* * *
ALTHOUGH I SETTLED into company life through the course of the Met season, it took time to get over the thrill of taking class beside my idols on a daily basis. Eventually I got used to dancing next to Vladimir Malakhov and Ethan Stiefel, but I never stopped watching them. Rehearsals. Shows. Bows. Pre-performance stage prep. Everything. Inspiration was only a studio away, or literally dancing in front of me during a performance. Even if I wasn’t on the stage on a given evening, I would watch, transfixed, from the wings, just as I had when witnessing ballet for the first time in the wings at Ballet Arizona. Ethan was in the prime of his career. I could see him furthering and refining himself as an artist in every performance while simultaneously displaying his impeccable technique. On those occasions when I was at an ABT social function with him, I took care to play it cool, calm, collected. Ethan is laid-back, with no pretensions. The last thing he would have wanted around him was a colleague blubbering on over his dancing . . . a gushing fan disguised as a company member.
* * *
AFTER MORNING CLASS one day, four months after I’d joined the company, I headed out of the stuffy studio drenched in sweat. A colleague approached me, saying, “Congratulations, Mr. Hallberg.”
“For what?” I asked.
“Haven’t you seen the new casting? It’s on the board.”
Suddenly, I was living out that stereotypical Big Break moment that has cropped up in countless dance movies: the young dancer hurriedly makes his or her way through a maze of corridors to the casting board, where other dancers are gazing at the white sheet of paper that lists the next ballets to be rehearsed and danced, and the names of the dancers who will perform them.
The list read:
Symphony in C
1st Movement: Herrera/Stiefel. Dvorovenko/Hallberg
There it was. The proof. The payoff. The chance. I had been cast, while a member of the Corps de Ballet, in one of Balanchine’s greatest ballets, to dance the same role that Ethan Stiefel would be performing on other nights. I stared at the list for a few more seconds, almost as if I didn’t know my name or suspected there was some other Hallberg in the company. The ball had been thrown to me. And now I needed to catch it.
Later in the day, walking down the corridor, I ran into Irina Dvorovenko, whom I would partner in the ballet. She was one of the reigning ballerinas of ABT and someone I loved to watch. She looked at me with her vixen stare, a tutu thrown over her shoulder.
“So we will dance Symphony in C together,” she said in her deep Ukrainian accent. More of a statement than a question.
“Yes, we will.” I smiled back nervously.
“Well, don’t be worried. I will break you in and teach you.”
As rehearsals began, she was a woman of her word. She broke me in by gifting me with what amounted to a private tutorial on partnering. I had little skill to speak of, but she wasn’t daunted. She knew what she needed from a partner and how I should provide it.
“Hold me here, down by the hip.”
“Don’t stop me too early. Let me go into the movement more.”
“Push my hips more forward so I am not hanging back on my leg.”
I was green and eager. I soaked up everything she said. Some experienced ballerinas don’t want to be bothered teaching newbies how to hold them, lift them, carry them. But Irina was generous. Never condescending. I was lucky to be under her wing for this critical turning point. It was the start of my education on how to partner a ballerina. My inexperience shone like a lighthouse through clouds. I couldn’t hide or fake my way through the technicalities of maneuvering her. I had to show my cards, and above all . . . learn.
* * *
I DEBUTED THE ballet with Irina at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Petrified, I waited in the wings, down stage left, in my makeup and costume. I watched her make her entrance while I fidgeted nervously with my tights, constantly adjusting what didn’t need adjusting. The head of the costume department once told me that male dancers get holes in the thighs of their tights because we constantly pull them up. True evidence of pre-performance nerves. As I tugged at my tights offstage, onstage Irina looked secure, confident, sharp. She had an ability to converse silently with the audience, flirting with them as she danced. Meanwhile, my nerves were telling me, I can’t do this. I’ll mess up my one chance. I shouldn’t be out onstage in a big role yet. I’m not ready. I’m a fake. I can’t live up to this moment.
Inevitably, the point of no return fast approached. I listened to the music leading up to my entrance. Each note brought me closer to the very moment I had always dreamed of and now dreaded.
Eight counts of eight.
Four counts of eight.
The music sounding my entrance thrust me forward. There was no more time for apprehension. I propelled myself onto the stage. I moved. I danced. I did what I had trained for years to do. The doubt, the fear, the anxiety dissipated as I was caught up in the music, the moment, the lights. Adrenaline coursed through me, the adrenaline that is such a crucial component of what defines a ballet dancer.
* * *
THOUGH IRINA GAVE me a wonderful, much-needed tutorial (bless her patience), I had a long way to go. I still didn’t have the strength to properly lift a ballerina; I didn’t know the right, courtly way to touch her. The relationship between two people dancing together, creating an aura of romance for the audience, is at the heart of ballet. Ideally, the two dancers have a chemistry that allows them to meld into one, connect with each other both emotionally and physically while displaying that rapport to the audience as well. But as I would discover, it doesn’t always work out that way. Some pairings don’t result in that rapport, as hard as both dancers might work individually. They aren’t able to blur the lines between what the male supports and what the ballerina exudes. When they dance together they remain individuals.
* * *
I HAD BEEN in the Corps de Ballet just six months when I was paired with Michele, who was an ABT Soloist when I joined the company. Even at a young age—she was twenty-two when we began working together—she had a solid technique. She worked deliberately on her craft and you could see that work in her intense focus on and off the stage. She was always in control of her dancing. Her dancing didn’t control her. That simple authority is a formidable trait, as so many dancers have problems controlling the outcome when they push for technically difficult steps or phrases (myself being one of them). Most dancers just hope for the best. But Michele showed precisely what she planned to show when she was in rehearsal or in performance.
We hardly knew each other when we began working together, but the minute we stepped into the studio it was all business and work. She was my superior, having been in the company four years longer than I had. I was very much aware of her experience compared to mine. She had a way of keeping a distance from colleagues, while I, on the other hand, having cast aside my isolation, had reverted to the person I was during my early days in Paris: a golden retriever, smiling, hoping for everyone’s acceptance. I was twenty years old then. Though I had not stopped growing I was six foot one with long, thin, sticklike limbs. Michele was five foot eight, which meant that when she rose up on pointe, she was as tall as I. The longer and taller the ballerina, the more there is for the partner to control.
We had been chosen to represent ABT in competition for the Erik Bruhn Prize, a prestigious event held in Toronto every three years. Bruhn had been one of the greatest and most acclaimed male dancers of the twentieth century. A handsome Dane with chiseled features, his nobility and grace made him the perfect danseur noble. The competition he founded was open to the companies around the world with which he was most closely affiliated. The awardees are intended to possess, in Bruhn’s words, “such technical ability, artistic achievement and dedication as I endeavored to bring to dance.”
All contestants are selected by their Artistic Directors, who are allowed to submit just one woman and one man. There is a small cash prize for the winners, but even be
ing selected is an honor that marks you as someone with serious potential within your company.
Both of the taxing pieces Kevin chose for us to dance—“Grand Pas Classique,” and the Manon bedroom pas de deux—require very complex partnering. “Grand Pas” requires the execution of pure technique, no story line but straightforward ballet at its most deliberate. The Manon bedroom pas de deux is a scene from the full-length ballet Manon by Sir Kenneth MacMillan. During the pas, Manon and Des Grieux dance alone, engaging in intricate and riveting partnering. It is an unusually intimate scene during which the audience act as voyeurs to the couple’s sultry mutual passion. It also has the longest kiss in the ballet repertoire, which is nothing like the adolescent kiss in the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. This was to be arousing, passionate, charged.
I had a lot to prepare. It was a major opportunity to learn and absorb these two works and I was in over my head. Professionals danced these ballets, especially Manon, in the prime of their careers. I wasn’t even at the legal drinking age. The biggest challenge was getting a handle on how to partner Michele in a way that would allow her to trust me.
* * *
KEVIN PERSONALLY PREPARED us for the competition. During his own dancing career, partnering had come naturally to him. He’d partnered many major ballerinas, most notably Martine van Hamel and Natalia Makarova. He had the ability of all great partners: to instinctively anticipate his ballerina’s needs even before she’s aware of them.
Kevin is tall, slender. Someone I could easily relate to in terms of physical proportions. When he became ABT’s director he established himself as a true creature of the studio whose dedication to the process of dance and to working with dancers remains paramount. He is astute and tireless and, years after his own retirement, still able to demonstrate virtuosic steps and intricate partnering.
It was a rare opportunity to have a few months to prepare two major pas de deux with Kevin, as his time was packed with rehearsing other dancers among other directorial duties. I was determined to gain as much as I possibly could from the experience.
* * *
AS REHEARSALS INCHED along (and by inched, I mean that every inch of the steps was spelled out to Michele and me), the atmosphere progressively got more and more tense. Kevin, with unwavering patience, explained every nuance of how to partner Michele. Where to hold her. How to maneuver her body into the most advantageous positions. It didn’t come easily to me. I didn’t sense where she needed to be and, as her patience began to wear thin, more and more I felt a mixture of nerves and fear. Nerves at setting Michele off. Fear of messing up. I had little patience for myself, even. Mentally I was frustrated that I couldn’t fulfill my duties. As an example, I didn’t know how to “put her on her leg,” as dancers call it. This requires the man to set up his ballerina so that she is comfortably on balance while standing on pointe. Every woman is different in regard to where she wants to be and where she feels most comfortable. It takes a good deal of technique and finesse (not just sheer strength), and most important, it takes instinct and confidence, of which I had none. I understood why Michele felt like a guinea pig.
Knowing that I wasn’t putting her at ease stressed me out. In ballet, the woman is meant to be lithe and feminine while the man is strong and chivalrous. A male partner has a responsibility to make the woman he’s partnering feel taken care of. When you are failing at this responsibility, it chips away at your confidence.
Every day we would work on my shortcomings as a partner, and every day Michele made clear how uncomfortable she was. Since I was in the junior position by a number of years, I felt I had no right to stand up for myself or give my opinion. I knew how inadequate my partnering skills were. She began dominating the situation and made her displeasure apparent. I was humiliated and equally upset by her attitude and my shortcomings. Kevin would always demonstrate what I needed to do. Everything seemed to work just fine when he was partnering her. She looked and felt at ease. It was a rare occurrence when things worked with me.
* * *
THE CLIMAX OF “Grand Pas Classique” contains a series of virtuosic balances for the woman. It’s the male partner’s responsibility to place her so she remains steady and on pointe. At the same time that she balances, the male lets go and does a double tour en l’air. After each balance and each double tour they both drop to one knee. This is repeated three times. If it’s timed correctly it’s a great effect. But if the timing is off, the sequence loses its impact and falls flat. Every day in rehearsal, we would start with the intention of achieving perfection. Things would be going relatively well (in my opinion). But we’d get to that first balance and Michele would stop. I never had her in the exact right place to balance. So we’d do it again and again and again. When it would work, I was relieved to move on.
“A little better,” she would always say, not completely satisfied.
I lost patience internally but never externally. I understood that the main objective was to make her comfortable. So I listened to Kevin’s corrections and learned how to partner her better. I was always ready to make improvements. But like clockwork, on a daily basis, we would stop at the same spot. Over and over. Balance after balance.
* * *
THE MANON BEDROOM pas de deux was an even greater challenge for me and my rookie partnering skills. The piece contains a series of very tricky off-balance arabesques and promenades that requires an even higher level of natural instinct than “Grand Pas Classique.” It was as new to her as it was to me, so we both started from nothing and worked together on the steps. In addition to its technical demands, Manon also calls for intense emotional interpretation. Toward the beginning of the pas, the man and woman slowly walk toward each other. When they reach center stage, he takes her in his arms and kisses her. The kiss is meant to be sensually charged, replete with yearning lust. Neither Michele nor I had ever had a kiss like that onstage.
There is a major difference between stage kisses and making out in real life. In our own separate lives, we had both certainly experienced passionate kissing, but we were hesitant about kissing with such fervor a person we were having troubles with professionally, and to do so, no less, in the studio, in front of our Artistic Director. When we rehearsed, it became a part that we always “marked”—which means we merely suggested the kiss—rather than doing it full-out.
Finally, one day, Kevin told us to come to the center of the room and kiss—his abrupt way of breaking the ice. We walked toward each other and I gave her a peck like a first kiss in third grade. No passion, just awkwardness. “Now kiss her a little longer and a little more like you mean it,” he said.
The next attempt continued as business, nothing like the way you would want to kiss someone with whom you were passionately in love. The third kiss was a little more believable but still just as awkward. I couldn’t believe I was getting a lesson in kissing, a step-by-step introduction. Kissing 101. We carried on like that for a couple of minutes in the silence of the studio with Kevin coaching us, slowly integrating more passion into our attempts. But thankfully Kevin’s method worked. Eventually, after weeks of laboriously ironing out the details of the intricate partnering, we were kissing as easily as we were turning and jumping. The kiss was just as technical as doing an arabesque.
* * *
THE NIGHT OF the Bruhn competition I could see in Michele’s eyes a total focus and determination to succeed and win. To my relief, the partnering went surprisingly well. Michele’s dancing (and the dreaded balances on pointe) stunned the audience. It was the best I had ever seen her dance. She absolutely rose to the challenge of the evening.
Though they perform as a couple in the competition, the man and woman are judged separately. After everyone had danced, we all stood onstage for the announcement of the awardees. Michele won. I lost to Friedemann Vogel, a German dancer from the Stuttgart Ballet. I congratulated both of them, but I was more upset than I let on. My loss combined with Michele’s victory would give her even more of an upper hand w
hen we rehearsed at ABT for other ballets. I knew this would create an even deeper divide between us.
CHAPTER 11
I had been in ABT’s Corps de Ballet for two years when I was given my first leading role in a full-length ballet. It was one of the most iconic roles in the repertoire: Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake. He is a complex and in some ways a mysterious character that I would dance and question for my entire career.
I didn’t make the decision as to when I was ready to dance Siegfried. No matter how hard a dancer works or strives to be great, our casting is in the hands of the Artistic Director whose company we dance for and whose job it is to assign the opportunities all dancers crave.
* * *
WHEN KEVIN DEEMED me ready to slowly prepare Swan Lake, I knew it was a huge opportunity as well as a huge responsibility. I was honored to be chosen to dance this role at the age of twenty-two, a role that had been performed by Nureyev and Bruhn and Baryshnikov, the brilliant dancers I’d revered as a kid, whose performances set the standard against which all others are measured.
* * *
EVERY DANCER GROWS up knowing Swan Lake. I had watched videos of it danced by companies around the world, and knew the haunting Tchaikovsky score note by note. The music spoke to me even when I was a boy in high school. I would listen to the third act, turning it up full blast in the car when I drove myself to school. I hadn’t yet learned what the steps were, so my imagination improvised. Mr. Han’s car broke down once and I had to drive him from the studio to his home (a nervous five-minute trip). As he got into the passenger seat of my beat-up ten-year-old Toyota Corolla, the male variation from the Black Swan pas de deux came blasting through the speakers. I had been in a state of euphoria as I drove to class earlier and had forgotten to turn it down. I was mortified that he caught me in my Swan Lake stupor, but pleased that now he knew how deeply I responded to such incredible music. What a kiss-ass I was—humiliated yet happy I got caught.
A Body of Work Page 8