A Body of Work

by David Hallberg

  I forced myself to leave the apartment and head to the theater, the last place in the world I wanted to be. But I was happy to see one of my idols dance in such a virtuosic way and to see the company and audience honor him after the performance with flowers and applause. Immediately thereafter, I went into my shell. And stayed there.

  Weeks passed. The longer I was separated from the fervor and energy of my work, the more I became frightened to return to it. It was a struggle to imagine myself back in it, racing all over the globe, trying to beat some internal clock ticking relentlessly away. I had just turned thirty, the age generally regarded as a male dancer’s prime. This was a time I could not afford to squander. But the recovery process was infuriatingly slow. It was two months before I could walk without crutches. By then my right leg had shriveled up; I’d lost muscle definition from my thigh to my toes. I no longer had the fat pads that protect the bones on the bottom of the foot; as I walked I could feel my bones pressing against the ground. I had gone from peak performance shape to lacking basic muscles that nondancers take for granted.

  But I was desperate to dance again. I pushed myself physically, which led inevitably to more setbacks and disappointments. Four months stretched to six. Then, finally, I was healed.

  CHAPTER 40

  When I was finally able to return to the dance studio, I worked once again with Alexei, who was creating a new full-length work, Shostakovich Trilogy, which would become a masterpiece for ABT.

  During a five-minute break, I lay on the ground, feet elevated against the mirror. I idly scrolled through my Twitter feed and saw a series of tweets in French stating that Sergei Filin had been attacked in Moscow. I assumed I didn’t understand them correctly, but then more and more came through in other languages and confirmed what I first read. Something about a substance being thrown at him outside his apartment building. My initial reaction was that these “reports” must have been exaggerated. I couldn’t possibly believe that someone would have attacked Sergei maliciously. Safety can be an issue in Moscow, so I assumed that he had been mugged. As I kept reading what was becoming a torrent of tweets, it became clear that something terrible had happened. With rehearsal recommencing, I was certain Alexei hadn’t heard any news of an attack, for he was in the thick of creating.

  I paced from one side of the studio to the other, unable to concentrate as Alexei worked with other dancers. His wife, Tatiana, was in the front of the studio, watching quietly. I made my way over to her and asked if she had heard anything. She hadn’t. When I told her what I’d been reading, she looked at me in shock. She had known Sergei for a long time, as he had been a Premier Dancer with the Bolshoi throughout the years that Alexei preceded him as the company’s director. I waited until the moment rehearsal finished to look at my phone again for any news I could garner. By then, the entire horrific story had been confirmed.

  Sergei had been heading into his apartment building late at night, after a performance, when someone came up behind him, called out his name, and then threw in his face a bottle of acid mixed with urine. The perpetrator ran. Sergei knelt down and shoved snow into his eyes and face to keep them from burning, an instinctive gesture that would partially save his eyesight. He shouted for the security guard to summon his wife. She rushed him to the hospital, where he was treated for major burns and eye damage. The image of Sergei’s completely bandaged face, first seen when he gave an interview from his hospital bed, remains etched in my mind.

  In the days following the attack, the global media latched on to the story. Not only the dance world was shocked. It was headline news everywhere. How could something so violent and vicious happen within a world known for control and restraint? It brought the gorgeous, fantasy world of dance crashing down in the wake of a hideous crime. In that sense, the attack was a betrayal: first and foremost of Sergei and secondarily of the world of dance and its audience.

  * * *

  WHO COULD BE vicious enough, I wondered, to do such a thing? And what could possibly be the rationale for doing it? Those were questions that everyone in the ballet world was asking. To attack someone, anyone, in such a beastly and archaic way was beyond comprehension and had no place in the sort of world I wanted to live in.

  Sergei is a visionary, a dreamer, propelled by his devotion to this art form. At times he had been a controversial figure with a fiery demeanor. But more often he was an impassioned leader revolutionizing the Bolshoi and bringing it into the current day. Along the way he was required to make decisions that some found distasteful or even enraging. Strong opinions are the sign of a strong director in ballet and in other major art institutions around the world. Though he did not lack detractors, an attack of this nature was unthinkable.

  Since I was in New York, reaching Sergei was almost impossible. He was bombarded by good wishes, as were his family and the entire Bolshoi Theatre. I sent him my support through others who were close to him, but I felt very separated and distant from my director and friend. It would be weeks before the truth was known. In the meantime, troubling facts seeped out, one after the other.

  Sergei had been receiving threats prior to the attack. The tires of his car had been slashed, he’d had repeated nuisance calls, and his email was hacked. Just prior to the attack he had told the Bolshoi’s General Director, “I have a feeling that I am on the front lines.” The Bolshoi’s spokeswoman, Ekaterina Novikova, said the suspicion was that he had become a casualty of the infighting between rival groups of dancers and managers. She told the press, “We never imagined that a war for roles—not for real estate or for oil—could reach this level of crime.”

  It finally emerged that Pavel Dmitrichenko, a dancer in the company, was angry because his girlfriend, Anzhelina Vorontsova, had been passed over for certain roles. He had planned the attack and hired two hit men to carry it out. I was stunned when I heard this. Pavel and I had danced together; he had been Von Rothbart when I danced Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake. It took me quite some time to get to know him and become friendly with him, but eventually we established a chummy rapport, easily joking about things in rehearsal or onstage. He had a fun sense of humor and seemed to be liked and accepted by the other dancers. It was a shock to learn that this horror had originated with him.

  Pasha, as Russians called him, would later say he intended to “rough Sergei up.” In his courtroom testimony, he insisted that he never imagined the attack would turn out as it did. He was sentenced to six years in prison, and released midway through that term.

  * * *

  THOUGH I WAS aware that the company had a long-standing reputation for scandal and intrigue, this was a side of Bolshoi Theatre from which I was generally protected. Whether it was because I didn’t speak the language or because I inevitably remained the “American at the Bolshoi,” I didn’t see the deep inner workings of the company. I didn’t have to fight for roles or go through the arduous and often dispiriting process of working my way up. I came into the company supported by Sergei and the Bolshoi’s general manager. They backed me and stood by my reason for being there.

  Once again, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the dancers secretly resented that my presence in the company had deprived them of certain roles; some might have even been annoyed that I was American. But if that was the case, they gave no signs of it. The interactions I had with everyone had been increasingly friendly and warm.

  While it had been hard to get to know my colleagues at first, beyond that nod of acknowledgment in the hallway, within a year my rapport with the dancers at Bolshoi Theatre rivaled my rapport with the dancers of ABT. We established a banter in daily class that was jovial and lively. I never once had even the slightest sense that I was in danger or that my safety was compromised. What I saw inside the walls of Bolshoi was a collective effort between dancers, musicians, singers, stagehands, and administration, all of whom were united by their pride in the work presented onstage and through their conviction that Bolshoi was the crown jewel of Russian culture.

  I
was once giving some American friends a tour of the theater. They walked around amazed by the ornateness of the lobby and sheer size of the backstage area and studios. Finally, I brought them onto the stage to show them the interior of the theater, the beating heart of the entire building. But the theater was completely dark. Onstage, a group of designers, stage managers, and workmen were lighting the stage for the new production of Marco Spada. As usual, the house lights were completely out and the stage lights were on. My friends, edging out of the wings onto the empty stage, peered into the vast darkness, trying to catch a silhouette of the chandelier, seats, anything. Then, in a flash, the house lights were brought to full strength and the interior of Bolshoi Theatre was revealed in all its glory. The stage managers, working in the audience, had seen me with my friends on the side of the stage peering into the dark theater. They halted their lighting call to bring up the Bolshoi house lights, just to allow my guests to see the astonishing interior. It was a thoughtful gesture, especially since they were crunching out long hours, lighting a ballet to be premiered in only a few days. That was the type of Bolshoi Theatre I knew.

  * * *

  I WAS AWAY from Bolshoi for thirteen months. I didn’t want to be absent from the company I had grown to love, but I was forced to heal my fracture under the guidance of my team in New York. I wanted to come back stronger, ready to pick up where I had left off. Still, my return intimidated me. I had concocted many theories of how the dancers and staff perceived my absence. I pictured the dancers blaming me for it. Consequently I felt some guilt about having been away. Because the last thing I wanted to do was fail to fulfill my end of the arrangement I had made with Sergei.

  When I finally returned to Moscow, the company welcomed me warmly. It was more like home than ever before. Svetlana became my most frequent partner, though I started to work with other ballerinas within the ranks. I would slave away six days a week, toiling with Sasha on whatever upcoming ballet I had scheduled, and on Mondays, like clockwork, I would head to Sanduny with Semyon. I looked forward to the mental and physical break Sanduny afforded me, with one of my best friends in Moscow. My Russian was still minimal at best, but the burgeoning friendships I had with other dancers developed into genuine mutual affection. This truly gave me a sense of place. At last I was comfortable.

  * * *

  I WAS EAGER to dive into the work with Sasha again. I had missed it greatly, and once we commenced I could sense that I relied on him more than ever before. I was struck by the fact that no matter how far a dancer progresses in his career, he remains dependent on the feedback of his coach, that seemingly omniscient figure watching from the front of the room. The coach is essential. But along with the luxury of having a personal coach who tells you what looks good and what doesn’t, the work process—even for a very experienced dancer—can become more about pleasing someone else than about trusting your instincts as an artist. It’s all too easy to cede authority and judgment, to let your coach be the sole determiner of what is good enough. Often when I ask a dancer how a performance went, the answer will simply be “My coach was happy.” I wanted to find a balance between trusting my own ideas and relying on the opinions of others. Even though Sasha was so important to me, I wanted to trust myself more.

  While I had hoped my injury would cause me to settle into a more sensible work pace, I could feel the addiction to work yet again. And I was hungrier this time. Having tasted my dance mortality, I was wholly resolved to dance as much as I could. Given the time I had lost, I wanted to accelerate full throttle.

  CHAPTER 41

  I looked at Svetlana in disbelief when she invited me to dance Sleeping Beauty with her at the Paris Opera Ballet in December 2013. I was terrified by the prospect of seeing them again—the students who had been so dismissive of me and made my year there a misery. Still, I accepted the invitation.

  The opportunity to return to Paris and prove my worth was something I had hoped for. And to return with one of my favorite Bolshoi partners seemed all too appropriate. Fourteen eventful years had passed since I was “L’Amerique” training at the school. In the intervening years I had built a professional life that I was proud to have worked so hard for. I knew who I was as a dancer. This time, I would not let myself be distracted by the casual cruelty of others. There was an enormous task at hand, and it was to dance as well as I possibly could and by so doing defeat the memories that had plagued me since I’d left Paris.

  The Paris Opera’s version of Sleeping Beauty was choreographed by Nureyev. It was like no other version I had ever danced. Performed not just in Paris but in cities around the world, it is a marathon of solos and subtle character development. Although I had danced other versions of Sleeping Beauty with the Mariinsky, Bolshoi, and ABT, this felt like a completely new ballet. When I first looked at a YouTube video of the variations I would dance, I couldn’t believe how taxing they were. Staring at my computer screen, I felt my confidence plummet. But I began to chip away in the studio, alone at first, then eventually with a coach. Day after focused day. Step after step. Clearly, it was a role that would swallow me unless I took everything I had learned over the years of dancing around the world and applied it.

  * * *

  MOST VERSIONS DEPICT Prince Désiré as merely decorative, dancing around like a Disney-esque nobleman, looking terminally fraught and puzzled while searching for his one true love. In the past, I had always enjoyed the display of pure classicism in the Grand Pas de Deux at the end of the ballet, but the Prince had remained two-dimensional, devoid of true human emotion. Nureyev forced me to rethink the role entirely. He pushed every character in the ballet to the extremes of technical capacity, adding steps on top of steps in lightning-quick succession. He had tailored the role of Prince Désiré to his own romantic, virtuosic style and created three extra solos that gave the character depth and range and elevated him to a figure who, like Albrecht and Romeo, experiences honest human emotion. There is an arc through the ballet that brings him from melancholic solitude to a triumphant climax.

  When I started to rehearse the ballet in Paris I realized that this version asked a different approach to my technique. This seemed to me the essence of the famous Nureyev style. Earthy, speedy, using both the melody of the music and the supporting notes. The undercurrent of an oboe. The subtle pulse of the strings. Some steps were “en bas,” below the movement, creating a style that allowed me to move faster yet express more intricately. I was working with Clotilde Vayer, an expert of this style who had worked with Nureyev and danced his versions of Beauty, Romeo, Swan, and Bayadère. Critics have complained that Nureyev’s ballets have too many steps, are too busy with excess. When steps are so taxing, they can control the dancer, as opposed to the dancer controlling them. It is easy to see when that occurs. The dancer struggles, lagging behind the music, unable to gain the edge. The more I rehearsed these bewilderingly challenging steps, the more comfortable they became.

  I found that his Beauty allowed for deeper questions and more meaningful answers. There were nuances and shadings for me to convey and profound, interesting connections between everyone onstage.

  * * *

  OVERALL, MY SCHEDULE was madness. In the four weeks leading up to Paris, I danced in Moscow, then in Singapore with the Bolshoi for Swan Lake. Back to Paris to rehearse Sleeping Beauty. Sydney to rehearse and dance Alexei’s Cinderella. Moscow to rehearse Alexei’s Lost Illusions, based on Balzac’s serial novel Illusions Perdues and finally back to Paris.

  I rehearsed Sleeping Beauty in every city I went to regardless of which ballet I was dancing there. When I had no one to rehearse me, I worked alone in the studio, going over everything by myself. I was running myself down again, but I never lost sight of the fact that, by dancing in Paris, I was returning to the place that had rejected me. Most of the students who had made fun of me when I was a teenager were still there. Some were Étoiles. Most were in the Corps de Ballet. I was being given the chance to face classmates I had tried so hard to forget. They ha
d plagued my dreams for years: apparitions standing before me in a group, as I came to dance with the company or revisit the school. Always, a feeling of rejection pervaded. I was determined that when I shared the stage with them, I would dance the best I possibly could.

  * * *

  WHEN I WALKED into the vast Studio Balanchine at Opéra Bastille for class at Paris Opera, a few dancers were warming up on the sides of the studio. The room was enormous, with grid-like windows looking out onto a view of residential Paris. I took a place in the back of the room and began to stretch and warm up, consciously ignoring the dancers I recognized from years earlier. In walked Alain, tall, and as lanky as before; the leader of the school in my day, now a Premier Danseur. In walked Sophie, same blond hair, slinky walk; the girl who had made no secret of her distaste for me when she laughed out loud after I slipped on the stairs. Her rank, Quadrille, was akin to being a member of the Corps de Ballet. I felt no reason to acknowledge them. I was there to do a job. I was back to dance as a professional. I had no need for their approval.

  None of them came to say hello. Maybe some didn’t recognize me. Maybe some didn’t care. There was a younger generation I hadn’t gone to school with who knew me as a dancer from ABT and Bolshoi, not as “l’Amérique” at the school. They greeted me. Talked to me. Told me they were excited to have me there. What a difference that was.

  But as my shows approached and I started to share the stage with dancers from the past, Sophie slowly came around. Gil Isoart, one of the company’s ballet masters, was a mutual friend who had worked with me at Bolshoi Theatre. He knew of my past experience with Sophie, and after he left Bolshoi he became an indirect liaison between her and me. Because of him, Sophie started speaking to me in class and even quietly supporting me as my performances approached.