along with like Barishnikoff and other people, but Eddie's a little bit earlier generation. And there was a Life magazine cover of Eddie Valella flying through the air, and I think, so again, is it true or is it my memory? But the headline was is this the world's greatest athlete? And my science class was like full who are like, yeah, this is what you do bingo. It was like new respect starts to creep in and it was something else.
Is that science teacher too.
Yeah, missus Pollock? Yeah, I think that was her name. Yeah, yeah, that's all. Yeah.
You also came into as young adults now dancing. You were dancing in the mid eighties, which became a very dark period in the arts because many people were dying.
People are dying.
What was that experience.
How did that affect I mean, I'm sure there were dancers, so you were dancing with that would have been.
Yeah, some of the best we lost. We lost people in City Ballet. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful guys. By the time I'm in, you know, in my late teens, and this is the AIDS epidemic is going on. It's again through the lens of all the artists. Are you know, disproportionately being affected by this. When you walk into State Theater, which we shared with the New York City Opera, which doesn't exist anymore, and the notices day after day after day of the people, you know, the memorials, and it was just like you know, and then the art starts getting made. Then you've got Larry Kramer, Tony and the things that are starting to happen that reflect right work and the movement an AIDS walk and I remember Heather other created the team, so the AIDS watch. It was like, let's have a team that walks, and you know, so City Ballet had a team and we would you know, and it was like a sense of community fighting the futility of it.
Yeah, So Damien, when did you know I've now stepped into this room? When did you know, like, okay, I'm actually now a principal dance room.
What was it a ballet? Was the evolution of being like, oh I'm here.
You know, there was a a couple of things that kind of were signals. What was simply the ability to do it, like, you know, because to get a chance and be able to succeed, it's not a guarantee. And so getting some key parts Ruby's was one of them. I was still in the Court of cass and I got one show out of the five that we're going and I got my one and you know, getting being able to deliver it. Okay, So there's that. I remember thinking like what is going to be necessary?
Now?
What do I need to you know, and I thought, you need to be indispensable and what does that look like? And it was like, you've got to be a go to person, got to be a person who can partner as well as dance. Well, not enough just to jump high. You're not going to get the real parts if you can't also do that. You're going to need to be able to learn fast in you know, if there's you, you know, some people learn. Everybody learns differently, right, multiple intelligences all the way. And for me it was like, what is it? How fast can I learn a ballet? And so I thought, okay, that's being And so in the end what happens is, I'm twenty one of the great dancers of all time at City Ballet is injured and I suddenly they start throwing shit at me. I'm been getting to do part after part after part after part in one season. So this is nineteen eighty eight, so I'm twenty one, and between November November I'm in the corps January. I mean, I made a soloist and may I'm made a principle. Wow, because I've done a huge swath of repertory and I've managed it, and I'm in dispenser at least then at least right then, and then you know, then you have other phases happened, But there was like that was the thing for me when I knew that. You know, basically, you could call me at six point thirty for an eight o'clock show, say we need you to do this, and I was going to be.
Okay, and you could do it.
I would be okay. Yeah, it may not be perfect, but I was going to be okay, you know, And I loved that. I loved that sense of emergency too, which is it's like a drug.
Yeah, like, oh yeah, you're home.
I love it. Sitting at a restaurant on Columbus Avenue, somebody wears Damien. Oh we saw him sitting in Lingay. That happened. I call at the restaurant, Yeah, it's great.
And then next thing, you know, you're.
Good, getting a makeup and go yeah.
I mean.
The thing that is though a lot of that is the other things. The reason like I could learn fast was because I'd studied music to some degree. It fed in I was a kid, you know, New England Conservatory on Saturday mornings before I was at ballet class. I was doing that so I had a musical education of some sort that I could read a score, I could do things like that that really helped, you know, I had and then the work i'd done, Like so when I was at SAV School American Ballet, it's like the company. Okay, so SAV is the school of the company. I would take a ten thirty class, a twelve thirty class, and then sometimes a five thirty class. In between the twelve thirty and the five thirty, I would go to the public library and I'd watch films and I just watched videos as much as I could. I had a ritual. You know, I had no real money, but I was okay, I just enough and I would I would go and i'd watch the video of the people that the things. So I was like studying and trying to learn. I loved it. It was so great. Loved it. Yeah, I could not get enough. Couldn't get enough. But that was part of it. Was like recognizing that there's more to it than just what goes on, you know in the studio or you know, I joined a gym to be able to lift or whatever, but you know, and I was listening to music and just and also just trying to live going to the clubs. I remember going to area. I mean I just thought, go to an area back then, you probably yeah. I mean it was hard to get in at first, and then you know, you figured it out. Go to Palladium, going to places that like opened your mind to New York, the New yorkness of it, all, the specialness. Go to the opera for the first times at the Metropolitan Opera, learning how to sneak into City Ballet, to like get in, knowing the ushers.
You know.
Security was different then. I mean, I don't know, it's like timing. I was like able to like bluff my way in, so I saw everything. I remember going to Carnegie Hall for the first time and seeing like almost a fight break out over music, and I remember that really impressed me. It was like, because the great conductor Ricardo Mouti was conducting something and that's the as the as the piece ended, I guess.
I don't remember.
I guess it was the middle of the concert, somebody screamed boo for Mooty and somebody else said, dare you. I was just like, wow, this is crazy here at Carnegie Hall. I never seen it again since, but you never know. These things make an impression. Yeah, the passion. I think key moments, Like you asked about that when you note things the first time, I like I kind of appreciated that complexity is not necessarily what you think. It is, Like the simple things can be the most complex. It's like you read like drawing a perfect circle is like the hardest thing. You know, it was like, but look looks really easy. But like the the cord, the ability to walk on stage, forget about the steps, just walking when you realize that as a as you know, whenever I was seventeen eighteen, you know I'm going to walk out there, and you suddenly start to question that and you're like start to really kind of go inside and say, well, what is it? Where's my how? And you realize how those simple things are actually the hardest, and then finally realizing as a performer that the whole point, the whole point, is to connect with the audience, and that's a very complex thing, very simple and complex. Like Jerry Robbins was the one who was like always like his ideal state he would talk about many of his ballets was that you do not even never consider the audience. They should be like observers who happen upon and they get to see this world. Don't sell it, yeah, don't like you know, look, you know sell you know, unless that's the part to do it. But then when you start to kind of take that apart a little bit, it's like, so I'm I'm never going to actually forget them, so I'm actually acting like I'm not recognized. So it's like doubly kind of false in a way, which is that it's so hard. It's so hard, you know. So that's like when I got to that place where there was something else. I remember with Robin's like the first time I recognized that what he was doing in many of his dances was this a completely different type of movement than I'd ever tried. Actually, there was a he used to say, market baby, Market, that was this thing. And what that means is they say take it easy because he didn't want to see you like pushing an effort. But then he'd also say I can't see it, and you'd be like, wait, I'm marketing, but you can't see it. And that's a very but it's a very childish reaction when suddenly you wake up one day and you realize I'm starting to get this. I'm starting to get this to all of this and how this actually what makes things different, that they're not all the same. You don't do everything the same. And so you see that with great actors obviously, you see that with great musicians, and you see that with great answers. So that was those were turning points that you know, take time and I'm still learning, still learning. I see Nisha like that way. I remember seeing a video of him like with Diane Sawyer and she got him to sit down and watch a video of himself with her and he's watching this video that you know, by any standard, is just off the charts so good, and midway through he's like, I'm pushing so hard, but I didn't need to do all of that, you know, just because it's and that's when you realize, oh my god, this is so much more than being impressive. It's actually it's lifelong kind of struggle to be organic. Actually, that's like it's like the meda goal is like to be connected organically, not in a forced way, as a as a technician or as a So those are like those are life life goals. Yeah, how do you get to that?
Our guest Damian Wetzel was a dancer with the New York City Ballet for twenty five years. During that time, he performed in countless productions, including Swan Lake and Copelia. It is so special to experience the ballet as a viewer, But what was.
It like for a performer.
Going to the ballet as a patron, as a person who's gone.
It's a very big deal. It's an event.
You're going to the ballet, you dress, the theater is so beautiful, the chandeliers, the lights, the whole thing. The expectation that then came as you sit and then you know the theatore goes dark and the curtain comes up from your side of it. What does I feel like when you're like, okay, we're about you, Because even though you know, you know, you have, these letters are big.
So there's so many different ways I could answer that, because I have so many different feelings about it. I mean, and it really is. It depends on the context of what's going to be danced where it is. I heard Wynton Marsalis give a version of kind of a masterclass meets philosophy lesson earlier this this fall with it. He runs Jazz at Lincoln Center and he runs Julliard Jazz and he was asking what are you thinking about before you play? And he got some answers that were technically good, and then one guy said, well the context of it? Where am I? Who are these people? What am I? And he was like, that's that's what you're thinking about this actually, So to me the answer is like, wow, director, I always think about that. I loved like, if I'm making something, or if there's an opportunity to seamlessly transition from the audience is just there there. You're doing what you're doing. I'm doing what I'm doing, and then suddenly you're in it. I love that. And I saw that Nick Heidner do that in a production to National Theater years ago. With the music and the intermission, suddenly they were back in the scene, and it's like it just blurs the line between life and part And I love that. Jerry, you know, is the master frankly, I mean, he's you know, the theatrical genius, and he could do it every which way, you know, kind of the you hear the music first and you don't even know what's happening, and then suddenly you're in the scene or his great masterpiece dances are gathering, which is all chopin piano music for an hour ten dancers' So the kind of thing we used to do, we used to do at the end of the night often, so the theater backstage would be very empty, just ten of us, everybody else gone home. And it starts with the audience is in. So I'll set the stage like you were talking. So you come back from intermission, you know this is you know, if you know what you know? You know, okay, just an hour long. I'm about to sit you know, it's a serious commitment. I'm here. Pianist comes out on the side. You can see them and they're kind of in a subtle light. But curtains down, lights go down, the curtain goes up, empty stage, blue sight in the back, and it's crazy wow, because so the first thing that happens is downstage, downstage left. My roll waits for the curtain to finish, takes a couple of steps out and stops, and all you feel is sort of the cool air coming from the audience and just the silence, and then you take a few steps and the pianist catches you on the fourth step with chopin talk about like the anticipation of many things. Like it's just like for the dancer, it's like, Wow, what a frommendous privilege to get to kind of be in a space and the whole point of the space. Jerry, when even coach it would say, this is a place that you were. You haven't been in a long time. But you come back up and you stand there and you kind of take it in and it's all about kind of remembering what you once did. And that's how it starts. And by the end, everybody's on stage and that same character my part goes and touches the touches the stage with your palm and just kind of lets it sit there for a second, kind of touching the stone of memory and history, pure intimacy, and you know, and the audience is there to see it. They happened to be there to see it. Happened to be there.
Audience remember to say we happen to be there.
It's a very different thing then, like you know, a show piece of some kind where you come out to entertain if you will. And you know, we're doing a thing right now at Juilliard New Dances. It's called every December and they are all new dances, so it's like all every every dancer is in it. So first, second, third, fourth year their college students, so every you know, they each get a choreographer. Then we're going to break that up a little probably in the future, and a few more things. But but it's it's kind of a creative collaboration moment. The musicians are often involved in great ways. And I was looking at the pieces and I was looking at one of them and I was remembering a phrase and I don't know the attribution. I could look it up, but it was dance that aspires to the form of music. And I was like, okay, so music. We don't demand much of music. We listen and in certain like you know, especially in classical music, there's no narrative, unless there's an unless there's a song being told. But it's music. And now if you study, you learn, oh this was actually based on a poem, and you can you know, do some things. But dance it aspires to the form of music. Wow. What it's like a conceptual kind of thing where it's literally it's a symphony orchestra or it's a solo and it's just there for the pureness of that dance. This is a milestone getting to that place where I was like for me, like okay, I get it. And then it was from the world of Robins or Valanchine to getting out in the world and seeing Paul Taylor, Immerse Cunningham, you know, Twila Tharp bringing in kind of more pop dance in a funny way, mixing, rubbing up against stuff. Just like music, the forms of music which have always influenced each other and been built off of everything from you know, folk tunes that became symphonies that became you know Servinsky. Early Servinsky is all about you know, Russian folks folk music. And I was just planning a program for next fall, the great great artist Barbara Hannigan, and it's all based on folk folks songs really have different composers who addressed folk music in different ways. And then we're going to add in some dance, and we'll add in this and it's like the thrilling kind of build of it is the thing. And then how exciting it is to kind of have that. It's it's just growing and I'm learning. I was just learning from her, Like the students will all be a part of this. They'll like get their minds blown as they go along, and they have to work really hard to do it because you still have to do it. I mean, it's like where Winton is Also, He's like, okay, now we talked about context, but you got to play right.
I was like, it's do you feel like you've mentioned a lot of incredible choreographers who are just you know, when you know you're like, oh, okay, I'm about to sit with.
Twila and Twilt is now going to talk about what we are going to do. We're just sitting with Jerome or sitting is.
There not necessarily a favorite, but how do you like, where does that play in you to be able to show to I know this is because twilet is very specific when you see a Twilet Flower production.
Well, so I think it's again in a way, it's like you you take in the context of whatever it is. Differently, so Jerry was different because I was I was a kid. I mean, he came to watch me in class at SAB on a Saturday morning because of mutual friends that you should look at this kid and basically gave me some corrections and then told me don't go to ABT. You should come to City Ballet really because I was like, I don't know where I was going. Because because Barishnikov was running American Valley Theater, which was like whoa Misha, but a very different repertory, much more like nineteenth century classics, Amisia was revolutionizing it in truth, but Jerry Robbins was sitting at City Valley making art, and I was like, so that was the validation I needed to say that's where I'm going, even though I was already total cult for Valancie and I was like, I was at that theater every night just learning, and I was seeing things I couldn't believe. Actually, I was like, what is this. I remember there's a valley called episodes. I was literally like, what this is unreal? Because I grew up watching Swan Lake. You know, I saw that too, and I was like and that. I was like, there is so much more. So when I think about your question, I'm like, it's a huge garden. You know, you're walking through and you make choices, you say, I want to work with this one, that one. You know, you explore different things. There are lots of different ways people do. Twilo was the first and maybe the only person I ever really worked with who used different music all the time. She would choreograph something to Randy Newman that ended up being set to Bob Telson, you know, and it would be like, what's happening.
On broad where she did that Billy Joel?
Yeah, moving out?
Yeah, right, and you're like, wait, wait, Twilette Tharp and Billy Joel have this like.
I mean, she was always opened for she did so much. She had great the Beach Boys Ballet and all these things that she did that were kind of rooted in popular so to speak, but then she would flip it on its side. I mean, I think the last thing she made that I was in was a ballet to Beethoven at City Ballet, and we worked with all kinds of music getting getting there. I remember she put on craft Verk, I remember kraft Work. It was German kind of you know, very like, had all this kind of vibe to it, and that ended up being, you know, Beethoven seventh. And there are those who would say that's really, you know, not how I would do it. The music is first, and we're going to do that. But what I learned was a respect for possibility, different ways to do things. And then and the.
Alway open to it.
I was, I was, I was ready to be it was ready. I was ready for that in one lane way like I love I love magic, like like literally like magic. Yeah, I mean there's a I had a I had a series of Kennedy's Center for a bunch of years called Demo, and Demo was all about bringing together great people musicians, dancers primarily, but occasionally a clown Bill Erwin was in for a while, and we would put together a show basically, and it was called demo because it really was and sometimes it was great and sometimes it was like okay, you know. Uh. But one of the groups I worked with had a friend in DC who was a magician, and the magician would come to the show and then afterwards we'd go out for dinner and he would then he would do stuff and I just remember never I'd never been that close to it before, and the things that would go on were like so, I just that was a mind thing. And I'm still I've been ruminating for a couple of years now on doing a show about magic, like trying to figure out how to bring that feeling of involuntary reactions almost like you just can't believe you know, the composer Caroline Shaw is someone I work with a lot on a door and I think she's just a genius. And I remember we were we were together one night when this guy did this stuff, and it's like we had a card and it ended up in the salt or something, and we still talk about it. So your card is in the salt, and it's like, wow, it's unbelievable, and you want that feeling of possibility, like how is that possible? Is kind of and so what a great place to be. So I aspire to that.
It's two thousand. From my understanding of the story, you're in DC. I believe you're sitting next to Giffer, to Gabby Gabby Giffer. Now, Harvard has never accepted somebody to get an mp.
A degree without having a bachelor's.
Now, arguably you've earned a bachelor degree for the twenty plus years of your life that no one earns in four years going And.
That was the case. I made that.
And you get accepted to this program, which then brings you to eventually getting the position of being the president of what is arguably, if not definitively the premier.
Art school, Juilliard in New York. I think one. But my silly question is, is it sort of like.
Fame for like, you know, like I always dream when I saw fame in nineteen eighty two, because.
Me too, that idea of level spilling out onto this performing art.
Yes.
So yeah, two thousand and four, I'm at City Ballet. It's going fine. I've started doing I mean between like getting to be a principal dancer, and then I've started branching and doing different things. I'm running groups, I'm choreographing for City Valley and other places. I'm directing things. Still primarily a dancer, but I'm at all these other things. I start doing stuff where I don't know. I wish I could really think about it hard. But there was a moment when I realized that I liked and I had an affinity for speaking in public about art stuff. Basically first dance, like I would do a lecture demonstration and I would very easily talk about dance, and that translated to being, you know, talking about the arts in general. And at one point I got asked to be on a group of kind of a forty under forty of US and China relations, and I was sort of the arts guy, and there was a Chinese arts guy, and there was an American business and an American military and so on and so forth and government. And that's where I met Gabby. So I had built to that place where I was sort of involved in things beyond my primary and I loved it and I was interested in it. It goes back to, you know, my childhood and my dad being an international law and foreign policy professor, and you know, it's like in my head that this is a global thing, thinking about how the art world played in the Cold War, and I would always think about that and talk about things like that, looking to make the arts more a part of society. I thought, you know, this is making it more than simply a performance. What's the rest. So when we talked a little bit about the eighties that was brewing, it was in there like this is a bigger conversation and I like to talk. It turns out, so National Committee has this forty forty thing. It's an interesting group, and it was actually in Arizona and Gabby and I get on the bus like going to dinner, you know, like from the hotel. You're a wady with the dinner thing, you know, and She starts asking me about what I'm going to do when I stopped dancing, which is not close, but it's maybe not far. I'm in my mid thirties that point, and who knows, you know, an accident can happen anytime. You don't know, yah, And I say, gosh, you know, I'm doing this and this and this. I'm dancing, I'm directing. I'm probably going to stay in the field because you know, I didn't go to college, and I don't see you know, I don't have some great ballet fortune here. It's not like I can just stop and take four years off and go to college.
You know.
It doesn't seem that way to me. So I see people do it now, and I'm just hats off. I'm like, wow, I don't know how to do this.
Stop the Yeah.
No. They managed to juggle in different ways, and she said, well, you know what, there's this program at the Kennedy School at Harvard. It's a mid career program and it's a master's program. And she said, I think you should do that, you know, And I was like, well, how am I gonna do that? She said, I'm telling you, it's a mid career program. You should persevere you should try. So I file it away. I go home and I look online and I look at the requirements and nowhere does it say you need a bachelor's degree. I'm looking and then like, it actually doesn't say it. So I call up the Kennedy School and I get somebody at admissions and I asked them and that somebody says, oh, well it should say that, you know. And I'm like, oops, okay, so okay, and I remember going outside, We're at our house in Connecticut other than I and I say, well, there goes that you know or something like that, and she's like, who did you talk to? And I'm like, I don't know. Somebody had admissions. She said maybe you should try a little harder, you know, And sure enough, I try a little harder. I end up going up there. I meet a mutual contact of a friend who basically says a version of well did you go to high school a bit? Because the truth is I graduated super early from Hollywood High School. It's because I was dancing professionally in LA at that point, and I got all the credits and I just couldn't wait to get going. So I did at least a bit I said, and she's like, oh my god, I guess you should come up here. And so I did, and I met the head of the program, and then I met the dean of the school, and the dean of the school an amazing man named Joe Joseph McCarthy, No, no choke be his name is. Joe McCarthy said to me, I like to think that Harvard's the kind of place that understands this situation. And boy do I think about that all the time in my current role. I'm like aspire to that. And he said, Okay, So here's the deal. Apply take your GRE tests, get your recommendations, and if you are not you know, if you if you are able to do the work, we're gonna we're gonna make this. We're going to figure this out. Because no one's been at school in a long time anyway, everybody's been out for at least a dozen years because it's a mid career program, and let's just see. So I came back, I got a tutor for the GRES, did a ton of practice tests, did it. It went fine, great, recommendations worked. You know, I just said, I think I can do this, studied like crazy, and one day I was on the airport going to Texas to do a gig and I got an email and it said you're in, You're going to You're going to Harvard. And I was like, are you kidding me? And I remember hither and I were laughing so hard because we were living kind of in another century, I guess, because we kept thinking it would come in the mailbox. And I got an email, you know, and it.
Was like, I got an yest century are.
Rejected, just an email in some you know, tragic little restaurant in LaGuardia. I'm like, oh my god. So and and I talked to the dean again, and I make some plans, and I take some economics courses over the summer to get ready. The next thing, you know, I'm there and I get this master's in Public Administration, which is essentially a leadership degree, but it's a to me. It was like the chance of a lifetime to go to school. And so I took classes at the business school, at the law school, and I was all over the place. I was taking you know, seminars, and I did all these different types of things, rhetoric with David Gergan. I remember I took a course on state craft with the most incredible professor who was a priest who I actually knew as a kid because he worked with my father on international law things. Again, it was like so crazy, and back and back in Cambridge, Boston, you know, running back and forth to Boston Valley to stay in shape because I'm still dancing. So I'm in Boston staying in shape, come back anyway. It all adds up that by the time I actually retire that night, when I'm forty one, I've kind of got a bunch of different lives going.
Thanks for pulling up a chair today on table for two. While Damien had an incredible career as a ballet dancer, he now has another important role. He has served as president of the Juilliard School in New York City since July twenty eighteen.
You've had this huge, vast career here in New York and you find yourself now running Juilliard.
So we'd all added up in a funny way. So that just to cut fast from two thousand and eight to twenty eighteen, when I become the president, I am doing I'm leading three or four lives, I'm directing, I'm working on national arts education, programs, really dreaming the big dream that every child should have arts in their schools and how do we get there? And doing work on that that I'm super proud of and super inspiring and humbling to get to do. I'm working as at the Aspen Institute. I created an arts policy program there that was all about art and society, very focused on education, but also diplomacy, economics, other things. And when I get a call about Juilliard, there's this moment when I go and I really am happy. I will say, doing all these different things, it is like, what a gift to never get to you never say no. I remember George Stevens Junior asked me to start directing, you know, dance when they had a Kennedy Center honor who is a dancer? I would direct those. I never had to say no. I was like, yes, call me, say yes. I did things for the World Science Festival honor. I to honor Stephen Hawking with a performance attributing art and science. So when I got when I got this call, I was in the habit of saying I do not want one job. But then I thought about what Juilliard was and I was like, it is all of it. It is the education piece, It is the performance piece. It is the international global impact. It is the future of the arts. It is economics, it is what is going to create the next centers, the next programs, all the teachers that come out of there who educate the next generation. And I was like, okay, I it is a dream dream to try to enter that world. And back at Juilliard.
Yeah, you know, do you feel like when you're looking at the student now at Juilliard and everything's changed in the world, you know, between social.
Media, attact and all that.
Yeah, has the student changed? Is there work ethic different? Are they jaded in a different way? Are they motivated in a different way?
It seems like it's a so yes, everything changes generationally, it changes. We all know that from from our lives. You know, we know that people and you know kind of and then we so we know it this way first looking up and then suddenly we look down and we're like, oh, they're different, right right, you know, they don't think that we're not thinking exactly the same way. Yeah, But you know the gift of getting to work, obviously with successive generations is recognizing that and being a part of that that story right to my mind. You know, it's gotten infinitely more complex in different ways, the things that take up your time. But conversely, you can see everything, all of the inspiration you want, it's at yours, it's in your pocket. It's like, oh my god, look at this, and look at this and look at this. Conversely, maybe you're not getting quite the same amount of the need for live experience, which is actually in so many ways the most that's live and living are related as works. So you know, are we living this? Yes, and yet the rigor of it is still the same. You're still showing up as a dancer to the bar, You're still going to your lessons as a musician, You're still doing your skills. You're still doing you know, a build of repertory found but where it's going or actors, the same thing. It's all good. The foundation of diction and all the things that they teach at Juilliard like nowhere else in the world. It's like it's I can't believe when I go and I get to watch and I see the progression over time that remains. But the destinations are enormously you know, more varied. There's more of a sense of and it's I believe in this so much. There are so many ways to get to heaven. There are so many destinations that are definitions of success. Whereas you know, in in many generations pass there was a narrower set of outcomes that you would, you know, you might embrace. You might be going to an orchestra. You might be a soloist, you might be a you might be a film composer, you might be someone who works independently as with your own ensemble. You might I mean, it's just it's the varying things are so much And what I love so much about Juilliard is that that edge effect is there are so many edges you have your you know, within music, there's an opera, there's jazz, there's composition, there's baroque music, there's orchestral news, there's chamber music. There's the composers. There's and then they're next to the dancers, who are a variety of outcomes, whether they're going into you know, foundational modern dance or into ballet or going to Europe to be in a you know, a contemporary company, or to be choreographers or to be directors of which so many Juilliard graduates and dance or the directors of the companies all kinds. And then in drama you know that that field, you know, from the theater base, which is what Juilliard's base was for theater. Look at the film, you know, you look at you know, from the beginning, you know, from like Christopher Reeves and Robin Williams and you know, to Viola Davis, to Jessica Chastain to and right down to day. The outcomes in film are enormous, But then all the other ways that actors are actually functioning today, and we just think about, you know, this is this is the ecosystem that we are actually not just partaking in, but going to continue creating. And that to me was the thing. I was like, Wow, this is you know, music, dance, and drama together, not just performers but makers. Not just makers and performers, but potential teachers at Lincoln Center surrounded by one set of outcomes which we send people to all those houses. You know, if we have a all call Julliard alumni on Lincoln Center Plaza, you know, all come out and you know, saying it'll be quite something, you know, but then it just keeps going, not just in America, globally around the world, and so what we put in is what we get out, and to me, that is that foundation. And then the adventure of it all. What is next? What are the what are the collaborative things that we can nurture now? What can they try now? That will be the next step. We think about the generation's past, and again it's oscillation. There are times when institutions kind of go like this and hang on to things. They say, we're going to solidify, and then there's times when they push out, you know, and they make room. I heard bil Ty Jones say that in a room at Juilliard my first year. He was talking about, you know, the message in one of the pieces, the piece they were staging on Juilliard, and he talked to the dancers and I have to say, I hadn't thought about this in a while, but man, it's mystical. They're surrounding him and you know what Bilty looks like. It's just like it's a magnificent human being. And he said what we were saying, and he put his elbows out is make room or make room. And I was like, wow, what a message.
One of the things that I find that's so effective in leadership is if you've actually worked in the trenches, if you worked in the you know, from being in the costume department to dancing to being you know, it doesn't feel like anyone sits in that chair who can actually talk to your students and say, I know it, I lived it.
Yeah did it.
I mean the history of Juilliard like the history of you know, kind of classical, but also art because in Juilliard's not strictly classical. There is jazz, for instance. There are contemporary forms both in dance and in drama. We have composers in film. This is not you know, but it is a it is a wide ambition, it's my point. But all of it is relatively new. When we look at the rest of the world, it's pretty new.
Yeah.
So Jilliard starts in nineteen oh five in its first incarnation, it's not even called Juilliard till nineteen twenty six, and then it grows to add dance in nineteen years fifty one. Yeah, we're going to be one hundred name so I get another whack at a centennial. They did one in two thousand and five, another one. We're gonna do another nineteen fifty one, they add dance. Nineteen sixty nine, they had drama when they moved to Lincoln Center to represent all the art forms there because that's where are the educational constituents that they had said, this is going to be everything, and it's all in development. So when I look back at the leaders of Juilliard from the beginning, this is all revolution. It's all like here we go. America too, will have a classical symphony of we will educate for it, not just going to import. And then dance takes hold and we think about the modern dance kind of revolution starting with Graham. You know, company is going to be They're going to have their one hundredth anniversary in twenty twenty six two. That's going to be the Martha Graham Company. It's all developing. So when like William Schumann was a president for many years and then he became the president of the first batch of Lincoln Center, actually first round, he was the second, but he was really the first practicing president. He's adding things in a way just like New York is, just like America is post war. Post war is like unbelievable. Look where we're sitting right now. You were talking about Lincoln Center. I was thinking of City Center, you know, on fifty fifth Street, which was made by Mayor LaGuardia to be the people's house for dance, where City Ballet was founded, for City Opera found, where the musicals, where all of this kind of history is just happening at that time. After it's a post war boom of many kinds, and in New York and in culture in America, you start seeing the investment in it. You see like the Ford Foundation sponsoring not just City Ballet and Soil American Ballet making an investment, but theater and orchestras around the country. All of those theaters, you know, the guth three and the one in Houston that I'm losing my mind here, I can't remember. All of that is post war energy that goes for decades. That leads us to the place where we have a Lincoln Center, because we're not there yet, we don't have our homage to art in that way. And that leads to the Kennedy Center, and then then we have an established thing, and Julliard is a part of that every step of the way, building and those leaders are adding and building. Yes, and you know this is a. This is evolution, and we continue and the project is not done. The project continue what it's one.
A message has I don't think has anyone ever sat in your seat, Julia with the history behind them, because you one of the things that I find that's.
So effective in leadership and leadership on any level. Damian.
I couldn't think of a better person to sit in the seat that you're sitting in. And I could also want to say the journey of your life from a little boy to the dance, to the choreographer to the directing to be sitting here in the center of our beloved city at such a vibrant time in your life and you are how helping people find their voice, to create more beauty and tell stories.
And oh, it's really kind of you. My goal here is to create next steps. I want this to be ever more creative and also ever more affordable. We're making it happen. We have our drama MFA went tuition free this last fall with the help of some wonderful people.
We have.
You know, over a third of our students, or just at a third right now, are tuition free, and some of our programs for young people, we have our own preparatory division that we're expanding out into communities to try to make sure that every child has that opportunity to experience art so they're not in a way, they get the benefit of it and whether they, you know, end up on a stage or just for life, for the skills that come with an artistic kind of practice. I think foundationally for America, for the world, that the foundation of understanding is culture. And I appreciate you giving me the chance to have this conversation all this time.
Thank you for your time, thank you for pulling up for share.
I love our lunches and never forget the romance of a meal. If you enjoy the show, please tell a friend and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Table for Two with Bruce Bosi is produced by iHeartRadio seven three seven Park and Airmail. Our executive producers are Bruce Bosi and Nathan King. Our supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. Our editors are Vincent to Johnny and Cas B.
Bias.
Table for two is researched and written by Jack Sullivan. Our sound engineers are Meil B. Klein, Jess Krainich, Evan Taylor, and Jesse Funk. Our music supervisor is Randall. Poster Our talent booking is done by Jane Sarkin. Table for two's social media manager is Gracie Wiener. Special thanks to Amy Sugarman, Uni Scherer, Kevin Yvane, Bobby Bauer, Alison Kanter Graber. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
