Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet (26 page)

I will admit to being a little weepy during the performance as I attempted to burn every part of the performance into my memory. James, I think, had decided not to think about the implications of the day until after it was all done. Besides, both of the roles he was dancing were physically very difficult, and male dancers usually do only one of them in any given performance, so he was more concerned with staying strong and dancing well for this, his last show.

Because he had chosen to retire in Saratoga, without any big public announcement, James meant for this to be a low-key private retirement performance. The weather, however, decided that just would not do—perhaps God was giving James a big send-off.

During the first movement of
Brahms
, dark green clouds rolled in across the sky and a strong wind picked up, blowing the curtains of the scenery around the stage of the outdoor theater. The girls’ knee-length tulle skirts billowed as they executed Balanchine’s already moody, windswept movements. As James and I waited in the wings for the upstage curtain to lower during the transition into the second movement, I heard the rumble of thunder and saw bits of leaves and flowers skittering across the stage in sudden gusts. When James and I ran onstage and took our opening pose, I saw that the sky had cracked open to pour torrents of rain on the grassy lawn behind the roof-covered general seating. People were running for cover, a river was running down the aisles of the theater and gushing into the orchestra pit, and some audience members closest to the outside edges of the roof had opened up their umbrellas right there in their seats.

It certainly made the Intermezzo more tempestuous and romantic. It also made James and me relax. We looked at each other, smiled, and knew that we needed to remove the pressure to have a flawless, special last performance together. We should enjoy dancing together and enjoy the performance as a single moment in time, to be lived and treasured just as we had done so many times before.

Throughout our first entrance, lightning and thunder increased in frequency as the storm grew stronger. The climax of the storm came during James’s solo, just as he was completing the phrase, which ended in a big double
saut
de basque
to the knee. There was a giant, stage-shaking boom of thunder, and the theater suddenly lost electricity.

Now, since it was a matinee performance, we were not plunged into complete darkness as we would have had it been nighttime, but because of the storm it was still very dim and certainly an unusual situation. True to the professionalism of the dancers of City Ballet, the three corps ladies who were onstage dancing at the time kept going as if nothing had happened. Even though the orchestra faltered a bit because their pit lights had gone out, the dancers kept their rhythm and maintained their grace. Then, just before James and I were to return for our final entrance, the generator kicked in and the stage lights came back up.

The rest of the performance took on a dreamlike quality for me as the wind blew the curtains of the set around and I was tossed and turned around the stage by my husband. I felt such a burst of pride for James and his career and a huge sense of gratitude for the times we had danced together both before and after we were married. Dance careers are short, and their end seems sudden, no matter how much thought and preparation may have gone into the decision to retire. For James, this was the end of a career he had pursued since he was a child, something that he had excelled at and a field in which he was an expert. But it was also a beginning; he would be entering the workforce in a whole new way and have a chance to advocate for dancers across the country.

It was certainly an ending for me too. I was deeply sad to be losing James not only as a dancing partner but also, and more importantly, as a
companion at the theater. We had been given the opportunity to travel around the world together as dancers of the New York City Ballet, and now I would be traveling without him. I was surprised to discover how much I relied on him for so many small things; perhaps this would be another chance for me to grow some more. I at least had to figure out how to get myself from the hotel to the theater all by myself when I was in a new city.

—

J
ames’s retirement also held the promise of a new beginning for us as a couple; once he had started his new job, we could start planning a family. God had given James a wonderful transition, with no lag time between jobs; he retired from dancing in July and started his new job at AGMA in September. We were ready to begin thinking about babies.

We were still living in a one-bedroom apartment at the time, but the week after James’s retirement and right before we were to go away on vacation, we got a postcard informing us that the studio apartment next door to us was up for sale. We realized that this might be our only chance to afford a two-bedroom apartment: we could buy the studio next door and combine it with our apartment. So while on vacation on the Outer Banks, we negotiated the purchase of the studio.

The following year and a half was filled with a great deal of upheaval: James started his new job and dealt with the very difficult transition from dancer to nondancer; we bought the studio, hired an architect, and then moved out to a temporary apartment while our home was completely gutted; I tried to adjust to hardly seeing my husband during the week when I was used to seeing him all day, every day. What was supposed to be three months of renovation ended up taking over six, and we still had to do many of the changes in our apartment ourselves. Renovating in New York City isn’t fun, especially on a budget. But ultimately, we found ourselves the proud and exhausted owners of a two-bedroom apartment.

One change in our life that helped us through the stresses of that time was the new church we were attending: Redeemer Presbyterian Church.
After we got married, James and I sought a church where we could have a new beginning and an identity as a couple, and Redeemer was a wonderful fit for us. Though I’d loved All Angels’, I knew it was important to find a church that James and I felt equally at home in, and James was drawn to Redeemer. The church had great teaching and a community that was outreach-minded and generously welcoming. Since the Christian walk is never finished, and James and I were very aware of many areas in our lives that still needed healing and grace, we knew we would need to have a consistent Christian community. As we struggled with the changes in our lives, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, we clung to God and the structure we found at Redeemer for stability.

Despite all of this upheaval, the show certainly had to go on, and I was hard at work at City Ballet. I felt more confident in myself as an individual at City Ballet, more grown up. While earlier in my career I’d been silent and subservient toward the ballet masters and Peter in particular, now I felt that I could have real conversations with them about the roles I was to dance and how I was to dance them. I felt assured in the decisions I had to make for myself, even on the rare occasions when they brought me into conflict with the artistic staff. One memory stands out for me: the moment when I realized that no one at the company, not even Peter, had the power to make me lose my sense of self-worth anymore.

We were in a two-week run of Peter Martins’s full-length
Swan Lake
shortly after James retired, and I was dancing the Swan Queen in the first week. I was also scheduled to dance one of the divertissements in the third act, a pas de quatre that Peter had choreographed, on some of the shows where I was not the Swan Queen.

The role of the Swan Queen is very difficult, and usually dancers portraying her don’t do other parts during a run of the ballet. But I was a new Swan Queen, and they wanted me to remain in my old parts even while I danced the lead. Normally I would have done my best to do this, but this time, I was hurting.

An old injury in my foot was starting to bother me, and I was
becoming worried that I would tear my plantar fascia, the muscle that runs along the bottom of the heel, once again. After my first performance as the Swan Queen, I woke up the next morning and could hardly walk. I realized I should pull out of the pas de quatre. I figured this was a logical choice; it was much easier to replace me in the relatively short divertissement, which had multiple casts, than to rehearse my partner with a new Swan Queen for an entire full-length ballet. I had put in six weeks of rehearsals, a great amount of time to City Ballet’s way of working, into the role of Swan Queen. I did not want all of that work to be for nothing. Plus, the particular style of steps in the pas de quatre, short, half-skippy mazurka steps, really aggravated my foot.

For a week I’d been warning the ballet master in charge of the pas de quatre that I might not be able to do it, but he avoided me and resisted me and then finally said I would have to talk to Peter. From this, I gathered Peter would not be happy. The old me might have tried to dance through the pain, just to please management and make it easier on everyone, but I asked to see Peter anyway, knowing that it was the right thing to do for my body.

Peter knew why I was coming and greeted me already angry. Now, I know that Peter has a great deal of pressure on him at all times; running a major ballet company isn’t at all easy, and there are multiple stresses and problems that bear on every situation. I’ve had a long and complicated professional history with Peter, and we have had both good and bad moments. His mood could have nothing to do with the people around him at any given time—he might have had a bad board meeting or learned that funding for a certain project needed to be cut. I’m sure the responsibilities he faces are very difficult at times. But for whatever reason, that day our meeting didn’t go well.

“Peter,” I said, “I think I have to pull out of the pas de quatre. My foot is really bad, and I think if I do all the performances, I’ll possibly injure myself and be out for the entire season.”

“How can you do that?” he demanded. “Now that you had a great first Swan Queen, you are just going to pull out of the pas de quatre?”

“No,” I replied, “it isn’t like that at all. The pas de quatre really hurts my old injury, and I just don’t think I should add it on top of Swan Queen.”

Peter actually pulled me out of his office and into the hallway. I’m not exactly sure why.

“How can you do this? What am I supposed to do?” he berated me loudly. “You are not thinking about me!”

I blinked at him, flabbergasted. Was I supposed to have been thinking about him? Whatever did he mean?

“Peter, if I do the pas de quatre, I’m afraid that I’ll be out for the rest of the season,” I repeated. “Then you’ll have to replace me in all of my ballets.” But I also knew there were already alternate casts for the pas de quatre, so I didn’t understand what the big deal was.

“I can’t believe you would do this to me,” Peter said, and stormed into his office. I walked away down the hall, shaken from the encounter, but also knowing that I’d been in the right. And I didn’t end up dancing the pas de quatre.

It was really an “aha” moment for me: Peter no longer had any power over me or my sense of self-worth. Because I’d come into the company so young, I had related to Peter as a child would relate to a parental figure. I’d desired to keep him happy and had relied on his positive opinion almost as if we were family members in a dysfunctional relationship. But in reality he was just my boss, and though I had to submit to him as I worked at my job, I could still keep my sense of identity safe from him and relate to him as one professional adult to another. The ballet world is a narcissistic world made up of circles of interlocking insecurities. I could break my own little circle, however, and refuse to feel insecure. I was my own woman, loved by God, and going forward the best I could with integrity and honor. In the past I would have assumed Peter was in the right, and would have taken all of the guilt and pain upon myself; this time I thought, Well, he was in a bad mood. And that was not something I needed to absorb into myself.

—

T
he arrival of the spring of 2006 meant that it was time for the biannual Diamond Project, a season filled with brand-new choreography specially commissioned for NYCB’s dancers. I was working on what would become
Russian Seasons
with a choreographer from Russia named Alexei Ratmansky, whom no one at City Ballet yet knew much about. Ratmansky was coming to choreograph for City Ballet after having been the director of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow and would soon be recognized as one of the most talented choreographers to appear on the dance scene in years.

I’ve always enjoyed the process of being choreographed on. Being a part of a new ballet is completely different from learning a ballet that is already choreographed. When I learn an older ballet, I often have preconceived ideas of how my part should be danced. The ballet might be one that I’ve watched for years and seen several other ballerinas dance, which influences how I’ll dance the role. I might like the way one woman danced it but not another; to my discredit, I might egotistically think that I have a better way to dance it than anyone who has ever gone before me (in which I’m invariably proved wrong). But I’m always eager to learn the steps and see how the choreography fits my body and how it complements or challenges my way of dancing. It is a chance to explore how I might bring something of myself to a role already laden with history while still being able to honor the choreography and the dancers who have gone before me.

There is no history, however, when I’m chosen to dance in a new choreography. I’ve probably never heard the music and rarely have any idea of the choreographic concept. I enter the first rehearsal with anticipation and wariness, not sure what is going to be asked of me but excited about the challenge and flattered that a choreographer wanted to work with me. Choreographers usually get to choose whom they will work with, sometimes with advice from Peter or the other ballet masters.

I’ve been in good ballets and bad ballets and often cannot tell which
category a ballet fits into until after some time has passed. Much of what defines a ballet after it premieres has to do with timing and the reaction of both critics and regular audiences. For me to like a ballet as an audience member, I need to have some kind of emotional response or connection to the work. I want to be surprised by the steps and moved by how the performer makes the choreography into visible music. As a dancer actually involved in a ballet, I’ve found that some ballets have a certain invigorating feeling about them and the dancers know that the work is going to be good; others feel doomed from the start. I’ve felt that the choreography was either like my second skin or like an uncomfortable coat that I have to put on, but whether the choreography is comfortable to me seems to have nothing to do with whether the ballet is a success or not. It just means I have to work harder with the uncomfortable ones so that I inhabit them well by the time I have to perform them.