A Body of Work

by David Hallberg

  During an early rehearsal, as I walked onstage for my entrance in Act II, there was Sophie. Her eyes connected with mine. We were now professionals. Life was moving on. The past was becoming exactly that.

  * * *

  OUR TWO PERFORMANCES were scheduled just after Christmas and just after New Year’s. My schedule left no time to celebrate the holiday season. On Christmas Day, Svetlana and I went to the empty Opera House to rehearse our solos and pas de deux. Everyone else at Paris Opera was home, feasting, opening gifts, enjoying the holiday. But there we were, sweating away in the quiet of the theater.

  * * *

  THE WORST PART of Beauty had always been the wait for my first entrance. But the nearly unbearable degree of pressure I felt before the performance in Paris was something I had experienced only once before, as I waited in the dressing room for my first entrance of the same ballet at Bolshoi Theatre. Waiting in Paris, anxiety got the best of me. Every second would inch by, and within every second, I analyzed step after step. I put the final touches on my makeup, sprayed my hair one last time, and buttoned up the beautifully embroidered costume the wardrobe department had made for me. I closed my eyes, alone in my dressing room, and took three deep breaths to settle my nerves and ground myself. I walked down the long cement corridor, into the wings.

  Dancers around me were preparing themselves for Act II as well, tying their pointe shoes, rosining up, bouncing up and down to warm their bodies. I walked past the wings and onto the stage. A thirst for what was to come finally enveloped me. As the time drew closer, more and more dancers came onstage for the beginning of the act. The director of the company, Brigitte Lefèvre, came up and wished me “Merde.” Dancers who passed me wished me the same. Dry ice gave off a vapor that filled the air, representing the morning mist in the woods. I practiced some steps, warmed my body even more, fed off of the energy of the few dancers and crew milling about the stage, glancing my way.

  The moment had arrived. I felt as though the only choice for me was to release everything and let the adrenaline propel me forward. I had ridden a roller coaster that, after the laborious and jerky climb to the top, was peaking, and now there was nothing left but a thrilling ride.

  The curtain rose and I stepped onto the stage at Paris Opera with the confidence that I could do what I needed to do because I had doubted and questioned it all. After the sheer grit of work, I was able to execute those daunting steps and put my stamp on this role.

  * * *

  AS I TOOK my final bow, the entire company stood behind me applauding. I had danced Sleeping Beauty with Paris Opera. I had faced one of my greatest fears. I had realized a goal I had harbored for the better part of fourteen years. I had risen to the pressures. It was an absolute peak.

  Later, after meeting scores of people backstage, I walked back to my hotel alone, carrying my bags full of cards from well-wishers, makeup, warm-ups. I thought, At this moment I could retire. I could stop dancing. I felt like I couldn’t get any higher. Not that I couldn’t get any better, because if I looked at a video of the performance I had just danced, I would find enough flaws to want to retire for a very different reason. Still, I had that rare feeling of being pleased with the outcome.

  But, as always, I wanted more. I was aware that everything that preceded this point had gone by so quickly that, in a flash, this time—the prime time—would be over.

  CHAPTER 42

  The sense of completion, however colossal, quickly became hunger yet again. My addict self took over. I was running on pure adrenaline. Fatigued and malnourished. The day after Beauty ended, I packed everything at Bastille and carried it all to Paris Opera’s other theater, the august Palais Garnier, where I joined the Bolshoi and commenced rehearsals for my debut in three days’ time in Alexei’s Lost Illusions. I couldn’t say no to dancing at both opera houses within a week.

  I will never be given this opportunity again, I thought.

  And so I danced, the sheer elation of what I had just experienced driving me forward. But I became aware of a slight sensation in my left foot. Like an itch that came when I pushed off of it into a jump. It quickly went away after the initial propulsion, but in the takeoff, it persisted. No matter, I thought. There was too much to do; too many places to dance; too many debuts to prepare for.

  I ignored it. It wasn’t much at first, and the thought of it sidelining me, even for a couple of weeks, was too much to fathom. I didn’t have time to listen to my body. After Paris, I was back at Bolshoi preparing for another live broadcast, this time in a title role created for Nureyev and choreographed by Pierre Lacotte, Marco Spada. The very next day after the broadcast, I was flying to Milan to make my debut with La Scala, another dream stage and company that I’d never thought attainable. I couldn’t and wouldn’t stop. I didn’t pay attention to anything except my desire to dance.

  * * *

  LA SCALA HAS been influential in the opera and ballet worlds for generations, and an invitation to dance there was an honor not easily afforded. I was asked to dance Nureyev’s Swan Lake. As I’d discovered with his Sleeping Beauty, the variations were more challenging than any I had previously known. Again, it was another approach altogether, not like Bolshoi at all. With new intricacies came a new taxation on my body.

  In rehearsal I experienced the same consistent pain in my foot, sharp and deliberate on takeoff. I could execute the required steps regardless, but every day I had the same uncomfortable sensation. The itch-like feeling was now more like a piercing needle. Wherever I traveled I would see the physiotherapist of that company, asking where she or he thought my pain was originating from. There was never a diagnosis, usually just a simple massage and brief chat about what I could do to remedy it for now.

  I was far from home and under too much pressure to give my foot any serious consideration. Instead, I distracted myself with Milan. It was my first time in the city, so I became an avid tourist. People had warned me about Milan, saying, “It’s not like the rest of Italy” or “It’s too industrial.” That’s what I fell in love with. The imposing, grand stone buildings towered over me as I walked down the streets. It had an importance and a buzz. And in the middle of the city was the great Teatro alla Scala. I settled into the company well; the dancers, mainly Italian, were warm and welcoming.

  I also knew about La Scala’s infamously opinionated audiences. They loudly bravoed when performances moved them, and loudly booed when performers didn’t meet their standards. I worked with that in the back of my mind. It was the first time I was appearing in Milan, and I had the whole scenario mapped out:

  Curtain up. I would dance. They would boo.

  Simple.

  In fact, there were no boos. The public was generous, and while a theater of such importance as La Scala made me nervous, I still liked the pressure to produce. The audience and La Scala’s director, who had hired me as a guest artist, expected me to dance well. To a standard. My expectations were as high as theirs. Those two sets of expectations had to be met.

  * * *

  I RETURNED TO Moscow to learn the most iconic ballet in the Bolshoi repertoire. I had never been sold on Spartacus as a ballet; I thought it dusty and dated—until I watched it in the vast Bolshoi Theatre. I was sitting in the center of the house, and when the overture started it had so much might and conviction that it felt as if the orchestra was blowing the walls off the theater. From that moment on, I was sold on the power of Spartacus. The dancers also validated why this work is still relevant. I was proud, sitting there, to be a part of a company of such quality and vibrancy.

  I began to prepare one of the most iconic roles in the Bolshoi repertoire. The rehearsal process for Crassus, the morally corrupt Roman consul in Yuri Grigorovich’s Spartacus, was intensely satisfying. Crassus’s character borders on the insane. He loves war, power, sex, violence. He craves bloodshed. A deeply complex role that holds extreme weight in the Bolshoi’s history, I was learning it from one of the great Crassuses, my coach Sasha. We took every moment we coul
d get to work on the role, staying late in the evenings. The steps were foreign to me. This was the definition of the Soviet Bolshoi style, where the movements were bigger than the dancer, calling on me to expand my body in a way I never had before. Sasha explained each phrase in total detail: the way to bend the body to create the arc in a pas de poisson; the preparations for jumps that defied the cleanliness I had honed for years. In this role, I would take off for jumps in the most efficient way possible, regardless of form. It was all to create an illusion in the air; the taking off was purely a means to an end.

  * * *

  WORKING ON CRASSUS took a toll. I was being pushed beyond what my body could handle. I was already running on empty, but the difference in style was (as I look back now) potentially the tipping point.

  My foot started to hurt more consistently. The pain was always there when I took off for a jump. Crassus has a huge diagonal of sissonnes, half-bent fishlike jumps in the air, which showcase him initially on the stage. The entrance creates gasps if done properly. We worked this diagonal endlessly. And each day, each time, my foot produced a sharper and sharper pain. I assumed it would go away eventually. So I continued on. After all, the stimulation of Crassus and other approaching opportunities were too great to pass up.

  * * *

  BETWEEN NOVEMBER 9, 2013, and January 18, 2014, I flew a total of 45,231 miles. I learned and danced four new productions. I translated four different styles of choreography, all in full-length works. Pushing through, remembering the choreography, executing the steps fully. Once again, my days off took place “in the air,” meaning that the day that it took to fly from point A to point B was my rest. I would board a plane, veg out in the seat, and try to relax mentally and physically, only to hit the ground again running.

  Here is what I wrote at the time:

  Some would think my schedule is absolutely crazy and a recipe for disaster or dare I say injury. But it keeps me ticking. It keeps me interested. Makes me feel that I am living this moment in my career to the absolute fullest. When I feel I have to justify things, I say to myself or others that this career span is minute. It’s over in a blink of my eye. And when all is said and done and I cannot dance anymore, I want to feel that I did everything in my power to have lived this dancing career to the fullest. Hence the crazy schedule. There is so much to do. So much to get done. I can’t sit somewhere and do one thing at a time, waiting patiently for the next thing to come. It just can’t happen like that. It’s not in my DNA. One of my mottoes is “I’d rather be busy than bored.” Boredom is a curse that makes me feel I have no purpose in life. Boredom rots inspiration and slowly eats away at me. So there must always be projects on the horizon, things to rehearse, projects to consider. When there is too much is when I feel at home. When I feel that I can prosper and thrive. There is never enough. But this is the curse of the hungry artist.

  That is why I have to do as much as I can right now, be completely busy and frantic and stressed and overscheduled. So when I have finished with this period in my life I can look back and know that I have done absolutely everything I could have done. That I tried my absolute best.

  My guiding principle has to be: Work hard. And then work fucking harder.

  When I read this now, all I can say is that these are the words of someone who did not give thought to consequences. But it perfectly describes my state of mind when I still believed I was invincible.

  CHAPTER 43

  I had been waiting for a tour like this since I became a dancer with the Bolshoi: a tour during which I would come back to the United States with the Russian company I had joined. In 2014, I finally came home.

  My most recent performances in Moscow had been hard to get through. I would come offstage feeling that I had barely been capable of finishing the show. I knew these upcoming performances would be difficult too, but I was determined to do them. It was a huge homecoming. Though American audiences knew I was dancing in Moscow, they hadn’t seen me dancing live with Bolshoi. So the chance to perform with them in Washington, DC, and in New York, where audiences had seen me grow as a dancer, was meaningful and important.

  It was a three-week tour. The company was scheduled to perform Giselle at the Kennedy Center in May, and then, in July, to offer a slew of standard Bolshoi repertory for the Lincoln Center Festival in New York. Svetlana and I were to dance the opening night in both cities. This was the complete circle. I was coming back, three years after I “defected,” to dance in my home country; to show American audiences what I had been learning in Moscow and how I had acclimated to the Bolshoi Theatre style.

  As I flew to America with the company, I felt that I was welcoming them to the United States. It was a complete reversal of my situation in Moscow. Because the uncomfortable divide between us had dissipated, I was a genuine part of the group. I could introduce them to the security guards at the stage door. The spoken language and signage were exclusively in English, but I could translate. When I talked with the dressers and stagehands, they told me their impressions of how they felt the company was run (with order and purpose) and the differences culturally between “us” and “them” (Russians tend to be more direct). I felt like I was mixing my two lives into one. Russian culture on American soil.

  * * *

  I HAD MADE so many debuts as a budding professional at the Kennedy Center. My first leading role in Balanchine’s Symphony in C. My first Romeo. My first Swan Lake. My first Solor in La Bayadère. And now, in my American debut with the Bolshoi.

  As at many shows before this one, Mr. Han would be watching.As I prepared with Svetlana and the rest of the company, I pictured him sitting in the dark theater.

  What would he be thinking, I wondered, as he watched? He still occasioned the same stress in me as before.

  Yet during the performance I felt calm. Once the curtain fell and I had made my way back to my dressing room, I heard a knock on the door. Mr. Han greeted me dryly, as was his way.

  “Hello. Good job tonight.”

  We shared a long hug, happy to see each other after so long.

  “Tell me what you thought,” I said. “How was my cabriole?”

  That question brought us back into the routine that would be eternal between us. I, the pupil, and he, the teacher. My curiosity to hear his critique. And his brutal, dry honesty. He began a dissection of my performance, just as I wanted. I could feel that he was happy for me, proud of the work we’d put in so many years before.

  Everything had changed and yet it seemed that nothing had changed: I was still the boy he trained and he was still “Mr. Han.”

  * * *

  MY FOOT WAS becoming a major issue, something I knew I couldn’t ignore for much longer. I was consistently in pain, and when I tried to push off, the pain worsened. But I chose to dance, paying no attention to what my gut was telling me.

  In Washington, I could make only one attempt at rehearsing my variation for Giselle. After jumping so much the pain would be too great. It was horrible knowing how few moments of true strength I could muster up. But I was in no position to cancel performances. I didn’t want to let ABT down. Nor Bolshoi. Nor the audiences expecting me on the stage. I willed myself to push through it all.

  A week after the Bolshoi engagement ended, I was back in New York, dancing with ABT. When another dancer became injured, I picked up an extra show of Giselle with Alina Cojocaru. Alina and I had danced together previously but never formed a consistent partnership. For this particular show, the last-minute change left us with less than a day to prepare. We quickly rehearsed and hoped for the best, trusting that our experience would guide us in a spontaneous performance. It did. Our minimal preparation paid off.

  Deep in Act II, I slowly walked out onstage for the main variation, to the hush of the audience. I paused, shifted my weight to my right foot at the start of the music, with my arms raised toward the sky. I took a large glissade, reaching my right foot out, propelling myself forward. With my left foot trailing behind the right, as I was pus
hing myself into the air for a cabriole, I felt a twist and pull in my left ankle. I knew something had happened. Adrenaline yanked me through my variation in front of 3,800 audience members; my mind raced. I knew I had hit a pronated downward angle in my left ankle and sprained it. This had happened before. I was all too familiar with the feeling of a sprain. In pain, I finished the variation. Eventually the curtain went down on a Giselle that was memorable for two very different reasons. One: Alina and I had danced together in unity and spontaneity. Two: It was the start of the downward spiral that would deprive me of the ability to push on through anything. I was at my breaking point. It would only get harder from here.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAYS were a blur of failed attempts at keeping my scheduled commitments. Though my foot needed time to heal, time was something I could not afford without foregoing certain performances. I came into a studio at the Metropolitan Opera House a week later to test out my steps for Swan Lake. Kevin tried to guide me along. With my foot taped up, I tried to ease my way through, but I couldn’t push off my left foot properly. I knew I couldn’t continue. I canceled the rest of my ABT 2014 season.

  The New York performances with Bolshoi in July were coming up in a matter of weeks. I would again dance at Lincoln Center but this time with my Russian company. I felt a responsibility to lead them into this season; it was an important tour for Bolshoi. So I rested and tried to heal the sprain as quickly as I could. A week later I was back on a plane to Moscow to rehearse Swan Lake for New York. I entered the studio with Sasha and told him where I was physically. We dissected every jump that took off from the left leg and tried to relieve the pain by changing them to the other leg. This unsettled us both. I didn’t want to alter the steps that Yuri Nicolayevich had choreographed and that I was used to. But there was no other way through. I had healed enough to be able to dance, but not to dance the exact steps. In a series of jumps, at my entrance, I would push off the right foot instead of the left. The beginning of my Act III variation would start on the other side of the stage, so I could push and land on my right foot. We changed everything we were able to. Certain steps couldn’t be changed because they involved other dancers, and they brought on the pain that had increased to a debilitating degree. I just gritted my teeth and danced. I knew I was on empty, but I felt I had no choice.