A Body of Work

by David Hallberg

  It was a two-week crash course. He hurled information in my direction faster than I could absorb it. With Yuri’s dynamic coaching I became immersed in Siegfried. Over and over we would review the variations, the preparations, the toes, the fingers, the head, the accents. Every movement and gesture was corrected. I felt, once again, like the pupil responding to Mr. Han’s commands. Repeating one step endlessly until it was deemed good enough that I could move on to the next.

  I had to trust that the deeper I dove into work with Yuri, the greater the end result would be. As the performance neared, there was nothing to do but trust that the work I had put in, the devotion and commitment of the past two weeks, would pay off onstage when I needed it to.

  * * *

  I HAD A new partner, Ekaterina Kondaurova, a tall, sensual Russian. It was also a new production of Swan Lake for me, with new passages to learn. Many well-known ballet figures attended the performance; among them was Sergei Filin.

  There are dancers who thrive when the pressure is at its highest, dancing better than they have in any previous rehearsal, stunning the audience with their risks. I was never one of those dancers. I respond to methodical and repetitive work, which develops over the course of a slow process. I knew this more than ever before after my Swan Lake with Mariinsky. I felt reincarnated onstage, with new shadings and attack. It was as if it were the first time I had ever danced that familiar role with which I had become bored and disillusioned. It reminded me that I needed to find that spark wherever I danced.

  I had left each coaching session with Yuri exhausted, unable to do another step. He had worked me to my core, wringing out each and every nuance. Our intense work in the studio meant even more to me than being on the stage. I was a creature of the studio. Was this the last time I would work with Yuri? We had a unique rapport that I cherished. It was harrowing to think of letting go of what I had so desperately searched for in a coach and finally found.

  Yet I couldn’t escape the fact that Sergei’s offer had come at such a fitting moment in my career. Maybe it really was that much-desired “risk” that I craved.

  CHAPTER 22

  When I returned to New York, the only people who knew about Sergei’s offer were Alexei; my manager, Peter Diggins; and a very few people in my inner circle. I needed it to remain intensely private so I could make as clear a decision as possible, on my own terms and not clouded by everyone else’s opinions. Were I to make the move, I would be walking away from everything familiar: my friends, the city, the English language, my apartment, the foods I like having in the fridge, my own bed. I wouldn’t have my Sunday New York Times routine with breakfast at my local diner where everybody knew my name.

  On the other hand, it would be a move that was big, that was bold. Among other things it would give me something I deeply wanted: many more opportunities to dance with Natasha.

  * * *

  I SPENT WEEKS mulling it all over. There was one half measure available to me: I could go to Bolshoi as a Guest Artist. But I knew all too well what guesting entails. As a Guest Artist, you come into the company, work with the dancers for a finite period of time, perform, and the next day you leave. No matter how much you dance there, you never have the chance to become part of that company’s culture. The dancers may welcome you warmly, but you remain an outsider. Guesting had almost always left me craving more substance from the experiences.

  Joining the Bolshoi would allow me to make a real commitment, as I had with ABT at the beginning of my career. I would integrate myself into the Bolshoi culture. I would put in the time it takes to become a part of it. I’d be looking from the inside out and not the other way around. A commitment like that seemed more fulfilling in the long run.

  * * *

  I NEEDED TO share the news with Kevin. I was apprehensive when I sat across from him in his office overlooking Nineteenth Street. I needed his honest advice about the offer. I always needed that from him, the harshest truth, even if it stung.

  He listened. Then he responded in his usual calm and rational way. His reaction was incredibly generous. He could easily have been annoyed or angered that I was even contemplating this proposal, which would inevitably affect the amount of time I could spend with ABT. But he didn’t try to persuade me one way or the other, he just asked questions and told me to not think emotionally.

  “Think realistically,” he said. “You have to listen to yourself and decide what is going to bring the most fulfillment.”

  I left his office feeling no more resolved in either direction but fortified by the reassuring sense that Kevin would be in my corner no matter what.

  * * *

  I DREADED TELLING Yuri about the Bolshoi offer. I kept putting off calling him in St. Petersburg, fearful of how he would feel and what he would say. When I finally steeled myself to place the call, it killed me that he sounded so happy to hear from me. Pacing my apartment, I told him what Sergei had proposed and that I was seriously considering it. He listened quietly. When I finished talking, his first statement was “You are not a Bolshoi-style dancer. You have the Mariinsky style.”

  He asked whether this meant I would be a guest with the Bolshoi or a full-time company member. When I hesitatingly said I would be the latter, he said what I already knew: it just wouldn’t be possible for me to dance with both.

  The disappointment in his voice was unmistakable. That was what troubled me the most. I knew my life and career were shifting. But I did not know which way to go. I cherished my relationship with Yuri. The prospect of disappointing him, or of turning down Sergei, paralyzed me.

  * * *

  THE NEXT WEEKS were a haze of stress, anxiety, insomnia, tears, elation, exhilaration. I had wanted something to shake me to the very core of my being. And I had gotten it. I would start the day with the thought of conquering a world of which I knew nothing, and finish the day in complete fear of it. And then there was my litany of what-ifs: What if the offer never fully solidifies? What if I imagine it to be something it is not? What if all the dancers see me as this usurping outsider? What if I never make friends? What if I risk nothing, stay in New York, and regret my decision? But above all others: What if all my talk of wanting a risk was fraudulent and, deep down, what I really wanted was the life I had created in New York City over the years that encompassed familiar places and customs and happiness with friends?

  As the weeks stretched on, I came no closer to a decision. My friends noticed a change in me. I was closed off and distant. Some confronted me, noting that I wasn’t smiling or engaging with anyone. I was adamant that few people know about my pending decision, which made it even harder to properly communicate with friends.

  The offer Sergei had made was an honor. Not a stress. But the prospect of changing my entire life was the ultimate stressor.

  Each day I would bounce from one decision to the other: Go to Moscow. Stay home.

  * * *

  IT IS OFTEN said that artists must make sacrifices for their calling. The word “sacrifice” implies that we give up something important to possibly gain something else. In literal terms, yes, that’s what happens. Once I began dancing I gave up the possibility of a normal childhood and life. I hadn’t seen my family with any regularity since I was seventeen, missing Christmases, Thanksgivings, birthdays, family reunions. When I was training late into the night for four years before that, I would miss family dinner every weekday evening and instead eat a microwavable dinner on the hallway floor at Ballet Arizona. But I never regarded any of this as sacrifice because there was no other choice. I had to dance. To follow that path. To see where it would lead. My curiosity and fascination with the art form took precedence over everything else. In that sense, what some would regard as sacrifice is, in my own private lexicon, a combination of duty and destiny. Which eventually turned into a responsibility.

  What, I wondered, is my responsibility to this art form? Talent is an unearned gift; but talent is also an obligation. One thing I truly did believe was that I was morally bou
nd to use whatever talents I had been given.

  As the days and weeks passed, one question kept reverberating in my mind: If this is the challenge you say you so need and want, then what is the hesitation?

  * * *

  I HAD CERTAINLY taken risks before. The risk that every dancer takes, in every performance, is to go onstage with thousands of people watching and execute ballet’s taxing steps. But then there are the dancers who go even further, who dance with a commitment and abandon that allows them to enter another realm where the risks are so heightened that the outcome can only be dazzling success or degrading failure. Those are the dancers I look to for inspiration, as I have always wanted to be that kind of artist. Not the one who steps off the stage—as I sometimes have—just happy nothing was messed up or that he didn’t fall. The Bolshoi provided an opportunity to take a risk on an enormous platform.

  In fact, I would not be the first American or foreigner to dance with the company. Michael Shannon, an American dancer, had spent years with the Bolshoi as a Soloist when the country was restructuring itself after the fall of the Soviet Union. The world was not as global then, and living in Russia would have been an even bigger risk for him than it would be for me.

  In interviews I had often said that art is risk taking and it’s the duty of the artist to chart unknown territory. I always knew that this wasn’t something I could just pontificate about. If I really believed it, I needed to act on it.

  I realized this one afternoon as I explained to a friend that my fear was deterring me from making a decision one way or the other.

  “You know why you are becoming so emotional about it all, don’t you?” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you know the answer and it scares you. You know what you need to do.”

  At that moment I recognized exactly what I “needed to do.” Not because it didn’t scare me to death but because it did.

  The decision to join the Bolshoi had been made. I wanted no regrets. I didn’t know who I would become. Whether it would be the best move for me in the long run. Or how it would end. And yet I knew, through my fear, that this was what I was craving and searching for. Finally, I was able to step into the unknown. And live up to the responsibility that I believed I owed the art.

  * * *

  MY MANAGER AND I were on the phone with Sergei the very next day at nine a.m., placing a call from the press lounge at the Metropolitan Opera House. The mood was ecstatic on both sides.

  “Welcome to Bolshoi Theatre!” Sergei said.

  But I hadn’t simply committed to a ballet company. The commitment was to change all aspects of my life in order to better my work. I would bring my knowledge of dancing, my years of being a professional at ABT. But I would also discover a style I knew nothing about, a style that wasn’t my training. Yuri was right: I had no “Bolshoi” in my dancing. Others in the ballet world, as I later learned, also thought I was more Mariinsky or Paris Opera; a more refined style with less fireworks. And that was precisely why it thrilled me to join the company. I planned to absorb their technique like a sponge, soaking in nuances of style that I hadn’t been exposed to previously.

  I would observe everything around me. Russian life and culture, the ballet world in Moscow, the people, the language. I fantasized about the moment when I could feel at home on the Bolshoi stage, when the audience would get to know me and there would be a rapport between us, much like the rapport I now shared, developed over years, with New York audiences.

  The one thing that was hard to live with was that I had disappointed Yuri. Yet I was certain that I had chosen the right path. I believed in living my artistic life to its absolute fullest. I was doing it. I was answering the call.

  CHAPTER 23

  The news was officially announced in Moscow and New York on September 22, 2011. A tidal wave of media came hurtling my way. I had no idea that people would care so much. The widespread curiosity about the move was astonishing. I was bombarded with requests. First, a mention in the arts blog of the New York Times. Then the whole story, first on the Times home page and the next day on the front page of the print edition. This is front page news? I asked myself. I was stunned seeing my image, jumping through the air, on the front page of the paper delivered to my door each morning.

  The article in the New York Times, written by the paper’s dance critic Alastair Macaulay and Daniel J. Wakin, viewed my move through a historical prism. It began, “Exactly 50 years after Rudolf Nureyev grabbed the world’s attention as the first major Soviet dancer to defect to the West, another symbolic journey is taking place—this time in reverse.”

  The other major defections from Russia had been those of Natalia Makarova in 1970 and Baryshnikov four years later. But since the end of the Cold War, many Russian dancers had performed in the West; Natalia Osipova, Nina Ananiashvili, and Vladimir Malakhov were among those who had done so as ABT Principals. It had been different in the nineteenth century, when Russian ballet was coming into its own and routinely imported the finest dancers from Italy and France, not least among them the Frenchman Marius Petipa, who would become known as “the father of classical ballet.”

  But over the course of the last hundred years, Russia had rarely engaged Western dancers. It was said they didn’t need them, that the exquisite training in Russia produced all the dancers they required. That made sense to me.

  Boundaries or no, I was still an American dancer joining a Russian company. Some would find much to criticize in that fact. American ballet doesn’t always receive the recognition it deserves. Some believe it’s devoid of history and refinement. While it’s true we lack the historical roots of other balletic lineages, America still produces world-class ballet dancers, and has done so for decades. In the interviews I gave, I spoke about the responsibility I felt as a representative of American ballet. I told the Times, “I have to do it justice.”

  * * *

  MY FINAL PERFORMANCES before my move to Moscow were in California, dancing in a presentation called Kings of the Dance. I geared myself up to bid a momentary farewell to American audiences. My parents came to the shows. They were never short of support for what I felt I needed to do, and moving to Moscow was no exception. Naturally it scared them a little. But so had my move to Paris.

  I knew what awaited me in a few days’ time on the other side of the world. I would dive into the work. Force myself to acclimate quickly to a style and city unknown to me. I would simply work, more focused than ever before. The pressure waited for me. The angst and indecision were gone. My nerves were beginning to feel like steel. Impenetrable.

  So I was hoping to enjoy these last few days in sunny California, dancing in a performance with colleagues with whom I loved sharing the stage. Marcelo Gomes from ABT. Guillaume Côté from National Ballet of Canada. Denis Matvienko from Mariinsky. And my new colleague from Bolshoi Theatre, Ivan Vasiliev. It would be my last experience of a pleasurable, relaxed atmosphere in repertoire that didn’t hold to the rigid traditions of classical ballet.

  * * *

  NATALIA MAKAROVA ATTENDED the opening night at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County. As I had discovered when she’d critiqued my dismal rehearsal of La Bayadère, she was always prepared to offer an unvarnished opinion.

  When I was told she had made a special trip from her home in the Napa Valley to see the Kings show, it immediately brought me to attention. I did not feel ready for Natasha. I had just gotten off a flight, and prior to it had packed up and closed my apartment in anticipation of the looming Moscow move. I was not in shape to dance in front of someone as knowing and eerily exacting as Natasha.

  The ballerina Paloma Herrera had a great way of describing a show that was nothing to write home about. When asked, “How did it go?” she would simply say, “It went.” And that night, thanks to jet lag and lack of sleep, my show “went.” Natasha came backstage afterward and basked in the worshipful attention bestowed upon her by all of the dancers.

  I was eager to
have a moment alone with her. Ever since the decision and subsequent announcement of my move to the Bolshoi, I had blocked out most opinions. But the viewpoint I had been most curious about was that of a Russian dancer who had defected to the West. I wanted to know how she felt about my moving to the land she left years ago. Would she regard it as a mistake?

  She invoked nerves in me whenever we met up, in the studio or out of it. She affectionately pinched my ribs as we all sauntered offstage together, en route to our dressing rooms. “I’m so tired of reading about you in the Russian newspapers,” she said.

  I laughed nervously.

  I told her that I had reservations about the Russian press because what I said could get lost in translation and give the wrong message. But she assured me that all was relatively positive; my decision coming across as rational and well thought-out.

  Later, when we were seated next to each other at dinner, she noted that she had been twenty-nine when she defected. I was at the perfect age, she said, to make a move like this. She too had been in the prime of her career when, as I was about to do, she’d launched into something about which she knew so little.

  “But I never regretted it,” she said to me. “It was the greatest move of my life. I see many parallels between my situation and yours. You are at that moment in your career when you are young enough but you know what you are doing. And this is a risk you will never regret.

  “Don’t try to be like the Bolshoi. Show the Bolshoi who you are. You have nothing to prove. Show them something different.”

  I took her words to heart. She could relate to what I was about to experience. And she said the words that I longed to hear: “You will never regret it.”

  * * *

  THE PERFORMANCES IN California finished and the time to leave for Moscow had finally arrived. I dreaded that moment when I would hug my parents and say goodbye. But dread was laced with eagerness to hone in on what was offered to me.