Beyond the Dance

by Chan Hon Goh

  Whether we looked silly or not, it was time for us to leave. My grandmother, who was a very strong woman, became depressed with the thought that she was losing her daughter to a faraway country and started to cry, a sight I had never witnessed before. It was then I realized what an enormous event this was for our entire family. I myself didn’t make any formal good-byes to the other kids in the apartment complex. All I could think was that I was going to be with my father again, so how could I possibly miss anything?

  Our plane flew from Beijing to Hong Kong, where we stayed for five days with a distant cousin of my father’s. While I happily played with my two girl cousins, my mother went out shopping for clothes and a set of dishes that would be shipped over to Canada. Once we got there, she saw the hardship that my father had endured to save up the money for our tickets and decided that she shouldn’t have spent anything at all.

  We also went to a salon in Hong Kong where our hair was made to look somewhat better. And then came the long plane ride to Canada, during which I slept a good deal. My mother woke me when the meal came, and I saw a strange vegetable that we had never eaten in China. It looked like green cauliflower to us, and only later did I learn that it was called broccoli. On the side was a little package of soy sauce that was so small and pretty I wanted to save it. This was the beginning of so many encounters with newness for me. For the moment we could marvel at these things without yet having to confront the more difficult realities of the new life that lay ahead of us.

  My father was fearful that we might get lost at the airport in Vancouver since neither of us spoke any English, so he had us met at the gate by one of his students who worked for an airline. She guided us through the terminal to an empty waiting area and there, sitting in a chair, was my father. The image I had carried of him all these months was not matched by the man I saw. This man was too thin. His hair was ragged. And at the same time I knew right away that I could put my arms around him and he was the same father I had always known.

  The meeting between my parents was more restrained, but in China kisses and even hugs in public were rare. My aunt and uncle were waiting in the car to drive us to their house. It was in their basement at 58th and Oak Street in south Vancouver that we would live for the next year. And over the next days we stayed pretty much around the house, getting used to my father’s teaching schedule; he was always running off to one dance studio or another. I was sorry that my cousins were teenage boys who had little interest in playing or even talking to me, but I was so glad for our family to be all together again that I could feel no disappointment. Of course there were adjustments we had to make to learn to live in our relatives’ house, sharing the upstairs kitchen. And again so many things were new. In Beijing we did not have a refrigerator, and clothes had all been washed by hand and hung to dry instead of in a washing machine and dryer.

  Back in China I had been given a couple of simple English books and a set of alphabet cards. But really I knew no English at all, and in the fall I was expected to enter school with the other kids. So my father arranged for me to go to summer school, where kids went for extra help. It was far from the house and each morning my father had to take me on the bus. I wish this first experience had been a good one, but instead it was extremely painful because I simply couldn’t talk to the other kids. While there were some other minorities, I was the only Chinese child, and I was shut out of the play. Recess was a nightmare. I would want to join some kids on the swings or at the teeter-totter or playing ball, but when I approached they would scream names at me.

  “Chink! Retard!”

  I didn’t have to understand the meaning of the words to know that they were insulting me, and finally I confessed to my father about my humiliation. He took it as a personal blow that I should be treated this way but, as he still felt unfamiliar with Canadian ways, he decided to consult a friend of his who was a musician with the Vancouver Symphony. The friend helped my father write a letter to the teacher, telling her how left out I felt and how hurt I was by the name calling. The next school day I gave the letter to the teacher and, after she read it, she gave me such a warm and kind look that I felt reassured for the first time. Then she went outside to speak to the other kids. After that they became much nicer to me. I still got the occasional dirty look or comment about “contaminating” the playground, but most of the kids made an effort to be friends and some of them even invited me to join their games. I went home much happier that day and my father, eagerly waiting to know what happened, was glad that he had found a way to help me.

  The assumption by other kids that I was stupid because my language skills were behind was something that continued to dog me for at least three years, until my English caught up. My teenage cousins were honor-roll students and my cousins in Singapore were also always getting achievement awards or scholarships, bringing honor to the family. But because I was behind, I felt myself to be inadequate. And seeing how I had been treated by the other kids, I thought that unless I could speak well and excel in school I would always be treated as an outsider. Some people become resentful and rebellious when treated badly, but I remembered an old saying that my grandmother told me back in China. “Slow birds fly earlier,” she had said. My grandmother was telling me that I might seem behind the other kids when I got to Canada, but if I got an earlier start each day and put in more time and effort, I would eventually catch up. Remembering her words, I had an urge to prove myself. I would show them just how smart and accomplished I could be.

  In rehearsal, I never mind doing steps over and over in order to get them right.

  We lived in my aunt and uncle’s basement for a year and a half before my parents felt financially confident enough to rent our own place, the upper floor of a house in a nice neighborhood. We all considered this a real step forward in our new life. By now my mother was also teaching in the basement studio; my parents had given their own classes the rather grand name of the Goh Ballet Academy.

  Moving to a new neighborhood meant switching to a new school, another hardship to endure. Not only was my English still weak, and my knowledge of Canadian ways still insecure, but I had to try to fit into a school where most of the kids had known one another since kindergarten. In order for me to be with my age group, the school decided to let me skip grade four, which made it even harder to catch up to the other kids in reading and writing. And because I was the only Chinese person in class, the kids considered me different. It didn’t help matters that I was no good in gym, a place where a kid could earn popularity by hitting a ball or running fast. Only in grade six did I start to do a lot better on my written work and get higher grades, but the teacher and I did not get along and he made life tough for me. Still, with my English reaching the level of the other kids, who had known me long enough to become my friends, and my grades rapidly improving, I began to feel better about myself.

  Coming from an artistic family, it was only natural that my parents would want me to take some classes outside of school. But they did not imagine me a dancer, or encourage me in any way to think seriously about ballet. No, it was musical talent that they saw in me and tried to encourage, first with piano lessons in China and then with singing lessons in Vancouver – they remembered those Chinese musicals I loved to imitate – before going back to the piano. In fact, it was for playing the piano that I seemed to have a natural ability, and my parents encouraged me to work hard. My piano teachers and also my uncle, who was a professor of music at the University of British Columbia, all thought I had a real chance of becoming a concert pianist. I had big hands that, as I grew older, could reach more than an octave, and I could “articulate” my fingers very, very quickly. But I did not enjoy practicing piano – it was such a solitary pursuit, requiring hour after lonely hour at the keyboard.

  In contrast to my natural abilities at the piano, as a dancer it was my weaknesses that were most obvious. I took my first ballet class at the age of nine, not with my mother or father, who didn’t have proper children’s classe
s going yet, but with my Aunt Soo Nee. Soo Nee was the older sister who had gone to the Royal Ballet in London before my father, and she taught at a well-established academy in the city. Most of the other kids had started classes when they were only five years old, and when I joined them they were already in grade two for dance. But catching up here wasn’t so difficult, as a nine-year-old quickly learns to imitate. Besides, I had watched dance all my life. Just like an adult class, we started at the barre – a long rail against the wall for holding on to – while doing various exercises in our leotards and soft shoes. After that we moved away from the walls to do center work. It was mostly a matter of trying to get the basic body positions right, but my Aunt Soo Nee was an inspiring teacher and she made us all feel like real ballerinas. At the barre we practiced doing the plié, bending at the knee in the turnout position – feet pointing outward – a fundamental exercise because it begins and ends almost every step in choreography. And just doing a plié, it was clear that I lacked some natural qualities for dance. My turnout was not good, and the plié movement itself came out small rather than full because of the short, tight tendons in my legs. Nor was I very coordinated at that age, so I had trouble controlling my long arms. When my father saw me in class, he saw these drawbacks and concluded that, despite some good qualities – such as a natural grace despite my child’s clumsiness – I did not have the makings of a dancer.

  I practiced piano every day, as I was told to – hut only because I was told to.

  Coming from a dance family, I was aware of these faults almost from the start. But they didn’t much matter to me. I was taking dance only once a week, hardly seriously, and it was enough that I enjoyed the class and felt inspired for the hour by Aunt Soo Nee. And so I took classes for two years with my aunt, by which time my mother had started her own classes for kids in the basement studio and I began to take some of hers as well. I passed my dance exams for grades two and three with “commended” and then, at the age of eleven, continued on with my mother and father, taking two classes a week after school and one on Saturday.

  But it was still just for fun. Instead of having to practice for hours alone at the piano, I got to hang out with other girls my age. My English had caught up, and at school I had moved to the top of my class. My parents were busy from morning to night, taking care of me while running the Goh Ballet Academy. My grandmother, who I called Lau Lau (the name for maternal grandmother in northern China), had come to Vancouver to help look after me. She and I spoke Mandarin so that I wouldn’t lose the language. Always valuing the importance of family, she made sure that we all ate dinner together each evening. The small, lonely girl still existed somewhere inside me, but I was happier now.

  And then things started to get serious.

  I was determined to match Rex Harrington’s strength and support myself as Spring in The Four Seasons.

  CHAPTER 5

  IF YOU WANT TO BE A DANCER …

  Sometimes it helps to cry. Or to do something in order to get noticed, as I was soon to find out.

  In our first years in Vancouver my parents built up the curriculum at the Goh Ballet Academy, and every year the kids would advance, giving my father and mother older, more accomplished students to teach. My parents’ teaching was based on the main principles of the Vaganova method, as passed to them by their Russian teachers. It wasn’t long before their students began winning awards at local ballet competitions. Other parents and teachers noticed not only their fine dance training but also the quality of the choreography – my father’s – and even their costumes. My father also formed the Goh Ballet Company, a semi-professional group of adult dancers, to perform in small theaters. Slowly my parents helped to raise the standard of dance instruction in the city, but even in the early years their reputation developed quickly. By 1981, the basement studio had become inadequate and the school moved to the much nicer Acadian Hall building on Main Street, with one large and one smaller studio space on the second floor. Professional dancers visiting Vancouver would come and join an open class and, when I was about eleven, Evelyn Hart, star of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, booked a few private lessons with my father. All the young girls – including me – were just mesmerized by this renowned dancer coming to our little studio. In time, my father was invited to visit the Royal Winnipeg Ballet as a guest teacher, and was also asked to guest teach at York University, the Banff School of Fine Arts, and schools in other countries.

  As for me, I was getting more hooked on dance from watching the performances of the Goh Ballet Company, and especially seeing the pas de deux work between the male and female dancers. How thrilling it must be, I thought, to be lifted high and do so many turns with a partner. But the main reason was that I was part of a group of girls, all of us about twelve years old, who wanted to take classes more often. And so I quit the piano in order to dance four times a week in longer classes. Dance became our major interest and even passion. Both my parents taught us, my mother instructing us in pointe work (which began at about age eleven), the fundamental positions, and accuracy of technique, while my father concentrated on artistic expression and style. Like most girls, I was glad to begin pointe – my image of a real ballet dancer was always up on her toes. Despite my other physical shortcomings, I had strong ankles and arches that weren’t overly pronounced, as well as the courage it takes to get up on pointe. Being on pointe seemed to me almost natural.

  From both my parents, I learned everything I could. In time, my parents designated us as the Professional School Program to differentiate us from the kids who took dance more casually, coming just once or twice a week. As in all ballet classes, we began with barre work and then moved on to center work, afterwards working on a little choreographed piece based on the ballet repertoire. We all loved practicing these little dances, usually on Saturday when we would stay for an extra hour. One day Father decided to choreograph a group dance for us using the music of the Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker. It was tremendous fun for us and made us feel like real dancers, and my father took us to one of the local festivals where we performed it for the judges.

  From the earliest age, dancers must get used to being watched and judged. We practice in front of mirrors, which makes us critical of ourselves. We listen to our teachers give us constant corrections – showing us how this foot or that arm is not placed properly. We compete in competitions and perform for audiences of our families and friends. Even for a young dancer, being constantly judged becomes second nature. But at our first festival we were all having fun, and so we were surprised and thrilled when the announcement came that we had won the first-prize trophy.

  And so I began to live, breathe, and dream ballet. Even when I wasn’t taking classes, I would be hanging about the studio with the other kids in our new Professional division. We would even join classes below our level just to get extra practice. And we had started to learn about the real world of professional ballet. We knew the names of all the stars of the American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet, whose performances would sometimes be shown on American public television – Gelsey Kirkland, Cynthia Harvey, Peter Martins. We also knew about the great Russian dancers who had defected to the West – Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. We knew about the famous choreographer George Balanchine, and that his favorite ballerina at the New York City Ballet was Suzanne Farrell. We would read Dance Magazine and find out which dancer was leaving her company because she didn’t get along with the director. Unfortunately, we knew much less about the Canadian dance companies, mostly because their performances were rarely shown on television. Sometimes we would hear of Karen Kain and Frank Augustyn at the National Ballet of Canada, and Evelyn Hart at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, but that was all.

  But even while the intensity of my own interest was increasing, something was deeply upsetting me. My teachers – who also happened to be my parents – did not seem to notice how hard I was working. I needed outside praise in order to believe in my own self worth,
and my father especially was not providing them. Not only did he pay me no special attention, but he seemed to concern himself with me less than he did with the other kids. He praised them more often, scrutinized their movements more closely, corrected them more frequently. Me, he took for granted. Being someone with strong feelings about fair treatment, it was only natural that my boiling emotions would finally erupt.

  At age 13, in costume for a solo at a local festival competition.

  I was thirteen years old when, one day after class, we came back home. My parents began talking about the students in my Professional class – who was the most technically accomplished, who the most expressive, who had the greatest chance to make it as a dancer. And suddenly I could not stop myself from speaking. “You know,” I said to my father, tears already beginning to well in my eyes, “I was in all of those classes today too. You never even notice. I don’t know what the other girls have got that I don’t. I try just as hard. How come you never correct me or praise me like you do the others?”

  By this time I was really crying. My father did not know how to respond and remained silent. It was my mother who had to calm me down. “Of course he would have noticed,” she said. “Your dad has enough love to go around for everyone. It’s not that he doesn’t notice you. But he feels obligated to these other people because of their financial commitment to the school. He thought of you as his daughter and didn’t know that you were actually that focused.”