A Body of Work

by David Hallberg

  Once we aligned these different versions, we could do nothing but leave the outcome to the universe. I had no expectations about the performance. No feeling that this would be the spark of something more lasting. The performance would either take off and be a memorable experience or it would go in the memory bank alongside other Giselle performances, and each of us would go our separate ways, dancing with other partners.

  * * *

  I HAD NONE of my usual preshow nerves leading up to the performance. It was pure excitement. I was a horse chomping at the bit, waiting inside the gate. Usually the familiar doubt and fear and dread would creep in a full day before, especially for an important show like this. The usual I can’t do this. I’m going to fuck this up. I can’t handle the pressure. I wish it were just over and done with.

  This time, I had nothing like that roller coaster. There was pure adrenaline pumping through me. I knew the ballet well enough to feel comfortable in it. And I could sense the anticipation from all around. The dancers. The audience. The New York dance world. I could feel the energy of expectation through the closed curtain. The audience was ready, and I was ready for whatever Natasha would throw my way.

  In Giselle, or any full-length ballet I dance, when the overture starts with the curtain down as other dancers heed the stage manager’s call to places, I always stay onstage for a moment alone. It’s then that I dive mentally into the performance. I close my eyes, feel the floor with my feet, the perspiration on my forehead. Once I’m calm and present, I open my eyes and view an empty stage. I look at the vast curtain. The sets. The dancers peering onstage or warming up in the wings. The stage manager in the front wing about to signal the opening of the curtain. I feel a rush of adrenaline, and the first sound of the strings propels me into the evening. Always, I remain onstage until the very last moment before the curtain rises. I draw energy from the music, the hushed audience, the story I am about to portray, the ballerina I am about to dance with.

  On this occasion, the ballerina and I were on our first date. Anything was possible. The prospect was equally unnerving and arousing.

  * * *

  JUST BEFORE THE curtain went up, I looked apprehensively at Natasha, who was standing in the wings. She seemed preoccupied, disconnected from me as her partner. Understandably nervous. She could certainly feel the anticipation from the audience, the buildup to her debut with ABT. I wondered what would transpire once we got onto the stage together. Would we connect and create something unique, capture the moment and live up to the anticipation? Or would she be too nervous to connect to what I would give her? There was nothing I could do but wait and see.

  * * *

  ALBRECHT COMES ONSTAGE before Giselle. He makes a mad dash down a ramp from the back of the stage with a cloak flowing behind him as he moves to center stage. He is there to woo Giselle, and goes boldly to her house to knock on the door—the famous knocks, choreographed perfectly to the music. The applause upon my entrance was strong. When I first enter for any role that traditionally has “entrance applause,” I can always feel whether the audience is primed and ready or a bit lax. That night they were at attention, eager to witness Natasha’s brilliance, the applause purposefully direct. The feeling that coursed through me was that enlivening sense of being on the brink of an unknown discovery. I fed off that applause. It energized me, fueling my own anticipation of Natasha’s entrance.

  At the start of Act I, Albrecht’s purpose is to convince the shy country girl Giselle to come outside and dance. After he knocks, he hears her coming and hurries behind the house, hiding from her. In one of the most iconic entrances for the ballerina, Giselle opens the door and steps onstage. Natasha’s entrance was greeted by loud, supportive applause. She bounded in a circle, suspending herself in the air looking for whoever was knocking. As she is searching, Albrecht sneaks toward her as she literally bumps into him. The moment we locked eyes, I knew how the whole evening would unfold. Our individual energies bound together. We became a unified breath. She was completely different than in rehearsal. She was vulnerable. Fragile. Yet at the same time, she radiated, like the force of the purring engine of a race car. I felt like I could reciprocate her energy, as opposite as we were. I had no choice but to respond to her presence. All preconceived reactions and thoughts went out the window. It was electric. Even if I wanted to dance the way I always had, I couldn’t. Her force was too strong.

  So I chose to react. I chose to lose everything I thought I knew about Albrecht and his love for Giselle. I went on the ride with her. Ups and downs. Curves and loops. I surrendered, every bit as enthralled with her as the audience was.

  * * *

  THIS BEING OUR first date, I didn’t know how she would react to something I gave her, and she didn’t know what my response would be. Our interaction became alive and spontaneous. Even a simple gesture, like when Albrecht asks Giselle to dance with him, created a moment in which she gazed so intently at me, then responded as if this was the most exciting but intimidating proposal she’d ever received. In everything she did there was complete belief and conviction.

  As the evening progressed we fed more and more off each other. She pushed me further and further into uncharted territory. Her energy was so intense and consuming that at times I felt overpowered. Like I was just trying to keep up. I had to dance at my absolute fullest to meet the challenge of dancing with her. She reached such heights technically that I had to go far beyond anywhere I’d ever been.

  Her interpretation, her attack, awed the audience. She took the smallest variation or step beyond usual notions of what it could or should be, imbuing it with her personal sense of how it can be done. Her Giselle was completely unique even down to the placement of the arms.

  Her movements all came from within herself. Her performance was completely true and honest. Any art is subjective: you could love it or hate it, seeing it as a breaking down of a noble heritage or a reinvention of meaningful standards for our generation. Some thought it too much, but what I found on the stage, dancing with her side by side throughout the entire evening, made me rethink how far I could push myself both artistically and technically.

  I had danced with partners who had their own distinct artistry before, but in those instances I often worried that I was being dishonest in my individual approach to dancing and acting. I felt like I was wearing someone else’s clothing that didn’t quite fit. But dancing with Natasha was totally different. She trusted me. She emboldened me. I didn’t give her what people told me to (arm here, reaction there). I just observed her. I watched her artistic choices, her ability to express a character’s emotions as if she were truly living them. Those observations informed what was possible for me. For the first time, I felt like I wasn’t acting. My emotions flowed abundantly and naturally. It was a revelation and an awakening. A spark had been ignited. I realized I had to be my own dancer. Natasha opened my eyes to artistic freedom achieved with integrity and purpose and commitment.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT, NATASHA captivated the New York audience. The performance was also the beginning of our tender, undeniable connection. Though we are different dancers with such different temperaments, somehow we came together as one, our disparate natures blending into the proverbial whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Following that performance with Natasha, I understood more deeply than ever before why I dance: for those transcendent moments of truth and the hope of creating them.

  Once you have experienced that onstage euphoria, you hunger for it. Yet you have to accept that it is as rare as it is precious.

  * * *

  MONTHS LATER, I was boarding a flight to Moscow to dance another Giselle with Natasha, this time at the Bolshoi Theatre.

  Before I left, Irina Dvorovenko, the ballerina I had partnered in Symphony in C a few years before, gave me some advice, telling me to just do my own thing and stay strong. The Bolshoi, she said, is a hard company to dance with as an outsider. They are extremely critical; they might eat me alive. It
was a daunting warning, and it stayed with me all the way to Moscow.

  * * *

  I HAD PERFORMED at the Bolshoi once before, in 2004, at a gala where Michele and I danced “Grand Pas Classique.” That invitation had come from Damian Woetzel, a long-standing Principal Dancer with New York City Ballet, who had put together a small troupe of American dancers to perform at the Bolshoi Theatre for an American Gala Evening. It was my first gig with dancers from other companies whom I had always looked up to.

  It had been a dream back then to be going to the historic Bolshoi Theatre. I recalled images from videos I had seen as a young boy of the theater’s dancers, performing on what I would soon come to regard as that intimidatingly enormous stage.

  I thought, This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment. I was sure I would never have the chance to dance on that stage again. So I coerced my parents into traveling to Moscow to watch the performance. They needed to experience it as much as I did.

  Russia was like nothing I had imagined. By first impression, I found Moscow to be an intimidating city. Enormous ten-lane streets were edged by Soviet-era buildings, brutalist and imposing concrete bunkers that seemed to provide a harsh corrective to the fanciful edifices topped off with multicolored domes that dominate Red Square.

  While other theaters in the world are at times dwarfed by their surroundings, Bolshoi soared above the rest. Even from the exterior, one got the sense of its importance and purpose. Today, this massive mecca of ballet and opera is the color of cream, with gargantuan Roman pillars on its facade. And at the top, looking down to the Kremlin and all of Moscow, is Apollo, the god of music, standing on his chariot with four horses rearing before it. My appreciation of this theater’s majesty never subsided, even years later when it had become my second home.

  But on my first trip there, Bolshoi Theatre had not undergone its huge renovation, and it was a far different place than it is now.

  Dancers and staff passed in and out of the stage door on Petrovka Ulitsa, the fabled door number 13. Inside, a surly old babushka held court, manning the door from behind a creaky desk. She treated anyone foreign to the theater like a terrorist who potentially threatened the very structure of Moscow’s cultural gem. After I proved my identity by presenting the proper ID, she then, conveniently, saw my name written in the guest log. Surprised to find it, she nonetheless muttered something under her breath. I imagined it to be “We’re watching you, young man.”

  Along with my American compatriots, I made my way into the well-worn maze under the stage. A soiled odor permeated the air. I recognized it immediately, having already been told about the legions of cats who live at the Bolshoi and the resultant stench of cat piss throughout. I assumed no one tried to get rid of them for they were a legend unto themselves. I never actually saw any of these cats, but I heard their screeching emanating through the walls, like the Bolshoi’s Phantoms of the Opera.

  We walked along corridors under the stage, then up old staircases, and found the dressing rooms. Each was ancient, comfortable, cozy, with dark wood lining the walls, a small table beneath a three-sided mirror with a few lightbulbs, and a closet. There was no modern flashy glamour like the Met Opera dressing rooms with their wall of mirrors, red carpets, showers, and chaise longues. But the Met, as prestigious as it is, didn’t have the feel of history these dressing rooms had. It was enchanting. The very first Siegfried, Victor Gillert, had prepared here in 1877 for the premiere of the first production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Gillert may have warmed up in the same room where I stood. You couldn’t ignore the weight of that history or the reverence that all of Russia had for this theater. It was their pride. Their blood.

  We Americans had no idea how we would be accepted by the Bolshoi dancers. Something, though, had occasioned their interest, because it seemed like every member of the Bolshoi Ballet was hovering in the wings, giving us stone-cold looks as we danced. What can feel like judgment to outsiders is really just the Russians’ way of interacting with anyone they don’t know personally. We were not their friends, but they watched with complete curiosity. Every company has different policies about people watching from the wings. ABT allows no one there except the performers. If a certain handful of dancers want to watch, they stand very far back, clearing the way for dancers to enter and exit the stage and, at times, bound into the wings at full propulsion.

  Bolshoi’s policy was the exact opposite. The dancers fought for the closest perch possible to the stage. They were in our way when we exited, leaping offstage and practically onto their laps. Some seemed to be inches from being exposed to the audience, just a thin black edge of a wing keeping them from view. They didn’t seem fazed by any of it and made no effort to accommodate the performers.

  We all thought this was rude, a way of enforcing that this was their theater and not ours. But in truth, it was their curiosity and interest that drew them, by the dozens, closer and closer to the stage. And there they stood, wide-eyed, watching.

  After the show I ran into Julio Bocca, then a virtuoso Principal with ABT, who was in Moscow to dance Don Quixote as a guest artist with the Bolshoi. I asked if this was his first time dancing with them.

  “No, no, many times before,” he replied.

  His answer impressed me. Being invited as a guest to this famed company was already a huge compliment, but being invited a second time provided the heartening affirmation that you had danced so well that they wanted you back. I pictured Bocca, one of the greatest dancers of his generation, being welcomed time and time again to the Bolshoi. I thought, I’ll never have that privilege of being invited to dance with this grand company.

  * * *

  FIVE YEARS LATER I was en route to Moscow to dance Giselle with Bolshoi Theatre. I was extremely intimidated at the thought of performing there. The company was huge, the audience educated and opinionated, the city cold. The pressure to deliver was on. But this time, I had Natasha at my side. I knew I could trust our partnership on this fearsome foreign ground. When the surrounding elements were overwhelming, I could look to her for support.

  The first time I took class with the company, there were about eighty of us in one small studio. I was warming up at a barre by the piano. Everyone eyed me as they walked in. I imagined them thinking, Who is this? Hallberg who? ABT?

  As class began, the teacher came over to me, took me by the hand, and led me to the center barre, already crowded with dancers. He said something in Russian, only to be met with hushed silence. Eventually I learned that at Bolshoi, Principal Dancers and Guest Artists use the center barre and nothing else. There is a protocol you must abide by. I respect that. It is the custom of the theater. The way it has always been.

  Though I had felt no sense of acceptance when I danced at the Bolshoi previously, this time it was different. I had been invited to dance there. With Natasha, no less.

  * * *

  NATASHA WASN’T AS guarded on her own turf. She wasn’t as distant or withdrawn. Revisiting Giselle together was a blissful reunion for us. It brought back memories of that evening when New York fell in love with her and we began our partnership.

  Given the connection Natasha and I had when we danced together at ABT, I had been wanting to experience again the euphoria we shared. That nonverbal connection demonstrated the founding assumption of ballet: that there is, at times, no need for words.

  * * *

  OUR PERFORMANCE WAS in conjunction with a festival honoring Vladimir Vasiliev, an astounding Bolshoi dancer who defined the Soviet style. The Bolshoi has two versions of Giselle: Vasiliev’s and another by Yuri Grigorovich, who, for thirty years, beginning in 1964, was the Bolshoi’s chief choreographer.

  I was to dance Vasiliev’s Giselle, a version that wasn’t much different from the ABT production I had previously learned. The only major change was the ending of the ballet. Most Giselles end with a solemn, chastened Albrecht, who repents his own fecklessness, which has led to Giselle’s death. The final act has such tender moments of pathos as Albrecht surrend
ers to his guilt, to his love for Giselle, and to the terrible recognition that he will be forever without her. But once Giselle has descended to her grave, Vasiliev chose to have Albrecht dance a huge manèges around the stage in an elaborate outpouring of emotion. I struggled with an ending that showed such an externalized show of angst and love for Giselle.

  Vasiliev’s personal character and his persona onstage fit this ending perfectly. He embodied expression in acting. Needless to say, I was obligated to finish the ballet in the way he wanted. He critiqued each step of a work I thought I knew. He never settled for my initial interpretation, gesturing and yelling corrections, most of the time in Russian, a translator trailing behind him. At times he would correct me in a way I couldn’t understand and the translator would turn to me and say, “More intensity.” My Lost in Translation moment.

  Vasiliev didn’t focus on how turned out you were in a step, how many pirouettes you did, how high your cabriole was. He insisted that you bring artistic integrity to the role.

  I had seen the same aesthetic priorities when I rehearsed La Bayadère with the Russian-trained ballerina Natalia Makarova, who had been a great star of the Kirov Ballet (now called the Mariinsky) and later ABT. She wanted my true convictions in professing Solor’s love to Nikiya. She wanted ethereality in the Shades scene, when Solor has a dream in which he envisions Nikiya after her death. The steps were hard, yes, but belief in the role was paramount. Both Makarova and Vasiliev demanded that I tell the story, believe the intentions of the character I was portraying, and emotionally connect with my partner and with the audience.

  One day when we were rehearsing Giselle’s death scene at the end of Act I, I flailed around the studio, desperate to gain Vasiliev’s approval. When I finished, on the ground, embracing the dead Giselle in my arms, he looked at me and dryly said, “Stanislavsky would have never believed you.”