Beyond the Dance

by Chan Hon Goh

  My favorite act of the ballet was the fourth, with its tragic depth of feeling – so different from the happy triumph I felt at the end of Sleeping Beauty – and as the performances went on I was able to lose myself in the role more and more. Dancing the last act I felt a great sadness, as if something had been stolen from my soul, an emptiness where love had once been. Taking the curtain calls, I felt almost subdued rather than the elation I had felt after Sleeping Beauty.

  It was easy for an artistic director to see me in roles such as the Sylph, or Aurora, or the White Swan. All of them lend themselves to a dancer with lyrical qualities, fine technique, and a delicate appearance – qualities that the critics praised me for. But I wanted to play other roles too, characters with even deeper emotional lives, that would require me to grow as an artist and not just technically. So when it was announced that the National would revive its production of Giselle for the next season, I desperately hoped that Reid would choose me as one of the principals to dance the title role.

  It was just before our summer break, when the company would disband until rehearsals in the fall. One day Reid called me into his office; I arrived to find the ballet mistress, Magdalena, there as well. “Well, Chan,” Reid said, “I feel that we should talk before the break. I’ve been very, very happy with your dancing and I can tell that it comes from the heart. Now I’m trying to decide on Giselle and I’m not worried about your being able to dance it. But I’m not convinced that you can do the acting necessary.”

  Reid went on. “Of course you know there’s the famous mad scene in the first act.” I could only nod. “That’s ten minutes without steps but just acting. I’m not convinced you’re ready for that. I’m going to think about it over the break. I haven’t decided, but I wanted you to know what’s on my mind.”

  I thanked Reid for his directness and then left hurriedly, knowing that tears were about to flow. It just crushed my heart to hear him say those words – crushed me because I too had the same doubts. When a person fears that something is true, it hurts even more. I felt upset for days. I didn’t know if I had the ability, and yet I wanted so much to have it.

  Giselle is a French masterpiece, renowned for both its romantic dance movements and for being a story of betrayal and eternal love. The dashing Count Albrecht dresses as an ordinary villager and falls in love with Giselle. Despite Giselle’s mother’s warnings, she succumbs to Albrecht and falls in love too. But when she finds out that he is really a count and already engaged to be married, Giselle loses her reason out of grief. In the mad scene, she imagines her meetings with Albrecht over again and, dancing in her madness, dies of a broken heart. In Act II, the queen of the Wilis, who are ghosts of young women, calls Giselle from the grave and commands her to goad Albrecht into dancing to exhaustion and death. But instead, Giselle’s pure love gives Albrecht strength. As dawn breaks and Giselle melts away, Albrecht is left alive, though in deep sorrow.

  I was truly beginning to understand that technical skill, while absolutely required, was only the basis upon which to express a character. Like an actor, a dancer has to find within herself the emotional truths of a character. She has to move beyond the dance. Just as a good dancing coach can help, so can an acting coach, and I spent the summer taking private acting lessons. Then in July, wanting to give myself a symbol of freedom and change, I impulsively had my long hair cut short, for the first time since I became an adult.

  My Toronto debut as Giselle (with Nicholas Khan).

  In August, I returned to work with the other members of the company. When the casting sheet for Giselle went up, I saw my name – I would be one of the principals to dance the role! Reid had changed his mind. Perhaps he still wasn’t sure, but he was going to give me a chance. My first feeling was of pure joy, and my second sudden dismay that I had cut off my long hair.

  During rehearsal I was encouraged to overcome my reticence during the mad scene, to really let go and use my eyes, my facial expressions, my arm gestures to reveal all that Giselle is experiencing. Meanwhile, the wig department had to fit me with a wig that I would wear over my short hair.

  Before performing in Toronto, the company took the ballet on a tour of western Canada. My first performance was before an audience of students in Saskatoon, and I felt afterwards that I had done all right. Our next stop was Winnipeg, where I wasn’t scheduled to perform. But I rehearsed at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and there I saw Evelyn Hart. Evelyn and I went back a long way, to her first private classes with my father when I was still a kid. She had always been generous and supportive, so it felt natural for me to ask her about the role. Evelyn took me out to dinner where she spoke at length on character development and especially on connecting with my partner. And because she was actively dancing, I could ask her detailed questions about certain steps and crucial moments.

  My second performance was before a regular audience in Victoria. After the show I returned to my hotel room and sat on the edge of the bed. My performance had been technically polished, I had held all my balances, but still there was an element of emotion within the character that I hadn’t fully released, a connection I hadn’t made. I started to cry and could not stop, just sitting with my shoulders shaking and the tears streaming down my face. Only later did I understand that certain depths of characterization cannot be found in the rehearsal studio, but only through the process of performing over and over before an audience.

  From Victoria we went on to Vancouver. My father and mother came for the performance, as well as lots of students from the Goh Ballet Academy. Many of my old Vancouver friends came too. The local television stations showed up to capture the home-town girl who had made good. But the additional pressure was balanced by having now performed the role twice. This time, when I went on stage, I forgot about the technical aspects, about how long I held my balances, and truly lost myself in being Giselle. Taking the curtain calls, I felt absolutely drained, but also as if a great emotional weight were lifting away from me.

  When I came off stage Reid was waiting for me. “I’m glad I was wrong,” he said.

  As I grew into the role, Giselle would become one of my favorite roles in the repertoire.

  Not acting, but becoming Tatiana in Onegin.

  CHAPTER 11

  MORE CHALLENGES

  Although I was now in my twenties, I still felt a lot of the little girl in me. When we went on tour I sometimes felt lonely or even lost, just as I had when my father left us behind in Beijing. Although I had reached my goal of becoming a principal dancer, I still felt the need to prove myself, and to please all the people around me – the artistic director and the ballet mistress, my mother and father when they came to watch one of my shows, Che, and of course the audience. I was rarely satisfied with my own performances, and I was always looking towards the next challenge.

  Just before a show at the O’Keefe Centre in November 1995, Karen Kain came onstage to announce that Reid Anderson had decided to step down from his position of artistic director. He was going to return to the Stuttgart Ballet in Germany and take on the same role there.

  I knew that with change can come new opportunities. The new artistic director, James Kudelka, had begun his career as a dancer at the National but had left the company to become a choreographer, making dances for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Joffrey Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre, and the San Francisco Ballet, as well as for us at the National. My first encounter with him, as he would later remind me, had occurred years before when I auditioned for the Canada Council and he had been on the jury. This would be the first time that the artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada would also be a major choreographer, able to create his own versions of the classic repertoire as well as totally new dances.

  On tour in Israel, at a street market in Jerusalem.

  We dancers had to adapt to his approach and style. He gave us new dancing opportunities that we otherwise would not have had. Soon after he took over, it was announced that we would be reviving Onegin. As
a corps member I had played the small part of a girlfriend; later as a soloist I had taken on the character of Olga, Tatiana’s frivolous younger sister. But this time I wanted to play Tatiana, the romantic-minded girl who falls in love with an older man. Instead of just hoping, however, I decided to share with James my desire to move into roles of real substance. I was pleased to find this courage in myself, and even happier when James cast me in the part.

  In the story, Tatiana falls for the worldly Eugene Onegin, but Onegin rejects her. After fighting a duel and killing a man, Onegin leaves the country. Years later he returns to find Tatiana married and realizes his mistake in turning away her love. Tatiana must choose between her first love and her husband. John Cranko’s choreography for the ballet is not rigidly classical in style. The pas de deux were very physical, requiring a lot of upper-body strength. There were a lot of throws and lifts by my partner, and I had to both hang on and resist with my arms and upper back, using my torso as counterbalance. The dancing had to be daring as I brought out the character’s tempestuous feelings. Emotional suffering is not pretty; instead of always looking light and beautiful, I had to be real.

  At the end of one rehearsal, I had a sore neck and arms. Going home, I complained to Che that I didn’t know if I was staying true to the character. Should I he more understated? Was I acting too young? Many questions tormented me. Che said, “Chan, don’t try to be Tatiana. You have to believe when you’re dancing that you are Tatiana. That Tatiana is you. Don’t try to be her because then you’re still someone else just pretending. If you believe that you are this person, if you put yourself into her fate, then you become her. And anything you do will be right.”

  Che’s words gave me the confidence to become Tatiana. In the end, the role was a turning point; I found the power to move beyond the steps, to not merely dance the part but to become it. This was the direction I needed to go if my artistry was to mature. And after Onegin, going back to ballets such as Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, I found new ways to imbue them with a deeper meaning, renewing my love for dance when I might have started to grow stale.

  A little more than a month later, Che and I ushered in the new year of 1997 by opening a bottle of champagne. Holidays could be a lonely time for me, since they emphasized the fact that I had no close relatives living in Toronto, but we always tried to make the best of them. On this New Year’s Eve I was feeling fine; after all, I had just danced a successful and challenging season. I was twenty-seven years old, and Che and I had been engaged for eight years. Suddenly I said to him, “Maybe we should get married this year.”

  And so we did. The wedding, on August 29, was held at the Rosedale Golf Club with 125 guests. It was a beautiful event that two of my close friends had generously taken charge of planning, for I had turned out to be quite naive about just how much effort a wedding takes. Indeed, they were so helpful that I did not have to take a single day off from the National’s dance schedule. Nor did I take time off afterwards; it would be two years before Che and I took our honeymoon, a week in Honolulu before going on to a teaching stint in Japan. Once again, we managed to do things our way, in our own time.

  Cutting our wedding cake. I wear a traditional Chinese red silk gown, the color of happiness.

  If Onegin was the turning point, it led to other exciting roles, culminating in John Cranko’s version of Romeo and Juliet, I was cast to play opposite Rex Harrington as Romeo. Rex was in demand by companies all over the world for his fine partnering skills. I felt a little intimidated because he had danced the ballet with so many great ballerinas. Even though my acting ability had come a long way, I still wasn’t confident that I could unleash the necessary emotions for such a deeply tragic role. During rehearsals, Rex kept telling me to move bigger, to trust him, to expand my gestures. I also spent one weekend working with Veronica Tennant, who had been a brilliantly dramatic Juliet during her own career. Veronica didn’t impose her own view of the character, but helped me to shape the role for myself. We especially worked on the scene where Juliet wakes up in the tomb, sees Romeo and is overjoyed until she realizes that he is dead. I had never played a more extreme or sorrowful moment, and I had to work hard to lower my emotional barriers to achieve full self-expression.

  A moment when time stood still; not seeing Paris (Ryan Boorne, left) while looking into the eyes of Romeo (Rex Harrington).

  Right after our wedding ceremony – we are finally official!

  My debut came in February 1998. Performing the role was more emotionally exhausting than it was physically tiring, but it was also an exhilarating experience. Dancing with Rex at this stage in my career allowed me to more fully reach my potential. After the final curtain call, Rex turned to me and said, “Thank you. I learned so much.” We hugged for a long time, and all along I was thinking, “What you have taught me, I’ll never forget.” From then on I was sure of the importance of a good partner with whom I could emotionally connect.

  I was so pleased to wake the next morning and read the review in the Globe and Mail. The critic noted that many of my previous roles demanded “technical brilliance” as much as they did dramatic ability. But here she called me “an intensely dramatic ballerina who is able to telegraph even the smallest detail of emotional change with her wonderfully expressive face and body. Her complex heroine was forced by circumstance to change almost overnight and leave behind the impetuousness of youth for the steel resolve of adulthood.”

  For the moment, at least, I was happy.

  A new dance-related pursuit occurred because for years Che had listened to me complaining about pointe shoes. Like most professional dancers, I went through four or five pairs a week during the ten months of the year I was dancing, and rarely was I satisfied. Too often there was a long waiting period before the shoemaker could fill an order, and when the shoes finally arrived it sometimes turned out that they were somehow wrong. The vamp, or top, might be too high, or the shoes might break down too quickly, or they simply might not be consistent from pair to pair. For female dancers especially, finding and getting a continuous supply of the right shoes was a constant problem.

  As a teacher, Che himself had often noticed students coming to class with pointe shoes that weren’t right for their feet. Either they were as stiff as bricks or they were too soft to offer proper support. When he suggested that they get better shoes, the dancers often explained that they couldn’t afford to, since a pair of pointe shoes can cost more than seventy dollars. To make them last longer, women dancers would use wood shellac inside them, while the men would tape up the ends of their soft slippers with duct tape.

  Dancers (clockwise from bottom right) Luminita, Ryan, Julie, and Avi showing off various styles of Principal Shoes.

  And so one day, Che began to do some drawings of shoes. He had always been interested in design and had recently found out that one of his old classmates in China was now heading a shoe factory. Che had his friend make up some prototype samples and I became his first guinea pig, trying them in class and offering feedback. I gave pairs to other dancers to get their responses. Che took our suggestions and went back to the design table.

  Finally, after a year of trials, Che felt satisfied that he could produce dance shoes that were less expensive but of high quality. We named the company Principal Dance Supplies and went into business. At first we sold the shoes only to professional dancers and other dancers who knew us, but after six months we began to sell them through dance retailers, choosing one reputable store in each major city in Canada. A year later we began to sell them in a few American stores, and after that we began to ship some orders to Japan. Before long we were selling three different styles of pointe shoes, soft ballet slippers, and character shoes. We also collaborated with many designers and began to custom make dance boots for specific productions. By keeping our expenses low – for example, instead of advertising, we rely on word of mouth – we have been able to make the company profitable. A percentage of the profits are donated to the National Ballet’s Buil
d-a-Ballet Fund, which commissions new works. We also donate a Principal Shoes Scholarship, to be awarded at festivals and schools across the country. For Che and me both, running a small company has been a constant learning process and a way for us to give something back to the dance community that has been so supportive of us.

  It wasn’t long after Romeo and Juliet that I needed another challenge, another goal to motivate myself and give my dancing purpose. This time it was The Taming of the Shrew, the John Cranko ballet based on the Shakespeare play, in which Petruchio marries and then must “tame” the wild and headstrong Kate to make her into a good wife. For several years I had performed the ballet’s secondary role of Bianca, the sweet younger sister of Kate, a pretty role but one without much depth. Now with Shrew returning to the repertoire, I wanted a chance to dance the lead role of Kate the “shrew,” even though I knew that the character would be a real stretch for me.

  During a meeting with James Kudelka, I told him how important it was for me to move out of secondary roles and into roles of real substance. Just because I was good at roles like Bianca did not mean I wanted to continue performing them. “Sometimes,” I said, “I feel like I’m being punished for doing a good job.” James appeared shocked; he had assumed that I would be happy in roles for which I was always praised.