and there is a set of black and white drawings at the bottom of the ad of dancing kids. Did you draw these adorable kids or was this the publisher? How did you do the research for this book? When I was contacting producers based on the information in the Hollywood Screenwriting Directory, I discovered that most of them were not soliciting submissions, were bankrupt and closed, or only accepted work from agented writers. Did you attempt to screen out some schools and add as many as you could or did you find most of these in a phonebook? I am curious what your process was at this early stage of your career. And how did you convince the publisher in this idea, or did he solicit your work for it? You talk about this in an interview with The Dance Enthusiast’s Sammi Lin from May 27, 2015: “New York City was called the ‘Dance Capital of the World.’ Marianne Liebert, editor of Manhattan East worked for Marcel Dekker Inc., a book publishing company. She conceived of a series of dance books and I came up with the idea of the Manhattan Dance School Directory. There were approximately 84 dance schools in Manhattan… Many of those schools closed down in the next 10 years because of the rising rents in the 1980’s.” Did your move out of NYC coincide with this change? Do you think there is another place in American today that has a similar artistic or dance climate?
“Sponge Divers, Kalymnos Greece”
36″x36″
Acrylic on canvas
This painting was interpreted from a photograph. I enjoyed abstracting seascapes.
Leifert: The dancers in the New York Magazine “Best Bets” editorial piece were drawn by an artist at New York Magazine. When I got the contract to write the dance book, I was writing for a magazine called Manhattan East—it was an upper east side weekly. The editor, this wonderful woman, Marianne Liebert, also worked for Marcel Dekker Inc, a publisher of science books. Marianne loved dance and proposed that the publisher create a dance series. Another of the books was about Dennis Wayne, whose company “Dancers” was patronized by the actress, Joanne Woodward. I pitched her the idea for “The Manhattan Dance School Directory”. At the time, there were 84 dance schools in Manhattan that taught primarily Broadway theatre dance or concert dance and ballet. I knew of most of these schools and had already taken dance class at least 20 of them. In New York during that time, these dance schools and their proprietors were legendary. Most were retired after having extraordinarily successful professional careers. New York was and still is the dance capital of the world. Now most teachers have formed larger conglomerates and teach under one roof at “Steps” or “Broadway Dance Center”—unless they are attached to a major dance company like Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, The New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Dance Theatre of Harlem etc. To research the book, I took dance classes at all of these schools and interviewed the dance school owners and teachers. There were some amazing studios at that time. One was “Multigravitational Aerodance” which was the precursor to Cirque de Soleil. I was literally flying and dancing at the same time. For the next 15 years, I continued to live in Manhattan and later on Woodstock, New York where my “author” credit was entrée to local newspapers in Woodstock, NY and New York City.
Faktorovich: You mentioned in your email that you worked for Gannett newspapers in Woodstock, New York for two years and then for the same chain in New York City, including USA Today. Were you working full-time as a reporter on “dance and music” in these years in your twenties, or did you write a few freelance articles? Did you have the freedom to write casually because of your husband’s job, and if so what did he do? Or were you a professional writer and supported yourself on this craft?
Leifert: I always worked as a freelance writer. I also wrote for The Woodstock Times, a very progressive newspaper in a very sophisticated arts community. I had a piece in the paper at least twice a week and once they got to know me I also covered rock and roll. It was Woodstock!!! I was sent all over the Hudson Valley to cover bands and to write either reviews or preview pieces. The Poughkeepsie Journal was my first Gannett job. I was writing a lot for them also. When I moved back to NYC after two years, I wrote for Westchester Rockland Gannett and did a few pieces for USA Today and New York Newsday. I supported myself and lived lean.
Faktorovich: Why did you decide to return to dance?