A Body of Work

by David Hallberg

  * * *

  I JOKED WITH friends that I had a “recital,” like in my jazz days when my parents patiently sat through recitals that were hours long. This was a different kind of show and a huge milestone in my return to performing life.

  The idea wasn’t mine. Sue and Megan wanted to replicate an actual performance, and with the company just across the road performing their season at the theater in the evenings, idle stage time was available. The show would be midday, midweek, when the stage wasn’t being used by the company. Megan coordinated everything. Repertoire. Partners. Audience. A proper rehearsal period leading to performance day.

  The entire administration was invited to sit in, along with invited donors, the team, The Australian Ballet School, some dancers, and my parents.

  With an audience, I felt the inklings of being a performer again. Nerves, adrenaline, the desire to present and perform. I wore baby-blue tights and a white T-shirt, by special request of Megan (her favorite outfit of mine). Brooke Lockett, the friend who was the catalyst for my coming to Australia, was one of my partners. Robyn Hendricks, a newly promoted Principal, was my other ballerina. They donated their time, aiding me in my return. Their connection with me onstage, through the two pas de deux we were performing, would get me through the show. Looking into their eyes gave me comfort, confidence.

  As I was warming up, with curtain raised and audience in their seats, I walked around the stage. I gazed into the house, those two-thousand-plus red seats looking back at me, about three hundred filled with people. I envisioned how I wanted this show to go. I wanted to remain in my body. I wanted to rely on the strength gained over the last fourteen months. I didn’t want to revert back to old habits. Previously, in the adrenaline rush of a show, that pressure I had craved taxed my body and led to injury. I hoped this had changed, that the strength and mental control would prove successful. I focused on this as I started.

  But there is a point of no return, as I had felt before. When you are in live performance, there is no stopping, going back, redoing. So I assured myself that my years of experience would aid in my discovery of the stage yet again. And once I started, it was over in a moment’s blink.

  * * *

  EVERYTHING WENT AS I wished. It was certainly the biggest test yet. My body held up. Nothing too painful or startling. But that unique feeling that only a performance can produce came flooding back. I was portraying again. Expressing again. I wasn’t in a studio analyzing my quadratus femoris.

  I was dancing.

  * * *

  I WAS FINALLY ready to leave Melbourne. Ready to return to New York. Ready to explore again. To “officially” dance onstage. And after the “recital,” Sue, Megan, Paula, and I hugged our goodbyes. They stood there. The last image I have of that Melbourne time is of the three of them standing together, watching my very last steps away from them.

  CHAPTER 54

  I had mixed emotions bidding Melbourne goodbye. I didn’t want to leave the safety of the team. But it was time to return to ABT at last. I walked into my first rehearsal. I looked around with a new set of eyes, with a sense of clarity and calm and peace. No wasteful insecurities ran through my mind. I had taken a long journey to get to this place. I was ready to rehearse Giselle with Gillian Murphy, with Kevin guiding us along in the front of the room.

  There wasn’t new choreography to learn or a new vocabulary to pick up. This ballet is embedded in my muscle memory; I had danced it in venues throughout the world with many different partners and companies. But it was Gillian’s first time to dance the role of Giselle with ABT, and I hadn’t touched the role of Albrecht since the last time I danced with the company, nearly three years before. My one looming question: how will it feel to perform? I had missed what should have been the prime of my career. All I knew for sure was that I felt like the proverbial phoenix risen from the ashes.

  In my first entrance, I was to run onstage, dashing forward to a musical crescendo. When the music sounded—music that was so familiar, calling up so many memories—I welled up instantly. I ran into the middle of the studio but couldn’t continue. I stopped midmovement. The pianist stopped. I covered my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as Kevin, Gillian, and Emily, the rehearsal pianist, looked on. “I just never thought I would have the chance to dance this again.”

  I dried my eyes. I saw that they felt this with me. They knew the struggle I had endured and what it meant to return to the studio and have the privilege to rehearse again. There is no deeper gratitude than when something is taken away from you and you regain it through the help and guidance of others and, most significantly, your own sheer will. This was how it felt to stand once again in the studio and be able to push my instrument to the demands that Albrecht asked of me. And to look forward to the evening when I could share the fight and the resolution with the New York audience that knew me best.

  * * *

  AS THE REHEARSAL moved on, I rediscovered the role. Given my recent experiences, it couldn’t help but feel totally different. I had been stripped bare, and now, gone were the affectations, the practiced gestures, the mannerisms that had seeped in with years of dancing. I didn’t need those external crutches to lean on. I could just stand there, as Albrecht, not trying to be Albrecht.

  Kevin and I were inspired to work with each other once more. There were details to iron out for sure; cleaner glissades, matching port de bras. But the character portrayal drove it all. If I didn’t have that, nothing would come across convincingly. At times, I would stand there, watching Gillian as Giselle, feeling like I was doing nothing. But in fact I was doing everything. Because I just had to be there. I had been told that years before, but now, for the first time, it changed the game for me. I had never felt Albrecht before. But “before” meant nothing. It was a different lifetime.

  * * *

  IN THE BUILDUP to my first major performance at the Metropolitan Opera House and my return to the New York stage, I had to master the physical demands required of Albrecht in the second act of the ballet. He jumped in ways I knew well but hadn’t tested since my recovery. Late in the ballet, Albrecht executes a series of entrechats sixes, legs quickly and compactly fluttering in the air, then landing only to propel upward again. That push on my tendon would be the ultimate test of how much it could handle. But I had fourteen months of building strength in that tendon behind me. The stairs I trudged up and down relentlessly allowed me to put pressure on it. I was liberated by the control I felt. The Australian team had taught me exactly how to approach the physical climb toward the goal; from day one of rehearsals until the evening of the performance. Every day built on the next, and rest was as important as the effort.

  I was a different dancer, though. Again, I could feel it. I wasn’t tempted to be an executor anymore, who goes from step to step hoping each one would work or that a pirouette would result in multiples, wowing the audience. I always knew those tricks didn’t matter, but now I was confident enough to know I didn’t need to prove my worth in that way.

  The day before the performance, Gillian and I, in costume, prepared to rehearse in a studio far below the Met stage. Clinton Luckett ran the rehearsal, Barbara Bilach (by far one of the greatest pianists I have rehearsed with) played, and Megan, having arrived the day before from Melbourne, sat quietly in the front corner of the room. I didn’t want to perform for her, show her what I had accomplished since she last saw me. I just wanted her to see me rehearse.

  Nothing to prove, I told myself.

  Though I intended only to try out a few steps, we ended up dancing the entire second act from start to finish. It went as I wanted it to: calm, controlled, open to honest interpretation. I executed all the jumps, turns, and lifts as I had previously, no excessive exertion of energy. It wasn’t until the end, being left alone after Giselle departs to her grave, that I realized what I had just done and in front of whom. I was able to do it all. I started to cry. Quickly, I left the studio, sweat-stained and in costume, to take a moment alone
. But I couldn’t stop. So I reentered, letting the tears flow freely and happily. I glanced across the vast studio and saw Megan wiping away her own tears. I walked toward her and we tightly held each other, sobbing. She had seen me when I was unable to execute a bend of my foot. And now we cried together because of what I could do a year and a half later.

  * * *

  MY ENTIRE FAMILY descended on New York to see my return to the stage. They were so deeply indebted to the team in Australia that they had brought them to New York for the performance. The evening before the show, we all convened in a restaurant close to the Met and toasted the ensuing moment. I looked around the table at everyone there. No one was missing. My closet supporters surrounded me. Sue; Paula; Megan; Mom; Dad; my sister-in-law, Kristina; and my brother, Brian, with whom I’d become deeply connected now that we were adults.

  After I left them, familiar feelings crept in. Even though I felt like a completely different artist, approaching a major role for the first time, those familiar doubts accompanied me through my preshow routine: morning class, home, eat, sleep, shower, shave, to the theater. In the quiet of my dressing room, tears flowed as I read pages of well wishes from the entire Australian Ballet. Flowers were delivered. Bottles of champagne. Support from everywhere. While my makeup was being applied, I thought of the team watching me. I thought of my first entrance in front of the New York audience. I thought of the final bows. My tears came so rapidly that, for a moment, the makeup artist couldn’t put the eyeliner on.

  I made final preparations in my dressing room. Putting my tights on, final spray on my hair, the walk to the stage from my dressing room, the arrival of the rest of the cast. These preparations and rituals that I hadn’t experienced for years.

  Then the call to “places.” Suddenly, unexpectedly, the company applauded me, their excitement as obvious as my own. Kevin approached and we hugged, tears in our eyes. With the curtain still closed, the overture started, and the stage lights imbued the scenery with the dim light of morning.

  I stood onstage alone. A completely different person than before. I closed my eyes. Took a slow, meditative breath, then opened them and took in the sight of the vast Met stage.

  I was ready.

  In the wings full of dancers, I prepared my props: cloak, horn, and sword. I climbed up the stairs to the ramp and waited for my music. The final chords, then I bolted on stage, feeling so raw, so liberated, so open. The audience’s applause felt as if they were welcoming me back home. A warmth pervaded the entire performance from that moment on. Gillian gave everything she had in her; she glowed from the moment we met onstage, finishing each line and gesture with delicacy and meaning.

  Of course, I couldn’t help but obsess about imperfections even though I knew it would take time to regain my “stage legs,” the feeling of assurance that comes with experience onstage. One can prepare as much as possible for a show, but it is the show that produces true progress. Still I was beyond belittling myself over one missed pirouette in my variation. That wasn’t the goal. All I cared about was communicating to the audience a true depth of portrayal.

  I dove into the story as I had never before. And when Giselle finally returns to her grave in the final scene, I bowed my head, eyes closed, as she vanished. Lying by her grave, I opened them again. The vast Met stage was all but empty. It was now just me and the audience. Sharing this return together. Sweat-drenched and spent, I walked slowly to the center of the stage, then toward the audience, as the curtain descended, to the last quiet chords of the score.

  Minutes later, after numerous company bows and curtain calls with Gillian, I stepped out in front of that vast gold curtain to bow alone. The audience stood and roared. I bowed through tears of appreciation. I clasped my hands together, closed my eyes, and bowed my head. There was nothing else for me to do but feel thankful for every bit of my past experience. The team. The work. The grit. The fear. The obstacles. The rebirth.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING I walked into a quiet studio for class in the basement of the Met Opera House. A few dancers were already warming their bodies for the start of another day of rehearsals. My fatigue weighted me. But I welcomed it as a reward. A reward for the exertion of the night before.

  I took my spot at the barre and began the first movements to bring my body to attention. It was as if the return to the stage and the audience I danced in front of hadn’t happened. Time and duty marched on. This was the moment I had waited for. The beginning of class. When the show is over, the expectation of it in the past.

  I had entered the studio one more time to work as I had on countless days, over the course of so many years before. I was again that creature of the studio, where the real work and the true glory of this art exist and thrive. The stage is a sacred space full of nerves, stress, triumph, and failure. But the studio is where the progress is made. The nuances found. The execution toiled over. Again and again.

  The never-ending process: from my fifteen-year-old self training late into the night with Mr. Han, as he gave me the foundations of my technique, to Guillaume and Kevin, planting the roots needed to develop myself as an artist. Then Yuri, shaping every inch of my physicality. Then Sasha, showing me the fullest reaches of my instrument. One added onto the other. Year after year. Each offering a different approach but speaking the same language of ballet, in their own studios around the globe. Each adding one layer and then another to who I am, and what I might yet become.

  I was there, after that journey to the edge, because of them. But also because of my sheer will to fight. The sweat, effort, stress, doubt; toiling away in a worn studio, whether in Australia, Russia, or New York.

  As class continued, the room now filled with the company’s dancers, the prescribed exercises unfolded one by one. We were like soldiers, executing our routine drills to the melody of the piano. As always, I felt the power of the music deep within me. I began to sweat, reaching that tipping point when endorphins flow. In the center, we turned, waltzed, jumped; each combination revving us up even more, beyond the fatigue, and into another day.

  During grand allegro, our engines revved to full throttle, we set off into a diagonal of suspended jumps, hurling ourselves from one end of the studio to another with no sense of caution, each trying to find that moment, aloft, when time stands still. I had become so accustomed to being cautious when I jumped, so fearful of that sharp pinch of pain it induced. But now, there was no pain.

  Positioned in the studio’s corner, I braced myself, like a runner at the starting line, then launched into the force of my preparation. A deep intake of breath. I propelled myself into the air.

  “Mine was a true American childhood, at least for a while.” From left to right: Dad, me, Mom, and Brian. Phoenix, age nine. (Courtesy of the author)

  “All of that was changed one evening by a mysterious man gliding across our TV screen. His name was Fred Astaire.” First dance recital, age eleven. (Courtesy of the author)

  “Classical ballet was like my black hole, a gravitational force pulling me in deeper and deeper.” The Sleeping Beauty, age fifteen. (Courtesy of the author)

  “ ‘Mais, Daveeeeed. Your leg in the back. It is not turned out. Bowlegs, non?’ ” The brochure criticized by a Parisian classmate, age seventeen. (Courtesy of the author)

  “Mr. Han would stand five feet from me and pick me apart. I absorbed all of his criticism. . . . I had total trust in what he asked of me.” A rare moment of teacher/pupil camaraderie, age fifteen. (Courtesy of the author)

  “My Sunday New York Times routine with breakfast at my local diner where everybody knew my name.” NYC. (Photograph by Henry Leutwyler)

  “If we think we don’t need class and the daily focus it provides, our work slips and that slippage is eventually visible on the stage. The audience can tell.” Daily class. (© Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos)

  “That is the purity of Apollo: so much depth behind each and every note and movement. Stravinsky and Balanchine created a masterpiece.
” (Photograph by Rosalie O’Connor for American Ballet Theatre. Apollo Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust)

  “Theme . . . is a ballet that will always let you know, in no subtle way, what shape you are in. It demands everything from you.” Theme and Variations, age twenty. (Photograph by Rosalie O’Connor for American Ballet Theatre. Theme and Variations Choreography by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust)

  “He is a complex and in some ways a mysterious character that I would dance and question for my entire career.” Prince Siegfried, Bolshoi. (Photograph © Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Bolshoi Theatre)

  “This young, blindly hungry rookie whose unshakable goal was to become a Principal Dancer in American Ballet Theatre.” “Grand Pas Classique,” ABT. (Photograph by Rosalie O’Connor for American Ballet Theatre)

  “I fantasized about the moment when I could feel at home on the Bolshoi stage, when the audience would get to know me and there would be a rapport between us.” Evgenia Obraztsova. (Photograph by Batyr Annadurdyev, courtesy of Bolshoi Theatre)

  Paloma Herrera aided me through many a debut with a work ethic matched by few. (Courtesy of the author)

  Amber Scott was ethereal and earthbound, exemplifying Aussie warmth. (Photograph by Kate Longley)

  “Once you have experienced that onstage euphoria, you hunger for it. Yet you have to accept that it is as rare as it is precious.” My partnership with Natalia Osipova. (Photograph by Rosalie O’Connor for American Ballet Theatre)

  “Then, in a flash, the house lights were brought to full strength and the interior of Bolshoi Theatre was revealed in all its glory.” Onstage selfie, Bolshoi Theatre. (Courtesy of the author)