But there was no relaxing with Mr. Han. And there were boundaries. He was my mentor; he wasn’t my friend. His approach may seem old-school to some, but I cannot deny the results of those arduous years.
At times, I find myself longing for the days when I knew nothing, including the extent of my potential. When I was just a young boy working away with my demanding teacher late into the night. It was just work with no knowledge of what it might produce. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
* * *
THERE WAS EVENTUALLY a shift in my dynamic with Mr. Han. It happened after I became a professional, and he would come to see me dance at the Metropolitan Opera House. The first ballet he saw me in there was Swan Lake. I was cast as Prince Siegfried and it was my first major Principal role with American Ballet Theatre. With the knowledge that he was in the audience, the nerves I’d experienced during our private lessons flooded back to me. I was fourteen again, trying to execute those steps perfectly to please his critical eye. I wanted to make him proud, all the while knowing I could never do a performance that he would deem sufficient. Throughout the ballet my mind flashed repeatedly on the daunting fact that he was watching me. When I bowed after my solo, I bowed to my image of him sitting somewhere in the vast darkness of the audience. When the final curtain mercifully fell he came backstage to meet me in my dressing room. I waited nervously for him to pick the entire show apart, every move, jump, gesture. But that night he established the way he would react to all of my performances thereafter. Even if the show was excellent according to others, he would simply say, “Very good . . .” dryly, and in complete monotone.
“Thank you,” I would reply, grateful and a little amazed that I got even that.
Then he would smile and add something like, “You had trouble with the turning in the Act three solo, no?”
Because of the mind-set he had instilled in me, I was more comfortable with his knowing critique than I would have been with praise. He was forever critical, but once I became an adult, he was also my friend.
* * *
MR. HAN EVENTUALLY left Phoenix to become director of the Washington School of Ballet. He had been there nine years—and I had been a Principal Dancer for ten years—when I was asked by The Washington Ballet, the company associated with the school, to join the board of directors. The day of my nomination I took the train from New York to Washington, DC, for my first board meeting. As I walked into the room full of men and women successful in their respective fields, I saw placards marking our places at the boardroom table, each imprinted with a name.
My card was positioned beside Kee Juan Han’s.
How amazing, I thought, that we had journeyed from the dingy strip mall studio where he worked me to exhaustion late into the night to this austere boardroom where we were seated, like equals, side by side.
CHAPTER 8
I didn’t consciously decide to become a professional ballet dancer. Ballet chose me. There was never a eureka moment. I simply knew that ballet was what I had to do. There are dancers who dance because they can and those who dance because they must. I was of the latter variety.
When I learned about the various companies that dominate the ballet world, I knew that American Ballet Theatre was the one I had to join. ABT dancers like Ethan Stiefel and Vladimir Malakhov graced the covers of Dance Magazine, and I eagerly studied their photos, absorbing every image and memorizing every quote. It is generally considered that there are two types of male dancers: Dionysian dancers like Rudolf Nureyev, who are earthy, lusty, as if rising from the soil; and Apollonian dancers like Mikhail Baryshnikov and Peter Martins, who are cool, light, airborne, originating from the sky. Both Stiefel and Malakhov were in the Apollonian mode, the style with which I connected the most. They were the sort of dancers I naturally gravitated toward.
Stiefel and Malakhov were also key parts of the exceptional cadre of male dancers who had joined ABT when Kevin McKenzie became the company’s Artistic Director in 1992. Each one was unlike the others. On any given night in the theater, you could see a Dionysian dancer as Albrecht in Giselle and the following night a completely different interpretation of the same role performed in the Apollonian style. Kevin had created a sensation. These male dancers were dazzling and sexy, graceful and masculine. And they influenced much of the younger generation of students who aimed to be like them.
ABT was the American mecca for dance. It was also where the best dancers from around the world went to share and hone their talent and to lend their gifts to the company’s unparalleled international roster.
No other company would do it for me at the time. I had no aspirations of dancing in Europe. I knew of other companies globally, of course: the flair of the Bolshoi, the refinement of Paris Opera, the precision of the Mariinsky. But I never imagined them to be attainable goals. They seemed too far away, as if in a different, unreachable world. I watched their dancers in awe and saw videos of these most storied companies dancing ballet’s great works (Royal Ballet’s Swan Lake, Paris Opera’s La Bayadère). But I never entertained the idea of joining them. ABT and New York City were my be-all and end-all. I had to dance there. I had to become a Principal Dancer with that very company, following in the footsteps of the dancers I idolized. This was my first real taste of setting my sights on a future goal. And I would let nothing get in the way of it.
* * *
MR. HAN WAS well aware of my dream to dance with ABT and mentioned that my first way of connecting with the company should come through their Summer Intensive, a six-week training program for young dancers that often provides an inside track for admission into ABT’s Studio Company and, ultimately, into ABT itself. In the winter of 1999, when I was sixteen, my parents drove me to Los Angeles to audition for it.
On the morning of the audition, I entered a studio rented out for aspiring students just like myself. Clearly, I was not alone in my ambition. Masses of kids, mostly girls, roamed the narrow hallway. All more or less the same age, we desired the same thing but knew that only a few of us would be chosen. If I had a good audition and was accepted, I would be going to New York City for the very first time to take summer classes in ABT’s studios, the same studios where my idols rehearsed Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet. How thrilling I thought, to walk through the same hallways they walked and encounter the artists I looked up to so much. But first I had to pass the audition in the sea of other kids.
I tried my best to make myself known in the turning and jumping herd. It was the epitome of a cattle call. I was desperate to be seen. I eyed the audition panel nervously. Were they noticing me amid these three hundred other young dancers? Was I good enough for them to even take note? I didn’t fall or forget the exercises, but other than that I had no sense of how it went.
After the audition, we were addressed collectively by one of the women on the panel. “Thank you all for your interest in the summer program,” she said. “We’ll let you know.”
* * *
THE WEEKEND OF the audition coincided with an ABT tour to Costa Mesa, California, where they were performing Le Corsaire. My parents bought me a ticket for the performance, knowing how much it would mean to me to see the company of my dreams onstage. The production was even grander and more wondrous than I had imagined. There was a star-laden cast and a massive, beautiful Corps de Ballet. Marcelo Gomes, a bright young star in the making, was debuting in the flashy virtuoso role as the slave Ali. He was incredible. The audience roared their approval. I marveled at the gorgeous, giant sets dominating the stage, including, in the dream scene, a real working fountain. I thought, Only ABT would have a real fountain onstage!
The performance was a harmonious marriage of prowess and refinement. I was all the more certain that I had to dance for this company. I had finally seen the quality that ABT was known for. There wasn’t a dancer who didn’t look in top form.
* * *
MY AUDITION AND first viewing of ABT gave me my first taste of a new sort of hunger. The hunger to work was already instilled in
me, but now I felt the hunger of ambition. It would be a long time before I learned the important lesson that ambition can be an impediment to achieving the very thing one desires. But I was so eager to show the world what I had learned from Mr. Han.
Forced into an agonizing wait for the verdict on my audition, I refused to think, I hope to get to New York City one day.
Instead, I set aside all apprehensions and doubts.
I will be in New York City, I told myself, dancing for ABT.
* * *
A FEW ANXIOUS weeks passed before I learned that I had been accepted for ABT’s Summer Intensive. In addition, I was given a full scholarship to pay for the tuition.
On the first day of classes in New York, all the students gathered on the sidewalk outside ABT’s studios, waiting for the building’s doors to be opened. Everyone was young and eager and, like me, convinced they were on the precipice of living their dream. The buzz and noise of New York City surrounded us. As I stood there nervously with the others, a yellow cab pulled up to the sidewalk and a tall, striking man I recognized from photographs in Dance Magazine came bounding out. It was Kevin McKenzie, ABT’s Artistic Director. I studied him closely as he weaved his way through the claque of spellbound students.
This was the man who had invited my idols to dance at ABT. Ecstatic to be mere feet away from the director of my dream company, I thought, There goes my future boss.
* * *
THROUGHOUT THE SIX weeks of the intensive program, I was mesmerized by the atmosphere at “890,” which, I learned, is how ABT’s dancers refer to the building at 890 Broadway where they rehearse. The long, wide hallways led to half a dozen high-ceilinged studios with huge windows looking out onto lower Broadway, each room larger than the last. The sweat of the company members had stained the wooden floors. In these studios there had been countless hours of rehearsals; the mirrors had reflected the images of Baryshnikov, Makarova, Nureyev—the most renowned dancers in the world. It was like nothing I had seen before, and a far cry from the dingy allure of my strip mall studios in Phoenix.
Although ABT’s spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House had ended, and most dancers had taken a summer break, on special days word would spread that Marcelo Gomes or Angel Corella was in the building. I’d run like the rest to see them. There, in the flesh, was Angel, waiting in the hallway before his morning class. All the students in the Summer Intensive would gawk wide-eyed and then attack from all sides for autographs.
Being at ABT and immersed in the cultural pulse of New York City, I knew this was where I needed to be.
* * *
THE SIX WEEKS at ABT flew by. At summer’s end I was invited back for the following year, but before I eagerly returned, ambition and curiosity had prompted me to set out on what had previously seemed an unattainable course.
Although my ongoing training with Mr. Han provided the structure I required during my formative years, I now felt the need to spend one year at a major professional school. I wanted to have a year dancing in a class with boys who were as dedicated as I was, as opposed to the boys who briefly took class with Mr. Han and soon moved on. Previously, I’d had offers from several schools, but my parents were uneasy about sending me far away at such a young age. They completely trusted Mr. Han and agreed when he said that if I wanted to experience another school, the right time to do it would be for my senior year of high school.
* * *
THE PARIS OPERA’S Ballet School is the oldest school in the world for classical ballet training, as well as one of the most prestigious. I saw an informational video about the school while I was training with Mr. Han and marveled at the students’ speed, clarity, and absolute command of the entire idiom of classical technique. Ninety-five percent of the school’s students were French-born, making it nearly impossible for an international applicant to get in, especially at the advanced age—in ballet terms—of sixteen. I was too American, too old; I thought I didn’t stand a chance. Nevertheless, I sent an audition video, filming it with Mr. Han in the studio. In it, I appeared lanky and adolescent, unaware whether anything I executed was good or bad but diligently working through the steps my teacher set for me. At the beginning of the video, I stared into the camera and attempted to introduce myself in French, a language completely foreign to me at the time.
“Bonjour. Je m’appelle David Hallberg. J’ai seize ans. Je danse depuis quatre ans a l’école de danse de Ballet Arizona. Voici ma vidéo. Merci.”
* * *
TWO WEEKS LATER, I got a thin letter in the mail with the elegant Paris Opera logo on the top corner. I stood there in my kitchen, frozen. In the United States a thin envelope from a school you’ve applied to usually meant a one-page letter saying, “Thanks but no thanks.” So I assumed the school wasn’t interested. Oh well, I thought, it wasn’t meant to be.
In any case, the letter was in French, so I nervously called my friend Brittany’s mother, who spoke it fluently, and begged her to translate. I attempted to read it aloud to her over the phone, massacring words I had never seen with their funny accents above the letters.
“It seems you’ve gotten in,” she said.
“What?”
“Yes. From what I understand, it says they are happy to accept you in the school but there are things they saw in the video that you need to work on. Your jump and your strength.”
The next few moments were a blur of excitement and disbelief as I screamed to my parents that I was accepted at this storied school I’d thought I had no chance of getting into. We had decided before the video went off to Paris that if, by some crazy chance, I was accepted, I would go. With that having been agreed upon, I was definitely moving to Paris. The farthest I had ever traveled was to Florida. I could hardly believe my stroke of luck. And luck is what I thought it was: it didn’t occur to me that I was good enough to be accepted on merit.
Like many who have never left the nest, my naiveté was immense. Before I left, I bought a year’s worth of shampoo and deodorant to take with me because I didn’t think I could buy those necessities in France.
I thought I was moving to Mars, and so did most of my friends. Paris could have been another planet completely. But, nervous and wide-eyed, I charged forward and prepared to move to a country that I knew nothing about.
* * *
TWO MONTHS BEFORE I would go to Paris, I returned to New York for another six weeks of ABT’s Summer Intensive. My surroundings felt more comfortable and familiar, and I was much calmer than I had been throughout the previous summer. For the performance at the end of the term, I was given two leading roles. One was the opening movement and first variation from George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations. When we learned it en masse, everyone seemed to know the ballet by heart. I not only didn’t know the steps, I had no idea who Balanchine was. I was definitely in need of an on-the-job education.
Kevin McKenzie came to the final performance. The students were all saying that he would want to speak to some of us after the show. I was one of those asked to stick around and wait for him. Kevin had been a leading ABT dancer. He had retired from performing nine years before, but still had the bearing of a danseur noble, and was tall with a great shock of dark hair.
He was complimentary about the show and asked if I did indeed have plans to go to the Paris Opera Ballet School the following month. I told him I would be leaving for Paris in mid-August.
“If you plan on coming back to ABT after the year in Paris is over,” he said, “I can have a contract for you. And if it doesn’t work out in Paris, you’re welcome to come here for the remainder of the year.”
Those were the words I so desperately wanted to hear. And they came from the person I wanted to hear them from.
I tried to conceal my utter elation. All I could say was “Thank you.”
I walked away, dazed and beaming.
It seemed everything was falling into place. But the year ahead would test my entire concept of what it means to live up to my commitment and persever
e.
CHAPTER 9
My idea that I would arrive at Paris Opera Ballet School with my big American smile and spiky blond hair and instantly befriend my classmates was shattered in the first week.
From the very first day in Paris to the very last I was known not as “l’Américain,” the American, but as “l’Amérique.” Literally meaning “the America,” which rendered me a cliché of the brash American rather than an individual. It was in that year that I became acquainted with the cutting art of condescension.
The director of the school was Claude Bessy. She had been a gorgeous and highly renowned ballerina whose dancing was very sensual, earthy and natural and entirely different from the manner of her fearsome and stringent directorship. The first day of class, as we were doing center exercises, she came in quietly through the studio door. The teacher announced her arrival and we all bowed (proper etiquette at any ballet school). But the atmosphere had changed instantly. The boys, shifty-eyed, continued in fear. Why be afraid of the director? I thought. I wondered if I should go up and introduce myself. After all, I was the new student in the room, the one she’d accepted but didn’t know. But something told me to just attempt to blend in with the class. She stood there, saying nothing, expressionless, while we tried to concentrate on the exercises. Only minutes passed before she went to the door to leave.
But as she walked out, she said in French, for everyone to hear, “I didn’t recognize l’Amérique. He looks like a porcupine.”
A Body of Work Page 6
