A Body of Work

by David Hallberg

Whichever method I chose, when I had had enough I would go back to the banquettes and order more food and morse. The same cycle could be repeated for hours on end.

  * * *

  THE OTHER BATHERS soon learned that Semyon and I were Premier Dancers at Bolshoi Theatre. Telling men in a sauna that you are a ballet dancer might not go over so well in other parts of the world—including America—but it’s altogether different in Russia, where there is immense respect for ballet dancers in general and Bolshoi dancers in particular. As I went more frequently with Semyon, I got to know the sauna attendants. One of them, an exuberantly friendly man named Genia, became fascinated that I was an American dancing at Bolshoi Theatre. His face would light up when , “the American,” walked in. He would ask me, “What are you dancing? Who are you dancing with? Do you miss New York?”

  We would stand there, naked, chitchatting as well as we could. He spoke no English at all. I spoke minimal Russian at best. So we tried to converse in Russian. I would understand about half of what he was saying, and at times we would have the awkward blank stare, neither of us having any idea what the other had said.

  Eventually, Genia mustered up the nerve to ask me for tickets to one of my shows. For many people in Russia, going to Bolshoi Theatre, a place of pride for any Russian, is an unattainable dream. I could sense that Genia had wanted to ask me this for some time but was too shy or modest to ask a favor of someone he barely knew. He explained to me that it would soon be Woman’s Day in Russia and it would be very nice if he could take his girlfriend to a performance. Something special for her on her day. It was an endearing request and I told him that I would try to figure something out.

  When I came to Sanduny with the tickets for Swan Lake, large red strips reading , Bolshoi, in big gold lettering, Genia couldn’t contain his excitement. Like many Russians, he had been told as a child that maybe one day, instead of watching Bolshoi on TV, he could actually see a live performance, at the historic theater. I had never witnessed such gratitude for the opportunity to attend a show. It gave me as much fulfillment to give Genia those tickets as receiving the tickets gave him. I can only imagine how proud he was to give them to his girlfriend for Woman’s Day.

  * * *

  THE MONDAY FOLLOWING Genia’s visit to the Bolshoi, my reputation at Sanduny had instantly changed. Genia had come back to work and told everyone that he had seen Swan Lake with Svetlana Zakharova and that I had danced the Prince. Now that they had connected me with Bolshoi Theatre, which they had fantasized about since they were little kids, I had, in a way, become a childhood hero come to life. As an American, whose own childhood imagination had run to heroes like John Elway of the Denver Broncos (even while idolizing Fred Astaire), I was astonished to see them with such deep respect for a ballet dancer. What Genia, and so many others at Sanduny, felt about ballet deepened my understanding of Russian culture.

  CHAPTER 32

  Giselle, which I first danced with Natasha, would become the ballet I performed the most at Bolshoi Theatre. As a company member I would dance the Grigorovich version and get to know it intimately. Most intimately with Svetlana.

  The leading character of Albrecht is young and feckless. He is a nobleman who spots Giselle, a naive peasant girl, and quickly becomes smitten. The ballet takes place centuries ago, when class divides were rigid. For Albrecht, courting Giselle is impossible, so he masquerades as a country boy named Loys. He sees little consequence in his flirtations. But Giselle falls passionately in love with Albrecht. She discovers his deception only when his fiancée, Bathilde—a beautiful noblewoman—arrives unexpectedly in her village with the rest of his court. When Albrecht affirms his betrayal of Giselle by kissing Bathilde’s hand, the sensitive and delicate Giselle collapses, and dies. In many productions, just as the curtain is falling on Act I, Albrecht, ashamed and grief-stricken, flees the village, followed by his dutiful manservant. The impulse to flee the scene, and by extension the tragic consequence of his actions, has always seemed the right artistic choice to me: Albrecht has done a terrible thing; the villagers, witnessing the death of their friend, rightly blame him; his perfidy is exposed and his cowardice shows through.

  But Yuri Nikolayevich saw it differently. His production calls for Albrecht to stay onstage, holding Giselle in disbelief and shock. I assume he felt that Albrecht fully apprehended what he had done, and realized that he had truly loved Giselle from the beginning. So he remains among the accusatory villagers, embracing the dead Giselle until the curtain falls.

  For the most part, I was given a measure of artistic freedom with my interpretations of repertoire at Bolshoi. But certain aspects were set in stone. For my debut in Giselle with the company in November, I fled the stage at the close of Act I. Sasha came to me the next day and said that Grigorovich wanted me to stay onstage. When there was a specific request from Yuri Nikolayevich, there was no negotiation. It did make for a dramatic end to the act, with Albrecht cradling Giselle in his arms with the villagers surrounding him. And after all, I was at Bolshoi to absorb these cultural and artistic viewpoints.

  * * *

  PREPARATIONS FOR GISELLE with Svetlana were condensed into a mere three-day period. It was one of those rare times when scheduling, in between one ballet and another, afforded us only a short stint to work things out. She was easy to read as a partner, though, which gave us the time to look past technicalities and on to artistic rapport and interpretation. Her Giselle was shy, frail, lithe. I fed off that, feeling as though it was natural for Albrecht to not only be attracted to the vulnerability she exuded but to use it to his advantage in his disguise as a villager.

  Svetlana’s coach, Ludmila, sat in the front of the room, enthusiastic about our interpretations, offering notes and small anecdotes, some from her personal experience as one of the great Giselles of Bolshoi Theatre. The energy in the studio was inspired and positive, devoid of stresses.

  I never doubted the role of Albrecht as much as others in the repertoire. The steps are manageable, nothing like La Bayadère for instance, where Solor’s steps are so difficult that Marcelo Gomes and I coined the phrase “six steps,” meaning that to get through the ballet we had to do a series of six combinations of steps, all extremely daunting.

  The real challenge of dancing Albrecht was his character. Apart from Romeo, there was never a character that I felt deserved a more humane and complex interpretation. I didn’t want to play him too soft, head-over-heels in love with Giselle (my natural inclination and much how I fall into an all-consuming infatuation in real life). But I also couldn’t play him solely as a cad, unaware that his actions could have serious consequences. It was a difficult balance to find. After a particularly emotional Giselle with Natasha at ABT, Natalia Makarova came to my dressing room and told me that in Act I, I had been too emotional, oversaturated. I realized then that a dancer’s personal experience in a live performance can be vastly different from that of the audience. We, as dancers, can finish a show and think it was one of our worst, failing miserably at every level, while our coaches think it was one of our best. Or we can think we did a great job, maybe nailing a pirouette or something else that is technical but essentially vapid, and our coaches think the performance was lacking true risk or sufficient artistic interpretation. This is an art, after all, not a circus.

  * * *

  THE PERFORMANCE BROUGHT Svetlana and I together in palpable ways. She was vibrant and alive. From our first encounter she responded to my gestures, my looks, and I did the same in return. We played. And the fact that we didn’t rehearse very much gave us a great spontaneity and helped us in the end.

  During the intermission, Sergei and Sasha came backstage to tell me how passionate the first act ending was, when I had been following orders and cradling the dead Giselle in my arms.

  CHAPTER 33

  I left Moscow the day after I closed Giselle. No time to waste. I returned to New York to work with Alexei Ratmansky on his new Firebird. This was the first time I would be working with him since I join
ed the Bolshoi, where he had trained and been Artistic Director. I sensed I could understand his heritage a bit more, the way he communicated, anticipating his expectations as a creator after being on his old turf. As with many dancers who come from historic institutions like Bolshoi, the theater he was brought up in never truly left him. I could now more deeply understand his language as a choreographer.

  Alexei was reworking Firebird, a ballet choreographed by Mikhail Fokine with a score by Igor Stravinsky. It was a huge undertaking. Alexei was creating more ballets that had historically significant scores and iconic choreography. I thought it was a daring move. Instead of creating something completely new, which audiences cannot compare to an existing work, he was reinventing something that had withstood the test of time. After all, Firebird was first premiered in 1910 by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, one of the most innovative companies in ballet history. But Alexei was a responsible reinventor who didn’t seek to forget the past but rather wanted to add to it.

  Alexei’s casting for Firebird was completely out of the box. I wasn’t scheduled to dance the young Tsarevich Ivan, who would be the perceived typical role for me. Instead I was cast as the evil sorcerer, Kaschei. I loved putting my mark on roles that didn’t involve being a prince, on dance characters like Basilio in Don Quixote who went against my natural demeanor.

  Alexei gave me the freedom to experiment. I have seen dancers transform themselves when granted that leeway. They open up and allow themselves to move differently; they discover new ways of attacking movement. It’s almost as if they shed a layer of skin. The skin of inhibition. Gone is the confinement of keeping turnout, pointing your feet, producing technically proficient steps, or shaping your legs in a certain way—freedoms, in other words, that classical ballet usually doesn’t permit. My idea of freedom doesn’t exist in the prince roles. For me, true freedom will always flourish in the creative process with a choreographer whose work grows from a seed of an idea and fully blooms on the stage.

  * * *

  ONE MIGHT THINK that Firebird, a ballet that audiences know so well, is exactly the kind of work that leaves me feeling the sort of confinement that I have tried desperately to escape. But Alexei’s approach to Kaschei, the story in general, and the music were completely different from any production I had seen before. While he respected the story and the style in general, his ballet had a modern freshness. Alexei gave me the liberty to discover my character. At first all I knew was that Kaschei is a sorcerer who imprisons the Firebird in the confines of his garden. He controls everything within its walls under a mysterious spell. In the past, the character has usually been played as an old bearded man, a very Merlin-type person, in classic villain form. Alexei completely stripped away the previous perceptions of Kaschei. Instead, we made him a younger, sinister, slimy sorcerer, more mad than old and dusty. The character evolved through the movement. There was both a freedom and a restraint. I felt I could try things out on my own without looking to him for every direction and nuance. Each rehearsal in the studio became a test of my imagination as I experimented with the many different colors added to my interpretation of the role. Alexei gave me the sense that it was my job to make the part my own, knowing all the while that if he didn’t like something he could honestly tell me. It truly was empowering. I felt I could go anywhere I wanted to go because the role was created for me. Gone were the comparisons to previous Kascheis. Alexei had taken music and a story created more than a hundred years ago and made something completely new. I was taught, yet again, that to be that dancer at the inception of a work is to be a collaborator in the process, and this is the ideal form of artistic expression.

  For instance, Yuri Grigorovich’s Spartacus was created on Vladimir Vasiliev. Every step was selected with him in mind and reflects the tremendous depth and breadth of his emotionality and technique. He had a colossal jump and a dramatic flair that exemplified the modern Bolshoi style. In making use of Vasiliev’s strengths, Grigorovich created Vasiliev’s signature role, as well as one of the greatest roles for a male dancer of that style. Others have performed the role of Spartacus successfully, but Vasiliev’s performance set the standard.

  The same goes for Balanchine ballets created with a certain danseur or ballerina in mind. These ballets were geared to the specific talents of the stunning dancers in his company: Edward Villella’s masculine vigor will forever permeate the leading male role in “Rubies”; Suzanne Farrell’s cool elegance and effortless fluidity defined the lead role in “Diamonds.” Although roles do evolve, and I have wept at the sight of Sara Mearns’s interpretation of “Diamonds,” it was created with Farrell in mind. The role must evolve, though, to stand the test of time. There’s no point in saying “No one will ever exceed Gelsey in this,” or “No one will ever match Fonteyn in that . . .” if these perceptions are being invoked to stubbornly dismiss the brilliance in this generation.

  I think any dancer would agree that nothing equals the thrill and the honor of having a role created on you. In an art whose impact comes from live performance, it is ballet’s truest form of artistic immortality. Years after your career has ended, whenever that role is danced, your own unique stamp will always be on it.

  * * *

  ALEXEI’S FIREBIRD PREMIERED in Costa Mesa in a frenzied atmosphere. There is always a certain buzz on opening nights, in the audience but especially backstage within the crew and dancers who have been working on this creation for months. From the moment we dance the first steps in the studio, a bond begins to form in an unforced, natural way. Over time the bond strengthens (the more colossal the work, the stronger the bond), right up to the eleventh hour when steps are changed or finished, stress levels mount, and everyone has opinions on everything. Moments before we go onstage in front of an audience for the first time, when we stand in costume before the call to “places,” everyone is in it together and we wish each other the very best show. We huddle together, with the curtain down, and collectively agree to commit to the work we have created. Such was the experience the night Firebird premiered. Natasha danced the title role. Marcelo danced Prince Ivan. I danced Kaschei. And we presented Alexei’s ideas to the audience.

  CHAPTER 34

  Quickly back to Bolshoi. I was anxious about returning. I was still new and barely knew anyone in the company. I hadn’t been there on a continuous basis, so every reentry was a shock to me, like starting over once again. I felt a growing pressure of expectation (whether imagined or actual). I worried that people’s perception of me was greater than the reality. I felt vulnerable and susceptible to mistakes, just like every other dancer in the company. But this vulnerability was an impediment to growth. I knew this. My work at Bolshoi wasn’t a reinvention of the wheel; it was just a different way to drive with the wheel. It gave me texture. More depth. A richness as an artist because of new absorbed experiences. The outcome was always worth the pressure and anxiety.

  This time I tackled another icon of the repertoire and of Yuri Nikolayevich’s productions: The Nutcracker. This ballet was precious to me as the spark that ignited my life’s pursuit. My passion for Nutcracker has deepened as the years have passed. The music is Tchaikovsky’s familiar score. I have listened to parts of this ballet as I walked down the street in New York or Moscow, far away from the rehearsal studio, intensely moved by sections of it. I was ready to take on one of the most recognizable productions of Tchaikovsky’s music.

  The Nutcracker is a staple of the repertoire at Bolshoi Theatre. The dancers know the ballet so well they need few rehearsals to get it into performance shape. Much like Swan Lake and Giselle. But the ballet was a debut for me, like learning to ride a bike without training wheels.

  Shortly before my premiere, the entire company was called to a rehearsal just to give me a run-through from start to finish. The last thing they wanted to do. I walked in focused, ready to tackle new territory, and feeling bad for bringing in the dancers solely because of my inexperience. Their stoic stares didn’t help my nerves. We walked through
the spacing; I mapped out where I should be and with whom. The dancers marked their steps, waltzing about at half energy as I tried my best to replicate a performance atmosphere. It was essential that I subject myself to every element of a real performance, experiencing it in all its aspects before the point of no return. That unique, collective energy I felt in performance was missing in the studio. I tried to engender some sort of stimulation. Because there was nothing from the other dancers. No matter how much I tried to give, they stayed at base level. I didn’t blame them. They were in full swing for the season, exhausted from the relentless performance calendar.

  When I began the pas de deux with my partner Nina Kaptsova, the company lined the circumference of the studio and watched. I looked around the room and saw all eyes directed toward us. My solo felt almost like an audition. It pushed me to produce work that could be deemed worthy by these dancers I greatly respected. I was, once again, in survival mode. I had no other option than to succeed, through sheer grit and determination. To prove myself to my new peers. At the end of my solo, there was a polite round of applause, but as I looked around, I saw the same stoic faces as before. It was a far cry from dancing with ABT, a company where I felt I could potentially fail and wouldn’t be judged for it. At Bolshoi I still felt I was being judged the entire time. Because I was the new kid on the block, I had to push past my fear of failure and call upon every bit of energy and skill I possessed to dig deeper, go further, and find more of the will to succeed that is essential to any striving artist.

  CHAPTER 35

  My life outside the Bolshoi walls remained lonely. After Natasha and Ivan departed, other than Semyon I knew only three Bolshoi dancers, and, even with them, the connection was professional rather than personal. There was Sergei, of course; and Sasha, my coach; and Svetlana. They were never less than kind, attentive, and helpful, offering up whatever they could to make my move and transition as smooth as possible. Still, I was alone after hours. When rehearsals finished, I would go home and settle into a solitary evening. Even on the rare occasions when I went out to a restaurant, I was alone. I passed the time with movies, Skype, books. In New York, the need to run the race of shows, dinners, concerts, museums was relentless. It was easier to simply hibernate in Moscow, a city whose environs still intimidated me. As I had in Paris, I was sacrificing a social existence for an artistic one.