The Sugarless Plum: A Memoir (6 page)

When I started my first year as a full-time student at SAB, Balanchine was seventy-six years old. He was of medium height, slim and very serene. Pictures of him as a young man show him to have been extremely handsome, with fine features that gave him the look of a painter or a poet. Now his still-handsome face reflected his dignity and wisdom.

His usual attire, consisting of a Western shirt and string tie, reflected the love that this man who had been born Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze in Russia had for the American West.

From what I've read of Balanchine's early days at the Imperial Theater School in St. Petersburg, which he entered at the age of nine, his initial impressions of ballet were very much like my own.
He couldn't figure out why he was being asked to put his body in such awkward positions; he was convinced he couldn't do it, and, even if he could do it, he didn't much want to.

Then, in his second year, he was chosen to perform the “Garland Dance” in a production of
The Sleeping Beauty
. Over whelmed by the beautifully painted sets, the gorgeous costumes, and the way the dancers moved to the sublime Tchaikovsky music, he fell in love with ballet. He was ten years old.

Balanchine was just eighteen when he established his own small company of fifteen dancers, including his then sixteen-year-old bride, Tamara Geva, and his future common-law wife, Alexandra Danilova, who would become a great ballerina in her own right and who was still teaching at SAB when I arrived. In fact, during my first year as a full-time student, I was honored to be chosen to dance a solo in
Reflections of a Dancer
, a documentary film about Danilova's life. To dance in the film as she coached me was a privilege beyond imagining.

Although Balanchine revered the great, full-length classical ballets he had been brought up on (
Don Quixote, La Bayadère, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker
and
Swan Lake
, created by Marius Petipa for the Russian ballet in the late-ninteenth and early-twentieth centuries), the ballets he choreographed, from the very beginning, had no princes, no swan queens, no lavish sets. Rather, they featured a man, a woman, the dancers surrounding them and the music, which supplied the impetus for every move they made.

On July 4, 1924, Balanchine left Russia with a troupe of four
dancers including Geva and Danilova, to perform in Germany. From there they went on to England, where Balanchine received a telegram from Serge Diaghilev, the legendary founder and director of the Ballets Russes, inviting him and his company to audition. Within days, they had become part of the Ballets Russes, and Balanchine's life was changed forever. Years later, he would tell his biographer, Bernard Taper, “It is because of Diaghilev that I am whatever I am today.”

Five years later, however, on August 19, 1929, Diaghilev died suddenly in Venice, and Balanchine was once more on his own. In what must surely be one of the most serendipitous occurrences of all time, Lincoln Kirstein, a wealthy young American with good connections and great determination, was vacationing in Venice and happened to wander into the church where Diaghilev's funeral was being conducted. A lover of the arts, especially ballet, Kirstein was already familiar with Balanchine's ballets. Now, taking this unlikely occurrence as a sign, he decided that he was meant to bring ballet home to America and popularize it.

He and Balanchine did not actually meet, however, until 1933. In the meantime, Balanchine was freelancing as much as he could and, in the process, becoming increasingly bored and annoyed with European ballet, which he regarded as stale and creatively stifling.

At that first meeting, arranged by a mutual friend, Kirstein asked Balanchine, “What do you want to do?”

“I want to come to America,” Balanchine said, adding that he
would love to go to a place where there were girls as wonderful as Ginger Rogers.

“I'll get you to America,” Kirstein promised.

But Balanchine knew that getting to America was just the beginning. Yes, he would have the artistic freedom he craved and needed, but dancers would be in short supply because, at that time, American dancers were poorly trained.

So, when Kirstein promised him not only his own company but also his own theater, Balanchine insisted on setting the priorities.

“But first, a school,” he said.

The School of American Ballet opened its doors in 1934, a year after Kirstein and Balanchine's first meeting. Fourteen years after that, New York City Ballet gave its first performance.

The 1980–81 City Ballet season began in November, following six weeks of rehearsal, and I finally had my first opportunity to see a Balanchine ballet performed onstage. Deidre and I were determined to see as many performances as we possibly could. Sometimes we bought standing-room tickets, but we couldn't afford to buy tickets every night, so we came up with a scheme. We would wait until we saw company members entering through the backstage door. Then we'd tag along, hoping that the guard would assume we were among the new dancers Balanchine had picked from our class. Once inside, we'd make our way backstage and out a secret door to the front of the house, where we had to sneak past the usher. The one who looked like a blond witch always knew what we were up to and watched us like a hawk. We hid in the bathroom until the lights went down, and when she was busy seating last-minute arrivals we'd sneak into the theater and find empty seats.

One night the ballerina dancing Titania, one of the leading
roles in Balanchine's
A Midsummer's Night Dream
, was so breath taking that I was sure she must be the great Suzanne Farrell, whom I had heard so much about but had not yet seen in person. But when I looked in my program, I saw that Titania was being danced by Nina Federova. I tried to find her name among the listed company dancers but didn't see it anywhere.

In ballet companies, dancers are assigned to one of three ranks: the highest ranked are principal dancers, followed by soloists. Principals and soloists dance leading roles. Most dancers in any company, however, are in the third rank, the corps de ballet, which literally means “body of the ballet.” Corps dancers are the ones whose names you don't know. They're the dancers who perform in nearly every ballet, often positioned onstage behind the principals and doing the same steps the principals do.

It hadn't occurred to me to look for Federova's name among the corps de ballet dancers. At the time I wasn't aware that Balanchine was known for giving dancers in the corps a chance to perform major roles. But Federova was indeed a corps dancer. I couldn't believe it. Knowing that this was how good dancers in the corps were, I felt especially intimidated.

 

After a while, Deidre figured out that we didn't have to buy tickets or sneak past the usher to see a performance. Instead, we'd enter the theater through the stage door and take the elevator up to the level where the stagehands, operating from a catwalk, pulled the scenery up and down. There was a tiny bench
at the front of the catwalk where they allowed us to sit and peer down at the stage so long as we didn't get in their way.

We had to lean from side to side as the scenery went up and down, but I liked being up there because we also got to see what was going on backstage. The dancers would smile as they danced for the audience, but the moment they were offstage the smile was gone and they were leaning over, hands on knees, gasping for breath. Then they would joke or talk or yawn. They'd adjust their costumes and their shoes. They'd sit and massage their aches and pains. They'd run in place to keep their muscles warm. I'd put them all on such a pedestal that seeing them this way made them a bit more human to me.

 

From my perch high above the stage, I picked out my favorites in the corps, but no one I watched came even close to having the effect on me that Suzanne Farrell did when I finally did get to see her dance. The more I watched her, the more I fell in love with the way she danced. She wasn't a perfect technician. Some nights she would fall off her balances, some nights she hit balances that seemed to last for days. But she was the most spontaneous, thrilling performer I'd ever seen or possibly will ever see again. Some people dance
to
the music; Suzanne
was
the music. Watching her, I understood Balanchine's maxim, “See the music, hear the dance.” She was everything I wanted to be.

I was also intrigued by her relationship with Balanchine. She had joined City Ballet when she was sixteen years old, and although Balanchine was forty-one years older than she, and
married, he fell madly in love with her. The situation was complicated; nevertheless, Suzanne became his muse.

Despite Balanchine's love and attention, Suzanne eventually married a fellow company member, Paul Mejia. Prior to their marriage, Mejia had been given some good roles; after it, Balanchine did not cast him.

Consequently, they both left NYCB to dance in the company of the brilliant modernist Maurice Béjart. Suzanne danced beautifully in Béjart's company, but her soul belonged to Mr. B. Her home and her heart were always with Balanchine and she came back to the company. Watching her dance, I felt that I was witnessing a historic event, the master and his muse reunited.

The more I watched not only Suzanne but all the dancers in the company perform, the more in awe I became of what I was seeing.

 

That first year, Suzanne taught my Monday morning class. There she stood, ten feet away, my idol, with a perfect Balanchine body—long, slender legs, nice arches, long neck, small head—no makeup, hair in a ponytail, wearing a simple leotard, practice skirt and pointe shoes.

Whenever she taught, she brought with her handfuls of pointe shoes that had been made specifically for her feet but that, for one reason or another, she had chosen to discard. I always took a pair because even though they were a bit too small, I could fit my feet into her shoes and I was determined to wear them.

Balanchine used to say that he could tell how a dancer danced by the way she did her
tendu.
A
tendu
is accomplished by
standing on one leg with the other leg extended straight out to the front, side or back. The foot is arched; the toes are fully pointed. The second, third and big toe gently touch the floor. Suzanne had the perfect
tendu
. I had never seen it done so beautifully and perfectly. I had never thought a
tendu
could be so important or that I would be so obsessed by such a simple movement. Now I wanted to do it as perfectly as she did.

Suzanne pushed me further than I thought I could be pushed. She'd have us do a step that we counted in four counts while the music played in three counts. She'd give us a combination and then say “Reverse” while we were in the middle of it. She'd have us hold a balance for the count of eight, an impossible feat. But even if we couldn't do it, she wanted us to try. I often felt clumsy in her classes, but I never felt inadequate. She gave me exactly what I needed: the freedom to explore without fear of failure.

She took the shame out of not being perfect.

Mr. B spent most of his time at the theater, four blocks from SAB, but he came by the school occasionally, mostly when he was looking for new dancers. He would appear unexpectedly, and we all knew that at any moment he could walk into a class, look at you, like you, pick you for the company and, in that moment, transform your life—even if you weren't one of the dancers favored by the administration and teachers at SAB.

We all knew the stories about dancers like Heather Watts, Sheila's former pupil. When Sheila had joyously told us about Heather's promotion to principal dancer, what she hadn't mentioned was that Heather was as difficult and disruptive as she was talented. But that feistiness didn't deter Mr. B. He took her into the company because he knew that she was supremely talented and that he would be able to bring out the best in her.

I was in Suki's class one morning when Balanchine made one of his surprise visits. We were doing a series of high leg lifts that were to be executed slowly—a movement called an
adagio
. I
looked to the front of the room, and there he stood. For a second, time seemed to stand still; you could have heard a pin drop. Then, in the blink of an eye, sweatshirts were pulled off, tights and leotards were pulled perfectly into place.

One girl in the class was extraordinarily beautiful and a very nice dancer, but she was a party girl and absent much of the time. There were constant rumors that SAB was going to suspend her, maybe even expel her, but as luck would have it, she was in class that day, and Balanchine could not take his eyes off her. Soon we heard that she had been made a member of his company, where she would go on to dance for many years.

Events like that gave life at SAB an air of unlimited possibility.

 

Besides being seen in the right class at the right time, the best chance a student had of being noticed was in the year-end workshop performances. The audience for these performances included every major dance critic in New York City, many of New York City Ballet's principal dancers, and the most important choreographers and company directors of the time—Balanchine, Robbins, Baryshnikov, Nureyev and Twyla Tharp, among others. If you had a good role in a workshop and danced it well, the odds were pretty good that you'd get a job with some company.

Each year the program was comprised of approximately six pieces, generally great works restaged by SAB teachers that called upon dancers to perform in different styles. And the class I'd been moved up to was one of the two from which students were chosen for parts in the program.

The City Ballet teachers and dancers who were presenting pieces all came to watch our classes and choose the dancers for their casts. The first year I was there, I danced in four of the six ballets. Now I was not only watching Balanchine's ballets; I was actually learning and dancing them myself. I was becoming fully a part of Mr. B's magical kingdom. That year I was in the corps of Balanchine's
La Source,
staged by Suki. Deidre and I danced a pas de trois originally choreographed by August Bournonville for the Royal Danish Ballet and staged that year by the New York City Ballet principal dancer, Adam Luders. The third ballet I danced in was a new work by NYCB soloist Joseph Duell, and the fourth was
The Magic Flute
, newly choreographed by Peter Martins.

This was the first year that Balanchine asked Peter to choreograph for the workshop, and I was elated to be cast as a demi soloist, and even more excited when, soon after rehearsals began, Peter asked me to also understudy the leading role (as a demi soloist I was one of four dancers highlighted from the corp de ballet). I was scared and didn't think I was ready for a lead at that point, it was incredibly exciting to be chosen and to be dancing a part Peter Martins had choreographed for me. I loved the fact that Peter liked me, and I was thrilled by the promise of more leads in my future.

Balanchine came to all of the final workshop rehearsals. It was the first time I'd ever danced for him, and I'm sure that all the other dancers hoped, as I did, that he would notice us. He really did give us all the sense that he noticed everyone and everything. Peeking at him out of the corner of my eye, trying not to stare,
I was wondering what he was saying. Who was he watching? What did he think? I didn't want to miss a single gesture.

But even when Balanchine wasn't at rehearsal, there was always some godlike important person there watching: Peter Martins, Jerry Robbins, even Baryshnikov. And I was one of the people they were looking at.

There was enormous pressure to perform well, of course, because we'd been rehearsing our parts for the entire school year, but for me it was also an enormous amount of fun. I was still one of the “new kids,” and the pressure wasn't as great as it was for some of the older, more experienced students. Also, one thing I knew about myself was that no matter how insecure I might feel offstage or in rehearsal, when the curtain went up I danced my heart out. I loved being onstage, and steps that I may have struggled over in the classroom always seemed to work when it came time for the actual performance.

I knew I'd done well in my workshop performances, but I didn't know whether any of my teachers would be considering me for a lead the following year. My secret fantasy was that I'd at least get to learn a lead as an understudy, but I didn't dare to hope for more than that.

I went home for the summer feeling really good about myself. In addition to discovering my passion at SAB, I'd made new friends who enjoyed being with me and who never thought of me as the “bad Zippora.” Back in California, I took driving lessons and got my license. I rode Gent, spent time with my family, took classes with Sheila and dreamed of getting back to New York.