The Women Who Raised Me

by Victoria Rowell

  For every artistic dreamer willing to do the hard work and courageously walk through the doors of Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center—or any other artistic venue—that is only the first step. Everything changes when you’re in New York City, the ultimate proving grounds. The big show. A supreme reality check for the naïve and the uninitiated. Whether you will rise to the top or not depends on so much.

  From the start I saw that hard work was a given. Everybody worked hard in the Big Apple. Cabdrivers, Nathan’s hot dog concessionaires, scam artists in Times Square, all artists. It wasn’t just talent or luck that made things happen, you had to have connections, and those connections had to think you were talented. You had to bring it all: guts, stamina, professional beauty, determination, and many things not in your control—random occurrences, Lana Turner moments, those circumstantial split-second choices that had no true or false classification but that, once made, could radically alter your path.

  For me, the ability to use everything in my arsenal was to be of vital importance over the next six years, while my major lesson was that I had to be willing to fall, which I did not like to do. That meant literally, professionally and personally. No one was exempt from enduring applications of harsh constructive criticism. Sometimes taking silent umbrage was my only outlet. I made mistakes. Disappointment was inevitable. But what I was about to discover was my resilience, the ability to brush off and get back up again. And to do it with panache!

  Though my guides along this learning curve were many and varied, I was most influenced by two inimitable grande dames—prima ballerina, choreographer, and legendary ballet teacher Valentina Pereyaslavec and piano virtuoso Paulina Ruvinska Dichter. They were the grandest of grande dames.

  Although they had much in common and both contributed to my evolution as an artist and as a human being, they lived in different worlds and entered my life at different junctures, like complementary yet individualized bookends. The first of the two to appear on my horizon was Madame Pereyaslavec, whose name alone was enough to send reverberations of anxiety through me when I learned that I would be studying with her.

  I didn’t know how to pronounce her name but would soon learn. Madame, nearly seventy years old and petite, was a kinesthetic powerhouse—a vibrating entity, influencing everyone she touched. She was never without her felt fedora and walking stick, unassuming loose navy blue pants, and a cardigan.

  Valentina Pereyaslavec was one of the most sought after living ballet teachers and coaches of this era, a prima to the primas. Her master class was so famous among ballet luminaries that it was known simply by its time—“the 11:30.” The same year that I arrived at ABT, Valentina was celebrating her twenty-fifth anniversary with the school and as company teacher—at age sixty-nine. Whether her students were members of ABT or in the school, or were visiting principal dancers from other companies, she was universally exalted by an endless list that made up the who’s who of ballet—from Lupe Serrano to Erik Bruhn, Carla Fracci to Ivan Nagy, Anton Dolin to Merle Park, Lynn Seymour to Rudolph Nureyev and one of her most celebrated pupils, Margot Fonteyn.

  Fonteyn—one of my early idols—was said to schedule special stopovers in New York whenever she was touring anywhere in the world and had been first introduced to Valentina Pereyaslavec by a colleague who arrived in the United States from Russia in the early 1960s. That certain celebrated artist was described by Valentina in a Dance magazine profile of her, in which she recalled the young male dancer, unlike any she had ever seen, who arrived in her class unannounced. What captivated her beyond his masculine beauty, his poetic and nobly expressive face, was the astonishing concentration and control in his work. After class, he introduced himself as Rudolph Nureyev. Rudi, or Rudichka—as she knew him from then on—became a regular in class whenever he was in town. For me, this was historic, to see him in all his majesty. Standing at the barre with a knit hat on to retain body heat, he followed along like everyone else. He described Valentina as one “possessed by the muse, a priestess of dance.”

  A similarly familiar quote from Margot Fonteyn—whom Valentina coached, just as she did Nureyev, for their historically acclaimed 1976 ballet film of Swan Lake—was “If you can survive Madame’s barre, you can survive anything.”

  I couldn’t have said it better. Double rond de jambe à la seconde en l’air en demi-pointe was one of her favorite exercises. She believed that holding the leg at ninety degrees on half pointe, applying a circular motion from the knee down, for extended periods of time built strength and it did. She thought nothing of choreographing an adagio that applied a derivative of this position from a grand plié simultaneously adding en tournant.

  Valentina was from the Ukraine, where she was born in 1907 in Yalta, before traveling to Moscow at the age of nine to train at the Imperial School of Ballet. She later spent three years studying in Leningrad under none other than Agrippa Vaganova. Valentina’s reign on stage in theater and opera as a prima ballerina lasted twenty-two years, ending not by her own decision but by the outbreak of World War II.

  Though Madame never spoke of what her experience had been during the devastation of the next seven years—certainly never in class, nor during the treasured conversations I had with her in private—I have to believe that what she witnessed would haunt her forever.

  What little I do know is that she was sent to work in a factory in Germany, a fate far more preferable than that which met so many in the arts, Jews and non-Jews, condemned to concentration camps. Hitler released his infamous “List of Degenerates, Jews, Bolshevists, and other Undesirable Geniuses.” The single most powerful threat to the Third Reich was apparently not an enemy armed force but creative freedom, thus requiring the murder of all forms of individual thought or expression. Hitler’s list of undesirables included the names of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers: Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Berthold Brecht, Kurt Weill, Billy Wilder, and Josephine Baker.

  However Valentina Pereyaslavec survived, Madame must have found empowerment from whatever lived inside of her—the power of art to mount the ultimate resistance against tyranny. Her experience under communist regimes must have fed that intensity. It was assumed that was the reason she so loathed the color red and that students were banished from class for making the error of wearing even a hint of it.

  Passion and having an inner wellspring to defy limitations was how she later described the difference between a good performance and a great one.

  “Many dancers beautiful,” she said in her broken yet melodic English, almost dismissively, during one of the first classes that I took with her as we began our pliés at the barre. “But many beautiful dancers the same. Only artist inside can make role great.” That inner work had to happen away from class and in rehearsals, Madame insisted.

  She compelled us, through the first exercise of the day, crying, screaming, beseechingly, “Pleeeee—” her face distorted, hands reaching out to the class, drawing it out, never finishing the word, making it a combination of please and plié, teaching with a go-for-broke approach.

  She would scamper across the studio floor in tiny black-heeled shoes, in bourrée fashion, to make the slightest correction. “Po-po in,” she commanded, as I attempted to conceal my derriere, which wasn’t going anywhere. She moved on to a fellow student, barking, “Don’t sleep, lady!”

  For any of us to aspire to ascend to the ranks of corps de ballet of the apprentice company of American Ballet Theatre, the main company, possibly becoming soloists and ultimately principal dancers—a daunting hierarchy—we had to fully inhabit our roles and allow them to inhabit us. That was an ongoing theme in Pereyaslavec’s teaching, as was the importance she placed on sequencing and not rushing movement. Every developé had to unfold and unfurl higher; full relevé (rising on to pointe) without a clear demi-relevé first was met with a “No good, lady” or, worse, a look of absolute repulsion. There was no room for slackers, and she could smell ’em a mile away. I loved her te
nacity.

  On one occasion in class, she demanded that I close my fifth positon, “Heel kiss toe, toe kiss heel!” Miss Jordan’s drilled placement lessons back in Cambridge were not lost on me. In a split-second decision, I replied with a verbal answer. Unheard of. Dancers were supposed to talk with their bodies, not their mouths. That rule changed. As much as I respected Madame Pereyaslavec, and God knows I did, I was all I had, I was my own meal ticket, and I wasn’t about to bust my kneecaps before I got into the big leagues. Common sense dictated that I couldn’t compromise my instrument on a request, not even for the teacher who taught Margot Fonteyn.

  As the incomparable Valia began playing, I raised my hand and said, “I’m sorry, Madame, but holding the position hurts my knees.” The entire class stood dumbfounded at the incongruousness of the moment. Her eyes had a wildness in them, then ever so slightly, she curled the ends of her lips; I smiled back in the same way.

  Without missing a beat, she carried on with class and never, ever asked me to close my fifth position again. Here were the exacting lessons, essential for survival of the fittest, preservation, and technique.

  Pereyaslavec stood behind me and tapped her walking stick to remind me that my leg could go higher, elements that added to the drama and would be an asset to me as a dancer. As Madame watched me in all phases of my technical development, she also seemed to have the unnerving ability to read below the surface, as though she could perceive so much more about my life and circumstances than anyone could have told her.

  Maybe she was harkening back in her mind to her own experiences after World War II was over, when she found herself in a camp for displaced persons of Ukrainian descent and started to live again by offering to teach ballet lessons to children among the refugees. Within a short time, Valentina put together a group of students there at the camp to form a notably well-trained youth company who went on to perform extensively under the sponsorship of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency.

  Maybe there was something about me, a scholarship student, that reminded Madame of her arrival in the United States in 1949, alone, with nothing more than the grand sum of eleven dollars in her pocket. At the age of forty-two, Valentina began her American odyssey as a factory worker in Philadelphia, before leaving soon thereafter for a ballet teaching job in New York City. By 1951, Madame Valentina Pereyaslavec had made her way to her home for the next thirty years at ABT.

  Whatever it was that spurred her to take me aside after class just before Christmas 1976, Madame didn’t say, except that she may have noticed the condition of my ballet slippers and pointe shoes and must have surmised that I had limited resources.

  By now I had adapted many of Agatha’s methods for extending the lives of my ballet shoes—washing them with Comet, drying them on the radiator, frequently recycling ribbons, and using floor varnish to reinforce the shank and box of the pointe shoes. No matter how diligent I was, they had to be replaced periodically.

  This was one of those times, and that was my first thought when Madame told me without asking, “You come to office now.”

  Saying nothing, I acquiesced, following her toward her private office. I doubled my steps to keep up with her astonishingly rapid, smooth gait, not sure what was coming next. Madame waved me in. “Now,” she began in a tone so serious I wondered if I was in some sort of trouble. Then she reached into her big pocketbook and pulled out an envelope. “You buy new shoes; appearance important,” Madame said in a deep, soft tone I had never heard come out of her before.

  Inside the envelope was a crisp twenty-dollar bill to purchase a pair of new Freed ballet slippers. My words of gratitude were simple: “Thank you, Madame.”

  She said sweetly, “No cry, no cry, lady.” Then, becoming stern again, Madame cautioned, “You tell nobody or I get in trouble. Secret, yes?”

  I could not imagine a woman of this formidable strength fearing trouble from anyone. I swore to her, emphatically, that I would not say anything to anyone. She nodded, then waved me off.

  Two days later I came to class with my new ballet slippers. Madame stole an approving glance as she gave me a correction. I couldn’t wait for class to be over. Following reverence at the end of the scholarship class, I took Madame a bunch of daisies. Very touched, she told me I shouldn’t have spent the money on her. I pasted the empty envelope into my expanding scrapbook with a caption about how fortunate I was to have her interest in me.

  Valentina Pereyaslavec probably suspected correctly that I had financial concerns that went beyond the need for the refurbishment of ballet supplies. But for the time being, I was doing my utmost to keep my life folded in the smallest of ways, a well-kept secret.

  I had completed my first summer in New York City at the ABT School. It didn’t take long to discover that the checks from the renamed Maine Department of Health and Human Services were nowhere near enough to support me in New York, not to mention the fact that they were chronically late in coming. The only thing I could depend on were regular letters and Toll-House cookies from Agatha, with peppy asides, reminding me that the cookout was coming up and letting me know: “I stayed up until 10 o’clock last night watching Mary Tyler Moore in Russia with the Bolshoi Ballet. It was marvelous.”

  Aside from these financial worries and late checks during this, my last year on the State’s clock, I loved the independence of my new terrain, where fitting in by being like everyone else was less important than being unique. Nobody cared where you were from or who your parents were or weren’t, but rather why you were there and what you could do. Being unfettered from the word foster, creating my own persona and living in New York City was brilliant. It was a first stab at opening doors that I could have never dreamed about.

  There were many nights I sat by the Lincoln Center Fountain, scoping out Park Avenue couples sipping champagne during intermission, hoping someone would become so enamored with their date that they’d lose interest in the ballet. One night I saw a couple do just that. I watched as they tossed their ticket stubs to the ground and hail a taxi. I managed to glide past ushers into one of a pair of plush ruby orchestra seats, oblivious to the snobbish highbrow crowd around me, so that I could witness the second half of Cynthia Gregory’s Sleeping Beauty. Amazing!

  It was thrilling to be in New York City as simply one of many pursuing the American dream, of which I would be reminded every time I happened by the patina-covered thirty-foot replica of the Statue of Liberty on Sixty-fourth Street. After discovering it, I thought of her as another sort of mother—not as flashy as her bigger sister out in the bay—but one who nonetheless welcomed all, tolerated all, and especially gave freedom and opportunity to all.

  Next door to my residence was a jazz club, with a name like the Half Moon or something similar, where I made my way as often as I could. With red lipstick, heels, and my best vintage dress, I passed muster for the doorman at the club, an African American sequoia of a man, who let me in with a grunt and an upward tilt of his chin. At nearly five foot seven I still had the face of someone younger than my age, but I put an edge in my stroll and nobody was the wiser.

  Inside, ensconced in live music, nursing a beer in a whisper of light and noshing on a fistful of peanuts, I recognized some of the regulars—a Vietnam vet, an old man, and the bartender. Having my fill of torch songs and conversation, I headed out and tiptoed back into my five-by-twelve room, undressed for bed and fell into a Russian split—legs pressed against the institution green painted wall. Fantasizing about Baryshnikov, I recited the rosary as I fell asleep.

  In November, Lauren Turner wanted to see what all the fuss was about in New York City. She asked if she could crash in my room at the Katharine House for a few days while she checked things out as she pursued a singing and modeling career. There would be consequences if I got caught harboring someone in my room. It was strictly prohibited. Katharine House was run by a Mrs. Martin, who was more like a warden than a resident manager. Needless to say, it was going to be very precarious, at best, to
keep Lauren under wraps.

  After a lot of back and forth she convinced me to let her stay. Against my better judgment, I snuck Lauren into my cubicle, and soon was busted, with grounds for me to be kicked out.

  The Katharine House was already battling with me and the State of Maine over the late rent payments, with long-standing threats of eviction. And when I returned from a trip to Boston to visit Agatha, following Christmas break, on a late January evening, around midnight, the night clerk said, “Don’t bother going upstairs. All of your things have been removed.” Not believing her, I went upstairs and found that all of my belongings were gone and the room reeked of disinfectant. I knew this was final. I stormed the office, demanding to know where my things were. The clerk snidely replied, “You’ll get them when we receive the rent. We kept warning you to get those checks to us sooner.” There was no use explaining how welfare worked to the robot sitting at the desk. With that, she informed me that I was now trespassing and to leave the premises immediately.

  “Leave the premises?” I asked her. “Where the heck am I supposed to go at this hour?” Her response was worse than the previous, “I don’t care where you go, but you can’t stay here.” I refused to leave. “The police are on their way,” she gloated. I didn’t believe her, retorting, “And you call yourselves the Ladies Christian Union?” I was mad, seventeen, and about to be arrested for late rent. Where were my guardian angels?

  Blue and red lights swirled outside, and I hid behind one of the double doors in the cafeteria. With what little I could see through space between the door hinges and the wall, I watched the burly officers talking to the night clerk. Before this turned into a bigger fiasco than it already was, I surrendered myself.

  Because I was still a minor at seventeen, they threatened juvenile detention. I begged that they hear me out. My heart pounding, mouth dry, feeling backed into corner, I tried to do the right thing and pled my case, explaining as fast as the words could form in my mouth, trying not to stutter, “Officer, I’m a full scholarship recipient at American Ballet Theatre School. It’s the best school in the world.”