He confirmed what I had questioned for years and had become increasingly sure of: that movement is meaningful only when it emanates from the truth you find within your own artistic intention.
* * *
GISELLE AT BOLSHOI Theatre was a turning point for me in terms of handling the pressures that an opportunity like that can present. The stakes had been high and I had tried my best to stay in the moment and remain as calm as I possibly could. Through that performance, I finally got a taste of the appreciative Moscow audience. They know Giselle. They have watched it for generations and have a standard for how it should be danced. Apart from the generous way the audience responded to my dancing, I witnessed how they responded to Natasha. Strong, enthusiastic applause was given to her when she entered, when she danced her solo, and again when she entered in the second act and tore through her opening variation. For our final bows, in front of the Bolshoi curtain, Natasha led the way, moving from one side of the theater to the other, bowing to one balcony and then the next. Non-Russian dancers are at times critical of what they perceive as the overindulgence of the way Russians bow. But in Moscow there is no other way, as the applause is loud and sustained. Audiences show their appreciation by clapping long after the show has ended. It is a tradition that you find in no other country.
CHAPTER 16
My Bolshoi debut was timed with another Russian debut in an equally storied venue: the Mariinsky Theatre of St. Petersburg.
The Mariinsky Theatre opened in 1860, replacing the original theater, which burned down, having been built in 1783 to house opera and ballet. Named for the Empress Maria Alexandrovna, wife of Tsar Alexander II, Mariinsky Theatre hosted performances of what became known as the Imperial Ballet, the company for which Marius Petipa, Premier Ballet Master of the Imperial Theatres, created the entire classical canon, including the ballets that dancers sometimes refer to as the Big Five: Don Quixote, La Bayadère, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake. The composer of the last three of those works was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Later, the company was known as the Mariinsky Ballet. During the Soviet years, it was renamed the Kirov, reverting to the Mariinsky Ballet after glasnost.
The Mariinsky Theatre is where George Balanchine first performed, as a boy, in The Sleeping Beauty, dancing the Garland Dance and appearing as a cupid; it’s where he watched that ballet from the wings, entranced by the glorious scenery and Tamara Karsavina’s portrayal of Princess Aurora, and knew that he wanted a life in dance. It’s where Rudolf Nureyev made his ballet debut and began imposing his own ideas on long-held traditions, and where he had his costumes altered (as Vaslav Nijinsky had done before him), requesting that his tunics be shortened to make his legs seem longer.
The Mariinsky, or the Kirov, was also the original company of ballet’s most mythic and heralded dancers: Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Fokine, Irina Kolpakova, Natalia Makarova, Mikhail Baryshnikov. All were trained there, as were Nureyev and Balanchine. They all left eventually to dance or coach or choreograph in the West, in the process creating and defining twentieth-century ballet. And what they took with them and built upon was the art form they had been steeped in at the Mariinsky.
* * *
ONCE THE FINAL curtain closed on my Bolshoi debut, I boarded an overnight train to St. Petersburg with Natasha, who was also going to dance at Mariinsky, and her then boyfriend and friend of mine, Ivan Vasiliev. Natasha and I were still somewhat sweaty from our show, which had ended just an hour before, and had faint traces of stage makeup on our faces. A surly conductor checked our tickets. The midnight train was old, utilitarian, showing the wear of countless trips back and forth from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The interior featured red velvet curtains with gold tassels; worn red carpet lined the narrow corridors. My sleeping cabin had a narrow bed on one side and seating on the other. The smells of gasoline and stale cigarettes permeated the air throughout the train. We were starving and in desperate need of a post-performance beer, so we made our way to the dining car.
The three of us sat down in a booth as the train left Moscow. For the next four hours, until we weren’t able to keep our eyes open any longer, we ate pierogi, borscht, and kotletki—breaded chicken—washing it all down with cold Baltika beer. Ivan, always one to foster a good time, ordered a carafe of vodka for us to toast with. And as we chugged along into the pitch-black night, we lifted one vodka shot after another to each other, to distant friends, and to the moment. Our only verbal communication was the little English Ivan spoke, as he acted as the go-between for Natasha and myself. But we didn’t need language, just the sheer joy of being together, in between debuts, on this train.
I looked out the window and thought how I would have never imagined vodka toasts with Russian friends in the middle of the night on a train heading northwest to St. Petersburg. It was blissfully satisfying.
* * *
WE ARRIVED IN St. Petersburg exhausted, after three hours of sleep in our single cabins. The air was fresh with the sun coming up on a crisp March morning. We dropped our bags at the hotel and continued on to rehearsal at the theater.
Ah, the theater! I was just as moved to lay eyes on Mariinsky Theatre as I had been when seeing the Bolshoi for the first time. Smaller in scale, the exterior is a pastel green and every bit as majestic as its counterpart in Moscow, but more subtle, less dominating. Fear, excitement, anticipation, nerves; all were mixed into my first sighting as I pulled up to the front, finally edging around the side to find the stage door.
I was guided through the long, narrow corridors by a Russian translator who had worked there almost his entire life. His was a common story among the employees of the theater: his parents had devoted their lives to Mariinsky and passed that devotion down to him. He spoke excellent English and was warm, welcoming, accommodating. Proud to show the maze of corridors to the lost American. I changed into my rehearsal wear in an old dressing room where the walls displayed photos of the legends who had dressed there as well. After, we entered a studio where dancers were rehearsing. They stared. Some seemed to recognize me. Most didn’t. We tiptoed by, through the room, to a wooden door that led to another intimate, worn studio of the same size. I was nervous, wide-eyed, intimidated. Left alone to warm up, in this empty studio, I quickly forgot about last night’s debut at the Bolshoi and instantly switched gears, readying myself for a rehearsal of Sleeping Beauty with the Mariinsky’s Artistic Director, Yuri Fateyev.
I had met Yuri two years before on Martha’s Vineyard at a summer program that Ethan Stiefel organized. Ethan had brought Yuri in to teach. That was when I started to understand the meaning of Russian training. Yuri’s passion was his work in the studio. His classes were strong, meaty, with a heavy emphasis on pure technique. He had a special understanding of the execution of turns and jumps for men, breaking everything down to the most minute details. The way the first leg reaches across in a glissade. The placing of the hands in preparation for a pirouette. He has an eye unlike that of anyone else I’ve worked with.
In contrast to many Russians, he doesn’t have a curt facade. He is open and accepting, with a huge, giving heart and a broad smile. It is the beauty and rigor of ballet that he loves; he appreciates dedicated and humble workers. Dancers with potential and no pretense. His world is ballet, and he offers it to whomever he works with, giving selflessly.
* * *
YURI WAS ALSO a man of his word. He had taken notice of me in Martha’s Vineyard, and then invited me to perform the Prince in Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky. That invitation shocked me. Early in my career, I watched a video of someone guesting at Mariinsky, all the while thinking that I’d never have the opportunity to dance at such a historic company, just as I had upon hearing about Julio Bocca’s guesting at the Bolshoi. Yet there I was, warming up in an empty studio at the Mariinsky. With our first rehearsal just forty-five minutes away, I took out my camera and photographed my mirrored image. Bundled up in my warmers. Humbled by the surroundings. I was still recovering phys
ically and emotionally from the evening before on the Bolshoi stage. But there was no time to rest, to think. I told myself, You are already warm; just move the body and break a sweat. You are ready for this.
I went over my steps in the ballet, which I had learned from studying a DVD. I watched the clock nearing the time of rehearsal. Finally the door opened. Yuri entered. A warm hello, in English. A big smile. Energetic, committed. It was time to start.
* * *
AT THAT STAGE of my career, although I was progressing as an artist, it was crucial that I have the incisive eye of a good coach watching and guiding me during those long hours in the studio. Many things had changed over the years I had danced professionally, but the need for a great coach was the one thing that never would. I had found that coach when I worked with Guillaume Graffin, but after he moved on, I hadn’t found anyone to replace him. Having the right coach was so vital to me that I went to Amsterdam to work with Guillaume when I was rehearsing my first Albrecht at ABT. But I’m not like some artists who shut themselves off to everyone but one coach, thinking there is no one else who can offer assistance. I think that attitude blocks you from growth. Everyone I have ever worked with has helped me in one way or another. I am grateful to them all. But there are some who hit a special chord. They understand me and push me beyond all limits I’ve set for myself.
Finding a coach in the United States is different than in Russia, where there are many possibilities to choose from and you pick your coach at a young age. In America there are usually only one or two coaches to choose from in any given company, and you are generally not given a choice of which you’ll work with. Hopefully you connect artistically with one of them, but if not, you have to find a way to forge a relationship and try to make it work.
But I have always believed that I was more difficult to coach than others, partially because of my late start in ballet at the age of thirteen. I didn’t learn at a young age the foundations of the big male jumps, for example. While others, who started young, had that technique rooted within them, I simply tried to propel myself into the air and hope for the best. I needed more than the usual amount of time in the studio. I needed to be shoved over the edge, beyond my comfort zone, to where I was free-falling and had nothing but unexplored territory below. This was when I grew the most.
* * *
I’D GOTTEN THE feeling, in the brief time I worked with Yuri in Martha’s Vineyard, that he knew my capabilities as a dancer. He was the coach I had been looking for. We had a natural rapport, making it easy for him to translate corrections and equally easy for me to understand what he wanted. There was no language barrier, since he speaks English fluently. But often, as I had found with Natasha, there was no need for words.
At the Mariinsky, we spent hours in the studio, repeating step after step. He pushed me to a level far beyond what I had experienced. I fed off the energy this mode of work engendered. I sweated and sweated and sweated, soaking my way through numerous rehearsal shirts, providing visual proof that I was working hard. And as we worked, just the two of us in a studio in the depths of the theater, I was given the artistic sustenance I had craved. I prepared a single role for two entire weeks, hours at a time during the day. Every nuance was analyzed. Picked apart. The result was large strides of progress, based on new ideas and techniques I couldn’t have realized without him. I knew I responded well to someone pushing me hard. And Yuri was just that person, telling me in all honesty what needed work, what had improved, and how I hadn’t reached the full potential of something as minute as a reach of the toe, a turn of the head, a hand gesture. It was all about the details with him. I couldn’t see those details myself. Yuri was a coach who could spot even the most subtle movement.
It was never about quantity with him: the number of turns, the height of the jump. It was about the quality of every step (which would lead to a higher jump or more turns). He would demand. Question. Repeat. Refine. I saw Mr. Han in him, only twelve years later.
Yuri emphasized French style with Russian training, refinement, warmth, port de bras (the carriage of the arms). I would start a variation with the presentation of one arm; my first movement before a big solo. He would stop me immediately. It wasn’t good enough.
Use the fingers, he’d say. Finish the movement with the palm of your hand presented toward the audience, inviting them in.
We would repeat a section four or five times, just for one movement of the arm.
It could be better, he often said.
We spent a full hour on a forty-five-second variation. This was something I wasn’t used to. Elsewhere, there was always barely enough time to devote a full hour to an entire ballet. I had been taught to be efficient in rehearsal, to get through two or three variations in thirty minutes. With Yuri, the attention to detail lavished on one series of jumps was eye-opening.
Another thing he saw was the deficiency in my execution of a manèges, that virtuosic series of leaps around the perimeter of the whole stage. Just like Mr. Han, Yuri drilled me, correction after correction, circle after circle. A manèges is a difficult but impressive step. If you make the slightest mistake, the entire audience will know. You need to turn, skimming the air as you split your legs, then land softly and repeat the same step as you continue to encircle the stage. This had never been my forte. I lacked the instant coordination to execute that low, airborne split perfectly, without strain. I would throw my legs, always dipping my body to one side and taking too much time to get to the final position.
Yuri told me to throw my advancing leg right in front of me as fast as I could, so I would hit the position instantly. Sometimes that would correct the problem, but at times that approach wouldn’t achieve the result we were looking for. Then he would tell me to use my arms to help get me aloft, jetting the front arm out quicker than the legs. He told me to open my back leg when I jumped to create the illusion of lengthening the whole position in the air. Yuri was weeding through all the mess that clouded the purity of the positions. That mess was another result of my late start.
* * *
AS YURI AND I worked on my role in Sleeping Beauty, he showed me shadings and colors that I never knew the ballet possessed. I had danced Prince Désiré many times before and always felt a dryness, a one-dimensional quality in this character who kisses a princess into wakefulness and finds his true love. I was almost bored with it, distanced from a role for which others said I was a natural. I had been told, since I was very young, that I had a “noble air,” and that was something that Yuri emphasized to me, making my understanding more complete and sure. Yet emotionally, I still had difficulty connecting with those noble characters. In pushing me to my physical limits, Yuri turned my one-dimensional Prince into a three-dimensional character. The style and refinement I had never found when dancing Sleeping Beauty, I found through Yuri. He humanized and validated the role of the Prince for me. He gave it depth and true meaning. He showed me that Prince Désiré is a character who has been blessed with all the material things in life. Privilege. Power. Wealth. Everyone at his beck and call. But what he lacks is a true existence. A reason to live. And honest love. Something is amiss, and he can’t pinpoint what it is until he finds love in the form of a sleeping princess. I knew these feelings we spoke of, that feeling of not recognizing true love until it hits you right in the face and, from that moment on, you can’t live without it. At last, I could understand the Prince.
Yuri’s coaching was a revelatory experience that changed me as a dancer. I needed to work with him more.
The night of the performance approached, and with it the ensuing nerves. I had just one evening to prove myself. Something I grew to crave even as I dreaded it was the pressure of an upcoming show, especially when the stakes were so high that you knew you had to dance at your best. Sure, I loved being onstage, but that was never the sole focus of my dancing. My primary interest was the preparation, the buildup and that exhilarating, inescapable pressure. This was certainly the case when I debuted at Mariinsky T
heatre partnering Alina Somova. There were the audience’s expectations to grapple with, as well as my own, and my determination to show Yuri that the time he had so generously given me had not been wasted. In the end, Yuri seemed satisfied with the work we put in because he saw it pay off during the performance.
CHAPTER 17
American Ballet Theatre performs for audiences around the world. Each country and audience is distinct. Some, like the Americans, love the excitement of beautifully executed technique, whereas the French savor refinement and purity of line. Some, like the Cubans, are loud and boisterous, showing their appreciation with piercing bravos, while the Japanese are silent vocally but fervent clappers. Wherever we went, we could look out at ecstatic audiences during curtain calls and see how profoundly this wordless art speaks to people of diverse ethnicities and cultures.
When I went with the company to Japan I quickly learned that the Japanese audience has an abiding passion for dance and especially its individual “stars.” Fans would meet us at our hotel to welcome us. They stood in the lobby for hours in the mornings just to get a picture and an autograph. And hundreds would wait at the stage door after a performance to show their appreciation. It was like no other post-performance stage door scene I have yet experienced. During my first tour to Tokyo, we opened with Le Corsaire; Ethan Stiefel performed the lead role. I was in the Corps de Ballet at the time, dancing as one of Ethan’s pirate sidekicks. After the show, I approached the stage door and saw at least five hundred clamoring fans in roped-off areas at both sides of the exit. As I tried to move through them I was mobbed. I felt like I was in a head-on collision. They were mad for an autograph. Mad for a picture. Mad for anything.
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