Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet (31 page)

I
’m often asked about my favorite roles and ballets. Dancing the principal roles in Balanchine’s
Serenade
as well as the experiences I had originating roles in Alexei Ratmansky’s
Russian Seasons
and
Namouna: A Grand Divertissement
will always be highlights of my career. But another ballet has been a part of my ballet life almost from the beginning of my time in the company, and as I’ve grown and matured as both a dancer and a person, I’ve moved through the different women’s roles in it. Indeed, this is one of those ballets that can take a lifetime to fully appreciate, from the stage or the audience. As I near the end of my career as a dancer, my experiences with this ballet take on a new richness and meaning, because I find that the ballet can be a metaphor not only for real life but also for the life of a professional dancer.

Jerome Robbins’s
Dances at a Gathering
is a masterpiece that requires many viewings to begin to grasp its depth and complexity. Though it has no story or plot, it is about living and interacting and experiencing human relationships in all of their forms. And because this work of art is a ballet, its mysteries and nuances are fluid; each live performance is different. Every time a new or different dancer is introduced into the cast, the dynamics of the piece change. Every time a new pianist comes onstage to play the series of Chopin waltzes, mazurkas, and études, his or her tempos and phrasing directly influence how each dance is performed.
Dances
is a ballet I’ve never tired of watching or dancing.

To audiences used to twenty-minute pieces,
Dances
may seem long. It is a solid hour of dancing. But each of its individual parts, choreographed for different groupings of the ten dancers who make up the
cast, is different in tone and texture. You can watch relationships being developed and then revisited throughout the piece. I find it mesmerizing, and I’ve been told that when Robbins began choreographing
Dances
,
which premiered in 1969, he showed some of the parts to George Balanchine, who said, “This is like popcorn. I want more!”

My own relationship with
Dances
started early in my career, after I’d been in the company for only a couple of years and before my struggles began.
Dances
is typically danced by principals and soloists, and I was a very new corps member. But Jerry Robbins, who was still alive then and overseeing rehearsals, was known for picking dancers without regard to rank, so it was really not that unusual that I was called to understudy the ballet.

Each dancer in this ballet, each “character,” has a different personality and manner of dancing, and I’ve been blessed to have an experience with each of the five female roles. The women are distinguished by the color of their flowing chiffon costumes: blue, pink, apricot (also called yellow), mauve (or purple), and green. The five men are dressed in different-colored tights and blouses with matching ballet boots. My first assignment was to learn the Blue Girl. The Blue Girl is in many ways the juvenile of the group and does not have as much stage time as some of the other dancers. Her relationship to the others in the ballet is similar to that of a younger sister. This was as true for me as a dancer as it was for the role when I was called to the rehearsals. The other dancers were experienced in their roles and already knew their steps, so I just stood in the back and watched, trying to pick up what I could.

It was intimidating to be in those rehearsals at first. The studio was filled with principal dancers in their prime: Kyra Nichols, Jock Soto, Damien Woetzel, Peter Boal, Maria Calegari, Lourdes Lopez, Helene Alexopoulos, and Wendy Whelan. None of them had ever even acknowledged my existence, and I kept myself in the farthest corner of the room, out of everyone’s way. I really didn’t want to be noticed at this point; Jerry was at the front of the room rehearsing, and though he was generally in a good mood for these rehearsals, I’d heard stories and I
was pretty scared of him. I don’t remember much from those first rehearsals because I think I was so overwhelmed to be watching these great dancers rehearse with this great choreographer.

After a couple of weeks, there was a
Dances
rehearsal on the company’s daily rehearsal schedule
that called only two names, and mine was one of them. Victor Castelli, the ballet master for
Dances
, would be with us. I assumed that I was now actually going to be learning the steps for the Blue Girl, not just watching others dance them, so that I would know them if I was ever needed to fill in.

However, when we arrived for the rehearsal, Victor informed us that we were to be learning the Green Girl. Now, the Green Girl is an oddity in the ballet. She does not arrive until halfway through the ballet, and when she does appear, it is only to dance a witty, stylized solo. My friend Pascale Van Kipnis, the other dancer at the rehearsal, and I were both young corps dancers and were a little wide-eyed to be learning this part. But Victor jumped right in and started telling us about the Green Girl’s character. Her solo was almost like a monologue. She was supposed to be an older ballerina telling stories about her greatness.

Using her body, Victor told us, she would “say” things like “Here, I would take a great leap, flying through the air, and when I landed the audience would go crazy! I would bow and then do a beautiful port de bras that would leave them weeping . . .”

The solo was very subtle, with nothing overtly difficult. The challenge lay in controlling the movements with the correct nuances and instilling the right feeling and meaning into the steps. There were delicate timings and musical phrasings with combinations of steps that turned on a dime and moved instantly from quick to slow, matching the staggered rhythms of the music. It was really fun to dance, and Pascale and I were red-faced and breathless by the end of the rehearsal, probably because we both held our breath throughout much of it.

We rehearsed it all the way through one more time and then were told that Jerry would be coming to see us the next day.

I was full of adrenaline for the rehearsal. I couldn’t believe that I was
going to be showing something to Jerome Robbins. Pascale and I were both in the studio early so that we would be fully warmed up and prepared. Jerry and Victor came in, Victor smiling and Jerry looking at Pascale and me warily. He obviously wasn’t going to give his approval easily.

The studio felt silent and empty with only the four of us, plus the pianist, in there. Jerry had us begin dancing the solo together, each of us taking one side of the room. The first thing the Green Girl does is to walk slowly in a half circle, opening her arms up to the audience. Jerry stopped us immediately.

“It’s more like this,” he said, demonstrating how he wanted the walks done. The way he walked had gravity and texture, and the expression on his face conveyed the character’s sense of self-importance and grandeur. Pascale and I had to try several times before he allowed us to move on to the next step, which simply involved shifting our weight from one foot to another.

We confidently executed this move, probably not putting much thought into it, and Jerry clapped his hands to stop the pianist again.

“No,” he said, “you are showing off your costume.”

Jerry again demonstrated for us, becoming the character. As he danced the steps, he looked up at the “audience” in the mirror and said, as if he were the Green Girl, “See this? When I danced before the Queen I wore this beautiful gown. Everyone gasped!”

I started to realize that the solo was not about the seemingly easy steps at all; it was all about the richness of the character Jerry had created. The dancer performing the Green Girl needed to understand
who
it was that Jerry was attempting to reveal to the audience. This was my first inkling that with Jerry, it was rarely about the steps themselves.

In the thirty-minute rehearsal, we didn’t even make it once through the entire solo, which is in reality probably only one or two minutes long. Jerry wanted to stop and talk about every step. When our time was up, he looked at Pascale and me and said, pointing his finger at us, “Keep working on it, keep working on it.” Pascale and I looked at each other, both amazed at the fact that we had just had a private coaching
session with Jerome Robbins. It was extraordinary, but it was also obvious that we still had a lot of work to do.

Shortly after that rehearsal, I was told that Jerry had decided to switch me to Apricot, also known as the Yellow Girl. I think I was just too young to grasp the nuances of the Green Girl’s persona. This was not something to be worried about; he often switched dancers from part to part until he felt that he had found the right fit between a dancer’s personality and the character of a certain role. He also tended to use his favorites in everything. I never did perform the Blue or the Green Girl onstage, but I’ll never forget that initial rehearsal with Jerry. His way of working appealed to my way of dancing; I wanted ballet to be about more than just the perfect execution of technical steps. I wanted there to be an inner dialogue going on inside the performers’ heads, even if there was no real story line to be followed. I wanted there to be a reason why I was doing certain steps, and Jerry’s choreography gave me that reason.

It was in the role of the Yellow Girl that I first performed
Dances at a Gathering.
The Yellow Girl is a complete change of pace from the Blue and Green Girls. Her personality is bubbly and free, vivacious and playful, with hints of a darker drama at times. For a season or two I just understudied, watching Lauren Hauser and Wendy Whelan be coached to perform the role. Jerry loved both of these dancers and rarely had much to say to them, especially because they had both performed the part before. And seeing that they each had different takes on the role of the Yellow Girl, I came to understand that another thing Jerry valued was a
genuine
quality in his dancers. He wanted dancers to be true to themselves, as they inhabited his choreography; any hint of pretense, tension, or acting would drive him crazy. He wanted to see thoughts and emotions come to the surface in an organic way that was evident through the layers of his choreography and the dancer’s own personality.

The Yellow Girl has a piece called the Wind Waltz, a pas de deux at the beginning of the ballet in which she dances with the Green Boy. We were supposed to dance as if the wind were pushing and pulling us along, and our steps often echoed and overlapped as we moved in
staggered repetition of each other. Mastering the Wind Waltz essentially taught me how to be a “Jerry Dancer.” It was while I was learning it that it was drummed into me that eye contact with my partner was more important than almost anything.

Jerry’s pas de deux are rarely about a bravura presentation to the audience. They are about some relationship or dialogue or experience shared between the two people onstage; the audience is allowed to watch this relationship and find satisfaction in the very human emotions the dancers are feeling. For that reason, Jerry wanted partners to focus on each other, without sidelong glances toward the audience for approval.

During my first rehearsals for the Wind Waltz, I rarely got very far into the choreography without being stopped. We would dance about eight counts of music and then hear Jerry’s hands clapping in a signal for the pianist to stop.

“You need to look at each other
all
the time,” he would say.

We would start over.
Clap clap
.

“You took your eyes off of him. Never take your eyes off of him.”

We would begin again.
Clap.

“No. You must look at her no matter what.”

Soon, my partner and I were twisting our necks at impossible angles in order to maintain eye contact no matter what direction our bodies were facing. We were dancing the steps horribly, but we were concentrating so hard on looking at each other that we were disregarding our ballet technique.

Jerry didn’t care. “Okay, you are starting to get it,” he finally said.