Pierre and Yvonne have been friends, dance partners and business partners for over thirty years. Each comes from very different backgrounds, Pierre, a proud, born and raised Middle Eastern refugee from Palestine; Yvonne, a simple Chicago girl with the childhood dreams to become a professional dancer. When they connected in the world of dance, they created an expression of beauty and weightless perfection that has rarely been seen.
Pierre became a refugee in 1948 and again in 1956 when his family fled to England to escape raging war. They returned to Jordan because his father was unable to find work, but were forced to leave again when the Suez Canal Crisis erupted. It was on this England return that Pierre first began to take ballroom class, but was also the point where his father passed away. Regretfully to Pierre, he would never see the great success that Pierre has had over his long career of dancing.
Yvonne comes from the classic structure and tradition of ballet. She decided to move to New York to begin her career and ended up being offered a job at Arthur Murray Dance Studios. Yvonne’s birth given last name was Mason and due to the fact of another Mason on board the faculty, they encouraged her to change her last name. Having already the beginnings of a French name, Yvonne decided to keep the same initials but have Marceau become her last name. After she met Pierre, the name had stuck and she decided to keep it as a professional name.
Pierre and Yvonne first met in the mid seventies. Pierre was a supervisor at the same Arthur Murray studio as Yvonne. He eventually approached her with the possibility to train with him and the legendary John Delroy in England and she gladly accepted. They competed in regular competition for Ballroom and “Did okay,” says Yvonne. “But it was really evident that we were not going to have the time to pay enough dues to ever be Latin champions.” At this level, most dancers have to start out as children and advance through the ranks over many years. While Pierre had been in competitions for many years, Yvonne was still very new to this.
Their partnership eventually came to the decision that they would have to take a different route to advance their dancing possibilities and went back to New York to train with John Rudis on the theatrical style of ballroom dance. John put together a routine for Pierre and Yvonne and they returned to England at the British Championship at Blackpool, considered by many to be the most prestigious dance competition for ballroom dancers. They ended up walking away with the championship for the Theater Arts category (they won four times over the course of their career). Within a couple hours after their performance, they had collected enough offers to work the rest of the year nonstop.
Pierre Dulaine and Yvonne Marceau eventually founded their company, The American Ballroom Theater, in 1984. In 1989-1990, they received the prestigious Fred Astaire Award for Best Dancing on Broadway with their roles as a couple in Tommy Tune’s “Grand Hotel”.
In 1994, they incorporated classrooms and teachers into their American Ballroom Theater and began to teach children the art of ballroom dance, called “Dancing Classrooms”. The story of the introduction of this program into the New York school systems is featured in the movie “Take the Lead”, starring Antonio Banderas. The program is used to teach children of all ages, self esteem, confidence and an awareness of the arts and themselves.
Teachers of this program are taught extensively on the art of ballroom dance with a 60 hour course that begins the end of October with weekday classes for approximately six weeks. They have auditions for acceptance to the program; however they do not require extensive ballroom experience to participate. All that is needed is a passion for children, passion for creative and verbal expression, flexibility in schedule and a good sense of humor. Pierre has recently franchised the children’s program and you will soon find classrooms popping up all over the world within the next two years.
Vanessa Villalobos has been with Pierre and Yvonne for the past few years, first as a teacher and now as the studios manager. She told us that over the past year the studio has just been “buzzing” with young people and working professionals. “Being involved with Pierre & Yvonne,” says Vanessa. “I can say I have learned a lot by watching this wonderful duo live out their passions and be able to bring the positive into other people’s lives through their work.” Vanessa has recently taken these lessons and opened her own dance program she calls, Balorico.
We had the opportunity to speak with both Yvonne and Pierre about their career, partnership, children’s program and magnificent life of dance:
Eric Leech: Pierre, what aspects of your Palestinian background come out in the way that you dance?
Pierre Dulaine: “I have never thought of such a thing. Yes, I do speak Arabic and enjoy doing so very much. I was born in 1944 and left Palestine at 4 years old in 1948 upon the creation of Israel. I was then brought up in Amman, Jordan and for my teenage years I grew up in England….first in Windsor and then in Birmingham. At 19 I moved to live in London.”
E.L.: What is your most proud and humble experience over your dancing career that most people would never know?
Pierre D: “Having been made a refugee twice in my life…..I have been speaking about it somewhat lately, but most people do not know this. I say it nowadays because other people can actually make it and should not let troublesome situations stop them from trying harder and make their dreams come true.”
EL: Yvonne, we all know that even the most compatible teams have moments of great disagreement. Did you ever have any conflicts that almost broke your partnership with Pierre?
Yvonne Marceau: “I can’t remember that there was ever a time that we considered not dancing together. Certainly, there were differences in how do we do this step, ‘I think it should be like this and he thinks it should be like that’. I think what saved us was that we were certainly good friends but we were also a business partnership—we weren’t married. What ever happened in the dance studio you did and you went home and came back the next day and felt better. We also had a coach or third party to say this is what it should be and we both came from traditions that respected that. Dancing is a very personal thing and there is a lot invested in it. People get very anxious about how to do things.”
EL: You have given so much to society in so many different ways, is their a personal account you could share with us of a moment where you were able to see this unfold for yourself?
Pierre D: “One reaches a certain stage/age in one’s life that one feels a need to give back to society. I could only dance and so this is the route I took. I honestly did not know and or realize that volunteering myself to teach children ballroom dancing would have such an incredible effect at the beginning. I did not have a ‘business’ plan or any such thing. I just did what I knew to do well. I have always loved children and wanted them to have a better future by sharing the ‘civility’ I was lucky enough to have had while I was growing in the various countries until my teenage years.
Yvonne M: “We hear stories about this all the time, but the story that comes to my mind—is a Manhattan based school here and Pierre was teaching and there was a little boy who has kind of Einstein hair, it kind of stuck up all over the place. He was a very smart kid. He was in this dance class and at one point he said to Pierre, ‘I know as an adult I’m going to be by myself because I hate doing this’. Pierre said to him, ‘I hear what you say and I understand what you are telling me, but what I see your body say is something different’. The kids eyes just got wide as saucers, because what we’d seen past the senses to what was really going on in this child and that changed completely. He knew that we knew what he was really about and that it wasn’t particularly helpful for him to have all these defenses and he turned out to be the star kid of the class.”
EL: What parts of the film “Take the Lead” do you feel you had the greatest influence on its audience? Is there anything about it that you wish you could change?
Pierre D: “The message it had overall. The film is not ‘based’ but rather ‘inspired’ by my life. I do not ride a bicycle to work, the children we teach are 5th graders and not 12th graders; also our program is part of the school day and not an after-school program. There is nothing I would change in it at all. I am thankful for the message it had as it has been a god-send to my dance studio actually having more people sign up for lessons and especially the younger generation.”
EL: Who were your greatest influences as a dancer Yvonne?
Yvonne M: “We went to see ballet companies when I was a child. I certainly can remember seeing Marge and Gower Champion on television (an immensely popular husband-and-wife dance team in the 50’s). All those Fred Astaire movies and things like that, it all kind of gets mixed up in your brain. When Pierre and I started dancing together, I was certainly influenced by the work of his teacher, a man named John Delroy. He was the first person that I can remember see do ballroom dancing that I thought was very beautiful. Being a ballet person, ballroom was a very different form and seemed at that time very mannered and I did not understand it from the inside out. Watching Delroy dance helped me in a way that I understood. Also our teacher John Rudis; he had a film of some kind of movement in his head that was very 30’s, but very, very beautiful.”
EL: For our readers who would like to start dancing, how would you recommend they start?
Yvonne M: “Do it, you know the old Nike thing. There are gyms; your local health club offers some kind of dance class. There are all different kinds of ways and all different kinds of schools and classes. Just go, try it once. Once you get yourself in the door, so to speak, there’s a whole world that people are happy to guide you. There is no way to start, but to begin, that’s true with anything. Everybody is a beginner once. Everybody starts at the same place, not knowing a whole lot, so one should never feel self conscience about that. So, if you can walk and if you like music… it’s fun!”
EL: Dance, as they say, is a journey of preparation, exertion and accomplishment, no matter if you win or lose. So many kids are focused on winning, how do you instill the lesson that it is the journey that truly matters?
Yvonne M: “They are curious, so I think the trick is to engage them. If you’re interest is in engaging them and helping them discover what they can do, that’s kind of where the journey starts. The byproducts of all this ballroom dancing stuff happens to them if they like it or not and can engage them to do it. What makes this truly unique in terms of all other dance forms in that you do it in someone else’s arms. Because you are in this embrace it brings out good things in people. You’re tapping into something where people want to be good to each other and it just blossoms from there. It is happening at a very deep unconscious level, they are unaware that this is what they are doing. You know, they’re not trying to step on each other (laughs).”
EL: Do you have any projects coming up in the future that you could tell our readers about?
Yvonne M: “Our immediately focus, besides the next school year you mean? We are looking at 200 and some schools this next year. I think we’ll teach close to a thousand courses, so certainly 25,000 children. The other project that’s happening is that this program is developing nationally, so we’re trying to get all that to take place. Pierre contends, rightfully so that this whole movement of children dancing is not only an American phenomenon, but a worldwide phenomenon. He was in Tokyo a few weeks ago and in England last week and it seems to be taking root there—we have had interest from Australia. People want a good world fundamentally and so you try to create one. I think that most people feel that dancing together is a good thing, it is a place where there is not a lot of contention.”
EL: Pierre, I have read an interview where you mentioned you would like to retire from these projects someday. What do you see yourself doing, if you ever do make that decision?
Pierre D: “Yes, I have said this, but I honestly do not know when. So much is happening, this ballroom dance phenomenon is now world wide. With so many countries having problems with their youth and education, so many people want dancing classrooms all over the USA, but also around the world. We are already in so many cities and growing rapidly and now in the next two years globally as well. Retire… when… please tell me. I am so blessed and so lucky in my life looking back at where I came from and the difficult life my parents had keeping us out of the war zones. Yes, I am truly blessed.”
And so are we Pierre to have you and Yvonne in our lives, creating beauty in both the human spirit and eye.
Live… dance… and be good to each other