It is with great sorrow that we mourn the passing of dear life long friend and colleague on January 25, 2022 just a few weeks from his 89th birthday on February 16th...
Donald Mahler was trained at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School by Margaret Craske and Antony Tudor. He joined the National Ballet of Canada in 1956, where he danced principal roles in ballets by Antony Tudor, Walter Gore, and Andrée Howard. He joined the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in 1961, and during the Directorship of Dame Alicia Markova, was made soloist. In 1975, Mahler was engaged as Ballet Master for the Zurich Opera House in Switzerland. In 1979, he returned to the Metropolitan Opera as Ballet Master and in 1982 was appointed Director of the Ballet. At the Met, he began his career as a choreographer, creating ballets not only for the operas, but for the Met Ballet’s touring company as well. He has also choreographed works for other companies here in the United States, such as Joffrey II Dancers, Ballet West, Ballet Mississippi, the New York Theatre Ballet and Ballet San Jose.
In recent years, he has specialized in staging a number of Antony Tudor’s works — Jardin Aux Lilas (Lilac Garden), Dark Elegies, Echoing of Trumpets, and Offenbach in the Underworld — for companies in the United States, France, Canada, and Japan. Mahler has taught widely for companies and schools in the United States and Europe, and works extensively in Japan both as a teacher and choreographer. In 1992, he was awarded a two-year Choreographer’s Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 2009, he received an Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Restaging Dark Elegies on Company C Contemporary Ballet.
Because Mr. Mahler worked closely with Tudor as a dancer for many years, his staging Tudor works worldwide helped to kept the vast repertory of works vibrant and true to their original intent. During the former Ballet San Jose's 2007-2008 season Mahler revived the staging of Tudor's Jardin Aux Lilas. In the 2008-2009 season Mahler staged Tudor's Dark Elegies and Continuo as well as his own Salut d'Amour. Donald Mahler lectures with depth and insight into "Ballets of the Greats", Opera Ballet, Dance and Choreography of today.
DONALD MAHLER, Choreographer/Lecturer and former Répétiteur for The Antony Tudor Ballet Trust
SALUT d’AMOUR
Choreography Donald Mahler
Music Sir Edward Elgar
Costumes Maggie Heaman
Lighting Kenneth Keith
I have, for many years loved the music of Sir Edward Elgar. A kind of romantic music, which, for some has fallen onto disfavor. His works are often looked down upon as being old fashioned and representative of the pre world war I British Imperialism. Just the same has been said of the writings of Rudyard Kipling whose works also came out of the England of Queen Victoria and King Edward. However there is much of warmth and love tinged with a kind of sadness in Elgar's works that lends his music an Elegiac quality, and nostalgia for things past.
I envisioned a time in which three young couples, are sharing a last few moments of friendship and joy before their English, Edwardian world, a world of comfort and ease passes away, a world never to be seen again.
I was drawn to Elgar's music for violin and piano as perfectly embodying this bygone era but which at the same time is reflective of those timeless values, love, friendship and nostalgia for times gone by.
Donald Mahler
"The dance and feelings it can evoke flowed most sweetly and successfully in "Salut d'Amour." Here, in a series of interwoven duets for three couples, Mahler found the balance point between pictorial nostalgia and graceful immediacy. With the men in long white trousers and shirts and the women in soft white dresses festooned with ribbon sashes, an early 20th century pastoral unfolded in its leisurely way to the music of Edward Elgar and Howard Brockway.
Everything the couples did seemed easy and unforced, whether the lovers were posing as if for some sepia-tinted photograph, tapping each other lightly on the shoulder to begin a flirtation or a liquid waltz or showing off in whirling leaps by the men and spacious arabesques by the women. In one particularly touching move, the chaste but earnest partners sat back on their heels face to face, rose to a kneeling position and came together on their feet."
Steven Winn
SFGate (Special to The Chronicle)
"With the second work — “Salut d’Amour,” for three couples — Donald Mahler makes his Ballet San Jose debut as a choreographer, creating a well-considered and tender response to Edward Elgar’s wistful piano/violin music.
Set in the polite world of lawn tennis, “Salut” hints at unspoken fears hanging over the lovers, perhaps because World War I threatens to separate them. Catharine Grow and Rudy Candia’s lifts ache with longing. The slight raises they execute while facing one another and kneeling look like vows being exchanged. And rarely does a dancer project the eloquence of Candia simply standing with his back to Grow, her small gestures telling him she understands.
Maria Jacobs-Yu and Hao Bo are caught up in the excitement of budding love — she shyly responsive to his solicitations, legs fluttering with excitement when airborne. Junna Ige and Solas take an almost fatalistic approach to romance: Let’s enjoy each other while we can, they seem to say."
Rita Felciano
San Jose Mercury News
National Ballet of Canada
Der Rosenkavalier / Metropolitan Opera 1974
Anna Marie Lageborg / Hans Meister / Antony Tudor / Donald Mahler
at the Metropolitan Opera House studio, NYC
Turandot / Metroplitan Opera 1955
