A Body of Work

by David Hallberg

  It is a moment one never forgets. As if it were a movie flickering before my eyes, I envisioned the years of training in Phoenix, of nurturing a dream, and the endless work and focus that had gone into achieving goal after goal. Debut after debut. And so that very moment I’d always dreamed of had arrived, in the same theater where I saw ABT perform for the first time when I was sixteen years old. I sat there, looking around the room, awestruck and speechless. I could hardly take it in. I had done it. From obsessing over other dancers who had attained Principal status—Angel, Ethan, Vladimir—it had become a reality for me. With American Ballet Theatre. One never knows how one will react when a dream is realized. My subdued reaction surprised me and was purely shock. Internally I was screaming at the top of my lungs.

  Kevin came over to me and gave me a huge embrace. He had worked for this as much as I had. He had guided me, had been patient with my shortcomings and had nurtured me for years. He took his time and had given me opportunities when I was ready. He gave me room to fail, never pushing me too fast. I will always be grateful to him for his patience and watchful eye.

  * * *

  LATER THAT DAY I called Guillaume to tell him the news. He had left ABT the year before to be a ballet master at Dutch National Ballet. I’ll never forget what he told me.

  “Now is when the real work starts.”

  He was absolutely right.

  CHAPTER 14

  It seemed to me then that there was nowhere higher to climb. My first two years of being a Principal were intoxicating. I added more classical and contemporary work to my list of roles and each one was either a new challenge or a milestone. I wanted to make my performances consistently better, find a continual flow of inspiration, and give the audience something worthwhile to watch.

  Each new ballet required my full strength and attention and demanded that I maintain the highest degree of stamina and tenacity. If not, my work would suffer. Each role consisted of virtuosic steps created in the nineteenth century. I was never at ease with what they required of me. I needed intense bursts of energy for Albrecht in Giselle, cleanliness and regality for Prince Désiré in The Sleeping Beauty, and masculine weight for the warrior Solor in La Bayadère.

  As much as I loved dancing these illustrious ballets (and as much as they challenged me), I struggled to find an individuality in these roles, just as I had when dancing Siegfried.

  People had set ideas as to how I should perform each role. I heard a lot of “Do this.” “Not like that.” “That looks wrong.” “This is right.” “That’s too much.” “It’s not enough.” There was always the specter of those who had danced the role before, and usually better than yourself. You are told, “The greatest Prince in Swan Lake was Erik Bruhn.” “The greatest Solor in La Bayadère was Irek Mukhamedov.”

  There are dancers who are always evolving in the classics. Every rehearsal and performance seems as fresh as when they first danced it. I have watched in awe as they consistently plow through the same variation over and over with the same full commitment as in months or years past. I envied that drive to keep fresh what has been done before countless times.

  But for me, when the reverence for such important works faded a bit and the excitement of dancing these roles dimmed, I was left to find something of meaning and value in works that existed scores of years before I did.

  I never believed there is only one way to dance a role or that there is some particular way that is the gold standard. That’s why art is subjective, and why certain interpretations can be so controversial without being wrong. And I was convinced that I couldn’t make my mark on these roles with the weight of the past on my shoulders. I felt like I was just carrying the history of ballet forward, doing my part to maintain the traditions of the work. Like a prop doll, almost. Consistently, I found myself wondering how to break free of the chains that felt so confining.

  I was primarily cast as the Prince. A prince is regal. At times disconnected. And stiff. Usually looking for a life outside his own. I had a hard time relating to this man. Who was I in these roles? I didn’t feel like my true self as an artist. I felt like an interpreter. Or an imposter.

  * * *

  WHEN INSPIRATION FADES, an artist naturally looks for new sources of interest and stimulation. I began to explore an artistic world that existed outside of classical ballet. I ventured to small theaters in New York City like Judson Church and The Kitchen. I found a community of choreographers who created work that blurred the boundaries between modern dance, visual art, music, and theater. Their work was different from anything presented on the stages that I danced on. I had been sweating away in the ballet studio for years, deeply embedded in the beauty of that art form, when all this was happening in the same city. After a day’s rehearsals I would rush off by myself to a performance that bore little or no relation to my everyday work. The doors of creative inspiration flew open and I dove headfirst into educating myself. The audience was a different crowd altogether, who rarely, I soon learned, went to see anything “uptown.” “Uptown” was Lincoln Center, where I danced. “Downtown” was the community I was growing to love, appreciate, and find nourishment in. I would view these works and think about how I could incorporate this new, foreign environment into the one I directly inhabited. Was there anything in it that I could use to push my own art form further along? Because more and more I questioned the ballets I danced. Compared to this new sphere of work I viewed so enthusiastically, I found them lacking relevance for my generation. Watching the work of these choreographers turned my ideas of performance in a completely different direction.

  Lar Lubovitch, a choreographer with a deep respect for ballet and modern work alike, knew of my budding interest in other forms of dance and asked me one day what was to be my first ballet for the Met season.

  “Oh, just another Swan Lake,” I told him.

  He looked at me in shock and snapped back, “Don’t ever undermine your art form like that. Your art form is just as important as any others. One is not better than another.”

  I didn’t understand it then, but he was absolutely right.

  * * *

  I WAS NOT the only person who saw the traditional world of ballet and the world of modern, experimental dance as two entirely separate spheres. On the rare occasion that anyone recognized me, they would ask in disbelief what I was doing there. Why would someone from the ballet world come to the downtown dance scene? I was shocked by this closed-mindedness. Why wouldn’t I be there? Art is art, regardless of where it is presented. It seemed that members of each camp viewed the other with mockery. One evening, after a long day of rehearsals, deep in the creative process for Alexei Ratmansky’s new Nutcracker, I sat in a downtown theater next to a well-respected choreographer. She asked me what I was doing now at ABT.

  “Nutcracker,” I told her.

  She laughed. “Figures,” she said dryly.

  On the flip side, I became known at ABT as the one who goes to see “the weird stuff.”

  * * *

  I TRIED MANY times to forge connections with choreographers who deeply inspired me, hoping for a mutually beneficial collaboration or simply a dialogue. My efforts were usually met with disinterest. One exception was Jérôme Bel, a choreographer once described as “the naughty French philosophe of contemporary dance.” Jérôme is an original: intellectual, inquisitive, provocative, and comical. His work changed the way I thought about how dance is presented onstage.

  I first heard of Jérôme after he created a piece for the Paris Opera Ballet. Véronique Doisneau is an eponymous solo work for the then forty-two-year-old retiring Sujet in the company (the term “Sujet” meaning a dancer who is two rankings below the highest rank of Étoile). Jérôme stripped away all that defined the Paris Opera Ballet (the hierarchy, the set and costumes, the glamour) and created a verbal narrative work about Véronique’s career on the picturesque Garnier stage. Speaking directly to the audience, wearing plain rehearsal clothes, she explains (and at times dances) what it fe
lt like to be in the company as a Sujet. Her greatest moments. The roles she always wanted to dance. The roles she hated most. All in brutal honesty. She describes what she did before and during the White Swan pas de deux in Swan Lake, known as the Love Duet, which is performed by the “star” dancers.

  “One of the most beautiful things in classical ballet,” she tells the audience, “is the scene where thirty-two female dancers of the Corps de Ballet dance together. But in this scene, there are long moments of immobility, the ‘poses.’ We become a human decor to highlight the ‘stars.’ And for us it is the most horrible thing we do. Myself for example, I want to scream or even leave the stage.”

  Then, to the music for the pas de deux, she shows the audience exactly what she does during one of the most revered passages in classical ballet. She stands there, moving minimally at times, throughout it. Jérôme has the audience watch the entire seven minutes of motionless poses. Her demonstration showed me a completely different way of looking at ballet. It wasn’t just that ballet isn’t always beautiful and weightless. This pas de deux can be seen from a different perspective by someone in the same scene. Boiled down. Shown in its rawest form. Watching this on DVD in my apartment, I was moved to tears. It broke down all barriers of what is considered performance.

  * * *

  AFTER WATCHING THE film, I immediately sent Jérôme an email through his website explaining how much his work moved me and forced me to reconsider my own thoughts of dance. I expected nothing back. I had a response from him within two hours.

  How does a dancer from ABT know my work, he wrote, and why are you even interested in it?

  I’m curious about other ways of presenting dance, I wrote back, and your work has changed my perspective.

  At the end of the email I mentioned that if he ever had an interest in working with me or even discussing doing so, I would visit him in a heartbeat.

  * * *

  THAT INITIAL EXCHANGE began a year-and-a-half-long collaboration. I flew to meet him for the first time at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. He could sense my lack of fulfillment. A discontentment with the world I inhabited. Why else would I be searching outside its boundaries? We decided to work together on what would be a deconstruction of my career thus far, detailing my interests, my challenges, my critiques. We would present these issues to the audience in a narrative form, along the lines of Véronique Doisneau. I couldn’t wait to get started and hear his ideas about the world I loved and respected—but questioned all the same.

  * * *

  WE WORKED DURING intermittent free moments in our individual schedules. I flew to Paris. He flew to New York. Trip by trip we ironed out the structure of the piece and eventually created a very strong body of work. We spent our days mulling over the timing and pace. I felt pushed beyond my comfort zone. Each time I rehearsed, I found more honesty as I verbalized my critique of my own place in the ballet world. I talked about dancing the same pieces over and over again, about my inability to find my true self in characters created in the nineteenth century, about my longing to be a creator rather than an interpreter.

  “There isn’t enough conflict,” Jérôme suddenly stated one day, after a run-through in Paris of the semifinished product. I stared back at him, uncomprehending, having just poured out my rawest emotions in front of him.

  He demanded to know, why was I there with him? What was it in the ballet world that I didn’t like? And what was I so afraid to say?

  I told him that I had said everything I felt: I’d told him about feeling uninspired, insufficiently creative, and confined. I had been totally frank with him. But I could not convince him that I wasn’t holding something back.

  Jérôme kept probing for more conflict, more angst.

  It struck me that he wanted me to denounce this ballet world and the princes I played. I got the feeling that he regarded ballet princes—and, more to the point, those who dance them—as wooden and vapid and overpaid. It seemed that he wanted me to say something along those lines. Which I wouldn’t do. I didn’t believe it. Yes, I was there with him because of a certain dissatisfaction. But no, I would not denounce the art form that often gave me extreme fulfillment.

  * * *

  OUR PARTING THAT day was tense. We agreed to meet again the next day for lunch, but I knew, after the year and a half of work, that the collaboration had ended. I was devastated. I had had such hopes for it. It pushed me in such an intensely challenging way and made me try to find true answers to questions I continually asked myself. I still admired and respected Jérôme. But now that our connection was bruised I couldn’t wait to get out of Paris (once again), to get home. My attempt at reaching farther afield had amounted to nothing. I was left hungry with no new tastes to satisfy my craving. I needed and wanted more.

  But as it happened, what I required was right in front of me the entire time. I didn’t need to search the world for inspiration. I just needed to practice a little patience. In the form of new partners, I would find what I needed above all: a fresh, personal, deeper sense of purpose in my art form.

  CHAPTER 15

  I began dancing with Natalia Osipova in 2009. Natasha, as she is known, is petite, dark, mysterious, and private. One never really knows what is going on behind those eyes. She has a unique energy. You feel it the moment you meet her. It’s as if there is an idle pilot light within her just waiting for the right moment to blaze to life. I found watching her in the studio or on the stage to be equal parts inspiring and daunting: inspiring to witness the freedom of her expression and movement; daunting to know that if she could find that freedom in classical ballet, I myself had a lot of work and exploration before me.

  Natasha was a gymnast as a child, but an injury ended her early hopes. She began taking ballet lessons simply as a physical outlet, though she found it boring and sometimes even amusing. “It was really funny,” she once said, “to see boys in those tights.”

  But the more she danced, the more she enjoyed it. She was eighteen when she was given a contract at the Bolshoi Ballet, despite the harsh opinion of “purists” who insisted she wasn’t Bolshoi material. She was brought into the company by Alexei Ratmansky, at the time the Bolshoi’s Artistic Director.

  The first time I saw her dance was at a gala in New York. She performed the Flames of Paris pas de deux with the wunderkind Ivan Vasiliev. Watching from the wings, I thought her style was somewhat brash and too externalized. She was reaching for steps beyond what is asked of a ballerina: more turns in the air, higher jumps, more outward energy. It seemed to me that she lacked care for the purity of the work. But there was no denying the energy coming from within her. And the audience adored her. She excited crowds to a fervor you rarely see.

  At the Bolshoi, she climbed quickly up the ranks, seized the attention of the global dance world, and became an astounding dancer and an artist who had to do things in her own way. Not out of stubbornness or rebellion, but from an absolute necessity to express her honest feelings through her dancing and the roles she portrayed.

  Controversy ensued when she debuted the role of Giselle at the Bolshoi Theatre. Entrenched balletomanes thought she wasn’t the lithe, ethereal Giselle needed for that ballet. That she didn’t have the right temperament or physical attributes and couldn’t create the harmonious lines or express the fragility required for this iconic role. In other words, she wasn’t like the standard set by the ballet world and especially by the Bolshoi’s most revered ballerina, Galina Ulanova, the company’s prima ballerina in the 1940s and ’50s and its most beloved Giselle. But Natasha stood her ground, refusing to imitate her brilliant predecessor and follow (like a proper ballerina) the traditions imposed on her. It was a remarkable stance for a young dancer to take; even then, she knew who she was.

  * * *

  WHEN NATASHA MADE her debut in Giselle with American Ballet Theatre, she already had a worldwide reputation. New York balletomanes and ABT dancers had been stunned by videos of her performances, which evinced her excellent Bolshoi
training. The movement of her arms came from her back, finishing with soft, unforced hands and fingers. The quality of movement wasn’t academic, as some styles of dancing are. It was all about release, pure emotion originating from the core of her body and extending outward, in all directions.

  Originally another dancer was scheduled to dance opposite her in the role of Albrecht. But when he fell prey to an unfortunate injury days before her premiere, Kevin asked me to step in.

  * * *

  I WALKED INTO the first rehearsal feeling apprehensive. I thought she would surely out-jump me (she has one of the highest, lightest jumps in ballet). I felt she would certainly overpower me.

  I knew we would be mismatched. Physically and emotionally Natasha and I are opposites. She is tempestuous and passionate; I am subtle and restrained.

  We looked at each other and smiled as she continued to warm up around the studio, prancing back and forth as if she were preparing for a sprint. She seemed focused, a little nervous. Natasha and I had no common language, as she spoke absolutely no English. I spoke no Russian.

  Irina Kolpakova, who had been a legendary ballerina of the Kirov Ballet and then become a ballet mistress at ABT, rehearsed us with Kevin at her side. Natasha and I were both tentative and cautious. With a new partner, there is always a period of feeling each other out. We moved through the steps easily, trying to sense each other’s energy. There were certainly no fireworks from the start. It felt studious.

  I knew first off that I couldn’t rely on the version of Albrecht that I had previously performed. It wouldn’t fit with Natasha. She was too different from other ballerinas for me to give her what I had done previously. Therefore I made the decision early on to allow myself to feed off her instincts of character and movement. I couldn’t dictate what I would like from her; I had to sense her inclinations and meld them with mine. But time wasn’t on our side. We needed to find a certain level of rapport quickly, and, more important, we needed to work out the fundamentals of how we were going to dance together. She had nuances from the Bolshoi version she had danced and I had the ABT version for which Kevin had coached me.