Beyond the Dance

by Chan Hon Goh

  Reaching the foreign ward – forbidden territory to the local people – was like entering another world. The rooms were clean, the nurses in bright white uniforms, the hallways carpeted. The heart specialist installed my father in a room and then came out to consult with us. He said that my father’s heart attack was severe. “He’s still in pain,” the doctor said, “so we’ve given him a morphine shot and he’s sleeping. The next twenty-four hours are crucial. We have to hope he doesn’t have another attack.”

  My mother and I were in shock; the possibility of losing my father was just too terrible. In the meantime, somehow the tour had to go on. That very night there was a big reception held for the company by Chinese government officials, and all the dancers as well as my parents were expected to attend. Of course my father couldn’t, but my mother had to represent him as head of the company, and so she stayed in the hospital until the last minute and then left for the dinner, permitting me to remain. My father now had twenty-four-hour nursing care, so I sat in the waiting room, somehow passing the night. I felt so helpless and scared, incapable of understanding how this could happen to my father, to me.

  Since I could do nothing else to aid my father, I interlaced my fingers and began to pray My ancestors had been Buddhist, but after the Communists took over China religion was rarely practiced openly, although it wasn’t actually banned. In Canada, our family had begun to practice again on the occasional holiday, burning incense and praying to the Buddha. As for me, I had also grown up surrounded by the Christian holidays and traditions of our friends. I didn’t know exactly to what or whom I was praying – perhaps it was to Buddha, to the Goddess of Mercy, to the saints, to everything good at once – but I prayed for my father to get through this, for him to wake up the next morning and recover. I was still praying when I fell asleep on the sofa. My mother woke me up – she had returned from the dinner – and sent me back to the hotel and a real bed, for tomorrow evening was our first performance.

  I didn’t want to dance. My father was in such critical condition, how could I even think of dancing? But the company was small and there was nobody to replace me. Deep down I knew that my father would have insisted I perform. The theater was very large, with perhaps three thousand seats, and the applause seemed to come from far away. Each time I entered the stage I thought, Just dance for Dad, just dance to make his name live and to make him proud. Afterwards, I could hardly remember dancing at all. As soon as the performance was over I rushed to the hospital again, and nobody knew that all the time I was praying inside for him to get better.

  We had two more shows in Beijing and then had to begin the tour. My father’s condition was still uncertain, and the specialist hadn’t yet decided if he needed surgery. My mother would stay with him, but couldn’t I stay too? I managed to convince the company to change the program for the first city on the tour so that I could stay in Beijing for three more days, just so that I could see my father get a little better. And I did hear him talk a little before leaving to join the others.

  With my father ill and my mother at his side, the management of the tour fell onto Che’s shoulders. Without my father’s strong leadership presence, the dancers began to argue among themselves and propose

  With Dad at a local newspaper’s photo studio. He has always been a great support and inspiration to me.

  changes in the program. With the artistic director absent, suddenly everybody wanted a say in the decisions. Che struggled to maintain control, even as he rushed to the next theater, got the lighting set properly, attended official receptions. I wanted him to be able to count on me, and after dancing in the show each night I helped him with scheduling, casting, and other details. The tour turned out to be a success for the company and an intense learning experience for me, not only because of performing almost every night, but because of the turmoil within the company.

  With my dad at the Prix de Lausanne in 1986.

  It lasted three or four weeks and then, while everyone else headed back to Vancouver, I rejoined my mother and father. I was relieved to discover Dad more like himself, talking and even walking about the ward. Still, he was very weak, and he would easily become short of breath. The doctor said his condition was stable but that my father would have to make major diet and lifestyle changes. For one thing, he had to give up his heavy smoking – and he did, never lighting a cigarette again. For another, he had to slow down his way of life and should never be put under stress. Only later would we consider what that meant for the Goh Ballet Company.

  When the doctor said my father could travel, the Canadian Embassy helped us to get tickets on the day we wanted to leave. And so we departed Beijing, my father in first class to make him more comfortable. It was a strange feeling arriving home again. We had been away for almost two months and, while everything about the house was the same, everything was different – just the way our apartment in China felt when my father emigrated before us. My father’s condition – in the next years he would have five arteries replaced in bypass surgery – meant great changes in his life. He had been working like Superman, running the company, teaching at the school, choreographing, giving master classes in other cities. Suddenly he had to stop everything, only gradually resuming some of his former occupations. My mother had to reorganize the school. As for the Goh Ballet Company, my father’s ambitions came to an end. In time it was transformed into the Goh Ballet Training Company, a troupe for graduates of the school to gain experience by performing in school tours and other venues before turning professional. This made it a valuable addition to the school’s training program and provided a next stage for graduates like myself. But it ended the possibility of the company becoming a professional home for me. I was going to have to dance somewhere else.

  As Princess Fiorine in the Bluebird pas de deux front The Sleeping Beauty.

  CHAPTER 8

  TURNING PRO

  Meanwhile, I had to finish high school. I had taken two years by correspondence in order to spend more time on dance, but my mother thought it might be good for me to get back to regular school again for my last year. She found out that a school just blocks from our house offered a half-day program for high achievers, and so I went to school in the mornings and continued my training in the afternoons. I also continued to study the major examination syllabus of the Royal Academy of Dance in London, and went on to perform for an examiner and adjudicators to earn the Solo Seal Award.

  It seemed as if life was becoming stable again, when illness once more struck our family, illness that would prove tragic. My uncle Choo San, the choreographer with the Washington Ballet, became seriously ill. Before long he had to be hospitalized. Because of his own still delicate condition, my father couldn’t go to New York to visit his younger brother. What was more difficult was keeping Choo San’s illness a secret from his mother, who had moved back to Singapore; the family decided that she would not be able to bear such traumatic news about her youngest and favorite child. My father found keeping the truth from his mother when they spoke or wrote emotionally difficult to endure (she never did find out before her own passing away). And then Uncle Choo San died. He was only thirty-eight, an innovative choreographer and a great interpreter of music who would have continued to grow artistically if his career had not been cut short.

  I knew that I would have to begin making career decisions but I was reluctant to give up being a student and turn professional. I felt that there was still so much more for me to learn. Perhaps, too, I was a little afraid of growing up. It was easier to focus my immediate attention on another competition.

  As he slowly recuperated, my father began to do a little coaching. Together we decided that I should enter the Adeline Genée Competition in London, England, the same one that I had watched before entering the Prix de Lausanne. It was a prestigious international competition, associated with the Royal Academy of Dance (R.A.D.), and doing well could help me enter a professional career. I had to prepare two solos, and this time I was not in such a dizzy
rush. On the other hand, unlike competing at the Prix, I now had higher expectations for myself.

  One of the solos I chose was the White Swan variation from Act II of Swan Lake, a very slow, or adagio, solo. To a non-dancer it might appear that dancing fast is the most difficult, but in an adagio variation it takes tremendous control and strength to keep oneself precisely posed and to prevent oneself from faltering or losing balance. My father was now strong enough to travel, and both he and my mother came to London with me, where all the dancers spent the first week rehearsing and being coached by teachers from the R.A.D. Although some wonderful dancers from South Africa and Australia had come to the competition, I secretly hoped that I had a real chance for the gold medal. The final judging took place at the London Palladium Theatre and, as I prepared to do my White Swan variation, I felt weirdly unsure of myself and my balance. Yet once on stage I somehow struck some beautiful balances; they felt like an out-of-body experience, as if I were dancing with the aid of some magical force. I could only think, Thank you, God, for helping me.

  After everyone had performed we waited for the three winners to be announced. First came the bronze medalist. Then the silver, and I heard the name “Chan Hon Goh” announced. Rising to receive my medal, I felt remarkably calm and even a little disappointed, since I had hoped for the gold, a sign of my rising confidence and ambition. But I was the first Canadian to ever receive a silver medal in the competition’s history. I knew that it was a great achievement and could only help me as I began to search for the next stage in my career.

  Not just in my career, but life. Although I was still a teenager, Che and I had been together for three years. I knew with certainty that I loved him and that he was the only man for me. One day he came home and showed me a diamond that he had bought, along with its certificate. “I’m going to design you a ring,” he said, and I knew he meant an engagement ring. Three weeks later he gave the ring to me, a combination of white and yellow gold with an impression of a dove on the band to symbolize peace. And so we were engaged. We were in no rush to get married, especially since I was young, and as time went on it didn’t seem to matter all that much since we began to feel as if we were married. We got teased sometimes about how long our engagement lasted – it would be almost ten years before we finally married – but Che and I had the confidence to do things our own way.

  With the school year moving on, I could not avoid the question of what to do. The Goh Ballet was no longer a possibility and Vancouver had no major ballet company to join. But I was a homebody who was closely attached to her family and the things she knew. It took my father’s friend and partner, Willy Tsao, who ran his own dance company in Hong Kong, to state the obvious. “You have to leave Vancouver,” he said during a visit. “That is the only way to become a professional and grow as a dancer.” They were difficult words for me to hear, but I knew that he was right. I had no choice but to leave home.

  With Rex Harrington in Madame Butterfly.

  But maybe I didn’t have to go too far. The Pacific Northwest Ballet was a big company, and it was just a three-hour drive from British Columbia to Seattle in Washington State. I wrote a letter to the artistic directors, flashing my Prix de Lausanne and Adeline Genée awards and asking that they consider me for a soloist position. This was a slightly crazy thing to do: a young dancer was expected to begin in the corps de ballet (which is like the chorus) and only after several years, if she was deemed worthy, might she be promoted to the position of second soloist. A few years later she might be fortunate enough to become a first soloist. And after a few more years she might, if she were one of the chosen few, a dancer of star quality, be named a principal dancer, a prima ballerina.

  So it was impertinent of me to ask for a soloist position. The artistic directors of the Pacific Northwest Ballet were a little taken aback by my bold request, but they asked me to come and take a class with the company. I took the bus alone to Seattle. Kent Stowell, one of the artistic directors, took me aside after class. “I can see that you have great potential, Chan,” he said. “But it isn’t realistic to ask us to make you a soloist. Besides, you aren’t an American citizen and it would be tough to get you a work visa. I think you should get some more experience and then come back to us.”

  I returned to Vancouver a little wiser. I still felt that I did not want a corps position, but I knew that I wasn’t ready to be a soloist. More training seemed to be the answer. The winter high-school semester passed, and when spring arrived I headed to New York, accompanied by my mother, to audition for the School of American Ballet. One of the best ballet schools in America, it was connected to the New York City Ballet, the great company dominated by the vision and choreography of George Balanchine. In the past, my mother had taken me to New York for a couple of week-long training sessions at the school, and now I decided to try for acceptance in their full one-year program after I finished high school.

  The audition went just as well as I had hoped, and the Russian women who ran the school offered me a full scholarship for the year as well as an allowance of $400 a month. I was excited at the possibility, for I had an intense respect for these great teachers and a hunger to learn all I could from them. The only problem was that New York was such an expensive city that $400 would not be enough for an apartment, food, and whatever else I needed to survive. My parents were willing to give me all they could, but I knew how hard they worked and what a strain it would be on their finances. So I decided to apply for a grant from the Canada Council.

  The Canada Council, the federal government’s arts funding organization, had already awarded me a substantial grant the previous year to help prepare for the Adeline Genée Competition. I would have to do another live audition, and the Council paid to fly me to Toronto. Before leaving, a Canada Council administrator had spoken to me on the telephone. “You’re graduating high school,” he said. “Shouldn’t you also consider auditioning for a professional company?”

  “Well,” I hesitated, “I guess I should. But I just thought I needed one more year of training.” I didn’t want to mention my desire to make a leap of progress so that I could avoid joining the corps of a company.

  “Since you’re going to Toronto, perhaps you might audition for the National Ballet of Canada,” the administrator said. “Do you want to take a class with the company? You can see what the directors think.”

  So I agreed, although more reluctantly than the administrator could imagine. I flew alone to Toronto, and on Sunday I danced my audition for the Canada Council. Unknown to me at the time, one of the jury members was a man named James Kudelka. Then the resident choreographer of Les Grand Ballets Canadiens, he was a former dancer with the National Ballet. Privately, he thought as he watched me that I would be a good dancer for the National with its full repertoire. Neither he nor I could know that one day he would offer and create for me some of the most challenging roles of my career.

  The next day I had my audition for the National Ballet of Canada.

  The National Ballet of Canada was the country’s largest company, with fifty or more dancers to perform the great story ballets of the 19th century in lavish productions. It also had its own orchestra, costume and set departments, management, and volunteer committees – in other words, it was a very large organization. Its Toronto home was the vast O’Keefe Centre (later to be renamed the Hummingbird Centre), but the company also toured across Canada and sometimes internationally as well. Like any major arts company, it had its share of triumphs, controversies, and funding crises. It also had stars – Karen Kain, Veronica Tennant, and Frank Augustyn – who had become beloved figures in Canada, although all of them by then were in the last years of their dancing careers.

  The story ballets were the most popular with audiences, along with the annual Christmas production of The Nutcracker, but the National also programmed more recent and new works by Canadian and international choreographers, stretching the experience of the dancers as well as the audience. But Erik Bruhn, the artist
ic director who had brought in a lot of these modern works and had infused the company with a new energy, had died suddenly in 1986. Since then the National had been led by two people – Valerie Wilder and Lynn Wallis – with choreographer Glen Tetley as artistic associate, who were trying to maintain Erik Bruhn’s vision during this period of transition. It was for the two women I had to audition.

  I did not know even this much about the company when I arrived at the rehearsal studios in a handsome building near Toronto’s theatre district called St. Lawrence Hall. I had no idea of how to recognize either Valerie Wilder or Lynn Wallis. A receptionist led me to the dressing room where I changed. I then joined the class, but there appeared to be nobody sitting in front to observe. Perhaps, I thought, they had forgotten about my audition. During center work a woman did come in and sit down, and a short time later a woman who was standing at the barre near me went to sit with her. I didn’t know who was who (the first turned out to be Valerie Wilder, the second Lynn Wallis, both former dancers), but I knew they were there to watch me.

  Class ended and the dancers began talking and gathering up their things. The woman who had sat down first came up to me and said, “Why don’t we give you a few minutes to get changed. You can meet us upstairs in the office.” I hurriedly dressed and made my way upstairs where Valerie and Lynn introduced themselves “We’ve heard a lot about you,” said Valerie. “We even saw a report of your winning the silver medal at the Adeline Genée Competition.”