Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet (6 page)

Finally the fall season started up, and I once again entered an entirely different world from the one I’d existed in before. My days were split up between school and ballet, and my adventures all took place within a six-block radius. I would leave my home on Sixty-first Street and walk to Sixtieth to go to my morning academic classes at the Professional Children’s School (PCS). I was now a junior in high school, and because of the advanced classes I had taken in Virginia, I didn’t have that many more credits to go before I could graduate. Also, the school was specially created to work around the schedules of artistically minded children. The class schedule was very flexible, and the school even offered private correspondence classes where students met regularly with their teachers one on one and were then responsible for a large part of their work on their own. The school catered to kids who were in television shows and movies, performed on Broadway every night, were musical prodigies at Juilliard, or were ballet students at SAB.

Looking back now, I can see that already my parents and I were subconsciously willing to sacrifice normal but important things so that I could pursue ballet as a career. I didn’t think about it. Ballet just seemed more important, more rare and valuable, than seemingly ordinary activities like school and church, and everyone from the ballet world told us that it would take all of my dedication to “make it.” It didn’t matter to us very much that at the age of fifteen I was hardly doing any academic work; in fact, we were thrilled that I had advanced so much in Virginia that I rarely had to think about my homework. I would get the credits to graduate early, leaving more time for me to focus on ballet.

I was nervous about my first day as a New York City high school student. My mom took me to the Gap and bought me a new outfit, as she always did for my sister and me on our first day of school. I felt pretty cute in my outfit and it did give me confidence, until I got home and realized that all the price tags and size stickers were still on the outside of the clothes and had hung there all day for everyone to see.

After two early-morning high school classes, my fellow SAB students and I would troop over to the old entrance to the Juilliard building on Sixty-sixth Street, where SAB was located at the time. The first ballet class of the day was from ten thirty to twelve. We would arrive with our heavy book bags balancing out our equally heavy dance bags and head to the dressing rooms to change into our leotards and tights. There was usually about a half hour before classes began, so there was plenty of time to primp, fix our hair, get on our pointe shoes, and stretch before class.

I prepared very carefully for my ballet classes. I was now a full-time student of the School of American Ballet, which meant I was now officially a student of Balanchine technique. His style was called neoclassical: turning away from the heavy costuming and dramatic story lines of classical ballet, he instead choreographed ballets that were sleek and modern, with simple costumes and no story. His choreography focused on the dance itself and used classical ballet steps but often added a twist—a flexed foot here, a more extreme, off-balance pose there. Though he had died in 1983 and his choreographic works in America began in 1934 with
Serenade
, the ballet that stole my heart, his work looks more modern and innovative today than some ballets that were choreographed just yesterday.

At SAB, I was being trained to be a modern neoclassical ballet dancer: a Balanchine dancer. We learned not only to dance rapidly with precision but also to dance any step from any position at any time with hardly any preparatory movements. Even a moment of stillness couldn’t be just a pretty, static pose; we needed to look and feel ready to move at all times, and there were supposed to be invisible lines of energy radiating
from our extremities. Balanchine’s technique is very difficult to master and was extremely challenging for me. But I felt energized and stimulated by the classes at SAB, and though every day I failed at many of the steps I was being taught, it seemed as if I were learning to really dance for the first time.

My main teachers that first year were Suki Schorer, Antonia Tumkovsky—“Tumey,” as we all called her—and Susan Pilarre. Susan was an expert on Balanchine technique and style who focused on musical precision and dynamics blended with confidence and strength. Tumey’s classes were exercises in endurance and stamina; her loving spirit would somehow shine through her tough Russian standards, and even when she made us jump until I thought I would pass out, I still adored her. Suki, whose class seemed to me to be the perfect interpretation of what Balanchine would have taught himself, tried to hone and refine us, searching for elegance and femininity on top of a strong base of musicality and technique.

After surviving our morning class, we would go to the Juilliard cafeteria to get some lunch. I would have yogurt and fruit and a half bagel, chat with some of the girls, and sometimes do some last-minute homework. But we didn’t have much time. Soon it was time for us to grab our bags and troop back over to PCS for an afternoon school class and perhaps a quick “correspondence lesson” with one of our teachers.

Once that was done, school was over for the day. It was time for us to go back over to SAB for our second ballet class of the day. These classes, usually from two or two thirty and lasting an hour to an hour and a half, were pointe or pas de deux classes, variations classes where we worked on real solos from various classical or Balanchine ballets, or sometimes even ballroom classes, where we added another layer of elegance to our partnering skills.

We had so much to learn, and SAB wanted us to be thoroughly schooled in everything they thought a Balanchine dancer would need. In our technique classes we learned the basics, the ABCs of ballet,
sometimes simplifying steps to the extreme and repeating them over days and weeks. In our pointe classes, we fine-tuned our work
en pointe
, emphasizing steps that would enhance our strength and precision. Variations class taught us how to sustain a ballet “paragraph”; most combinations in a technique class are short, only seconds long, like sentences for the body. In a variation, or solo, a dancer must have the strength and stamina to dance excellently for a minute or more, transitioning from one “sentence” to the next, and this takes practice. Both the pas de deux and ballroom classes focused on our ability to work with and trust a male partner and were in many ways the highlight of my week.

Once again, Suki and Susan were our main teachers for pointe and variations, Andre Kramerevsky taught us pas de deux, and once a week we had variations with Madame Danilova, a famous old Russian prima ballerina who was one of the stars of her generation. Though she had left Russia with Balanchine and been involved in his early European companies, Danilova rounded out SAB’s curriculum by teaching the students very classically. Her classes were something special during the week.

Danilova was a treasure. She seemed to step out of an old daguerreotype when she emerged from her dressing room. Perfume wafted around her, and her hair was always perfectly set. She wore a leotard and a sheer chiffon skirt with a colorful scarf around her waist. Dainty ballet slippers with heels graced her feet, and her matching earrings and necklace twinkled in the studio lights.

Her classes were of an older style of ballet, slower and more poetic than the classes of the other teachers. She encouraged us to find subtle nuances in our dancing and to use contained and understated port de bras—the way we carried our arms—to make beautiful pictures with our bodies. In her classes we learned to dance in a way that would invite an audience into our world to see the luminescent shapes and phrasing we were creating onstage. She didn’t want us to bash the audience on the head with our audacious technical daring. The good technique
should be there—just underneath a layer of artistry. The variations she taught us were from the classic full-length ballets; that first year we worked on the fairy variations from the prologue to
The Sleeping Beauty
. She was quiet, ladylike, and frail with age, and throughout my adult career I often wished that my fifteen-year-old self had taken more time to soak up her style while I could. Even just an hour and a half with her taught me how to dance and behave like a lady, with poise and dignity.

Most days, this second afternoon class was the last of the day, and I would return to my family’s apartment to do homework. By this time I was walking on the sidewalks by myself; I would have been horrified to still be picked up by my parents. Most of the other students, even though they were just teenagers, came from out of town and lived in their own apartments with roommates. I was already an oddity to be living at home with my parents, and I was at the age where I was trying to get as much independence as possible. Looking back now, however, I’m glad that I wasn’t as independent as the other students. Fifteen was too young for me to be entirely on my own, dealing with the various pressures facing teenagers, in New York City.

On Fridays a special third class was added to our day. A five thirty–to–seven pointe class with the wonderful Stanley Williams, it was one of my favorite classes. I would hang out in the Juilliard lounge or in one of the hallways at SAB wearing warm-up clothes and doing homework or having a snack with the other students. Then we would go up to the studio early and stretch or just mess around and be silly the way only ballet dancers can be, asking each other, “Can you do this crazy thing on pointe?”

Then Stanley would come into the studio wearing his trousers and button-down shirt, smoking his pipe, and chuckling at all of us. Utter silence would descend as we prepared our brains to decipher his mysterious monosyllable of the moment. Some weeks the only word he would say was “in.” Other weeks it was “toe.” He asked for very simple steps and preferred uncomplicated music, mostly just chords. The other
students and I would attempt his combinations, trying to figure out what he meant by “in” when he was correcting the way one rose onto pointe.

Every now and then a student would earn a nod from him, which was highest praise. Whenever I got a nod, I would think wildly to try to figure out what it was exactly I had done right so that I could do it again. I never really knew. But somehow I danced differently in his class; the mixture of his particular combinations, with the minimal music, silent studio, and simple words, would cause me to glide and float silently on pointe
.
I had greater mental focus on where I was putting my weight as I moved through the combinations of steps, and much more control over my body’s balance. I couldn’t reproduce this feeling in anyone else’s class.

After the Friday-night class, my parents and I, and sometimes my sister, had a new tradition where I would meet them in the lobby of the Juilliard building and we would go for a slice of pizza and then an ice-cream sundae at Diane’s, a burger-and-ice-cream parlor on Seventy-second Street. I could eat whatever I wanted because I had a teenage metabolism and was dancing a rigorous three hours a day. I was not worried about my weight and really had no awareness of anyone my age being worried about her body. If any of my friends had weight concerns, we never spoke of it. After our meal, my family would walk home, passing shops that were fully lit and open for business despite the lateness of the hour and marveling that we were now living our regular life in New York City.

The fall and winter leading up to Christmas was a blur of adjustments for me. School wasn’t overly difficult, but given my busy ballet schedule, it was always a push to get assignments in on time. Classes at SAB were intense and challenging; the class size was very small, perhaps only fifteen or twenty girls per class. And every student was talented. I felt that I had a lot of catching up to do; my training had made me a pretty dancer, but not necessarily a strong dancer.

Indeed, there was a new level of competition for me at SAB. I was certainly not the best dancer, though I had my good moments. For
every type of ballet step, there was one girl to whom the skill and movement came naturally. I would try to learn from her, always aspiring to be as good as or better than her at some point in the future. For turns, I would watch Monique. For fast, precise footwork, I would watch Elizabeth Walker. For high, effortless jumps, I would watch Tatiana Garcia-Stefanovich. I’m not sure they watched me for anything—perhaps for the way I used my arms in port de bras, a carryover from Washington. Ballet class for us was a silent, beautiful struggle, as each of us strived to be the best and garner the praise of the teachers. Outside class, we were giggly teenagers, but in the studio it was hard, serious work.

During this time, my family was still attending All Angels’ Church, located beside the famous food store Zabar’s on Eightieth and Broadway, about fifteen blocks from SAB and Lincoln Center. It was a small church with a dedicated family of congregants who knew one another well, a strange thing for New York City. Many of the members were professional artists, actors, and singers, and the leaders of the music ministry were talented songwriters with experience on Broadway. Needless to say, the music during the services was excellent.

Going to church was just something my family did on Sundays now, an accepted fact of our life. With the amazing worship music and the genuine, friendly members of All Angels’, it was a pleasure to go. I had a personal and real faith as a Christian, but it had never been tested. It was easy for me to believe, and I didn’t put much intellectual thought into my faith. I wonder now if we really know and have a good grip on our faith in God until we go through a major trial in our lives; is our Savior really a personal one until we have had to go through a true crisis of faith? As ballet began to take over more and more of my life over the years, I unfortunately found it easy to let God slip away. But here, with my family’s traditions, I was laying down what would be good “muscle memory” for faith, and it would serve me well many years down the road. And though I gave up on God for a while, He never stopped pursuing me.