About

Margot Fonteyn's Vision
Fonteyn Academy vs A Dance School
Dame Margot Fonteyn de Arias
Kenneth Ludden, Director
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At the age of 3 Ludden took a neighborhood movement class in Montgomery County, Maryland. Jessica Rae, former Denis-Shawn dancer and later with Liz Lerman’s Dancers of the 3rd Age, held classes in her basement. He took these classes for two years. The Ludden family was very active and creative, and the children all learned to sing and play musical instruments from early ages, as well as doing amateur family performances under the name “Kendepestauri Theater”, a name derived from the first names of the six Ludden children. In the late 1950s a neighbor working for CBS television cast some television extra work from among the Ludden children, and Ken appeared on Ranger Hal, Kaptain Kangaroo, Bozo the Clown, and others. When Kaptain Kangaroo did a televised concert with the National Symphony Orchestra at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, DC, Ludden was one of a half dozen child extras.

The family moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania when Ludden was 10 years old. Upon entering the Cumberland Valley High School, which housed grades 7-12 in a single building, he saw audition notices for a Senior High production of Brigadoon and went to the audition, not realizing he was much too young. When the assembled boys were asked if any had dance experience, Ludden was the only one to raise his hand, which he did remembering his early classes with Jessica Rae. He was cast as the lead dancer, Harry Beaton. At the first rehearsal it became clear he was too young for the production, and that his training in dance was only creative movement and not technique classes.

The choreographer, Richard Wilson, took Ludden aside and explained the problems. But, he added the stipulation that if he was willing to study ballet, he could be in the production. Wilson then contacted Marcia Dale Weary and a scholarship was arranged. Ludden was the only male dance student at the ballet school at the time, and studied privately with Ms. Dale Weary, but also had to clean the studios in exchange for his scholarship. As Brigadoon performances came to a close, Wilson told Ludden that if he stayed in ballet throughout high school, Ludden could dance in his semi-professional jazz company (The Richard Wilson Dancers) when he was in the tenth grade. And Ludden did stay, and did dance with the Richard Wilson Dancers, eventually performing in an extended run of Sweet Charity, and as a dancer for the Pete Womback Show out of Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Marcia Dale Weary had guest teachers from the National Ballet of Washington to help stage productions and teach. Eddie Myers and Pat Sorrell were the guest teachers, and they worked extensively with Ludden. When Margot Fonteyn came to Washington, DC to present diplomas at the National Ballet School, Myers brought Ludden along to the ceremony so he could see the famous ballerina, whom Ludden had heard about and had seen a single photograph of her which hung on the wall of Marcia’s studio.

While at the National Ballet School ceremony, Fonteyn saw the boy standing separate from the other children and interrupted the proceedings to ask who he was and why he wasn’t getting a diploma. Myers explained that Ludden was a student, but at a different school. Fonteyn then came over to where they stood and asked Ludden several questions, and was concerned to learn he was the only boy in the school.

Fonteyn went on to arrange for Ludden to take classes at the Royal Ballet School in London, and live with her mother, Hilda Hookham (known to her friends as “BQ” or the Black Queen from a role she had taken on stage in a children’s performance at the Royal). Ludden was able to take her up on this offer when he went to the Lycee in Vichy, France as a foreign student for a summer session, after which he went to London to study. He returned to London to study off and on for the next six years, while still finishing his high school studies in the US.

Ludden kept studying in America with Marcia Dale Weary, and eventually went to the National Ballet School, studying under Mary Day and working in wardrobe and as a janitor for the Company to fulfill his apprenticeship obligations. He also danced with the John Cage company for its residency at Dickenson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, appearing as “the one who answers the door” in an unstructured sound and movement improvisation piece.

Ludden also took classes in Maryland with Danny Diamond, as a guest of Eddie Myers, and was taken to New York and introduced to Margaret Craske, with whom Myers and Fonteyn studied. Craske allowed Ludden to come and go, taking classes with her when he was in New York.

He entered Colgate University in 1970. By November of that year Ludden became depressed, but didn’t understand why. Seeking answers, he compared his life at Colgate with his life before and became aware that the difference was that he was not dancing. He called Syracuse Ballet Theater and got a job dancing in their Nutcracker Ballet.

While at Colgate he started the Earlville-Sherburne Ballet School with studios at the Earlville Opera House and Hamilton, NY, creating his first artistic link to Upstate New York. He also contacted Rachel Lloyd, a faculty wife who had studied with Martha Graham, and petitioned the University for her to teach modern dance classes that fulfilled the physical education requirements for Colgate. He taught ballet and Mrs. Lloyd taught modern, which has led to a full-fledged dance department today at Colgate. Ludden put together an evening of dance called “Beginning to Beyond” marking the first choreography of his career.

While at Colgate the Erik Hawkins company did a residency, which Ludden attended. Hawkins, who allowed Ludden to work with the company while there, asked Ludden to come to New York to study and perhaps join the company. Ludden had gone during breaks to do that, and developed a working relationship with Hawkins. He also took classes with Martha Graham and June Lewis, Lucas Hoving, and others, including Paul Sanasardo. But Ludden always took ballet class with Margaret Craske in New York. This crossing of lines between classical ballet and modern dance, with the blessings of Craske and Hawkins who were both purists and rare allowed that line to be crossed, became an earmark of Ludden’s career. Today it is common for ballet companies to offer a wide variety of choreography. But at that time, companies did not make such offerings, and Ludden was one of few dancers who worked both sides of the dance divide.

At the end of two years at Colgate, Ludden’s financial aid was denied in a form letter from the Registrar. That same day he received a letter from Paul Sanasardo, inviting Ludden to come to Saratoga Performing Arts Center for the Summer School of Modern Dance on full scholarship, and dance in the Sanasardo Summer Company. So Ludden refocused his life and went to Saratoga, staying with family who lived in nearby Schenectady, New York. That summer he was asked to be rehearsal partner by Melissa Hayden and through that work met Violette Verdy. Ludden took NYCB company class, which Balanchine periodically taught, that summer as well. Again, Ludden studied classical ballet and modern dance alternately even on the same day.

After the summer at SPAC, Ludden went to New York to audition in late August, 1972. He was given a contract with the New York City Classical Ballet Ensemble for their upcoming European tour. He drove back to his family home, once more located in the Washington, DC area, to celebrate his contract. Before going home he stopped and took class with Martin Bruckner at the Washington Ballet School, and started feeling sick. He then went home and later that night was taken to the emergency room with massive kidney stones. He had extensive surgery, and faced an extended time without being able to dance. When he was still in the hospital, Martin Bruckner invited him to dance in a production of Man of La Mancha, but Ludden turned him down. He didn’t want to leave the world of professional dance, even for musical comedy which he loved, for he had been bitten by the New York bug.

He went to New York to recover from the surgery, and worked as wardrobe assistant for the Circle In The Square Theater School, costuming their production of “La Ronde” directed by Madeline Sherwood. Sherwood had Ludden give morning company ballet class to the actors, and other actors from the Circle In The Square professional company also took his class. And he also worked slowly back into shape taking classes with Margaret Craske and Paul Sanasardo.

Two months later, before Ludden was fully recovered, Pat Sorrell and Eddie Myers invited Ludden to return to Washington and take up his scholarship with the Washington Ballet School, and got him a job in the wardrobe department, in hopes that when his dancing was strong enough he might become an apprentice with the National Ballet Company. Ludden went, worked in Wardrobe, took classes at Washington Ballet, and also modern dance with Maida Withers. He became friends with Frederick Franklin, and several of the dancers. For a time he shared an apartment with Kevin McKenzie, was introduced to Carmen Mathe, and became very close friends with Kirk Peterson. But very soon, in 1973, the National Ballet closed forever.

Fonteyn had kept a close eye on Ludden from their first meeting time until her death in 1991. During this period she would call him to encourage him to keep working, and suggested that he study again in London, which he did off and on. She and her mother gave much moral support when Ludden danced briefly with the Irish National Ballet (a job he did not stay with due to the low pay and difficult conditions for the dancers). Instead, he returned to America and danced with several companies: Maryland Ballet Company (Danny Diamond, Director), Virginia Ballet Company (Oleg Tupine, Director), Arlington Dance Theater (at that time with Mary Craighill), McLean Ballet (Molly Vick, Director) and others.

Ludden had started working with a small amateur company directed by Cheryl Van Metre in 1974, and returned every year for the next fifteen years, watching the little company grow to become the Appalachian Ballet Company of Knoxville, Tennessee. And in 1976 Ludden was invited by French National Television to narrate and dance in a tribute to the American Bicentennial. In 1977 Ludden returned for one summer to Colgate University to pick up more credits toward his undergraduate degree in Art History. While there he formed a non-profit called Summergate Dance Theater, and produced an evening of ballet at Colgate University’s Dana Arts Center.

The next several years his career blossomed. He became a very good partner, an impressive dramatic dancer, but never a virtuoso. He danced with Sallie Wilson, Rebecca Wright, Andrea Price, Libby Wade, Ruth Mayer, Janet Panetta and others. Very much in demand, Ludden became principal dancer and assistant director of the Luzern State Ballet in Switzerland, while traveling around Europe as a guest artist and teacher. He returned to America in 1980 to become Ballet Coordinator for the Washington Opera Company, and danced as an international solo artist booked three years in advance. He was invited by Sallie Wilson to appear with ballerina Jean Czula in a gala to raise money for the newly forming Poughkeepsie Ballet Theatre, and at the last minute was also asked to dance the lead role in Paul Sanasardo’s “Fatal Birds”, a role up to then only danced by Sanasardo himself. Sanasardo taught him the role in a single six-hour rehearsal.

The gala was successful and director Gilbert Reed invited Ludden to come to dance in Poughkeepsie. Ludden accepted, but kept up his scheduled appearances as well. Sallie Wilson asked Ludden to become her partner there, and the pair danced together in several ballets.

While at the Washington Opera, Ludden had performed in Dominick Argento’s opera “Postcard from Moracco” after which Argento approached Ludden and asked him to choreograph a piece of music he had specially written for ballet: Royal Invitation: Homage to the Queen of Tonga. Ludden accepted, and hired the Poughkeepsie Ballet Theatre with guest artst Sallie Wilson in the lead role.

Then in 1982, during a televised gala for Margaret Craske’s 90th birthday in New York, Ludden’s Achilles tendon severed and when initial surgery failed was told he would never walk again. But a doctor friend, and ballet supporter, organized surgeons from Hospital for Special Surgery, Cornell Neurosurgery Department, Mayo Clinic along with the Red Cross to do an innovative series of 11 operations headed by Dr. Alan Inglis. The surgery was successful, but kept Ludden in a wheelchair and on crutches for nearly three years. During this time Ludden continued to choreograph and teach. He attended Boston University, and while there his friend Violette Verdy, then director of the Boston Ballet, had Ludden coach some of the principal dancers, including prima ballerina Laura Young. And Ludden did choreography for the Appalachian Ballet Company as well. His productions were produced by his non-profit company, which changed name to become the National Arts Group.

Ludden graduated from Boston University in 1985 with a degree in Art History. He had continued to mount productions all over the world, and had started writing about dance and other subjects. For two years he served as a dance critic covering Boston for Dance News. He returned to Washington, DC and opened Washington Classical Dance at the Eighth Street Studio. Continuing National Arts Group productions and his well known fundraising Salons, Ludden was invited by Vadim Pisarev to travel to Donetsk, USSR in 1989 to become the first American to choreograph original works in the Soviet Union, and the first cultural exchange under the new policies of Glasnost and Perystroyka.

Fonteyn and Ludden had started in earnest to form the foundation for a performing arts school, which would house a ballet academy bearing the famous ballerina’s name, and be fitted to her vision of the most effective way to train ballet dancers. When Ludden’s trip to the USSR resulted in thirteen more invitations to travel to eastern Europe both before and after the Soviet Union fell, he and Fonteyn took this opportunity to study first hand the different institutions of dance and arts around the world, making it impossible for him to keep his dance school open.

Ludden took on private students and continued to coach principal dancers in various companies, and kept on working on choreography. He brought American competition ballroom dancers to Russia, formed educational exchange programs between elementary schools in the Ukraine and Upstate New York, choreographed new ballets and musical comedy productions, wrote about dance, and became an all-around ambassador of dance. Then Fonteyn fell ill and died before their school could open. She left Ludden with the vision, and the guidance to wait until after the new millennium, to start at least the ballet portion of the envisioned centre.

For the next fifteen years Ludden has continued to add to his list of accomplishments, publications, awards and productions. He moved with his partner and daughters to the west coast, and for nine years wrote for the newspaper (SF Spectrum), was the senior correspondent of a television news magazine (QTV Newsmagazine), performed vocally to raise money for AIDS Orphans around the world, and became the official San Francisco AIDS Orphan Ambassador to the world. He published the first of a nine-book science fiction series (Second Pass), formed a video production company (Castro to Christopher Street Productions), wrote, published and directed several plays and a television pilot, and continued always to coach and teach privately.

Two years ago, a group of professional dancers came to California to ask him to return to the east coast and create a place for them to study and dance. Discontented with the kinds of works they were asked to perform in professional companies, and aware that even as professional dancers they were lacking in technique and a strong foundation, they wanted something more. Ludden was then ready. Fonteyn said he would know the right time to start building the school, and it was clear the time was right, but where?

Ludden did two searches on the internet: one for municipalities with support for the arts in their charter; the other for cities with independent film theaters which had been open for a number of years. When he put these two lists together, there were only three matches: Austin, Texas; Charlestong, South Carolina; and Peekskill, New York. So he knew when and where.

Ludden has now formed the Margot Fonteyn Academy of Ballet in Peekskill, New York. Many of the ballerinas he danced with, or coached, or just knew have come to support him. Some of the most famous names in ballet from America are lending their support to Ludden, for all see that Fonteyn’s vision is true.