A Body of Work

by David Hallberg

  But as I signed their programs, something didn’t feel right. And I eventually became aware of what I was actually signing. They all kept pointing with their pens to Ethan’s picture. It made total sense then. They weren’t going crazy for me, the pirate at the back of the stage. They were going crazy for the lead pirate, who at times looked like my doppelgänger. Blond hair. Blue eyes. All signs pointed to me being him. I panicked, refusing to sign his picture. I sheepishly tried to sign the opposite blank page instead, pointing to his image and saying “It’s not me,” to no success. I’ll never forget the look of disappointment on their faces.

  Why wouldn’t Ethan sign his picture? they thought.

  It was a moment when a common language would have instantly fixed the mix-up.

  * * *

  ON A RETURN trip to Tokyo years later, I convinced my family (as I had for Moscow) to come and witness Japan and its culture. I was a Principal Dancer by that point, and the crowds were asking me to sign my own picture. I had warned my parents about the fans in Tokyo.

  They are like no others, I had explained.

  My dad has always been very supportive of anyone who waits for an autograph and instilled in me, at a young age, that each of them deserves a moment of my time, a picture, a signature. As a crowd waited at the stage door in Tokyo, he made it very clear that I “must sign any and all autographs.” Which meant hundreds. As I walked out to meet my parents and the mob of fans, I saw my dad eyeing me, watching, waiting for me to sign everyone’s program. He wouldn’t settle for less. Therefore I wouldn’t settle for less. Supporters of ballet, or of any art form for that matter, are what keeps it alive. If you cannot connect with them, not only on the stage but after the show, then you are turning away from the very people who make it possible for you to express your passion. My dad’s attitude is something I have carried throughout my career. The reason you are there is because of them, I always hear him saying.

  * * *

  CUBA IS ANOTHER country where ballet has a huge and fervent following. When ABT went to Havana in 2010 for the first time in fifty years, it seemed as though the whole country was waiting to see us perform. After baseball, ballet is the thing Cubans love most. As one would expect from a Latin country, this makes for highly audible audiences that cheer endlessly and whose loud shouts of “Bravo!” throughout the show are pronounced with a rolled r that makes them seem all the more emphatic.

  The Cuban passion for ballet was made abundantly clear to me as I hopped in a taxi to head to the theater before a performance. The driver, eager to practice his English, asked the normal questions of where I was from and what I was doing in Havana.

  “I’m here performing with American Ballet Theatre,” I told him.

  “Oh, my friend!” he said. “It is such an honor to have a ballet dancer in my taxi. Welcome to Cuba. I will watch you tomorrow night on the television. Your performance will be live across the country.”

  He asked if I knew Alicia Alonso, the most celebrated Cuban ballerina ever, who danced with ABT in the 1940s. I told him that ABT had been invited to take part in the twenty-second International Ballet Festival of Havana and to honor Alonso’s ninetieth birthday. I was thrilled to be dancing Balanchine’s Theme and Variations for the celebration because Alonso was the ballerina on whom Balanchine had created the leading role in 1947.

  * * *

  ON OUR FREE day after our arrival, class was scheduled at the National Ballet of Cuba for whoever wanted to take it. I knew the atmosphere of the studios would be something I couldn’t miss. Something uniquely Cuban. This company had made its global mark on the ballet world, training its own style of dancer, and the studios I entered, housed in a large Spanish colonial–style building in the heart of Havana, were where Cuban ballet was born. They were completely run-down, but much like the feeling of Bolshoi Theatre, they showed their proud and significant history. Wood was still used as the flooring in the studios, instead of the more standard Marley. A large, decaying staircase dominated the middle of the building. Out-of-tune pianos echoed in the hallways. There were no water fountains anywhere. It had a rich, wonderfully unique texture.

  The building buzzed with dancers and fans milling about. Many came to observe class, with a large group of onlookers filling the doorways of the studios and sitting in the balconies perched above the room. The tropical climate kept my body warm and sweating from the first exercise. I stood at the barre close to a large open window, mentally recalling countless pictures I’d seen of this same room. “Studio Azul,” with its light blue walls, had huge stained-glass windows open to the street, lessening the stuffiness caused when fifty dancers crammed into it.

  A Cuban class is unique. It doesn’t start with the usual pliés followed by tendus. It starts with tendus and then pliés. The exercises are deliberate, strong, purposeful. There isn’t the finesse of a Paris Opera barre, with its elegant clarity. Class in Cuba is about strength and power. This is a huge part of what I relish as a touring dancer: the different styles, the altered approach to steps we perform universally, just done a different way.

  The meditation of barre, this daily series that we execute throughout our entire careers, can take many forms depending on where you are. I first experienced a wave of change when I trained in Paris. There, barre was fast, clear, and clean, and completely different from Mr. Han’s methodic work. A Russian barre usually lasts only half the time of the French but includes the same number of exercises, if not more. Whatever the culture or country, barre exercises reflect a particular style of preparing a dancer for the center work and eventually a performance. It is paramount to their identity. To experience these diverse methods of training is to enrich your own technique and texture. The more you open yourself up to taking a class at the National Ballet of Cuba or at ABT in New York or at Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, the more choice you have in expressing how you feel as an artist. We all speak the same language. There is no right or wrong style.

  * * *

  MY FINAL TRIP in 2010 was a first-time visit to Australia, where I was scheduled to dance The Nutcracker with The Australian Ballet. I had eagerly accepted an invitation from the Artistic Director, David McAllister, to join the company as a Guest Artist. I felt a strong attraction to the Aussies. Somehow, I connected to them.

  Boarding the Sydney-bound flight, I imagined the next twenty-four hours of my journey to a country that I knew nothing about. I didn’t know the audiences, the people, the culture. It was more geographically remote than anywhere I had ever traveled. I had been dancing professionally for nearly a decade, and hadn’t been this excited about a destination in a while. After years of dancing throughout the world, from one-evening galas to a week’s-long guesting, I had become accustomed to the cities and countries I visited. But Australia was a faraway land yet to be discovered.

  I slept deeply on my evening flight, and woke just as the sun was peeking over the horizon as we approached Australia’s shores. I had landed in too many cities around the world to remember what each looked like when seen from so high above, but I’ll never forget the sight that unfolded when skimming the sky over Sydney. The harbor is its own unique wonder, bustling with boats, houses, and bridges connecting it all. But just at the tip of the land is the magnificent Sydney Opera House. It is unmistakable from the ground, but from the air it looks like a shore-bound shark, fins arching straight up toward the sky. More often than not you see a landmark in a photo before you actually lay eyes on it. Some thrill in their splendor when seen in person, while others disappoint. The Sydney Opera House and its surroundings, first viewed from fifteen thousand feet in the air, trumped all photos I had seen. Here was Australia! The fins of the Opera House spiked out like embracing arms, welcoming me, inviting me to experience the country’s culture. Then the beautiful image vanished as quickly as it appeared as we landed and I headed off to board a connecting flight to Melbourne, where I would be dancing.

  I had no idea at the time that this was the country I would seek out in a
few years when I was brought to the depths of loss and needed to be restored to physical and emotional life.

  * * *

  MANY DANCERS THROUGHOUT the world view Guest Artists with resentment. Guests fly in (usually without enough time to properly rehearse), perform, and then immediately leave, heading on to another company to do the same. Their presence often means that a full-time, hardworking company member is deprived of a leading role.

  This is hard on the dancers in any company, though it is, at times, unavoidable since audiences love to witness something new, and the addition of a foreign dancer tends to boost both ticket sales and excitement. That success, in turn, can create a culture of recurring Guest Artists stealing the limelight without having to do the work company members have put in. But if there are just one or two guests in an entire season, as there often are at Australian Ballet, it can inspire the company’s dancers and alter the way they view their work and performance. It can be more of an educational tool than an annoyance or a burden.

  * * *

  WHEN YOU ARE guesting, you find that every company treats you differently. Some are warm. Others don’t seem to care that you are there, remaining friendly but never penetrable. You can work for four or five hours during the day, then, as you finish up, you have no one to eat with, talk to, go out with. Being a guest artist makes for an isolated existence.

  The true Aussie spirit is kind, open, generous. There was a warm welcome for me on my first workday at Australian Ballet, with everyone on staff piling into the vast studio 8 to join in. It seemed like every dancer and member of the administration introduced themselves over the course of the first week.

  Still, on day one I was far more nervous than I let on. Internally, I was buzzing, wanting to make a good first impression. When I was younger, I would treat the first ballet class with the entire company as a proving ground, dancing full-out, knowing that all eyes were peering my way. By this stage in my career, I had realized that it’s best to pace myself. To let things settle. Feel the atmosphere. Calm the anxiety. Don’t blow it out all in one class.

  The first few days I tell myself, Take deep breaths. Ground yourself and your mind. Never show off. You have nothing to prove . . . yet. Nerves, when not in conjunction with a performance, are wasted. You will deliver your best later, knowing that everyone is expecting something greater than the reality of what you can do.

  Greater than the reality. A thought that rankles when paranoia gets the best of me. Expectation is a double-edged sword. On one side, you can start to believe you’ll meet all expectations, which leads to ego, which can lead to ruin. On the other side, there’s nothing more dispiriting than failing to deliver what the audience expects of you. I have seen the disappointment on people’s faces when I haven’t performed as they imagined I would. It can paralyze me, make me cower. In other words, managing my own and other people’s expectations makes for a tricky game no matter how I play it.

  * * *

  AFTER THREE WEEKS of rehearsal for The Nutcracker, it was time for a dress rehearsal in the theater. Each theater has its own aura. State Theatre at the Arts Centre Melbourne had a feeling of lush grandeur. Although Sydney Opera House is an icon, the interior houses a minuscule stage and concrete bunker–like lobbies and dressing rooms. State Theatre in Melbourne is the nation’s best, its treasure. Cloaked with a red curtain with gold leaf threading, it looks appropriately grand.

  On the day of the dress rehearsal, the pianist and ballet mistress waited onstage. I was in my pink costume. Pink? Why bright pink? I wondered.

  Along with becoming acquainted with the stage and the lights, I was also making last-minute adjustments to the costume. If a costume doesn’t fit perfectly, it makes everything more difficult, from lifts to jumps to breathing.

  My partner warmed up as well, testing out steps. Kirsty Martin was a radiant ballerina with brown hair and almond-shaped brown eyes. She too was in costume. A huge tutu, for such a small ballerina.

  Two minutes after we began dancing, Kirsty slipped. We stopped, both of us surprised by how slick the floor was. We started again, this time more tentative and shaky. Again, Kirsty slipped. This was not going the way we imagined. We started for a third time. In a simple glissade to arabesque, Kirsty rose up on pointe. She hit an angle on the outside of the tip of her shoe. Her ankle twisted. She shrieked in shock. In pain, she fell to the floor and grabbed her foot.

  “Oh no. Oh no!” I could hear the despair in her voice.

  She sat there, welling up in tears, holding her foot tight, in panic, crying, I could do nothing but stand beside her, speechless, in my pink costume. The last three weeks of hard work, during which we had incrementally built a fine rapport, flashed through my mind. I wanted to help her in whatever way I could, so I quickly ran to find the physical therapist, whose office was outside the theater, across the street, at the company’s studios. She raced back with me to attend to Kirsty, who was now lying on the State Theatre stage, her foot clearly sprained, swollen right where she twisted it.

  I threw her on my back and carried her to the studios. It made for a ridiculous sight we would laugh about later: me in that bright pink costume and gray tights piggybacking her with her sprained foot and big pink tutu.

  * * *

  THANKFULLY IT WAS a minor sprain. The mind is our most powerful tool in moments like those, a truth I would get to know all too well during my lowest moments of injury. There is a fork in the road. One way leads to a downward spiral. You succumb to the accident and let it envelop you, making it that much harder to climb back up the ladder to where you were before.

  The other path is the one Kirsty chose: to will yourself to push on and achieve what you’ve worked for and planned. It requires fighting the odds. Calming the mind. Pushing forward. She was back in action in four days.

  * * *

  THE USUAL NERVES kicked in twenty-four hours before my premiere with The Australian Ballet. Continual support from all dancers in the company, including opening-night flowers, cards, and “chookas”—a word for good luck in Aussie—reassured me that I belonged. I was part of their clan. Their ballet clique. But even so, there came the worry. The doubts. The pressure. Inwardly, I recited my usual mantra: Don’t fuck this up.

  After my first entrance, I caught sight of the other dancers in the wings watching me. Interested. Suddenly I was calm. The buildup beforehand is when the doubt really attacks, coming on in waves through my entire body. But once I’m onstage, there is no return, no time to question. I have to present. The Australian dancers’ generosity inspired me to share, to give back, to connect with them, to learn from them. And so we all went on the ride together. And we brought the audience with us.

  * * *

  DURING THE BOWS, I felt a sense of unity with the entire company. Not like a Guest Artist, dropping in and taking a role, but a part of the company’s bigger picture, a cog in a wheel that would roll on grandly without me, but which I was integral to for the moment. Then, it was over. The applause and congratulations subsided. I showered. Shed the costume. Left the theater. And I went out to eat. Alone.

  * * *

  AFTER FOUR WEEKS with The Australian Ballet, my friendships there were deeper than those I usually established when guesting. Still, a dancer’s life is filled with contradictions. There are the worldly destinations, new cultures, and different companies, all of them fascinating, inspiring, and challenging. But then there’s that pervasive solitude. The return to being by yourself. To passing time. Going from one city to the next, sometimes for many weeks in succession.

  I have learned what to do with my hours of idleness. I love discovering a new museum, restaurant, café. I like to get lost in the streets and tune in to the specific beat of a city, balancing those wanderings with my routine.

  Overall, I had become a pro at travel. I didn’t let living out of a suitcase bother me. I packed minimally and grew accustomed to new cities quickly. To hotel rooms and their sterile cleanliness. The essential sameness of every ball
et studio and its stale, sweaty smell. The espresso that tastes the same in every part of the world. Ultimately, my surroundings didn’t matter. I was in a city to do a job, and being alone was part of the nonnegotiable price paid for my calling. The only thing that really mattered was what happened in between those solitary moments, when I was rehearsing or performing.

  * * *

  AS I WRITE this, I am alone in Melbourne once again, this time to remedy the injury that has plagued me for too long. I can’t perform. I won’t have the sold-out house. The gifts and “chookas.” The stress and the thrill of dancing. The doubts about my own ability to rise to the occasion.

  I am experiencing a different sort of loneliness here: the kind that comes with deep depression. Because this is a different moment of doubt. Not one that lasts a few hours and ends in applause. This is more dire. Desperate, even. The question now is, Will the time I devote here result in my being able to dance again? Or will I have to accept that I’ve reached the end of a fulfilling, dearly loved career?

  Just as if I were here for a series of performances with Australian Ballet, I arrived alone and will leave alone. But what happens this time, in between those solitary moments, will determine my future as a dancer.

  CHAPTER 18

  I went to Washington, DC, in February 2011 because the Mariinsky was performing there. I was eager to take class with the company and to work with Yuri again. There is a unique air about the Russians. After all, the classical ballets were created in Russia. You can understand why they believe ballet belongs to them. That ballet everywhere else pales in significance. So it is not the most comfortable situation to be an American, the sole foreigner, in a room full of Russians taking morning class. I had not forgotten what happened at school in Paris. How I was shunned for the whole year. I was determined not to make the same mistake twice. Never again would I beg for the approval of my colleagues.