Before Stanton Welch AM, who celebrated 20 years at the artistic helm during the 2023-2024 season, the season that also brought in Julie Kent as an artistic director, there was Ben Stevenson OBE. Before Stevenson, there was a young hippie with an inspired flair for modern new works, named James Clouser. Serving in several capacities in the early to mid ‘70s, Clouser first came to Houston Ballet to stage the Flower Festival at Genzano pas de deux by Danish choreographer August Bournonville at the request of Nina Popova, one of the Ballet’s earliest directors. Beginning a fruitful relationship with Houston Ballet that marked a pivotal shift in the Company’s repertory and community impact, Clouser also served as a ballet master, assistant to the director, resident choreographer, and finally interim artistic director before the Houston Ballet Foundation Board of Directors recruited British classical choreographer, Ben Stevenson.
On January 13, his 88th birthday, Archivist Anne Wheeler was able to interview him for Houston Ballet’s Archive Collection. The following is sourced largely from that conversation.
Originally a French horn player and musical composition major at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in New York, Clouser’s life trajectory changed when he took a dance class.
CLOUSER: While I was there [at Eastman School of Music], I went to a dance class and decided to become a dancer instead of a French horn player and went to New York to study at the Ballet Theatre School. It’s now American Ballet Theatre, but then they hadn’t put American at the beginning of it. I studied there and joined the American Ballet Theatre quite swiftly.
It went very well for me, and from there I went to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet where I had a long career as a leading dancer and did all kinds of repertory and travels to Europe and got to study in New York, with some of the greatest teachers of that time.
WHEELER: Where were you first exposed to dance, was that just at the Eastman school? Or had you ever been exposed before that?
CLOUSER: I think I saw the movie The Red Shoes when I was maybe a freshman or sophomore in high school in a little movie theater. I think that was the first exposure [to dance]. And when I went to Eastman, I had to earn money, so I ushered at the theater there.
I got to see everything that the artistic program brought to Rochester, which was quite impressive at the Eastman Theater. [American] Ballet Theater came through, and I was an usher. In the second act I didn’t have to seat anybody, I could have gone home, but I went down and sat in an empty seat in the front row. I looked down into the orchestra pit and heard the conductor telling the string bass player to ‘get some rosin on your bow!’
Then I began to forget that the orchestra was lousy and began to watch the dancers. It was Alicia Alonso and Igor Youskevitch in Giselle, a great first Giselle to see. And then I fell in love with Billy the Kid [choreographed by Eugene Loring with music by Aaron Copeland for Ballet Caravan, which eventually became New York City Ballet]. That was the other ballet that I was crazy about.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
CLOUSER: When I was with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, we [toured] to England. I got offered some jobs in Germany, but I remained in Canada and the United States. I had become ballet master at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and began to establish my credentials as a choreographer who could get the job done on time, if you just tell me what you want. I was good for occasions, and I was liked as a choreographer.
I went to the Banff School of Fine Arts, a summer school in Canada connected to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, as a teacher. When I was there, I met a beautiful young woman who was assigned as my accompanist, and we fell in love. We got married and went back to New York. I began teaching at the Juilliard School, where I was assigned to be assistant to Antony Tudor, which was quite a privilege, I think, and I was surprised, but when I was his assistant and when he would go out of town, (he was teaching at York College in Toronto [Canada]), I would step in and teach his classes.
Then I taught at the School of the Metropolitan Ballet and danced with a small company called The Manhattan Festival Ballet. Ron Sequoia was the director, and they had a small theater in New York that they used and presented a very decent role for me while I was there; the Flower Festival pas de deux. I was the only person at that time in the United States with the permission to stage it, because I had gone a couple times to Denmark in my free time to learn it straight from the Danes. So they gave me permission and through that… During that whole time, if you can believe it, I became a folk singer.
My wife was a singer. And taught me to play the guitar and I had a decent enough voice to sing sixties hippie songs and we made-up our own songs and we began touring. We played colleges, and it came time to make a decision, Where was this career of mine going?
Because I was used to being a teacher, I was popular with those people who believed that something had to be done about the anatomical damage that much of the old traditional training did to dancers, and I went on to get a degree in kinesiology. There was that pulling me and then there was, Oh, I want to choreograph! At that point it was modern dance, rather than ballet and I, you know, I wanted to pursue that.
ON GETTING TO HOUSTON
CLOUSER: Before I went to Texas, I didn’t have any feelings about moving to Texas. When I had toured with The Royal Winnipeg Ballet and with [American] Ballet Theatre on the bus and truck tours, I had been to Houston and I had liked it. I had been to Galveston, and I had liked it. The look, the town, the water. The people are very eccentric and very conservative. And I found that fascinating. That the personalities just fabulous personalities among in this enclave of quite conservative, wealthy folk surrounded by vivid folklore, history and background, so I liked it.
I had gotten asked to come to Houston by Nina Popova who wanted to stage the Flower Festival pas de deux. She asked me to come to Houston, and I went to Houston, and I staged it. It was in the summertime, so I didn’t get to see the Company, just one couple who came in during their vacation to learn it. And then I got back to New Jersey and New York where [my wife and I] were living, and we set off on vacation. We were going to drive up to New England and suddenly I stopped the car.
I said, “We’re going to Houston!” and turned the car around. Found the first telephone and called up Nina Popova and I said, “I have not given you a good answer yet. Is the job still open to stage the Flower Festival?”
And then she said, “Will you come and be the ballet master? My ballet master has left.”
She had seen my work and so of the three [New York, New England, or Houston], I chose to go to Houston – the least well-paying and the most exciting, I think, to take over and be in charge of the training and the presentation of the dances of a young, vigorous American ballet company. So that’s how I got to Houston.
WHEELER: What was Houston Ballet like at that time?
CLOUSER: What was the Company like? This is interesting because it gives you a little sense of the regional ballet, how it feeds the ‘biggies’. And Houston was eager to be a biggie, I think. But they knew they had to start as a regional ballet, and there had been all these studios in Houston, an amalgamation of the local teachers who had been making efforts. They’d joined together, and they worked with the [Houston] Symphony, and they’d tried to get a company to build itself up. And in that time, Houston Ballet Foundation did it. They got their grants together and they formed, you know, a much sturdier basis.
And then they have to decide… Where do the dancers come from? Do they come from these Houston studios where the teachers are a little bit suspicious of one another and aren’t working together? Or do you hold an equity audition? And so, you’re opening up to the country.
And who in New York at that time, not now, but at that time, who in New York was going to take a chance and get a job with a brand-new company with no track record out in the middle of nowhere? Where New York was the only place you knew that you were really going to prove yourself.
The people who came to Houston Ballet were a mixture of daring. People who dared to say, “I want to dance and right now there’s no place for me in New York, and I’ll go down here in Houston and learn how it works because nobody else is hiring me right now.”
So those people were daring. Some of them were talented, some of them were clumsy oafs. And you, you did the best you could. And if you had to have a company, you needed this many girls and that many guys, and you’re going to do Swan Lake within the next couple of years. The board wants it, you know? They want Swan Lake. So, you better have girls the same size. And you better have, you know, ‘all of the things’. So, you had a hodgepodge of people who came to fill those places. And some of them were so beautiful and so talented. That’s what it was like for me at the scene when I first came.
THE TIMES THEY WERE A-CHANGING
Perhaps it was the electric magnetism that Clouser possessed, or just an energizing sign of the times, but there was substantial growth under his leadership.
WHEELER: During your time at Houston Ballet, the organization amplified their subscription series. Do you remember anything about that endeavor?
CLOUSER: Yes, I do. I remember that during the period that I was there and doing my work, the subscriptions got better and better and better and better. I don’t know how successful they were at the beginning, but obviously they were, or Henry [Holth, the company manager at the time] wouldn’t have considered, you know, to keep pushing this.
By the time I left they had a very admirable improvement in the subscriptions because we would get out there and be visible, do things that are Texan, that are Houston. You can turn on the television and see The Nutcracker, you know. So that that was my feeling then, that the Company should be uniquely what the city of Houston is, what the state of Texas is, which is a lot of interesting things.
WHEELER: What designers did you work with during your time?
CLOUSER: Mainly with my wife. We’re not married now, but we’re amicably divorced. She was a musician and an artist, and she did it all. You have enough people to deal with who don’t agree with you, and then to have to take in a designer you don’t know, who comes in from somewhere, and goes, ‘Well, I never do that!’
So I don’t remember the other designers that I worked with, besides my wife. That was that was a blessing.
WHEELER: Did you ever work with Jennifer Tipton on lighting?
CLOUSER: I did work with Jennifer Tipton. She lit several of my ballets. It was the first time that I had a Name laying design. I’d had good lighting designers in Winnipeg, but they were the locals. There was the stage manager and that was his job. He didn’t do New York and boom boom boom like Jennifer. She came to light my Carmina Burana. I was nervous and I wasn’t sure if the Ballet had told them, you know, ‘He can be insecure about a work…’
WHEELER: When I was reading about the history of Houston Ballet, I saw the ballet began performing with an orchestra during this time and that it might have been conducted by Charles Rosekrans.
CLOUSER: Charles Rosekrans. Oh, I wanted to talk about Charles. What do you want to know?
WHEELER: Just anything you remember.
CLOUSER: Well, I think that was part of Nina’s brilliance of beginning the Company. I think they were determined to always have live music and not recorded music right from the beginning. And I think Charles was their go-to man. They might have preferred Hugo Fiorato from New York City Ballet, who came down whenever we had a guest dancer from the New York City Ballet, Hugo would come and conduct the orchestra. Charles, he was local, you know. Houston.
Another thing, when I first came, the accompanists, the pianists, they were paid crumbs. I raised them to minimum wage of the time which was $12.00 an hour I think? [Note: In 1975 the minimum wage was $2.75.]
WHEELER: What ballets do you feel were your greatest works?
CLOUSER: I think everybody will say my Carmina Burana. It’s been done for several companies, and everybody comes up to me and always says this is a good one, you know? Caliban the rock ballet might fit into that category. Because it involved, not just choreographing, it involved making a search around the country for the right musicians.
Working with Shakespearean experts on my scenario, being able to tackle that subject in ballet, and find a wonderful score and get the Houston Ballet audience out of their seats and onto their stage, shaking their hips and clapping their hands. I think that probably was my favorite Houston Ballet accomplishment, which is great because it was the last thing I did for them.
Considering the brevity of Clouser’s influence at Houston Ballet in the ’70s, his contributions to morale – increasing musician pay, attracting new audiences and swelling subscription rates, he represented a turning point in the Company from the traditional Russian backgrounds of Tatiana Semenova and Nina Popova to a truly American background. Clouser continued to serve the arts community in Houston for many years after his departure from Houston Ballet, with his dance company, Space/Dance/Theater, before eventually joining the Dayton Ballet as artistic director.
When Wheeler had asked if he had received any awards, classic Clouser was modest.
“No, I never entered any. I once choreographed a solo for a woman who went to a competition in performing. She didn’t win anything. I’m not much of a competitor… You know, some people have lots of cups and things in their studio and everything, but can they stage a 15-person Swan Lake? And have the greatest Russian living Russian ballerina in the world steal part of it? That’s an accomplishment to me.”
Throughout his long career, Clouser served on the faculties of the Julliard School, Loretto Heights College, Texas Christian University, the University of North Texas, and the University of Arizona. Clouser was the first recipient of Artistic Merit granted by the Texas Commission on the Arts. He also received a Canada Council Grant for study at the Bolshoi and Kirov in Russia and a lifetime achievement award from CORPS de Ballet International.
By Elizabeth Sosa Bailey
James Brady Clouser, MA and MFA
James B. Clouser 1/13/1935 – 7/31/2024 Born in Rochester, New York in 1935, James Clouser graced the world with his artistry as a choreographer, dancer and musician, and with his warmth as a loving teacher. A devoted family man, he leaves behind not only a legacy to dance, but a family he cherished and who cherished him as their patriarch. (details below)
Clouser’s gifts to the dance field are immense, marked by a spirit of generosity and an abiding respect for the art form. And from beginning to end, the pathway he chose was full of surprises.
While studying Composition, Theory, and French Horn Performance at the Eastman School of Music, his passion for dance took over, and in a change of direction he joined American Ballet Theatre. In 1959 he joined the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, where for nine years he was a principal dancer. For the next decade he served as Ballet Master, Resident Choreographer and Acting Director of the Houston Ballet, and then founded Space/Dance/Theater and later served as Artistic Director of the Dayton Ballet. He has choreographed for numerous companies in the United States, Canada and Europe. Noted works include Con Spirito, Carmina Burana, Rasputin, the Holy Devil (which starred Erik Bruhn), Ear To Stone (presented in 1999 at the Avignon Festival in France), and the Shakespeare inspired Caliban (this country’s first full-length rock ballet to music by St. Elmo’s Fire).
Clouser’s pedagogical studies took him to the Royal Ballet Schools in London and Copenhagen and to the Bolshoi and Kirov Schools in Russia. His teaching in higher education included appointments to the faculties of the Juilliard School, Connecticut College, and the American Dance Festival. Those were followed by leadership appointments at Loretto Heights College in Denver, where he became Chairman of the Programs in Fine Arts, and at Texas Christian University, where he served as Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Ballet and Modern Dance. A subsequent seven-year stint at the University of North Texas ended in retirement, but in another surprise twist, Jim came out of “retirement” when he was invited to join the dance faculty at the University of Arizona. There, for UA Dance, he served another 18 years! His lifelong studies in pedagogy, kinesiology/injury prevention, and history, positioned him to teach academic courses while continuing as a creative artist. While at Arizona he taught Ballet Technique, Men’s Ballet, Dance History, Dance and Culture, and Looking at Dance, for which he wrote a book by the same title. These courses, along with creating new choreography, staging classics, and re-mounting some of his earlier repertoire, led to his receiving the University of Arizona’s College of Fine Arts Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching.
More recognition followed when, in 2015, the organization CORPS de Ballet International selected Clouser for its Lifetime Achievement Award, as Jim joined the ranks of other awardees such as Alonzo King and Amanda McKerrow.
And then, as his final retirement neared, he was asked if he might consider doing one more thing… to which he said “yes, I can do it.” So instead of a quiet exit, Jim, at the age of 84, took on the direction and choreography for Bernstein’s Mass. This collaboration included artists from the Tucson Symphony, True Concord Voices and Orchestra, Tucson Boys Chorus, UA Dance, and special guest vocalist, Jubilant Sykes, and was the crowning performance of the Tucson Desert Song Festival in 2018.
While it is impossible to sum up Jim’s life, it was indeed a “festival” — filled with energy, adventure, magic and joy. The countless thousands of people he touched and inspired will remember, with endless gratitude for his kindness and wisdom, the artistry of his life, and will pass on to future generations his gusto for forging a path…
The family’s wishes are that in honor of Jim’s legacy, donations can be made to Dancing In the Streets AZ. Contributions can be mailed to 6411 East Brian Kent, Tucson, AZ 85710, or made online at www.ditsaz.org.