A Body of Work

by David Hallberg

  “You have to start somewhere,” I kept assuring myself.

  CHAPTER 12

  Despite our mutual antipathy, Michele and I went on to dance many more ballets together: Petipa’s Raymonda, George Balanchine’s Ballo della Regina. It was rarely enjoyable and she continued to make clear to me how uncomfortable she was. It was consistently humiliating. I could, at times, understand her frustration, considering that before I danced with her I’d had no concept of leading the woman in a pas de deux and taking control of the partnership. I would watch her dance with stronger, more experienced men and try to learn from them. What was so hard for me to absorb seemed to come so easily to them.

  In time, I danced more and more with other women in the company, and although I still needed to improve, I had a different rapport with them. It flowed. We would banter back and forth. They seemed to accept my shortcomings and were happy to dance with me. Above all, they treated me with equal respect.

  My inexperience as a partner was handled most patiently by Julie Kent, an American ballerina and an artist of extreme integrity and delicacy, who influenced a generation of dancers around the world.

  Julie was in the prime of her career, and a ballerina at her peak would normally insist on a male partner who had the experience to match hers. But when Robert Hill wanted me to dance the role of Dorian, in his ballet based on the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, he proposed to Julie that I partner her for the premiere. Surprisingly, she agreed. When we began, I was in a stress-induced sweat knowing I was dancing with such a legend. Robert was a former ABT dancer with great partnering skills, who would toss women around with no great effort. As he created the pas with Julie and me, I tried to keep my head above water. The partnering was at a level I had never attempted before. But Julie never faltered or lost her calm, gently letting me know precisely what she needed from me.

  “Hold my hips, not my waist.”

  “Put me more over my supporting leg, and less hanging off it.”

  She always began her requests with “David, could you please . . .” or “I’d love it if you could . . .”

  I was the same partner with Julie as I was with Michele, trying my absolute best to accommodate and be forthright about my shortcomings. I wasn’t an ideal fit for Julie at that time in my career, but her response to my lack of experience was entirely nurturing and constructive. Dancing with her wasn’t only an honor; it was a joy.

  Another ballerina I began partnering early on was Gillian Murphy, a young dancer of brilliant ease and clarity whose technical prowess had begun to awe both audiences and other dancers. When I entered the company, Gillian had just become ABT’s newest Principal, and in a year’s time, we were making numerous debuts together. She was my first ballerina in Balanchine’s Theme and Variations. I was her first Romeo. Alexei Ratmansky created his Nutcracker on us. Together we discovered the constrictive world of Pillar of Fire.

  In countless rehearsals and performances, I watched Gillian from the wings or in the studio and marveled at the unforced nature of her talent. She took everything in stride, never crumpling in a pool of tears the way some dancers did but laughing things off if they didn’t work. She was always the first to make fun of herself. After performances, sweat-stained and wiping off what remained of our makeup, we would debrief in one of our dressing rooms, still feeling the adrenaline buzz. Because we were so deeply rooted as friends, when things went wrong I never blamed her and she never blamed me, and we were able to laugh about what didn’t work as well as we had hoped. We adored and respected each other, and the simple, natural rapport between us was something that I didn’t feel with anyone else. There was a balance between the two of us. An ease.

  But no matter how much I tried and no matter how much I improved, I never had any rapport with Michele. We certainly kept trying our best to make things work, given that we had to dance together. A couple of years into our partnership we met one day to air our grievances. At last we were finally being honest. She said that at times she felt I worried only about myself. I told her yes, of course I worried about myself—we were both young and ambitious and eager to make our mark. But I was, and had always been, more worried about pleasing her and making her feel comfortable. I explained that I needed her to treat me with more respect and to give me just a little room for error. I was absorbing how best to partner her and this took time and patience.

  We both agreed to try to alter our approaches when working together. There was no right or wrong. Not one person better than the other. We would both work on smoothing out the rough edges. And for a time it worked. We would try to verbalize our issues in the studio the moment they arose, being extremely careful about how to best articulate the problem. But dancing together remained a constant struggle because, ultimately, nothing we said changed anything. We simply couldn’t meet on the same level. Once again, I was on one side of the studio and she was on the other.

  * * *

  GEORGE BALANCHINE’S Theme and Variations is among the most challenging of his many difficult creations. What you accomplish technically in four acts of other ballets, you do in the thirty minutes of Theme. I learned the first movement at the ABT Summer Intensive when I was sixteen years old. It gave me a small glimpse of what was to come. To dance the lead role in its entirety is another beast altogether. Theme is a rite of passage at ABT. I’ve heard it said that Mikhail Baryshnikov deemed it harder than any full-length ballet.

  Theme’s virtuosic steps demand perfect execution, with an ease of style but at whiplash speed; even the slightest error of timing or balance is obvious to the audience. Both the man and the woman begin with incredibly rigorous variations (the term used to denote a solo). The second male variation is the true test: a consecutive series of seven double tours en l’air, each followed by a single (or at times double) pirouette, until the end of the solo. When executed perfectly, it is the type of sequence that causes the audience to roar with approval. If you’re even slightly off, you end up popping around the stage like a kernel of corn in hot oil. This was always the most stress-inducing part for me. I imagined the worst and rarely met the required lofty standard. As I jumped around in the middle section, with the music building to that series of tours, I waged an internal war between confidence and doubt.

  It’s nothing, just do it.

  No! It’s impossible. I’ll never be able to do it.

  Use your plié.

  Go easy.

  Don’t pop the pirouette. Use it as a preparation.

  At times I gritted through it, just making it by the skin of my teeth. After the solos, in the pas de deux, both lead dancers slowly descend into fatigue. I was glad to have danced my first Theme with Gillian. She made this epic test of a ballet seem a bit easier.

  * * *

  FOUR YEARS INTO our partnership, Michele and I were rehearsing Theme for ABT’s spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House. By that point, we had danced it together many times, but we still approached the ballet with the intensity and focus of dancers who had never done it before. The entire company packed into Studio 1 for a final run-through, a rehearsal where, even if certain steps didn’t work, we pushed on, simulating a live performance. With the eyes of all your colleagues on you, up close in the studio, these run-throughs can be more stressful than the actual performance.

  We started the ballet like any other run-through, a mixture of nerves and confidence. I danced my variation. She danced hers. I danced my second variation. She followed. Audibly puffing, we finally met in the pas de deux. Just after the start, Michele began fidgeting when I would partner her, as if she was extremely uncomfortable. When a ballerina on pointe is off her leg and wants her partner to put her back on her plumb line, she shakes her hips as if to adjust back on pointe on her own. It’s a universally understood nonverbal signal that speaks volumes to the partner. She’s saying, I’m not on my leg, dammit. And I’m going to prove it.

  It’s a rude and inconsiderate gesture. I would have much preferred her to si
mply say, “Could you get me farther back on my leg?”

  Michele shook her hips a number of times. She then stopped dancing altogether, merely walking through some of the steps as the music continued and I stood behind her trying to press on. She was blatantly demonstrating to the company how uncomfortable she was dancing with me. The pas de deux runs five minutes, and for those entire five minutes the company looked on in shock. You could feel the tension in the room. Here was the perfect picture of our partnership for all to see. Passive-aggressive behavior devolving into a complete lack of any decent working relationship. We continued with the pas, dancing some steps but walking around marking for most of it. My blood boiled. The pressure cooker was bursting. I could feel it. I was silently enraged, humiliated, bewildered. When we finished the pas, no one applauded as they ordinarily would. The room was embarrassingly silent. The company joined us in the finale and we finished the ballet but something had clicked for me. I had hit my breaking point. I had been patient; I had made myself a better partner through the force of will and fear; we had tried to create a more harmonious relationship. But all that amounted to was this: a display of what it truly meant to her. Our partnership could never evolve.

  Afterward the ballet masters tried to skirt around the problem by giving us their corrections. There was everything to say about what had just happened but nothing to be said at the same time.

  When they left the studio, Michele turned to me and said, “It was okay . . . I thought.” She looked at me blankly. I could sense an apologetic tone in her voice, as if she knew she had gone too far. I stared back at her, lost in shock.

  “It was not okay,” I said. “It was horrible. You humiliated me.”

  I didn’t even look to see if there were still dancers in the room, though I later realized that everyone was there, awkwardly listening in on what we were saying. In the moment, I was so enraged I didn’t notice. We walked over to the side of the rehearsal studio. I addressed her in a hushed but direct tone.

  “I’ve had it,” I told her. “Years of disrespect and this fight to make things work are over. You clearly don’t want to dance with me and I have tried everything I could to make you as comfortable as I can. But then you come into this rehearsal and belittle me in front of everyone.”

  She just stood there, wide-eyed and frozen.

  I was furious. It takes a huge amount of build-up before I lose it (in this case years), but when I finally break my anger goes beyond the point of no return.

  “If you don’t want to dance with me, then, fine, that’s perfectly all right,” I continued. “I want to dance with a woman who does. You can put all the blame on me. I don’t care. I will accept full responsibility. I’m finished being treated this way.”

  * * *

  AFTER OUR CONFRONTATION, I went on with my day, knowing that Kevin would hear about it eventually. I felt no need to run into his office and explain my side of the story. I was certain about how I felt. Later in the day I had a rehearsal with him alone. He walked in and immediately said, “I know everything. You don’t have to explain it.”

  Kevin is levelheaded in heated moments. He thinks rationally when no one else is doing so. There was no way around the fact that Michele and I had to dance together in the Met season, which would begin in a week’s time. Casting had already been announced and it was too late to make any changes and switch dancers around. I understood the situation, so we got on with it. Michele and I came to terms with dancing the few works we were scheduled to perform together. Those performances and the rehearsals for them were focused, cold, efficient, impersonal. We clocked in and we clocked out. We did what we needed to do to get the shows on.

  It was a terribly disappointing outcome for both of us. And now that I have much more appreciation for the ruthless role that time plays in a dancer’s life, I wish we had been able to enjoy dancing together and to reap far more positive benefits from all the work we put in. I walked away feeling that I did my best. I did know, too, that a more experienced dancer would have done better. But, at the end of the day, as in any part of life, you don’t vibe with everyone. And Michele and I didn’t vibe.

  Now, after many years, I’ve honed the skills to make my partners happier. It’s not lost on me that, to a large extent, I have Michele to thank for that. Through my fear of her and my desperation to make her content and comfortable, I willed myself to become a good partner. It was the fear, I feel, that produced the best results. During our four years of tribulations I was forced to work harder and become more studiously attentive than I might otherwise have been. Once again, as in Paris, my greatest learning was through struggle.

  CHAPTER 13

  If a ballet dancer’s goal is to become a Principal in the topmost rank of dancers, he or she must remain committed and patient and accept that any ascension is gradual: occasional small roles lead to frequent featured roles and then to some major ones. In other words, it takes a long while—if it ever occurs—to do what the Principals do, which is to dance leading roles all the time. One usually waits a number of years to be promoted to the next level; sometimes that promotion never comes. It happens differently for everyone. I spent three years in the Corps, all the while wanting to be a Soloist. When I was promoted to Soloist, I was obsessed with finally becoming a Principal. I was always seeking what I hadn’t yet achieved.

  With the goal of becoming a Principal in mind, I immersed myself in each opportunity Kevin afforded me, working tirelessly on role after role as I sought to prove to him that I was prepared to handle the responsibilities the coveted title of Principal entailed. Each role, whether standing center stage or on the side amid the group, was a part of my progression. I couldn’t have danced a Principal role without first mastering the building blocks that Kevin deemed necessary. I needed every step.

  * * *

  IN 2006, TWO years after my promotion to Soloist, the company made its annual tour to Costa Mesa, California, to dance at the theater known today as the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. In this series of performances, I was making major debuts in two beautiful ballets: Sir Frederick Ashton’s Sylvia, a very stylized ballet created originally in 1876 and reworked by Ashton in 1952 for Dame Margot Fonteyn, and George Balanchine’s Apollo, a ballet whose title role is another of those precious rites of passage for a male dancer, and one I had dreamed of dancing for years.

  Choreographed in 1928 with a score by Igor Stravinsky, it depicts the journey of the young god of music, Apollo, from boyhood to adulthood, aided by the inspiration of three muses who represent poetry, mime, and dance.

  A long line of male dancers have tackled this role, most prominently Baryshnikov, Peter Martins, and Serge Lifar, on whom it was created. It’s a stunning showcase for a leading male. I was taught the bulk of the role by one of Balanchine’s “great Danes,” Ib Andersen, who had learned it from Balanchine himself. This was a true example of the art being passed down from generations. Balanchine created it. Ib learned it from him. And twenty-three years after Balanchine’s death, Ib taught it to me.

  Ib explained each movement and its imagery. The first step: arms moving from down by the hips to high above the head, hands outstretched as if “pushing the weight of the world in your hands.” The sous-sous: with hands crossed in an angular, birdlike way just above the head, “like an eagle spreading its wings.” He told me how a series of kicks side to side is like “a soccer player kicking a ball back and forth.”

  There are no virtuosic steps in Apollo. But the entire work can be virtuosic if approached with the right style, which is to create movement with purpose and substance. I had found that to be true in all of Balanchine’s ballets. It was never just ballet as technique, which is at times (in my generation of dancers) mistaken for enough. But with Balanchine’s works, even if the ballet is technically virtuosic (like Theme and Variations), it’s always choreographed so musically that it reads as movement and not just as empty steps.

  In one of the most beautiful parts of the ballet, after Apollo
exhausts himself by dancing alone, the three muses, each clad in a pristine white pleated dance skirt, simultaneously clap their hands, then offer their hands as a pillow for him to rest his head. He is weary and winded. Four chords sound, each one a brief moment apart giving Apollo an instant to raise his head just slightly off their hands. Chord. Head. Chord. Head. One by one. On the final chord he raises his hand in the air as if reaching to his father high above the skies. In the apotheosis, Apollo is summoned into ascension, to Parnassus, by his father, Zeus. Balanchine said that this is the point in the ballet when Apollo “hears his father calling.”

  There is very little to do technically, but the stillness and simplistic movement communicate in an enormous way. That is the purity of Apollo: so much depth behind each and every note and movement. Stravinsky and Balanchine created a masterpiece.

  I had just scratched the surface with my first Apollo. Each time I have danced it since then I have discovered some new avenue that allows me to explore his character more deeply than before.

  * * *

  THE MORNING AFTER my initial performance, with the buzz of a premiere settling into deep fatigue, a meeting was scheduled for the entire company after daily class. I schlepped into a small room in the theater with the other dancers, anticipating the usual details of an upcoming tour or other administrative logistics. Kevin opened the meeting. “Well, there isn’t really anything else on the agenda except that I would like you all to help me congratulate David Hallberg on becoming the newest Principal of ABT.”

  In an instant, the room exploded with applause. All eyes shot over to me, at the back of the studio, where I had been hunched over wearily in my postclass sweat. There were beaming smiles everywhere. I was stunned.