Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet (22 page)

The door opened, and they invited me back inside.

“We see a lot of progress, and we’re very happy about that,” Peter said. “We would obviously be happy to have you back, but we’re thinking of hiring you on a temporary contract just to see how it goes. We will hire you for
Nutcracker
, just through to the beginning of January. What do you think of that?”

I took it. I was thrilled. I was stepping back into the dance world, but this time it would be on my own terms as a new and changed person.

—

I
t was strange to be back with the company again. Life there had continued in the same vein as always while I was returning as someone completely different on the inside. I fell easily back into the rhythm of things, all the while knowing that I might only be there for a month or two. I approached each rehearsal and class a little cautiously, feeling a bit precarious in my newfound confidence and convictions. What if something happened that set me going downhill again? On the other hand, I loved the jokey camaraderie with the other dancers and the feeling that I was doing something I was really good at. No one spoke to me about my “year away”; everyone just picked up where I’d left off. There was a new crop of apprentices I didn’t know, but everyone else there had been my coworkers and friends for seven years.

The day of my first performance back with the company arrived. It was the opening night of
Nutcracker
, and it was like every other opening
day that I’d experienced since I first joined the company at age sixteen. I’d spent all day at the theater, setting up my dressing room, taking class, and then doing the stage rehearsals for the night’s performance. After the last rehearsal, I left the theater for some food and fresh air.

With my bag of food from the deli in my hands, I sat down outside the stage door for a couple of minutes. Perhaps it was the very sameness of all of these rituals that was making the day feel surreal to me. Here I was, about to perform at the New York State Theater again, when a year ago I thought I’d quit dancing forever. I was about to dance onstage, and instead of the feelings of dread I’d become accustomed to, I was excited about it.

I grabbed my bag and went into the theater to my dressing room. Would I remember how to do stage makeup? I gave myself extra time, but it wasn’t necessary—apparently applying stage makeup is like riding a bike. I saw my made-up face in the mirror, unnaturally pale from the base makeup and powder, with dramatic eyes and huge eyelashes. That face was so familiar, but so foreign. Behind that makeup, any thought or feeling could be disguised, but I was hiding nothing now, and I felt great. Even beneath the makeup, with my frizzy hair slicked back into a bun and a giant flower on my head, I felt like myself.

The butterflies kicked in when I stood up to put on my warm-up clothes. I was dancing one of the two Demi Flowers, a part that I’d done more times than I could count, and normally it would not faze me. But this time was, of course, different. I put on sweatshirt, sweatpants, and leg warmers and went down to the stage level to warm up.

I’ve always preferred to warm up backstage so that I can look into the wings and watch what is happening on the stage. That night I followed my normal routine and entered the backstage area while the party scene was just ending. I found a spot at the barre and watched the dancers playing the Party Parents exit the stage, laughing softly with each other and heading briskly to their next costume change. The men would become Mice in the battle scene. The ladies would turn into Snowflakes.

As always, I stopped my barre work to peek through the wings and
watch my favorite parts of the ballet. Our production of the
Nutcracker
is so magical, filled with moments that enchant watchers of every age. The first such moment is the transformation of our Christmas tree—as it rises to its towering height on the stage, it gets applause every time. The next moment is when the Nutcracker Prince changes, in the blink of an eye, into a real prince who then places a crown on little Marie’s head. Then the snow forest comes alive and the Snowflakes enter, bringing in the first extended dancing of the production. One of my best friends, Elizabeth, was always the first Snowflake onstage, and I took great joy in once again waving to her across the wings before she entered and danced the brief solo that begins the dance of the Snowflakes.

My warm-up complete and intermission quickly approaching, I returned to my dressing room. This was the time for makeup and hair check, last bathroom break, quick taping of the toes with masking tape to prevent blisters, and getting into tights, trunks, and robe. Then I looked into the mirror once more, and a smile broke out on my face. I grabbed my pointe shoes and went down to the girls’ costume room offstage.

Just as my body remembered my old routines, so did my brain: What if I looked fat in my costume? What if everyone was looking at me in secret disgust? What if I looked different from everyone else? I shook my head and pushed the thoughts aside. I would not tolerate those thoughts anymore. I was here, I had changed, and I was proud of who I was. My body looked great, even if I did still hope to lose a couple more pounds. I had a right to be here and a right to dance. I felt great, and I’d been healed from so many things. I was a whole person now. And besides, I told myself, it wasn’t all about
me
! I needed to remember the bigger picture, stop focusing on myself, and be grateful I was here. God had given me a gift, not for myself, but to share with others in whatever way I could.

I changed into my costume, leaving my leg warmers on underneath. I carried my pointe shoes to the offstage workstation and did a last check to make sure no threads or elastics were loose. After they were securely
and comfortably on my feet, I half-jogged onto the stage to get my heart rate up.

Dancers from the other divertissements were already there, the backstage area filled with living Hot Chocolates, Candy Canes, Teas, and Marzipans. Some were warming up, some were chatting and laughing with friends. I bounced around and joked with people, exchanging wishes of “merde.” Then the little girls playing the Angels appeared, signaling that it was almost time to start act 2. We moved offstage to prepare for our entrance.

I removed my leg warmers and felt another surge of butterflies, tensing up when the orchestra started playing. But I reminded myself that it was my choice to be back here, and that this was indeed something I loved. It was a miracle that I was again in this theater and able to perform on this stage. And I wasn’t going to waste time being nervous. I was going to enjoy this.

Finally it was time for the Waltz of the Flowers. I stood in the front wing and waved at Pascale Van Kipnis, my opposite Demi Flower for this performance. Our music began, and then suddenly we were taking two steps onto the stage and holding a brief arabesque balance. We ran to our first pose, and I got an initial glimpse of the audience, lit by the warm glow of the jewels that surround the rings of the theater. It looked like home. Then came four beats of the waltz, and suddenly we were really dancing. I felt a surge of joy. I was dancing, and I was free.

During that
Nutcracker
,
I was cast in a busy schedule of Demi Flowers and Lead Spanish, just as I’d hoped. Slowly, over the course of the six-week run, I was able to get down to an acceptable ballet weight. The company offered me a full contract in January at my old rank of soloist, and I gradually returned to my old parts. In the spring of 1999 I was even cast in the lead role of the Waltz Girl in
Serenade
, a gift I’d never expected to receive. Dancing in that ballet again, after all that had passed, and with James dancing opposite me as the Dark Angel boy, was an experience I’ll always treasure.

I never returned to the almost-too-skinny weight of my late teens, but
I was at a great dancing weight, fit and healthy and strong. I was thin, but I had thighs and a figure. My eating was normal, and, determined never again to succumb to disordered eating, I refused to go on strict diets. Therefore my weight did fluctuate, based on how much I was dancing; at the beginning of a rehearsal period after a layoff, I had a couple of pounds to lose. At the end of a very busy performance period, friends would tell me I was too thin. It was important for me to be normal in my outside life and stay away from the craziness of restrictive eating during layoffs, when I wasn’t as active as I was in performance seasons. I couldn’t constantly force myself into the ballet mold when I knew it would alter my priorities again toward a ballet-centric life, and eventually drive me crazy. I felt I could never sustain that kind of pressure on myself, so I strove for health and normalcy during every phase of the elliptical schedule of a dancer’s life. And it worked for me.

One day in the summer of 1999, James planned a whole day for us as a surprise for me. We were on our summer layoff from City Ballet, looking at twelve weeks away from work. James took me on a ferry to Fire Island for a day at the beach. Then he brought me home and told me to change and meet him at our midway point in Riverside Park. He promised me a bottle of wine and a beautiful sunset.

I met him on a quiet bench a little way uptown from the Boat Basin. We drank some wine from plastic cups and gazed at the sun setting over the New Jersey skyline. James got suddenly quiet. Then he set his wine on the ground and pulled a box out of his pocket. He somehow got halfway off the bench and then leaned close to my cheek and said in a slightly choked voice, “Will you . . .”

He didn’t seem to be able to finish. I quickly said, “Yes! Yes!” and we were engaged. I remember feeling so different that night with his ring on my finger. I’d known that he loved me, but it was altogether different to have a symbol on my hand that said that someone wanted me enough to tell anyone who looked at me that I was taken. He not only loved me, but he also wanted us to belong to each other for the rest of our lives. It was an extraordinary feeling.

Six months later, another January had come around, and I’d been back dancing with the company for a year. I’d just had a stage rehearsal for Jerome Robbins’s
Fancy Free
, a ballet about three sailors on leave in the big city, and was in my dressing room changing out of costume when I was called back to the stage over the intercom. I put on my terry-cloth bathrobe and fuzzy slippers and went backstage to find Peter waiting for me. He had a little smile on his face.

“So,” he said slowly, looking at me as if he had a secret. “I was thinking that it was time to promote you and make you a principal dancer.”

He watched my face while I digested the news. I hardly knew how to react. I was thrilled and surprised and in slight disbelief. I stammered out something like, “Wow, thank you,” and after we stood there for a moment we both simultaneously figured a hug was in order. The group of dancers rehearsing onstage seemed to have been in on the secret, and when they saw Peter and me hug, they broke out into applause and cheers.

After that everyone was just standing there and smiling at me, so after uttering more thanks and looking around idiotically for a bit, I escaped back to my dressing room.

It felt pretty unbelievable, even though I’d been doing major principal roles for the past season and was about to make my debut as Aurora in
The Sleeping Beauty
in a couple of weeks. To be promoted to principal, the highest rank a dancer could attain in the company, after all I’d been through, was astonishing and a testament to how far God had taken me in my life. I sat in my dressing room for a time, taking it all in and not quite sure how to handle the momentous news. I reminded myself that
this
was not where my true happiness lay, nor was it where my identity was stored. I said a prayer of thanks, and then went to call James and my family.

I
’ve been a professional dancer for almost twenty-five years now; the rules, rituals, and methods of this lifestyle are as comfortable to me as a favorite pair of shoes. But I realize that the ballet world is unique, and many of my daily routines probably seem exotic. Each dancer develops his or her own way of preparing for the stage, and that preparation is very detailed and time-consuming.

I’ve discovered that it generally takes me about two hours to prepare for a performance. Backstage, a sheet is posted on one of the many bulletin boards with the timings for each show. The sheet lists each ballet for the night and displays when that ballet starts, how long it is, and what time it will end. It also tells us if there are just three-minute pauses in between the ballets or full twenty-minute intermissions. When planning when I want to start getting ready for a performance, I go to the time sheet, find my ballet, and figure out what time it starts so that I can determine when I need to be in my dressing room to start my preperformance routines.

I enjoy getting ready for a show. I follow the same ritual almost every time, and the sameness is soothing. My dressing room is one of four located on the stage level. These are set aside for the more senior principal women, and each one houses two ballerinas. My dressing-room mate has been Maria Kowroski for over ten years and when we’re in the room together we’re likely to be chatting and laughing most of the time, unless one of us is feeling particularly tired or nervous. We almost always have music on, and I let Maria choose what we listen to, since I never
want to force too much country music on my friends. But when I’m alone, I blast Willie and Dolly and the Dixie Chicks.

Upon arriving at the theater for a performance, I immediately change into some comfortable and baggy warm-up clothes and put fuzzy socks on my feet. If I’ve been rehearsing all day, I take a quick shower and have a snack before changing so that it almost feels like I’m starting a new day. Then I settle down in my chair at my dressing table to start my makeup.

The large mirror in front of my chair is surrounded by lightbulbs encased in metal safety cages. From the cages I hang a variety of objects such as a water squirt bottle, barrettes, safety pins, and even little shiny disco-ball ornaments for decoration. On the walls beside the mirror, I have pictures of my family, a schedule of the current performance season we’re dancing, and Post-it notes reminding me what I need to pick up at the drugstore. On the shelf on top of the mirror, I have boxes of various makeup and hair supplies as well as some paintings and pictures that I brought in to make my corner of the dressing room feel homey.

During the day when I’m not performing, I like to keep the table in front of the mirror clear so that I can more easily sew pointe shoes; yes, we all have to maintain and repair our own shoes, even the principal dancers. I’ve gotten my shoe-sewing time down to an efficient seven minutes—ribbons, elastics, and all—after so many years of practice. Sometimes I read or even pull out a computer during my downtime. But when I’m getting ready for a performance, I pull down the containers of makeup and hair stuff so that everything will be in easy reach once I finally sit down in front of the mirror.

I always start with my stage makeup, and if I’m going at my usual leisurely pace, it takes me about thirty minutes to accomplish it all. First I apply a concealer stick over my entire face. This helps my base stay on when I start sweating. After the concealer comes a thick stage base that is a shade lighter than my normal skin tone. Our makeup adviser told me that this helps me to look ethereal and otherworldly, not my usual look. The base comes in flat cakes, and I use a wet sponge to get it from
the disk and onto my face. I have to apply it fairly thickly because my skin easily flushes, and the second I exert any energy, I get red in the face. No one wants to see a sweaty, red-faced ballerina.

After the base comes some loose powder. I use yellow powder because of my skin tone and because I read in some magazine that movie stars use yellow powder to look younger and more vibrant. I then apply two colors of blush to shade and contour my face and then extend my eyebrows slightly with an eyebrow pencil. I don’t have to do anything else to my eyebrows because God blessed me with the Ringer gene for bushy black brows. Next come my eyes. I put a purplish eye shadow in the middle of my eyelid following the line of my eye socket and then extend it out toward my temple about a half inch. I then line the top of my eyelid with a black pencil, blending it up and out at the outer corner, kind of like cat eyes. Then I partially line my bottom lid with a brown pencil, not closing the eye at the outer corner but again extending the line straight out. I put some eye shadow over that lower line to make it look softer.

Next comes the false eyelashes, and at City Ballet we like our lashes huge. I enjoy wearing mine as big as I can without looking ridiculous. We apply them directly to our lashes in order to look as doe-eyed as possible. I always did like to dress up, and stage makeup still gives me the opportunity to look like a serene princess even though underneath the paint my face might show the exhaustion of work or of being up all night with a sick child. Stage makeup serves two purposes: it heightens, glamorizes, and enlarges our features so that audience members at the back of the house can still see our faces under the intensely bright stage lights, and it hides the fact that we’re working so hard onstage that our faces are flushed and sweaty.

The last thing I apply is my lipstick, usually something very red unless I’m doing a more muted ballet such as
Dances at a Gathering
. Each ballerina makes her own makeup choices and has her own way of doing her makeup that makes her feel beautiful and confident. And after finishing my makeup, I’m ready to start taming my hair.

My hair and I have been battling since I started wanting to fix my hair myself like a big girl. Though my hair isn’t particularly thick, it is somewhere between wavy and curly, and depending on the meteorological circumstances, it can be downright wild and frizzy. It varies in length; I got my first short haircut in the 1980s when I was eleven or twelve, and I remember the enormous quantity of hairspray necessary to make my “wings” stay in place. I used to have to walk with my face constantly pointed into the wind, no matter which way my feet were pointing, because if the wind blew from behind me my wings would stick out like elephant ears.

I had long hair past my shoulders for my first years in the company, but constantly slicking it back into a bun started to do a lot of damage. I began to trim it shorter and shorter until finally one day I chopped it all off to the nape of my neck. I did it at the beginning of a twelve-week layoff so that it would grow back some before I began performing again. Though the only real requirement from the company is that we’re able to slick our hair back into a bun somehow, I think management would probably prefer that their ballerinas all have long hair. But I loved the short hair. I think I loved it because it was a small rebellion against the ballerina type. I longed for an identity separate from being a ballerina and didn’t want to walk down the sidewalk instantly recognizable as a dancer because of my long, untrimmed locks and turned-out walk. There were so many things I had to conform to as a dancer and so many rules I had to follow. I wanted to be able to control my own hair.

Even when I had long hair, a good stage hairdo was a problem for me. I could make a very nice bun and a beautiful French twist. That wasn’t my issue. The trick was getting all of the little frizzies on the sides and top and back of my head to lie down flat and stay there. My willowy ballerina friends with their pliable, cooperative straight hair would brush their hair a bit, bend over to sweep the glossy strands into a ponytail, and then flip back up to reveal a flat, smooth, perfectly executed bun. They would then squirt just a bit of hair spray on, to ensure that nothing moved.

I, on the other hand, would wrestle with my hair until it felt as if all the blood had left my hands and pooled into my elbows, using water, mousse, gel, and hair spray to try to slick down the curly horns that sprang up all around my head. I would use a brush and a comb and my hands and even try to time the hair spray so that it would be slightly dry and sticky before I pressed my hair into place. Ballerinas were supposed to have smooth, perfect hair pulled back into a smooth, perfect bun. And oh, how I aspired to that vision. Often, after I thought I’d successfully wrangled the beast, one horn would suddenly pop out of its confinement, reverberating mockingly as if it had just been released from a spring. At these times, I sat at my mirror and stared at the scissors on my table, wondering how bad it would be if I just cut the darn thing off.

When my hair is short, I scrape it into a tiny little ponytail on the top of my head that looks a little bit like a Hershey’s Kiss. Once I’ve slicked the rest of my hair, I get out my fake ponytails and braids. I love using the fake hair because I can do so much more with it than I can with my own hair. Once I have a nice bun in place, I put in my headpiece for whichever ballet I’m doing that night. Often the principal ballerinas have a lot of freedom when it comes to the headpieces for their costumes, and we can wear them however we feel is the most flattering. I prefer putting my headpieces on asymmetrically and view my head as my own little canvas on which I get to create a shiny piece of art.

Once my hair and makeup are done to my satisfaction, I take out my large sponge and put the same thick base I use on my face on the parts of my arms, chest, and back not covered by my costume. I do this because if I didn’t, once I started dancing, my face would stay one light color while my arms and chest would flush red from exertion.

Finally, I put on an extra sweatshirt and my ballet slippers and check to make sure I have everything ready that I’ll need for the performance. I look at my pointe shoes. I have a pile of them in various states of use on the floor of my side of the dressing room. Earlier in the day, I’ve usually decided which ones I’ll wear for the show that night. To help me remember, I write something on the bottom of the shoe, such as the first
letter of the ballet I’ll be dancing. I make sure the ribbons and elastics are still well sewn, with no threads coming loose, and check that the tips and sides of the shoes don’t look horribly messy. I get out my tights and anything else I’ll need to wear under my costume. I make sure the costume, usually already hung in my room by one of our wonderful dressers, is ready to go and has no problems. Once I feel that all is in order and that I just need to return to my room to get dressed for the performance, I go out to the backstage right area, just around the corner from my dressing room, and start to warm up.

My hair and makeup generally take an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes to finish. When I get backstage, I find a spot at one of the two warm-up barres there and sit down to stretch a bit. Other dancers are usually there as well, and we chat. If I’m warming up before the first ballet of the performance, the backstage lights are on but not the stage lights. Stagehands are starting to prepare the stage for the first ballet of the show: one person is mopping the stage, another is checking the lights, another is making sure the dancers’ workstation has all the resin, Band-Aids, sewing needles, and other emergency items that might be required at a moment’s notice. The curtain is still up, and from the orchestra pit we might hear the harpist plucking her strings as she tunes her instrument. The audience hasn’t been allowed into their seats yet.

If I happen to be in one of the latter ballets of the evening, I watch the performers onstage while I warm up, gaining inspiration from them as they dance their hearts out in that other world that I will soon be entering. I feel that I have the best seats in the house because I’m able to watch my amazing fellow dancers up close as they unfold their artistry on the stage.

A half hour before the performance starts, the backstage area suddenly gets very busy. A stage manager calls into the intercom, “Half hour please! Half hour until the top of the show. Please sign in if you have not already done so!” We’re all required to “sign in” by writing our initials onto the company roster highlighted with those performing that night, so the stage managers know that everyone is at the theater and not stuck
in the subway or oversleeping. Anyone who forgets to sign in when he or she arrives at the theater—and it happens inevitably—wanders downstage to announce his or her presence. The full contingent of stagehands arrives to finalize the preparations for the first ballet. The curtain is lowered so that the audience can be allowed into the house.