The Women Who Raised Me

by Victoria Rowell

  Susan Jaffe was one such fellow member of Ballet Rep, as we abbreviated the title of the company. We had met at the auditions and had gotten to know each other when we arrived that summer, sealing a permanent friendship after that. Before coming to ABT, Susan had lost her mother quite tragically but rarely acknowledged that she was in any kind of pain or mourning, allowing those feelings to live through her ballet, powering her to astounding heights in her artistry. If anyone had predicted in 1978 that she would be the one prima ballerina to come out of our class, I might have concurred; La Jaffe, as she became known, had an aura early on.

  Even though I was given a solo or two, there was a familial comfort and security to being a member of the corps that I almost preferred to being in the limelight.

  Belonging at any level to this royal lineage was what mattered, just the prestige of rubbing shoulders with the likes of Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov—who would soon take over the directorship of ABT. What mattered was the privilege of being taught and directed by ABT faculty like my champion, Valentina Pereyaslavec, and another important influence on me, the extraordinary Patricia Wilde. Canadian-born, another force of nature and former prima ballerina, Wilde, always in a pastel leotard and chiffon skirt, was a bolt of lightning as a teacher and choreographer, challenging us all to defy our physical boundaries. Balanchine once referred to Wilde as his strongest dancer because her speed, precision, and ballon (bounce or height in jumps) were peerless. She understood and imparted the aspect of ballet that is all about drama, all about holding the attention of the audience in suspension of disbelief—secrets that became all the more meaningful as a I segued into an acting career.

  On the day of the great blizzard of 1978, I allowed myself to feel proud of the privilege of belonging to this world, to know that I was breathing the same rarefied air as so many greats, having the chance to watch through rounded Plexiglas windows in observations of classes and rehearsals, learning from the mastery of everyone from Carla Fracci, Gelsey Kirkland, Fernando Bujones, Antoinette Sibley, Cynthia Gregory, Alicia Alonzo, and, notably, African American Mel Tomlinson.

  I was proud to be in a lineage of those dancers, like Tomlinson, who had broken down the racist bias that had operated in the ballet world for decades. It hadn’t been until the 1950s that blacks were allowed onto the stages of the major ballet troupes in the United States, making it necessary before then to study privately with white teachers or in nonprofessional segregated settings. That was until 1937, when Harlem’s American Negro Ballet opened its doors, followed in the 1940s when the First Negro Classic Ballet was founded in Los Angeles.

  It took the incomparable Janet Collins to shatter the color barrier in 1951 when she debuted as a prima ballerina with the Metropolitan Opera, doing for African Americans in classical ballet what Marian Anderson soon did as an opera singer. To follow in the footsteps of Collins—known for designing and even sewing her own costumes, thanks to her training as both a visual and dance artist—that was the star I kept reaching for.

  There was one other unforgettable member of this lineage whose path had crossed mine in the crowded halls in between classes early in my tenure at ABT. Incredibly striking, though not tall, with hair twisted imperfectly into a chignon, her dark, sad eyes poured out a luminous beauty that was at odds with her face that was masked in pancake powder, like a member of the seventeenth-century royal court.

  There in the hallway, she gave me a piece of advice, unsolicited but welcomed. In an unusually soft, low voice as she studied me closely, she said, “You’re a beautiful dancer, but you’ll have to work very, very hard.”

  I nodded in recognition, smiling but also sighing as she moved on, disappearing into the mass of dancers that thronged the corridors between studios.

  Her name was Raven Wilkinson. After being forced to leave the United States in order to dance, Raven had eventually joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo as its first black ballerina in 1954. When she returned to America to perform, her progress was interrupted when she was touring in the South and the KKK was said to have marched onto the stage in the middle of rehearsals, demanding that she be turned over to them. None of her fellow company members said a word, allowing her to stay hidden until they could all leave town. With subsequent threats, however, Raven was let go for fear that a boycott of the troupe would happen because of the presence of a black dancer.

  Humbled that she had taken the time to stop me, I could never take lightly the doors that had been opened by Raven Wilkinson and those ballet dancers of color who came before me.

  That was why I was so determined to arrive at my destination that February morning, not for a second anticipating that it would only be me and the elevator operator, a proud blue-black Jamaican whose patois never failed to warm me as he grinned and said, “Girrrl, da place closed, can’t ya see we we’re avin’ a blizzard? What ’cha doin’ up in dis wedd’ah?”

  “Same as you,” I replied.

  He looked over his glasses, snapped his suspenders, and agreed, saying, “Ye’ere now girl, I take ya up so ya can see fa ya’self.”

  Standing alone in the center of the studio that was unlit, gray, still—as a rat scurried into safe hiding from our feline mascot—two contradictory feelings arose in me. The dance/fight that ballet had always been was now a duel between my need to be rooted and a growing need for motion, travel, exploration. Europe in 1979 had become my mantra. But doing anything to unsettle the taut wire of dental floss on which I was balancing was out of the question.

  After all, at almost nineteen, I had managed on my own, helped by an ABT living stipend, supported emotionally by what had really become my family; so the thought of this not being my home forever sent pangs of anxiety through me. Then again, I was starting to see that “forever” didn’t exist, and, whether I embraced change or not, it was heading my way.

  All I could do was to trudge on home through the snow, stopping first to cast a glance back at the Metropolitan Opera House and wonder if I could actually see the fantastic reds and yellows of the Marc Chagall murals through the frosted glass of the lobby. I took another moment simply to admire the simple architectural power of Lincoln Center—standing there in immortal defiance of the weather, a cathedral with many chapels for honoring all creation. The mystical work of Marc Chagall, gracing the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera, did more than hang there—it pulled me in.

  In the great blizzard of 1978 it was hard to imagine that years later I’d fly to France to see Chagall’s masterpiece in the form of a ceiling mural at the Opéra National de Paris, originally founded by Louis XIV in 1669 as Academie Royale de Musique et de Danse. The opera house that stands today was designed by famed French architect Charles Garnier and was commissioned by Napoléon III in 1862.

  On my own tour, I would stand in the face of history in a private suite decorated in crimson red. Poised at the loftiest tier of the opera house, I would never forget looking up at a swirl of color and nature that the seventy-seven-year-old Chagall painted when I was only four years old living on a farm in Maine.

  Between touring with the Ballet Repertory Company and then on circuits performing with other ballet companies that allowed me to earn money but mainly fed my hunger for travel and adventure, I went through extended periods where a Manhattan address wasn’t necessary.

  “Why worry?” asked Paulina Ruvinska Dichter, the grandest dame of them all, as we sat in the living room of her Riverside Drive apartment. I was welcome, she reminded me, to stay on her green 1960s sofa anytime that I was in town, in between apartments, jobs, or boyfriends.

  The year was 1981 and I had already been through several of all the above.

  “Tell me,” Paulina said, a virtuoso listener as well as a pianist revered by the elite of the international music world. As I began a quick recap before dinner, not necessary to do because there was never anything that needed to be rushed with Paulina, I allowed my eyes to wander through the spacious apartment that was a veritable art museum. From the
moment that we had met after being introduced by mutual friends in the art world, we clicked immediately and cultivated one of the closest and most enduring relationships that I had with any of the women who raised me.

  My visits with Paulina were like nothing I’d ever experienced or would again. Her art collection was vast, amassed over the years in her travels with her husband, Chester Dichter, who was no longer alive. Not one but two grand pianos presided over the living room, used both for practice and the steady stream of private students who came and went at many hours.

  As I told her where I’d been, my attention returned frequently to a dominant piece of art at the entrance to the living room—a black, smooth owl that stood three feet high and set a tone of mystery, signifying the presence of wisdom, strength, and beauty. All qualities that Paulina commanded.

  We laughed about my adventures three years earlier in the apartment that I had shared with four other dancers.

  When I first heard about an opening at Mayfair Towers, on West Seventy-second Street, a security building with a doorman and a chandelier in the lobby, Shelley Winters on my floor, all next door to the Dakota, my response was, “Are you kidding me?” The Dakota was where Roberta Flack lived, not to mention that it was the famous address of Rudolf Nureyev, Yoko Ono, and John Lennon—for what would be his last year of life.

  These were the high-flying disco party days of the late 1970s, and I wasn’t going to miss out. I had to say yes and didn’t have a dime. Had to scratch, beg, and borrow my way to keep that roof over my head.

  We made the most of it, ballet by day and disco by night. Definitely underaged, we went to Studio 54 often enough to be on a first-name basis with Mark the gatekeeper and where I hit the dance floor with the likes of Pelé. The really big excesses of the ’80s hadn’t kicked in yet, but there was a lot of contraband and hanky-panky.

  The wonder days in that apartment came to an end when my roommates started booking contracts with various domestic and international ballet companies, leaving for assorted foreign ports of call. This was when I made one of those decisions that I spent years second-guessing, only to later conclude that I hadn’t made a mistake so much as I had come to a fork in the road.

  I was offered the opportunity to work with choreographer Twyla Tharp on the feature film of Hair, which was being directed by Milos Forman and costumed by Ann Roth. But the shooting dates conflicted with the ballet Little Improvisations, which I’d already committed to, with the Juilliard School of Dance and legendary choreographer Antony Tudor. With Tudor’s blessing, I found a wonderful dancer as a replacement, freeing myself to work on the film.

  The moviemaking process was thrilling, as was the experience of dancing in a corps of eight dancers, hand-selected by choreographer Twyla Tharp, an Einstein of a modern dancer who always wore tennis shoes to dance in, and who held an expression that matched the seriousness of her focus and intensity. Twyla later paid me an immense compliment by including me in a workshop she presented, another exposure to dance so different from the pure classical training that most shaped me.

  When I returned from filming, I discovered that my replacement for Tudor’s Little Improvisations had failed to show up because Forman’s secretary forgot to tell her that she’d gotten the job. And I took the hit. I was naïve, obviously, and learned a hard lesson that with ambition comes responsibility. From then on, I would be very meticulous in attending to details in all professional arrangements, an excellent policy. If I had everything to do over again, that would be the piece of advice that I wish someone had given me. Unfortunately, without it, my career at ABT was effectively ended.

  I decided to audition for Ballet Hispanico, uptown on Eighty-ninth Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The studios were located next door to horse stables. I had gone from witnessing Nureyev to navigating horse dung—taken with a sense of humor. Here I was smack-dab in the middle of Manhattan and back on the farm at the same time.

  Artistic Director Tina Ramirez, an olive-skinned beauty born in Venezuela, the daughter of a Mexican bullfighter, inherited her teaching inclinations from her mother, an educator of Puerto Rican descent. Whether it was her ancestry or not, she had a hot temper, which I loved to watch when she became angry without apology, then return her focus for the benefit of what she loved most—children and dance. Tina lifted everyone to a high standard, never failing to remind all of us, “Without discipline, you have nothing.”

  Although she suffered from a severe back injury in her thirties, her heel work was impeccable and at lightning speed, evoking a sense of vertigo. Watching her was like being transported to the front seat of a bullring, excitement personified, harkening me back to my favorite John Singer Sargent painting. Possessed no doubt of her father’s drama, Tina’s nostrils flared, her eyes seductive—all to a diabolical riff with what some consider the most sophisticated of percussion instruments, her castanets.

  Being a part of Tina’s family introduced me to another way of expression, another voice through dance, as she guided me toward becoming a soloist and learning the art of flamenco, introducing me to my soulful self. This was all a departure from ballet—moving my body to the choreographic rhythms of Geoffrey Holder and Talley Beatty, meeting the graceful Carmen De Lavallade, and performing at the Copacabana, connecting to Afro-Hispanic rhythms with Ballet Hispanico.

  During my time with Ballet Hispanico, Tina contributed to my dance heritage, passing on what she knew from studying with the incomparable Spanish dance teacher Lola Bravo, even after Tina had taken Broadway by storm and tours took her across North America and to Cuba and Spain before she commenced her forty years of teaching.

  Tina Ramirez was the perfect mentor at the perfect time, for which I became increasingly grateful over the years, showing me that just as there are many languages to speak, so too, there are many ways to dance, to communicate, to celebrate.

  Those were some of the learning experiences I could share with Paulina Ruvinska and appreciate how she empathized so heartily, knowing as I did of her long and laureled career. There was still regret on my part about my departure from ABT.

  “This is the life of an artist,” she reassured me. “We evolve. Mistakes are part of growing.”

  I wasn’t so sure but leaned in attentively as Paulina went on to regale me with accounts of numerous ups and downs, all of which she promised me had made her stronger in the end. Her point was that sometimes we learn more from our mistakes than from our victories. If she really believed that—known as she was for her indomitable power, masterful technique, and incredible range of repertoire—then I had to take that on faith.

  Almost seventy years old, Paulina was born and raised in New York in the musical, intellectual atmosphere that flourished in her own home. A child prodigy, she made her professional debut at the age of seven in a performance with the Detroit Symphony but then waited another sixteen years before giving her first major concert in New York at Town Hall—taking the music audiences by storm, so much so that for the next ten years her annual recital was a much anticipated cultural event.

  In her thirties, however, Paulina had taken time off from performing. “The best thing I ever did,” she insisted, affirming my decision to take time off from ballet after the fiasco that caused so many doors to close for me.

  In her forties, Paulina Ruvinska picked up right were she had left off and was more acclaimed than ever. Whether she was practicing in her living room or performing for a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall, she channeled music as though from the mind of the composer, playing some of the most challenging Bach transcriptions with an effortlessness that made what she did seem almost easy.

  Was it really effortless? Paulina smiled. An echo could be heard in my mind of what Raven Wilkinson had said to me: “You’ll have to work very, very hard.”

  From a Russian Jewish family background, Paulina knew about overcoming prejudice and transcending limitations. As she spoke, a Miró hanging on the wall behind her, her message to me was to allow myself to season a
s a human being, to live a full life and laugh about it, which could only elevate my art. And, she added, “Don’t underestimate yourself.”

  Remembering what my first experiences away from ballet were, I wasn’t sure I agreed. After deciding to give up dancing or it deciding to give up on me, I took a job as a live-in au pair in the employ of a society couple, which involved being a round-the-clock housekeeper and babysitter, all for the princely salary of one hundred dollars a month. After one morning of having to fend off the husband who came in to where I slept with the children, I had to then deal with the wife’s jealous retribution, as well as her imperious questions about whether I had washed the floor.

  “Yes, I did,” I told my soon-to-be-former employer in a final episode of inquisition.

  Bonwit Teller hatbox on her wrist, she snarled right back, asking, “By hand?”

  That was the end of that job. Nothing left to do but to pack up my belongings, load a dolly, and roll it right down Seventy-second Street, past James Baldwin’s building and onto Broadway, not sure where I was going next but drawing on faith for guidance at being able to find new digs in the Big Apple.

  Some of this was familiar territory to Paulina from previous conversations but she knew very little of what had happened over the past two years.

  Basically, I explained, trying for irony, after getting settled in a place to stay, “I went from the fire to the frying pan.”

  What began as a passionate affair with a friend of Milos Forman’s, whom I affectionately, and later not so affectionately, called the Cinematographer, had turned into an all-consuming nightmare. There had been those initial whirlwind moments—this dashing, successful fellow in the arts and in film who approached me on the street when I was window shopping on Fifth Avenue, then a romantic date ice-skating at Rockefeller Plaza. At twenty years old, I had lived in the convent of academic and professional ballet a long time and wasn’t yet worldly wise, a virgin still. Emotional intimacy was a completely foreign concept. There were still so many parts of myself that I kept cloaked, like my hands in protective gloves.