Albany Berkshire Ballet, the only resident professional ballet company in the Berkshires and New York’s capital region began on North Street, in Pittsfield, in 1955, when Madeline Culpo founded the Cantarella dance school there. She is still there, and in Lenox and Albany. She no longer runs a school in Williamstown, but one of her old students teaches at Terpsichore. Another teaches at Dalton Ballet, and yet another in Adams and Bennington, Vermont. Culpo’s main teachers at Cantarella, Deirdre Swindlehurst and Nancy Ropelewski Pierce, both grew up in her school, as Alicia Gilbert in Albany grew up in the Albany School. And her jazz, teacher Alicia Girhenti, learned from another of Culpo’s students. Madeline Culpo is a matriarch.
Culpo is a Berkshire county native— “first or second generation Italian or whatever I amâ€â€” and she has danced in Pittsfield since she was a girl. She learned acrobatics and tap from Hazel Slater and vaudvillian Ray Hart. Ballet came to the county, and she switched over as a teenager. She went to Jacob’s Pillow when she was 16 and studied with Ted Shawn. She took classes with Joe Pilates for body conditioning. Pilates’ method is now world famous, and she still uses it.
Margaret Craske, Antony Tudor and Martha Graham taught her. She said an unreal number of famous people taught her between the ages of 16 and 20. She hardly appreciated or realized it then.
In high school, she said, she decided she wanted to teach kindergarten. Her mother decided she should audition for Juilliard. She was one of only 50 students chosen, nationwide, for Juilliard’s first class in dance. After she graduated, she came back to Pittsfield and married. She opened her first dance school in the same building she is in, or more specifically, a building now connected to this one.
“In pursuit of excellence,†she said, “you keep going forward.†Culpo joined the Northeast Regional Ballet Association in order to be with other people in dance. It was great to be with other people from other territories and share ideas and techniques, she said.
Culpo used to take her students to Jacob’s Pillow in the summers. She performed with them in different venues. She believes her greatest strength is teaching, she said, and she is proud of her teaching abilities. She has total control, discipline and respect in the classroom: her only sad thought, she said, is that she does not have it at home. By 1960, she had created a small performing group. It evolved into a non-profit corporation in 1964, when she got one of the first Comprehensive Education and Training Act (CETA) grants. Her dance troup was running on $8,000 a year with a volunteer staff. The grant transformed it into the Berkshire Civic Ballet company with an annual budget of $150,000.
Berkshire Civic Ballet became a professional company 1975, and expanded into the Albany Berkshire Ballet in 1989. “It is still the Berkshire Ballet,†Culpo said. “This is home. We are us. We perform wherever and whenever we can.†Albany Berkshire ballet has performed in New York in Riverside Church, and has been the subject of a documentary, in 1984.
“Today, it’s a different world,†she said, and her dance company is conducted as a business. They
are not doing a summer season this year, because they are in the second phase of a capital campaign for the new Nutcracker. This year’s fundraising will provide for new costumes for act two. Carl Sprague has designed sets for the new play, and Kevin Sprague has taken pictures. Fundraising has delayed the summer season one more season, Culpo said; the ballet will only perform the Rockwell Suites at the Norman Rockwell Museum, July 30 and 31 at 1:30 p.m.
During her last summer season 1999, Culpo produced Our Town, Patruschka, Capriche, Autumn, and Aesop’s Fables. In 1998, she did Carl Orrf’s Carmina Burana and she hopes to do it again. Noting that Berkshire Lyric Theatre recently performed the piece, she added that it is nice to collaborate with other organizations.
Among her alumni, Culpo has also produced, to her credit, an esteemed choreographer, Mary Gianonne Talmi. Culpo’s students have carried her influence far and wide. Dawn Caccamo, a Lee Native, joined the Joffrey Ballet, and created role of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet while Joffrey was alive. Deirdre Duffin Swindlehurst of Lenox was a soloist with the Pennsylvania Ballet and toured internationally with the Kozlovs’. Andrea Duffin danced with the Washington Ballet, Michelle Duffin with Connecticut Dance Theatre and Bill Evans Dance Company, and Louise Nadeau with Pacific Northwest. Others of Culpo’s students have been ballet mistress of the Ohio Ballet, and associate director of Memphis Ballet, and performed at the Boston Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and the Lido, in Paris.
Culpo said she is proud of students in the present generation who will graduate to perform dance or study at dance colleges. “Dance is lifelong,†she said. “It is something you can’t walk away from.†It gives discipline, determination and stick-to-itiveness.
The best part is producing really fine students, she said. It is rewarding to have students write to her, and to see the number of kids who have grown up in Nutcracker. Her 30 year old son remembers his first performance, when he was about five. She said he sometimes comes back and offers critiques. Her grandchildren dance. “If you love what you’re doing, its not work.â€
She teaches some adults in the regular afternoon classes, though she said adults are a different breed and often busy. In Albany, more adults take ballet and modern classes. Cantarella is a classical ballet school, but she feels it is important to have modern dance, and all her students take it.
She offers also jazz. Ballet is the basic form, and the students go from there, she said. But good dancing is good dancing, whatever the form.
Culpo first decided her troup was good enough to perform a Nutcracker in October 1974. No one told that it was frankly impossible to cast, choreograph, teach, costume, design and build sets for a Nutcracker in two months. So she did. She died during those two months, but she produced her show. “This is the kind of determination you get if you stick with dance,†she said. “ . . . I just do it. I don’t take no for an answer.â€
She has choreographed a number of pieces, among them a children’s ballet: Adventures in a Perambulator, Brahms Theme and Variations, Capriche, and the Rockwell Suites. Her favorite of those is Girl in the Mirror, she said. She enjoys bringing those portraits to life. Choreography is fun, but she does not do it often. “One of the advantages to getting old,†she said, “is that you don’t have to prove yourself.†Her son is a composer in France. She has choreographed some of his work.
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Winter Storm Warning Issued for Berkshires
Another snowstorm is expected to move through the region overnight on Friday, bringing 5 to 8 inches of snow. This is updated from Thursday's winter weather advisory.
The National Weather Service in Albany, N.Y., has posted a winter storm warning for all of Berkshire County and parts of eastern New York State beginning Friday at 4 p.m. through Saturday at 1 p.m.
The region could see heavy to moderate snowfall rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour overnight, tapering off Saturday morning to flurries.
Drivers should exercise caution on Friday night and Saturday morning, as travel conditions may be hazardous.
Saturday night should be clear and calm, but warming temperatures means freezing rain Sunday night and rain through Monday with highs in the 40s. The forecast isn't much better through the week as temperatures dip back into the teens with New Year's Eve looking cloudy and frigid.
Many homeowners are showing their holiday spirit by decorating their houses. We asked for submissions so those in the community can check out these fanciful lights and decor when they're out.
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