by Zippora Karz
And all the while Peter worked with us, Suzanne watched silently from the wings.
For us, just rehearsing with Peter Martins was incredibly special and signified what he had in mind for our futures, but neither of us dared to speculate about whether or not we’d actually be cast to dance our roles in a performance. The next day, casting was posted for the following week. And there we were, cast as the Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier in Balanchine’s The Nutcracker.
It was absolutely unbelievable, and we had less than a week to prepare. In most companies, principal roles are cast weeks or even months in advance, but at City Ballet, it was always one week before. As we continued to rehearse the pas de deux with Peter Martins, Suzanne continued to look on.
For the solo, I worked with Rosemary, who picked the role apart, giving me notes on every single step. Her corrections included what to do with my hands, my feet, my head, even my pinkie finger. Rosemary was a great technician and I learned an enormous amount from her, but I was getting overwhelmed by the details. I felt so pressured to be technically perfect that I couldn’t focus on the nuances of phrasing, musicality and the feeling of the work, all of which, in combination with technical brilliance, are what allow one to give a magical performance.
Suzanne had always made me feel that I didn’t have to adhere to anyone else’s preconceived idea of perfection, and I needed her help and her attitude now. One day, I asked if she would come to the studio with me for fifteen minutes. A great dancer does not necessarily make a great coach, but I trusted Suzanne and knew she would know just how to guide me. She was becoming my Balanchine.
Suzanne taught as she danced—from the heart. She could see that all the pressure was taking a toll on my expressiveness and musicality—the very qualities that had prompted Peter Martins to cast me in the role and two of the most important qualities any ballerina can bring to the stage—and she wasn’t happy. “Go home and listen to the music,” she told me. “Close your eyes and see yourself dancing. Feel the music. Feel the dance. See it.” Her words were inspiring and comforting. When I got home I put on my Walkman and dimmed the lights, but the visualization wasn’t easy for me. The first few times I tried to see myself dancing as I listened to Tchaikovsky’s score, I saw myself falling down. At that point I would stop the music, quiet my fear and do it again—over and over until I could see myself dancing the steps the way I dreamed of doing them. I also tried to see myself enjoying the role and, most important, dancing it from my heart. Hundreds of visualizations later, I saw a flawless performance in which I embodied Tchaikovsky’s music with passion and soul, just like Suzanne.
In the few days remaining before the performance, I tried to stay calm. During the day I was so busy rehearsing that I didn’t have time to get caught up in my anxiety. In the evenings, I was busy dancing my usual parts as a snowflake, a marzipan shepherdess and occasionally a flower in The Nutcracker. But trying to sleep at night was hopeless. Romy talked to me until she had to close her eyes, and when I finally dozed off my anxiety manifested in disturbing dreams.
The night before the performance, I dreamed that I was standing at the top of an icy mountain with my skis on. The slope was so steep that the mountain dropped straight down in front of me. As I made my way toward the perilously steep slope, I realized I didn’t know how to ski. Then I realized that I was completely naked. That’s how I felt: totally exposed and vulnerable, unprepared to tackle what I was about to do, and out of my element. But frightened or not, with or without sleep, the performance would go on.
My mother came to New York for my first solo performance along with Sheila and two other teachers from her studio, Chris and Marilee, who had always been my great supporters. I was afraid that having them there would add to the pressure I felt, but it actually helped knowing they were in the audience, and I was glad they had come.
Peter Boal and I were nervous and shaky as we stood in the wings like third graders before a big school play. From the other side of the back stage area Heather Watts and Jock Soto waved to us, wishing us good luck. Dancers in a ballet company have a rare camaraderie. There are rivalries, of course, and while I knew some of the others were upset that they hadn’t been chosen, I felt incredibly supported by everyone. We are like a team, and when each of us is dancing our best, the team as a whole is lifted to a higher level of performance.
All of our training and rehearsing pays off in the performance, that moment when, despite whatever nerves you might feel, your mind and body take over, you focus on the moment and you just let go. When the performance began that night, something took over inside us. The turns I kept falling off of when I began visualizing now went beautifully. The more we danced the freer we became. When it ended, what made me most happy was that despite the pressure and my fear that I wasn’t ready, I had been able to get my mind out of the way and dance from my heart. At moments it felt as if I had allowed something greater and grander than myself to be expressed through me.
Afterward, Peter Martins would describe his impression of my performance to Sheila in three words, “Simple, pure and unaffected.” Clive Barnes, reviewing in the New York Post, wrote, “Both Karz, a controlled yet exultant dancer, with a rhapsodic, flowing line and beautiful placing that punctuates her dance with split-frozen seconds of sculpture, and the elegant Boal, showed a great deal more than promise. These two are potential stars.”
Joe Duell came up to me onstage immediately after the performance, hugged me and said, “This is your home.”
EIGHTEEN
Right after my performance in the grand pas de deux, I went back to rehearsing my usual corps de ballet roles. After one of those rehearsals the following week, Rosemary called me aside and said, “I know that Sugar Plum was a big deal for you and you danced well, but it will probably be a while before you dance anything that big again. I don’t want you to get depressed about it. For now, you should work on getting technically stronger.”
Getting that kind of feedback from Rosemary was unusual, and I appreciated it. More often, you aren’t told why you’re not being cast again; the roles just go to other dancers. And, in any case, I knew that I needed to get stronger. So long as I was being considered for principal roles in the future, I could wait. In the meanwhile, I was performing every night in ballets that were challenging and inspiring and would help me develop the strength I required.
As it turned out, however, I didn’t have to wait as long as I’d anticipated. Jerome Robbins always had an eye out for new talent, and he had come to see my Nutcracker performance. I obviously made an impression, because a few weeks later he chose me to dance a lead in his epic ballet The Goldberg Variations, set to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He’d originally choreographed the role for Gelsey Kirkland, one of the world’s greatest ballerinas. I was surprised and extremely grateful that he had noticed me and chosen me for the part.
After I’d rehearsed the part with ballet mistress Sally Leland, Jerry said that he wanted to rehearse me in my solo himself. The idea of dancing for Jerry was exciting, of course, but also terrifying.
Since Balanchine’s death, Jerome Robbins was the living genius and master choreographer for City Ballet, producing amazing works all the time. Watching his ballets evoked in me the same depth of feeling I experienced watching Balanchine ballets. But while Balanchine was a kindly, endlessly patient presence, Jerry was unpredictable, unsettling and utterly intimidating. His volatile temper was famous throughout the dance world. There is a well-known story of an incident that occurred when, years earlier, he was directing Billion Dollar Baby. He had been yelling at the cast, and as he verbally tore into them, he kept backing up slowly but surely toward the orchestra pit. The entire cast saw what was happening but no one said a word. Instead, everyone stood silently by as Jerry fell backward into the pit, injuring himself quite severely, and nobody had tried to stop it.
But working with Jerry was worth it. He could push, mold and inspire a performer to achieve his or her highest potential. An
d even he had a sweet, gentle side, and when he was nice, the whole room lit up. Everyone was happy when Jerry was happy, and everyone—including me—wanted to be part of whatever he was creating.
The rehearsal for my solo in Goldberg was the first time I had ever been alone with Jerry. I had started to dance the beautiful piano piece when suddenly I hit a slippery spot on the floor and I fell flat on my face. It took me a second to realize what had happened. And when I looked up at Jerry, expecting him to ask if I was okay, he yelled, “Get up!”
I was flat on my stomach and getting up wasn’t easy. I tried but couldn’t. Again, Jerry yelled, “Get up!” A moment later he yelled louder, then still louder. “Get up! Get up!” Finally, I managed to get back on my feet, brushed the dirt off my stomach and started again where I’d left off.
Much as I wanted Jerry to like me, much as I hoped he’d be inspired by me and one day nurture me as I’d hoped Balanchine would have done, I really wished he weren’t so mean and temperamental.
With the promise of dancing a lead for Jerry and future leads for Peter, I took Rosemary’s advice to heart and did whatever I could to increase my muscle strength. “Be strong” had become my constant mantra. I was obsessed with working my body as hard as was humanly possible, adding Pilates, weight lifting and yoga to my already intense schedule. In class, during our center work, instead of resting like most of the others while the second group danced, I danced with both groups. I wanted to be strong enough and consistent enough to dance leading roles. Overall, however, I was happy. I was no longer nervous in company class and I loved performing every night. It seemed to me that I was much further along than I had even dreamed of being at this point.
Just one thing was really bothering me. Joe Duell had suddenly stopped correcting me in company class. When I said hello as I passed him in the hall, he stared blankly ahead and ignored me. Now I wondered if I’d done something wrong. Was Joe disappointed in me?
This was particularly upsetting because Joe had always been there, correcting me in class, saying hello in the hall, and once, when he saw that I was struggling, he even asked me to lunch. Back in the fall, before I’d been chosen to dance Sugar Plum, the company had gone to Washington, D.C., to perform at the Kennedy Center. I loved the experience of seeing new places, performing for new audiences and bonding with the other company members in ways that you don’t when you’re not on the road. But on that particular tour, the lack of feedback had really gotten to me. I was feeling particularly insecure and even a bit depressed. As usual Joe Duell noticed and suggested that we go to lunch. Even though I’d never had a problem talking to people, I was nervous. Could I tell Joe what I was feeling? I knew that Peter and Rosemary had the entire company of dancers to think about, and I didn’t want to complain or seem ungrateful. I don’t remember what we talked about at that lunch, and in the end, I’m not sure it really mattered. It was enough that Joe had taken the time from his busy schedule to be sure I was okay.
But I do remember that something very odd happened at that lunch. A fly kept landing on Joe’s forehead. It kept circling around, and I kept waiting for him to swat it, but he didn’t. At one point, while he was eating, it actually flew onto his lip, and still he did nothing. As he continued to speak, it stayed there. I tried to listen to what he was saying, but all I could focus on was the fly on his lip. How strange, I thought. He didn’t notice it.
I thought of that incident now as I worried about the change in his behavior. I had enough self-awareness to realize that because of my own insecurities, I was making this all about me. But what if his problem had nothing to do with me? I always knew when something was bothering my friends, and I was always able to reach out to them. So why couldn’t I reach out to him? I vowed to myself that the next time the opportunity arose, I was going to ask him how he was doing. He could tell me or not, but at least I’d have made the effort—as he had for me in Washington.
Every day I’d look for a chance to speak with him alone, but he’d become elusive. Then one day we were waiting for the elevator together—just the two of us. I kept telling myself that this was my chance, but I just couldn’t do it. I froze, and I didn’t know why. If he’d given me the slightest opening, I might have mustered up the courage, but although we were standing next to each other, it was as if I wasn’t even there with him.
The next day, during stage rehearsal for Symphony in C, I sat at the very front of the stage with Stacey and the other dancers, waiting to rehearse our parts while Joe rehearsed his. As we sat there watching him dance, I whispered to Stacey how concerned I was about him. She took me by the hand and whispered back, “Something’s not right. I can’t look at him. He seems all cold and clammy.”
The day after that, while we were in the dressing room getting ready for a matinee performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an announcement came over the loudspeaker: “All dancers come to stage level immediately.”
Everyone froze for an instant and then rushed to the elevator. The last time that announcement had been made to the company, it was to announce Balanchine’s death. Something was terribly wrong and everyone could feel it. Some of the older corps women burst into tears, thinking that Lincoln Kirstein must have passed away.
The elevator was too small to accommodate everyone at once, and when I finally arrived at the stage level the first person I saw was Lincoln, towering above everyone else in the middle of the stage. Then I heard screams and gasps. Everyone looked shocked and horror-struck as they fell sobbing into one another’s arms.
I found Catherine Oppenheimer, one of the last women Balanchine had taken into the company, standing off to the side, tears streaming down her face. “Joe killed himself,” she said.
He had jumped out the window of his fifth-floor apartment. He was twenty-nine years old, and I could only imagine the kind of pain he must have been in to do such a thing. I couldn’t believe it.
He had been scheduled to dance that matinee. As always, the show went on.
NINETEEN
Luckily, there was only one week left in the season, because after Joe’s death I was finding it more and more difficult to keep going. Instead of warming up my muscles before the performance, I sat in a chair feeling as if I were stuck in mud. On Mondays—our day off—I generally did errands, cleaned the apartment and sometimes took a yoga class. On the Monday after Joe’s death, I sat in bed all day staring at the TV.
The last day of the season, Lincoln, Peter and Jerry called a company meeting. I knew that Lincoln had been especially close to Joe, and the loss must have been terrible for him. Now the three of them told us that they understood what a horrible time this had been. They wanted us to go away and rest, and not to think about ballet during our two weeks off. In effect, they were giving us permission to let down and fall apart. I felt that I already had. Now, with their blessing, I went home and didn’t think about ballet for two weeks.
For some dancers who are in peak condition, a two-week break will not drastically affect their form; I wasn’t one of them. When we returned after the break, I had lost muscle response, particularly in my toes. I wasn’t yet ready to take on a full schedule. I needed time to get back into shape mentally and physically, but I didn’t have that luxury.
During the first week of rehearsals for the spring season, Jerry picked me to learn the only pas de deux in his playful work Interplay. When Jerry really liked a dancer, he wanted her for everything, and soon I was also learning a leading role in his masterpiece Dances at a Gathering.
For Interplay, I was to be third cast understudy, which meant that during rehearsals I could stand behind the other soloist and principal dancers while I tried to get myself back into shape. One day that first week, however, Jerry surprised us by showing up unannounced at rehearsal. We were still learning our parts, and I was still struggling to find my toes again. So, when Jerry said that he wanted to see all the casts for the pas de deux, I knew I wasn’t ready. I looked at the clock and I prayed that we would run out of tim
e before he got to me. But luck was not on my side, and to my dismay, there was just enough time left for me to dance.
When it was over, I knew that I hadn’t done well. Actually, I was surprised that I had done as well as I did. Still, considering how good it needed to be for Jerry, it was pretty bad.
“You’ll see,” one of the older corps members had recently warned me. “One day you’re in and the next you’re out. It will happen to you, too. Jerry does that.” While I appreciated her attempt to prepare me for what had happened to her, I was secretly thinking that it would be different for me. Now I couldn’t believe that one less-than-perfect rehearsal would cause him to drop me. Soon enough, however, I discovered how right she had been.
The Goldberg Variations was to be staged again toward the end of the season. Since Jerry had been pleased enough with my performance to then choose me for Interplay, I was naturally assuming that I would be cast again. When I asked Sally Leland if I should start thinking about rehearsing it on my own so I would be ready when Jerry wanted to see it, she smiled and put her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about rehearsing it,” she said. “He’s going to use somebody else.”
The next day, when I looked at the rehearsal schedule, I saw that a younger corps member had been cast in the role. At twenty years old, I was already a has-been and I felt incredibly rejected. I knew I hadn’t danced well in the rehearsal for Interplay, but I still didn’t expect to be canned so quickly. I was heartbroken. I didn’t want to accept it.