Every Step You Take (21 page)

The increased intensity and creativity Heather and I felt onstage was echoed in—and perhaps facilitated by—parallel changes in our private lives. Because I was single for the first time in ten years, I had more free time to spend with Heather offstage. As it happened, Heather also had more time to spend with me. Heather and Peter's already stormy relationship had been upgraded to a high monsoon category by the late eighties; the two of them were constantly breaking up and then getting back together, only to break up again. I found these romantic upsets very disturbing, probably because I was craving stability and Peter and Heather were basically my surrogate parents. In fact, I wanted them to get married and solidify our little family so badly that I would sometimes fantasize about and plan their imaginary wedding. I may have been a little slow to grasp the reality of the situation, but time would make things clear soon enough when Heather and Peter broke up for good and each fell in love with someone else—in both cases, as it turned out, with the person whom they would eventually marry. Heather's new love was a dashing young dancer named Damian Woetzel, who had joined the company in 1985; Peter's was our beautiful and well-established star ballerina Darci Kistler.

All the relationships in my private life seemed to be shifting during this period, and because my private and professional lives were completely entangled, just navigating life on a day-to-day basis could get pretty tricky. Heather and Peter were both still close to Ulrik; Peter was still choreographing new ballets on Heather and me; and I was partnering both Heather and Darci. I told myself that predicaments of this kind must arise in every profession, not just in the intense and inbred world of a ballet company, and I tried to simplify the challenges of juggling all the personality clashes by reminding myself that at the end of each day I knew exactly where my loyalties would lie: with the company and the integrity of our work. I knew it was not the first time nasty private conflicts had threatened to disrupt the professional responsibilities of company dancers—this happens all the time—and I knew the standard operating procedure for such situations. All grudges and differences of opinion and personal problems had to be laid down outside the studio door, so that whatever work went on inside the studio or on the stage could be conducted with a purity of effort and intent. That was the way it had to be, and that was what everyone tried to do.

Peter was on his usual prolific tear at the time, instituting all kinds of innovative programs and initiatives for the company and constantly choreographing new ballets. He had me working with him on a sequence of very different ballets—
Fearful Symmetries
(with Heather and Merrill Ashley),
Delight of the Muses
(with Darci),
Jazz: Six Syncopated Movements
(with Heather), and
Sinfonia
(with Darci and Wendy Whelan and Yvonne Borree)—and I felt that in our choreographing sessions we were communicating better than ever. During this period, when I was working so intensely with Peter and ping-ponging as a partner between Heather and Darci, the NYCB choreographer Richard Tanner also tapped me to work with him on two beautiful new ballets—
Ancient Airs and Dances
and
A Schubert Sonata
. Dick is very smart and very musical, and his choreography is quite intricate and fast. Working with him on a pas de deux with Heather was especially exciting because, although he was very involved and demanding, Dick left a lot open to us dancers. As if all of these challenges weren't enough, another amazing opportunity—and one of the greatest honors of my career—came my way during this same time period when choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett began working on her ballet
Chiaroscuro
with me and several other dancers. I was completely oblivious to the special tribute Lynne was paying me as we began working; all I knew was that I was constantly onstage and working with a series of dancers who came and joined me in a fascinating and demanding ballet. I really loved it. It wasn't until after the premiere that I understood that Lynne had envisioned the ballet specifically as a tribute to and a showcase for me. I was stunned. We had never really talked about it, but somehow she had intuited essential qualities of my Native American heritage—an earthiness and spirituality, and the intricate relationships within a large clan—that I'm not sure I was even aware of myself.

Learning all of these new ballets one after another in such an insanely busy whirl was demanding, but I was growing more confident about my own creativity, both as a dancer and as a collaborator in the exciting process of choreography. I could feel my skills maturing into a fluent, almost patented language that allowed my fellow dancers and me to use our bodies to paint an emotional landscape onstage. I have never been able to explain the alchemy of dance very well—maybe because motion and steps, not the alphabet, are the foundation of the language I speak best. But I could always feel the magic when the dancing and the music emulsified (to use a cooking expression) to create an entirely new artistic and emotional experience, and I loved the process of getting there. In fact, the process was itself the miracle.

Sadly—and, in retrospect, almost comically—during this period when my reputation as a principal dancer and my partnering experiences onstage seemed to be hitting new highs, my partnering adventures offstage were hitting new lows. I remember some dance critic commenting during this period that I performed with “more focus” when I was partnering. I'm not sure that I appreciate or agree with this assessment of my dancing, but the statement certainly applies to my private life. I am one of those people who seems to do much better in a steady relationship with one person. My breakup with Ulrik had been long overdue, but this did not mean that when it finally happened I landed in a happier and more well-adjusted place. On the contrary. The combination of having almost no time for a personal life and very little experience at “playing the field” resulted in a sequence of ill-advised romances that I sometimes refer to as “My Mistakes.”

Probably everybody has some passage in their romantic history that makes them cringe to recall. When I look back on this period of my life, my catalog of cringe-worthy mistakes goes something like this: the Screamer, the Architect, the Hollywood Agent, the Wannabe Pop Star, the Famous Painter, the Gossip Columnist, and the Velvet Mogul. Summarizing it so coldly makes it sound like I was doing a brisk business, but most of these encounters were very brief. With the Screamer, for instance, I knew it was a no-go from the moment I had to cover his mouth—which, as I recall, was before we had even begun to undress. The Architect was handsome and older than I, but dating various people at once, which is not my style. The Hollywood Agent and I were never really dating per se, but he was amusing, and he seemed to like to stare at me, which gratified my ego. It seems worth mentioning here that many dancers, even though they are part of a profession that depends on grace and beauty, do not think of themselves as uniquely attractive. This has certainly been true of me—I have always been, and will always be, insecure about my looks. In 1990,
People
magazine included me in its annual roundup of the “50 Most Beautiful People in the World”—but my attitude about this was, What does
People
magazine know? I assumed they had to fill their performing-arts quota for the annual list that year. Over time I have trained myself to look into a mirror without really seeing myself. I look for form and posture in an abstract and artistic evaluation of movement, without seeing my specific body.

The Velvet Mogul was the last—and by far my favorite—in the list of my so-called mistakes, and only a mistake in the sense that I think we both knew before we began that there was no way we would be together forever. We met at a Calvin Klein show and became infatuated with each other, but our ages, backgrounds, and lifestyles were just too disparate for things to work out long term. I had been around plenty of wealthy people during my years at NYCB, but none matched the grand scale on which the Mogul operated. If I was on tour, or if he was out of town, he would sometimes send his plane to fetch me, and he liked to literally shower me with gifts. All of this was really fun, and a little crazy, but what I liked most about the Mogul was that he was always very kind, and he always treated me with the utmost respect. He was a truly good and intelligent person, with a really big and generous heart. We got along.

During the period when I was seeing the Velvet Mogul, I began touring the country during my time off from the company, performing with several of my fellow dancers as part of a special group Heather had organized. Heather had designed excellent programs that the audiences seemed to love, and these tours were generally wild and fun road trips in which we got to travel together, not to mention make some very welcome extra cash. Sometimes the Mogul would send his plane to pick me up from wherever I was dancing on these tours—Lincoln, Nebraska, or Palm Springs, or Miami—and then I would grab Lourdes, Heather, Damian, or whoever was around, and while the rest of the troupe got on a bus to head to the next venue, we would fly out to Beverly Hills or some other place for a few days of fun. It was always amazing to disembark from the plane and find the Mercedes limos waiting for us on the tarmac. People who have that kind of money really do live differently, and it was a kick to go along for the ride for a while—but even as it was happening I knew such a life would not work for me over the long haul. It wasn't long before we broke up, and while we didn't speak for a while afterward, in the long run we have remained cordial. Whenever our paths cross it is always nice to see him. He is a good man, and I wish him well.

The truth of the matter is that although I made what I consider a number of dating mistakes, there was truly no one who would have been an appropriate partner for me at that particular time in my life. What I needed was time alone—something I had never really had since hooking up with Ulrik at age fifteen—and time to figure out where I stood in my dancing career. Some big and daunting changes were looming in the not so distant future—no one talked about it much, but we all knew they were coming. I had reached an age when I couldn't just wing it and bounce through life with the blithe, carefree,
que será, será
reflexes that had served me so well from childhood through my early twenties. I needed to pull back, find myself, think things through, and try to make intelligent plans.

One of the saddest and most difficult experiences during this period of my life, and also a major factor in my general feeling of confusion and doom, came when I learned that my former boyfriend John had been diagnosed with AIDS. AIDS is such a cruel disease, and it had taken so many special people in our world already. For any gay man there was also always the constant fear factor—would this awful and unpredictable disease get you, too? By then everyone was well aware of the AIDS threat, and everyone I knew who was gay got tested regularly and we were all very careful. But the disease is an insidious and ruthless enemy. I have always been very lucky, but many others have not been so lucky. It was heart-wrenching to watch John growing weaker and weaker over the months, and on the day he finally died I was absolutely flattened with grief. I was scheduled to dance Jerry Robbins's
The Cage
with Heather that evening, but at 7 p.m. I was still in my bed, unable to think or move. Our ballet was the second on the program, and at some point, as time was running out, Heather called me.

“Honey, you have to get out of bed,” Heather said gently. “Get out of bed and come to the theater.” When I got to the theater, Heather was already in her wig and makeup, waiting for me in my dressing room. She sat me down and wet my makeup sponge and began to apply my makeup for me.
The Cage
is about a Queen (of the insect world) who is teaching a Novice (Heather) how to seduce her intruders and then kill them. I was dancing the part of the Second Intruder, whom the Novice happens to fall in love with, before killing. I remember lying on the floor after the pas de deux with Heather, staring up into her eyes just before she has to kill me, and wondering at the strange and sad turns life can take—and at the powerful imperatives of performance. I was about to have my neck broken and get stomped to pieces by Heather in an artistic portrayal of a death onstage at Lincoln Center. A very dear friend of mine and Heather's had just died, in real life—and there we were, dancing a fake death. No matter what, the show must always go on.

Life was getting more serious. Everyone was older and everything was changing. Peter Martins and Darci Kistler married in 1991, Heather and Damian were settled into a cozy relationship, and Heather, Damian, and I had become an inseparable trio. I think the three of us were all ready for something new and were craving more stability at the same time, and in 1993 we realized that as a result of our freelance tours around the country we had amassed enough cash collectively to take an extraordinary step that would placate our urges for both novelty and stability. Joining forces with another great friend, Hamilton South, we bought a country house in upstate Connecticut and set about creating the domestic pitter-patter of a “normal” life and home. When Hamilton decided that he wanted a private homestead of his own, Heather and Damian and I bought him out and quickly regrouped as a solid little trio of happy homemakers.

We were the owners of a beautiful home on twenty acres of land, and although our dance schedules did not allow us to spend long stretches there, we did manage to have wonderful times whenever we could get there. Heather and Damian took up gardening with a vengeance, and set about creating a paradise with acres of glorious flowers and bushes and trees. Heather and I launched into a serious cooking phase, and began inviting friends to regular dinner parties at our bucolic retreat. In the winter when it snowed we would sled down the hill all the way to the end of the driveway. In the spring the tulips would arrive in abundance, and in the summer we would sit on the terrace and watch the sunset while our dogs—we had golden retrievers, mine was named Absolut and theirs was named Q—cavorted on the lawn.