And what was with the little pieces of elastic that came in the Capezio box with the ballet slippers? For years I just threw them away and tied those little strings on the top of the shoes as tight as possible, and for just as long the back of the slippers invariably slid off my feet. It wasn’t until I was at Mia Slavenska’s barre in Los Angeles and happened to glance at the slippers on Muffy Schwab’s feet, the least glorious part of her anatomy, that I had another epiphany. Oh, THAT was what those little pieces of elastic were for!

Anyway, the Joffrey School was too much an extra-terrestrial experience for me, and someone said why not try some modern dance classes at the New Dance Group. It was there I fell deeply, madly, totally in love. I even remember the exact moment in time when I realized why I had been placed on this earth. Yet another epiphany!

I began to attend as many dance performances as possible, and fortunately the Brooklyn Academy of Music, under the revitalizing leadership of Harvey Lichtenstein, had become the center for dance performance in the city, with several major American dance companies doing their seasons at “BAM.” I saw Paul Taylor, the debut of Eliot Feld’s American Ballet Company, Ballet Theater, Martha Graham (with the Goddess herself in one of her last stage performances), and the real knockout, the one that floored me, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

So enamored was I with that first sight of the Ailey company, that immediately afterwards I ran backstage to see The Man himself. In these days of TSA and a secure America, this would not likely be possible, but in another time I quickly found Mr. Ailey in a tiny costume room standing behind an ironing board, if memory serves.

It was the first of a number of encounters and chats we would have over the coming months, but the result of this first meeting was that Alvin, whose company had found a home at BAM, was starting a dance school for young people at the nearby Hansen Place Methodist Church, and would I, a teacher, like to help him out. Would I like to help him out? Would I like to help him out?? Was there ever a dog who leaped faster towards a juicy bone, than I for that luscious offer Alvin Ailey proposed that long ago night in Brooklyn?

I tried to be a good volunteer, but star-struck as I was I would too often sneak into company rehearsals, talk to the dancers, and otherwise hang out rather than helping out. I began to also sniff around the newly resurgent Brooklyn Academy of Music, cadging comps to performances, and otherwise making a persistent and inquisitive pest of myself.

Soon, however, I got to know two wonderful people, Ivy Clark, the executive director, and Wade Williams, her associate, who ran the administrative aspect of the Ailey company. I began to assist them in their BAM offices, and it was Ivy, I believe, who told me that a place called Clark Center for the Performing Arts was looking for an assistant to the director. I hadn’t a clue what this place was, but if Ivy said to apply, and that Alvin had some sort of history with it, then who was I to question her generosity.

I had been raised as a second generation Jewish-American in a family where two or three different languages were spoken, but my broader non-Jewish world extended only as far the many Italian kids, and fewer Irish, who attended school with me, or lived in the several neighborhoods of my youth.

“I had no contact with people of color until I began to teach school. My colleagues were overwhelmingly white, but the students were a blend of African-Americans, most first and second generation kids from various Caribbean islands, a few of Puerto Rican heritage, and a smattering of Caucasians, the remainder of a community that had been the majority in Crown Heights until fleeing en masse in “White flight” several years earlier to other parts of the borough, Queens and Long Island.

It was at Clark Center that my experience with cultures other than my own was more deeply nurtured. Kathy Grant, the director, hired me for reasons that remain unfathomable to this day although I suspect a good word from Ivy may have done the trick. She was a former dancer who had the distinction of also being in the direct line of practitioners trained by Joseph Pilates, only deceased for a few years when I got the job.”

Clark Center had on its faculty two others from that lineage, Lolita San Miguel, and the ballet teacher Romana Kryzanowska. At the time I had no grasp of who Pilates was other than an old guy in a photo with a puffed out chest standing in front of some funny wooden contraptions. The internecine battles over who owned the rights to his machines and exercises were decades in the future.

Kathy had been known as “Red” when she was younger, an African-American woman with big glasses whose hair and freckles bespoke that nickname. I liked her generosity and fairness in dealing with her staff and teachers, and her honesty in dealing with me. I also learned from our occasional conversations about the difficulties of being a person, more specifically a dancer, of color in a too unwelcoming world. With a somewhat distracted air, administration did not seem always to be the best fit for Kathy. I was therefore surprised when after several months she left to take a job running the business end of the new Dance Theater of Harlem.

Clark Center was a wonderland for me, a veritable candy store, a smorgasbord at which each day I could choose my favorite dish. There were classes of all kinds, rehearsals for Broadway shows, dance companies in residence, showcase concerts for young choreographers, and fabulous visitors – “Oh, you just missed Geoffrey (Holder) and Carmen (De Lavallade). They stopped by to say hello.”

Best of all, was the congenial atmosphere created by a group of African American pioneers of dance who taught or rehearsed at the center. They and others had come together several years earlier in this one place to pool their skills and experiences under the supportive umbrella of the mid-town YWCA on Eight Avenue in which Clark Center was housed.

Of the many regrets I have acquired passing through life, there are two that relate to this time: not to have taken more classes from the wonderful instructors who taught there; and not writing down or making other efforts to document the rich personal histories that abounded in its halls and studios.

The years have dimmed my memory of exactly what it was I did as assistant director (or assistant to the director, I cannot remember which), so I’m not sure my work had any value in return for the wonderful dance history education I received. I was particularly fond of two gentlemen, James Truitte, who taught Horton technique, and Charles Moore, who offered that of Katherine Dunham.

Truitte was a tall, elegant man, who had danced with Lester Horton’s company in Los Angeles, and was one of the stalwarts of Alvin Ailey’s first troupe. When you see the photos of the now iconic opening sequence, “I’ve Been ‘Buked,” from the masterwork “Revelations,” the extraordinary sequence of arms opening and closing, it is Truitte’s that spread widest and highest like a protective canopy over the other dancers.

Jimmy could be genial and chatty, but also acerbic and dark. It was clear that he still was stung by what he saw as his dismissal from the Ailey company several years earlier. I have no idea what the internal politics were, but Jimmy seemed to feel that he was released because he had gotten too old.

Ailey himself played an important role in the early years of Clark Center, and though I am not clear on what that history was, he seemed to have been among, or near to the original group, and his earliest company was said to be in-residence. A decade later the Ailey originals still included several people like Truitte, the always upbeat and charming Thelma Hill, and the lovely dancer Loretta Abbott.

Charles Moore, who with his wife Ella Thompson had been an early Ailey company member, was a man with a quick laugh, extraordinarily friendly and generous. He had been a dancer with Katherine Dunham and other noted contemporary choreographers, and also had a great interest in West African dances. He was later to start a well-known company that explored the latter. I especially liked him because he, as I, lived in Brooklyn.