by Chan Hon Goh
The application was due in a week, while the competition itself was a mere three weeks away. Most entrants had already spent months in preparation. But that night I thought it over – it occurred to me that during the competition I would turn seventeen – and by morning I knew I wanted to enter. While it seemed unlikely that I would get much past the initial barre section of the competition, what did it matter? The experience would be invaluable.
My parents and I hustled to get in the application, sending it by courier two days before the deadline. After we heard the application was accepted, my father and I had to get to work. I needed to choose a classical variation from the allowed list, and settled on the Aurora variation from Act III of Sleeping Beauty. It is the epitome of the style of the great classical choreographer Maurice Petipa, a style that suited me well. Part of the wedding pas de deux, the variation requires very neat footwork, classically precise arm gestures, and a sharp musicality. The dancer must project the elegance of a true princess claiming her throne. More practically, the variation wasn’t as technically demanding as some of the others and, considering how little time I had to get ready, it seemed a sensible choice.
In the evenings I watched a video of Natalia Makarova dancing the variation with the American Ballet Theatre and learned it step by step. It had been too many years – before the Cultural Revolution, in fact – since my father had been in a production of Sleeping Beauty for him to remember accurately, and I wanted to be exact. And since Makarova was one of my idols, it was only natural that I would want to mimic her expressiveness. So at night I would watch the video, and during the day I would rehearse with my father as coach. I liked working hard in spite of knowing that I probably would be eliminated before getting a chance to dance it. Meanwhile, a costume had to be made. My mother called up a woman who sometimes worked for the Goh Ballet Company, and although she hadn’t made very many tutus (they’re quite difficult to make) she was eager. It turned out very pretty, and all we needed to do was buy a tiara from the local dance shop.
There was also the problem of the modern solo I was expected to dance. I didn’t have anything modern in my repertoire, and in fact had done almost no modern training. It had to be only a minute and forty-five seconds long, which meant that we would have to come up with something ourselves. When my classical variation was coming along, my father and I felt able to look up long enough to consider the question. We decided to ask Che, my first partner and the school vice-principal, to choreograph a piece for me.
By then Che had made the transition from dancer to teacher and choreographer, devising dances for the Goh Ballet Company. The two of us had also started to go out as friends. We went to movies or to a restaurant for a meal after rehearsals. I found him very attractive and his personality fascinating, while his opinions always shed light on issues I felt unclear about. Yet at the same time, I felt I was his equal. As I grew into a young woman, my crush on him was deepening into something more, and I hoped that he was beginning to think of me the same way. But in the studio, we were collaborators only, and after two and a half hours of hard work we came up with the solo. We rehearsed it only twice – the last time the day before the flight – and made a few small refinements. And then, ready or not, it was time to go to Lausanne.
Backstage at the semi-finals of the Prix de Lausanne, with students from the Royal Ballet School, Dame Merle Park, and Darcey Bussell (far right).
January. Time of colds and fevers. The extra hours I had put in must have worn down my resistance, because when Kelly, my father, and I boarded that airplane I had a blooming cold. The change in altitude made my sinuses pound in my head. Many hours later we were in Geneva and taking a train to Lausanne, with me carrying a big, round tutu bag so the costume wouldn’t get crushed. Finally we checked into our hotel and I collapsed for the night.
In the next days I met some of the other competitors; a beautiful American girl named Julie Kent with the perfect made-for-ballet look (she would become a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre); an English girl named Darcey Bussell (she would become a principal with the Royal Ballet); as well as dancers from Japan and Europe. In all there were more than a hundred competitors, more than two-thirds of them girls and the rest boys. We had two days to get used to the time change and to rehearse, and then the competition began before the panel of twelve judges. In the bus from the hotel to the theater the other girls stared at me as I furiously blew my nose so that I could breathe a little better. But strangely, the cold didn’t affect my mood, most likely because I had no great expectations.
The eighty or so girls were each given a number. During the first round we did exercises at the barre led by an instructor while the judges looked on. Every so often we would move further down the barre so that the judges could get a good look at each of us. Darcey Bussell and I were beside each other, while Julie Kent was about ten numbers behind us, and the three of us went through the competition together. The judges eliminated only a few girls at the barre, after which we went on to center work. Here more entrants were eliminated, and we went on to a little variation exercise on pointe. I survived this round too, and the competition was suspended until the next day.
Unfortunately Kelly, who had been the reason we came, was eliminated from the men’s group on the first day. Disappointed but resigned, he made himself content with joining my father as a spectator and encouraging me on. The time arrived for the classical variation, after which thirty or so entrants would be chosen for the semi-finals. We were given the afternoon to rehearse. I practiced the sequence of steps in a circle, called the manège, that came towards the end of the solo. This sequence always tired me out anyway, but on the “raked” stage of the theater, I would have to dance them up the slope of the stage, which felt like climbing a mountain. Watching the other girls, I was impressed by how technically efficient and strong the Japanese dancers were. “Oh my gosh,” I would blurt, “I can’t believe that girl is doing so many turns.” Or “Look how high she’s jumping.” But my father always had something to say that would boost my own confidence. “Nobody can shine like you,” he told me. “You’ve got a distinct style. And your musicality stands out.” He made me feel special and showed how much he believed in me. We were both happy that I hadn’t yet been eliminated; my father felt that coming all the way to Switzerland had already been more than worthwhile. It was an exciting and emotional experience for him, seeing his daughter hold her own against the best young dancers.
The day of the classical variations, February 1, was my seventeenth birthday. Each girl danced in turn and in the evening we gathered to hear the thirty semi-finalists announced, beginning with the lowest number and moving upwards. Some girls who I thought had danced really well were eliminated and I thought, “Ah well, I can tell my number’s not going to be called.” But then my number was announced and my father and I hugged in amazement.
The next day the finalists would be chosen. All the finalists were prize winners, but they would compete one last time in the closing performance, after which the various scholarships would be given out. I danced the classical variation again as well as the contemporary piece that Che had choreographed, the piece that I’d had no time to rehearse since arriving and only went over the night before. It was a very long day. In the late evening everyone gathered in the hotel meeting room to await the results. It was past midnight when the ten female finalists were announced. The numbers were called out; my own was not among them.
I had known the unlikelihood of my making it as a finalist, but still I had held onto a glimmer of hope and could not help shedding a few tears. My father comforted me, saying, “You did really well, Chan, and I’m proud of how far you’ve gotten. We didn’t really even prepare properly. You did exceptionally well.” So I made myself satisfied with reaching the semi-finals. I was so tired and so relieved that the competition was over that, when we went back to our room, I fell into a deep sleep that lasted all night and well into the next day.
My
father, however, could not sleep. He had watched all the dancers, and to his highly discerning eye his daughter deserved to be a finalist. What flaws had the judges seen that he had missed? In the morning he went down to breakfast and came back up to find me still sleeping. Not until one in the afternoon did I wake up. I was famished, but the hotel had stopped serving for the afternoon, so my father took me to the nearby McDonald’s. My father anxiously watched me eat. He wanted to get to the theater because the judges were holding a kind of open conference; the dancers who had been eliminated could seek advice, and my father wanted to hear why I hadn’t made it to the finals.
We arrived while the judges were still there, sitting in pairs so that the dancers could approach them. My father and I approached the nearest two, one of whom was Suki Schorer from the School of American Ballet. Suki Schorer took one look at me and said, “Why are you here? You should be resting up for the show tonight.”
My father said, “But her number wasn’t called. She’s not a finalist.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “I didn’t hear my number either.”
“No, I’m definitely sure you’re supposed to be a finalist,” Suki Schorer asserted. The male judge next to her was not so sure, but Suki was adamant. “We’ve got to find out what’s going on,” she said. And the next thing we knew, Suki was marching us to the office where the heads of both the jury and the competition were.
“I’m sure this girl is supposed to be in the finals tonight,” Suki told them. The head of the jury listened and then explained why I had been left out. The Prix jury had to choose a certain number of finalists who were studying at government-funded institutions and a certain number from private ballet schools. I was studying at the Goh Ballet Academy which, the jury head continued, was an institution, and those slots were filled by others chosen ahead of me.
“But I don’t come from an institution,” I said. “I come from a private school.”
This put the two men into a fluster. Such an error had never happened before. By rights I ought to be a finalist, but there were only ten scholarships to give out. Besides, the final competition began in only a few hours and I had not spent the day preparing. They conferred for some time. Somehow another scholarship would have to be found. Then they gave me a choice: I could receive a finalist certificate but not compete tonight, since I was hardly ready. Or, if I really wanted to, I could choose to compete anyway.
“I want to perform,” I said.
I did dance that evening, musing to myself that at last I would get to wear the costume that I’d dragged all the way from Canada. I was awarded a Prix de Lausanne Finalist Diploma and a summer scholarship to any of the famous schools. I chose the Rosella Hightower International Dance Centre, in Cannes, France – Rosella Hightower herself then offered me a full year’s scholarship. When we returned to Vancouver, tired but elated, the dance critic Max Wyman interviewed me – my very first interview – for the Vancouver Province. The local dance community was flabbergasted. Chan Hon Goh a finalist prizewinner at the Prix de Lausanne? But she doesn’t even win the competitions around here!
For me, something important changed after the Prix. Until then I hadn’t felt sure of my own talents. Of course my parents thought I was good, but maybe they were prejudiced in my favor. At the Prix I had not only danced well, but had proven to myself that I could perform even when under pressure. I had a new confidence, a belief that I really could go through with this dream of being a dancer. I accepted the summer scholarship, rather than the full year, and spent six weeks in Cannes. Many professional dancers came to take classes at the school as well, including stars of the Paris Opera Ballet and the Maurice Bejart Company. It was a heady experience to suddenly be living in this adult environment, with more freedom than I had ever known. Rosella Hightower, watching my progress, told me that my technique was already proficient and that what I needed to do was “virtuoso work” – by which I think she meant I had to take my dancing to the next level of brilliance and expressiveness.
Che came to Cannes too, staying in his own bed-and-breakfast, and for three weeks before my parents joined us we had this time alone. The previous summer, when I was sixteen, I had said to Che, “You have to tell Dad that we are serious. You need to get his approval so we can be truthful about how serious we are. And if he doesn’t approve, I want you to take me away to elope!”
I just couldn’t talk to my father myself, but Che was nervous about approaching him too. After all, to anyone else our age difference seemed large. But as an only child, I had always felt adult, and to me Che did not feel so much older. We were so compatible, and the crush I felt because of his princely manners had turned into real love. We could talk about anything and, although being older brought a maturity to his views, I always felt as if we were on the same level. He was generous and calm, qualities that helped me to be a better person.
With Rosella Hightower at her studio in Cannes.
That summer my father was guest teaching at the Banff School of Fine Arts and Che was dancing there. Che telephoned me and said, “I spoke to your father and he seemed okay about us.” My father in turn spoke to my mother, my mother spoke to my grandmother – and in the end we got the approval we wanted. Not to marry yet – I was too young for that – but to see each other with the goal of marrying some time in the future. Cannes was the first time we traveled together without my family nearby. The two of us felt timid in this foreign place, but we had a chance to rely on one another and to explore and deepen our relationship.
I had gone to the Prix, I was training with great teachers, I was in love, and I was seventeen. The world could not seem to hold more promise.
As the spirit of Giselle.
CHAPTER 7
THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN
If an unexpected event had not shifted the direction of my career, it is possible that I would have never left Vancouver. In time I might have become a principal dancer with the Goh Ballet, and under my father’s artistic direction the company would have grown to become a fully professional company with a larger repertoire, more performance dates, tours in Canada and abroad.
My father was already extending his ambitions for the company. In 1987, when I was seventeen, he and my mother began to organize a Goh Ballet tour of China and southeast Asia, beginning with Beijing and moving on to four other Chinese cities before traveling to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. As a member of the company, I was one of about twenty young dancers, most around the age of eighteen or nineteen, and I had a number of leading roles to perform. One was in The Dream of the Red Chamber, a kind of Chinese Romeo and Juliet that combined Western ballet with traditional dancing, which we had already performed in Vancouver. But I also had a pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty, partnering with a young dancer from China, and a role in a piece called Ballade that my choreographer uncle, Choo San Goh, had “made on” me, creating it with the dancers of the Goh Ballet. Although by now I had performed in a few single-evening shows, this would be my first series of performances, when I would be living the life of a working dancer, performing night after night. I would have the chance to become more at ease in front of an audience and to build up the stamina needed to dance a full season.
The logistics of such a tour are enormous, and my parents worked extremely hard until the day we finally left. In retrospect, I know how much stress the planning must have put on them both. The first stop was Beijing, where we arrived after the long flight and were given a half hour to rest in our rooms before meeting in the hotel restaurant for dinner. My father did not appear in the restaurant, and my Aunts Lin Wen and Wen Yee, who still lived in Beijing and had picked us up at the airport, said to me, “Your father has a bad toothache.” So we had dinner without him and then I went back to the room to sleep.
In the morning, my father appeared at the rehearsal studio to give us a class and I saw that he was his usual energetic self. I did notice him perspiring a lot, but I knew he was tired from the long trip and the excitement of coming
“home.” In the afternoon we had a rehearsal at the theater, and left my father at the studio talking with his old friends. But some time later one of the friends appeared at the theater. “Your dad’s in the hospital,” he said to me. “He’s had a heart attack.”
I heard the words but I could not comprehend them. My father? The same man who had just given us such a vigorous class this morning? I just could not take it in.
Che hurried with me to the hospital, the sight of which filled me with even more dread. It was such a run-down, dreary place, with dull-eyed patients lined up in the crowded hallways, intravenous lines in their arms. There were so many of them that we could hardly move down the halls, but finally we found my father in a room, hooked up to a monitor and with an IV drip in his arm like the others. His eyes were closed. All I could say was, “Dad.” He opened his eyes. I held his hand, and only at that moment did I understand that my own dear father had really had a heart attack, that he was in a hospital bed and might not be all right. He looked at me and smiled, his breathing shallow, unable to speak. I wanted to ask a nurse or a doctor about his condition, but there wasn’t a single one to be seen. I looked at my father and said, “You’re going to be okay, you’re going to be okay, everything’s going to be okay,” although I didn’t know if I believed it.
Meanwhile, my mother had been found, told of the heart attack, and rushed to the hospital. Fortunately, she knew of a good doctor at the hospital who referred us to a heart specialist. Within an hour the specialist arrived and, after examining my father, suggested that he be transferred to the ward for foreigners, which was newer and had private rooms. We had to help move him to the ward, through a dark connecting tunnel with someone holding a flashlight and others pushing the bed while I held the IV bottle.