By
Mike Silver
“Boxing’s appeal is its drama and grace, a blizzarding grace that amounts to an impromptu, exigent ballet, especially in the lighter and nimbler weights. Hands, arms, feet, legs, head, torso—more is done per moment than in fast ice hockey; and since there is more motion, the athletes in other sports cannot surpass a consummate boxer for grace.”
–Edward Hoagland
Alexis Arguello
Edward Villella began taking ballet lessons at the age of ten. He was an outstanding all-around athlete who also enjoyed boxing. In the mid-1950s he became the welterweight boxing champion of New York’s Maritime College and was undefeated in 20 fights. Several boxing managers expressed interest in signing him to a professional contract, but his love for dance was greater than it was for boxing. Edward Villella eventually gained international fame as one of the world’s premier ballet dancers. He became the lead dancer for the New York City Ballet under the direction of the legendary George Balanchine. Villella has won numerous awards including an Emmy, the National Medal of Arts and Kennedy Center Honors. He is the only American ever asked to dance an encore at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. In 1985 he was named founding artistic director of the acclaimed Miami City Ballet and served in that role until 2012.
In 2005 Edward Villella agreed to be interviewed for my first book The Arc of Boxing: The Rise and Decline of the Sweet Science” (McFarland & Company Publishers). I wanted to ask this great artist how boxing compared to ballet since he had experienced and trained in both disciplines. The following is an excerpt from the book:
Mike: I think you will agree that a properly trained boxer is built more along the lines of a buff ballet dancer like yourself rather than a tightly knotted bodybuilder or beefed up football lineman. I have been critical of a recent trend in boxing that emphasizes weight training for boxers similar to how professional football athletes use weights in order to increase poundage and add extra muscle to their physiques. I’d like to read you a quote from an old school trainer who disdained the use of weight training for his boxers: “Old time fighters had a sleek shape. They were not carrying extra weight through muscle. Fighters in the 1920s through the 1950s, heavyweights included, were trimmed down. They had long smooth muscles. There was no need to oxygenate big muscles.” Have you ever recommended weight training for your dancers?
“Boxers and dancers are finely tuned instruments. Lifting weights would not be good for them. It’s like putting sand in the gas tank of a Ferrari.”
Edward: I have never asked my dancers to do weight training. As dancers, we have long use of the muscle tone. We don’t want to short the muscle tone. We want speed and elasticity. I don’t think that you have to dismiss all weight training. You can exercise with four or five pounds, and you’d be surprised what that will do for you. When I was a dancer I’d occasionally put a one or two pound weight on either ankle. And then when I took them off my speed was just terrific, and my feet moved so quickly. And that’s what we need to do; we need our feet to move. Our feet are like a fighter’s hands. My great mentor George Balanchine said, ‘the floor upon which we dance is the music’, which is the timing…it’s the phrasing. The dancer does not stay in one rhythm. You have to move in and out, in and out, up and down, slow, fast, set it up, go, go, go.
Mike: That is very similar to how a boxing match develops. Why do you think so many of the new breed of boxing trainers are bringing in “strength coaches” from other sports and are having the fighters lift weights far exceeding four or five pounds in the belief the added muscle will increase the fighter’s punching power?
Edward: Without a comprehensive understanding of your muscle tone and the purpose of exactly what it is that you want to accomplish with a weight training routine you could end up training against yourself. You don’t want the training to go against your talent. That is the thing you cannot do. You have to understand your talent and know how to feed it. And that is why I don’t want our guys to do that kind of thing. Guys are normally thicker muscle toned than women and I don’t want them to bulk up because they will lose that agility. Boxers and dancers are finely tuned instruments. Lifting weights would not be good for them. It’s like putting sand in the gas tank of a Ferrari.
Mike: I agree. A properly conditioned boxer, or a professional dancer, is a fine-tuned instrument. Interfering with the machinery of that instrument by bulking up and losing agility is to be avoided.
Edward: What we seek is to eliminate tension. If you train against that purpose it’s not going to work for you. For instance, if I were preparing our dancers for a style that requires very quick and light footwork their training would be different than what is needed to dance in the much slower 19th century Russian Grand Imperial style. There is heaviness to that style. The moves have a beginning and an end, and then you start all over again. Whereas in neoclassicism, which George Balanchine provides us with, the moment your heel got to the floor that was your propulsion for the next step, therefore the continuity of it had terrific natural connection. So you didn’t ‘stop, gesture, stop, gesture’. It’s like when you watch a heavyweight. They wind up and throw a big punch but they have no combinations. These guys are huge and they have four yards of left jab but it’s just hanging on ‘em. They can’t go low, high, down. They can’t get that jab working. Pump that jab. Work those combinations…boom, boom, boom (demonstrates by shadowboxing and throwing combinations). I relate to that kind of attack and speed.
Mike: That is an interesting analogy.
Edward: There is a whole connection about the approach to any physical gesture that we are about. It’s all totally connected and if you can be relentless in the way you approach these rotations, so that they are there and available for you any given second, you begin to dance instead of just doing a trick. And for me that is what differentiates fine dancing and fine fighting. It’s not enough that you’ve got a heavy right hand and a neat left hook and you throw two punches. There is more to it than that.
Mike: I wasn’t aware there were so many different styles of ballet.
Edward: My dancers have a repertoire where we have to dance in probably five, six, seven different styles, seven different periods, seven different choreographic approaches. They have the variety and they have the broader horizon. That was the beauty of my growing up at the New York City Ballet, which had a phenomenal repertoire. I danced everything from Swan Lake to Tarantellas. You can’t get further away from being Oberon in Mid Summer’s Night’s Dream to being the Prodigal Son, or Apollo. So unless you can counter and balance off all of these other things you become a one trick pony.
Mike: Unfortunately, there are too many “one trick ponies” in boxing today who continue to follow the same pattern round after round without knowing how to make the necessary adjustments due to a lack of experience and quality instruction.
Edward: Dancing, as George Balanchine said, is a conversation; I offer a hand, somebody gives me their hand. Do I hold the hand, or do I just use what is necessary? For instance, if we are having a conversation I’m not going to shout at you the whole time. Nor am I going to talk like this (speaks haltingly). So you have to have all of those ups and downs, sideways, expansions, extensions, all of this kind of flexibility that constitutes the purpose that you are about.
Mike: It sounds like you are referring to athletic intelligence which every great boxer must possess. I assume that is also true for a great dancer?
“You need dance intellect just as you need boxing intellect if you are going to reach your potential. You need the intelligence that relates to your talent. And if you can combine that talent and that intelligence you are so far ahead of the game.”
Edward: It’s really your mind driving your talent. So you need the talent and you need the mind that comes with the talent. It’s not like you’re trying to be a brain surgeon, but you need dance intellect just as you need boxing intellect if you are going to reach your potential. You need the intelligence that relates to your talent. And if you can combine that talent and that intelligence you are so far ahead of the game. So it becomes this mental exercise. I’m fond of saying our physicality is ‘mind driven’. It’s not just the talent. It is the mind analyzing the talent, and all of the nuances that are available can be used.
Mike: Both boxers and ballet dancers share fundamental requirements that include balance, coordination, rhythmic and fluid movement and precise timing. The most graceful boxer I have ever seen is Sugar Ray Robinson. At his best he possessed an almost ballet like grace and is generally acknowledged to be the greatest boxer of the 20th century. In fact, after his first retirement, Sugar Ray Robinson had a brief career as a professional dancer and he was pretty good at it.
“Dancing, like boxing, is moving through balance…My favorite boxers are the ones who move and are beautiful to watch. The way Sugar Ray Robinson executed his combinations…the speed and accuracy…the timing aspect of it.”
Edward: Dancing, like boxing, is moving through balance. And the athlete that you remember is the beautiful dancing athlete. I once took a bunch of athletes and intercut them with dancers and made it into a whole one-hour show. It was called “Dance of the Athletes”. Joe DiMaggio covering center field. His swing when he was at bat. Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Frank Robinson. These, to me, were the athletes who were the dancers. My favorite boxers are the ones who move and are beautiful to watch. The way Sugar Ray Robinson executed his combinations…the speed and accuracy…the timing aspect of it…the way a good defensive fighter could stand in front of somebody and bob and weave and pull their chin back, maybe just a quarter of an inch, and the punch would miss them. To me, that is absolute talent, which is so practiced, so rehearsed, so completely understood it becomes a conditioned reflex.”
Mike: You mentioned growing up in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s and that you were a fight fan. Do you still keep up with the sport?
Edward: Unfortunately, with my schedule, I rarely get to watch the fights today, and I can’t follow them. There was a fight on the other night, but it was all one sided. Let’s face it; a lot of the matches today are awful. They’re mostly mismatches, and it’s all setting up for the big payday, and to me that’s not what it’s all about.
Mike: What are your earliest memories of boxing when you were growing up?
Edward: My father ran a trucking business in the garment center and his two closest buddies were former professional fighters. And they used to have poker games every Friday night and in the middle of the poker games the Friday Night Fights came on. Everybody stopped to watch the fights on TV and when it was over they went back to the poker game. I remember seeing great fighters like Willie Pep and Sandy Saddler, Tony Zale, Rocky Marciano, Carmen Basilio, Kid Gavilan and his ‘bolo punch’. I can’t even think of all the names now.
Mike: Did all the years you had ballet training give you an advantage when you boxed.
“When I was an amateur boxer in college I had a tremendous advantage because I had trained as a ballet dancer for about seven years. Therefore, my legs were mine. They were in terrific condition for boxing.”
Edward: When I was an amateur boxer in college I had a tremendous advantage because I had trained as a ballet dancer for about seven years. Therefore, my legs were mine. They were in terrific condition for boxing. I’d wait until the third round and by then my opponent would be standing on spaghetti legs (laughs).
Addendum:
The best “dancer” among today’s top fighters is the current 135 pound champion Vasyl Lomachenko. He is a throwback to an era when mobile footwork was taught and emphasized as an essential element for offense and defense. Lomachenko and Villella have something else in common. Ironically, Loma’s father wisely insisted that his young son take ballet lessons for several years with a Ukranian dance company before being allowed to box. That experience gave the youth a “leg up” on the competition, so to speak. Loma’s amateur record was spectacular. He lost only one of 397 amateur fights and won consecutive gold medals in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. He has also held multiple professional world championships from featherweight to lightweight. Perhaps all aspiring professional boxers should consider donning ballet slippers and start practicing pirouettes before learning how to jab and hook.
Mike Silver’s newest book, When in Doubt, Stop the Bout: A Revolutionary Approach to Boxing Safety and Reform(Hamilcar Publications) will be available in December 2024. Mike’s previous books include The Arc of Boxing: The Rise and Decline of the Sweet Science; Stars in the Ring: Jewish Champions in the Golden Age of Boxing; The Night the Referee Hit Back: Memorable Moments From the World of Boxing.