Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet

by Ringer, Jenifer

  My parents were living in Virginia at this time, and my mom found a seamstress who was willing to convert the dress into the style that I wanted. She seemed to know what she was doing. We had some fittings at Christmastime while I was in Virginia guesting as the Sugar Plum Fairy at a local school’s performances of The Nutcracker. However, when I returned to her shop in March during City Ballet’s spring layoff period, the fitting didn’t go so well.

  I stepped into her dressing room, eager to see how I looked in the dress in which I was to be married. I slipped it over my ankles and moved it over my hips—where it stuck. It would not move. I tugged. Here we go again, I thought. But this time I knew it wasn’t my weight that was the problem; I was at my post-performance-season thinnest and it appeared that the seamstress had just made the dress too small. She promised me that she could fix it and that I didn’t need to be worried. I decided to trust her and put it out of my mind. The next time I would see my dress was a couple of days before the wedding, when my parents brought it to New York City with them.

  July was a bit of a whirlwind for James and me because the first three weeks of the month were spent in Saratoga Springs performing with the company during their regular summer season there. We were to get married during our week off before the rehearsal period for our summer tour. My parents arrived in the city, and my mom and I ran around doing various last-minute errands for the wedding. My mom was still very nervous about being in charge of a New York City wedding and was driving me a little nutty with her anxiety about everything going perfectly. And since we were trying to save money, we were doing a lot of the small things ourselves. Finally on Wednesday night, three days before the big day, I excitedly tried on my wedding dress alone in my apartment. It was a disaster.

  Not only was it still too small, but the seamstress had also created a strange asymmetrical line running down the back of the skirt in her attempt to correct her previous mistake. I was dumbfounded and had no idea what to do. The wedding was on Saturday.

  Early the next morning, I placed a frantic call to the costume department of City Ballet and left them a message pleading for their help. Then I dashed off to the restaurant to attend my bridesmaid’s brunch. I told no one what was happening because I didn’t want the whole brunch to be about my dress. And I really didn’t want to tell my mother because she had so much on her mind and I knew it would upset her. But after all the girls had left I took my mom aside.

  “Mom,” I said, holding her arm. “I have to tell you something. I tried on my dress last night, and it does not fit.”

  I watched my mom’s face go slack and the blood drain away. I saw a look of dismay and pain in her eyes that clearly showed she wasn’t worried about the dress or the wedding, she was worried about my being disappointed. In that moment I realized that all of the anxiety she had expressed over the wedding was really her fear that I would not have the perfect day for myself.

  “It’s going to work out,” I told her. “I’ll either buy a different dress or get this one fixed. Don’t you worry about it, because I’m not.”

  I realized then that I really wasn’t worried about it. The wedding was more about marrying the man I loved and celebrating the support of my family and friends than having the perfect dress and the perfect food and the perfect music. My bridesmaids were wearing silver dresses, and I had a silver dress in my closet, left over from a City Ballet gala. I could just wear that if I had to, I thought.

  Just in case, I walked home from the brunch and stopped in every dress shop along the way to look for a white dress. The only one I found was tight and mermaid-style and covered with sequins. I thought the silver dress in my closet would be better.

  Just as I had given up my search, I got a call from Dottie and Norma, the wonderful ladies from City Ballet’s wardrobe department, and they told me to come right over with my dress. I rushed to the theater, and we assessed the situation. Dottie and Norma discovered that the seamstress from Virginia had actually cut material from the dress rather than folding it back as a seam, in case it had to be adjusted. She had tried to cover up the mistake by pulling the material up and tilting the zipper off-center. Basically, it was a complete mess, and they really didn’t know if they could fix it.

  Dottie and Norma looked at the dress, looked at me, and told me to go away and come back in the morning, and they would see what they could do.

  I came back Friday morning, the day before our wedding. Dottie and Norma had performed a miracle. In a bin of discarded fabric they had found some white lacy material and inserted it into the back center of the dress to make a kick pleat. It was actually lovelier than before. I could hardly believe what a beautiful job they had done.

  So I was married in my mother’s wedding dress after all, thanks to those amazing ladies from the costume department. They were accustomed to working last-minute miracles to make ballerinas look just right onstage; it shouldn’t have surprised me that they could work one more miracle to make me look just right on my wedding day. And my mother really was able to give me a wonderful New York City wedding!

  —

  James and I enjoyed being married in the same way that any regular couple would; we made dinner together, went for walks in the park, went out to movies or Broadway plays, and took care of each other when we were sick. One real difference for our marriage, though, was that we also worked together, very closely. We were one of the few married couples in the ballet world, and we were partnered often in performances. For five years we danced together as a married couple, and James will forever be my favorite partner onstage.

  In 2002, however, James began to think of retiring. He was thirty-two and had been offered a job with the American Guild of Musical Artists, the dancers’ union. He had always been an active member of the Dancer’s Committee at City Ballet and had caught the attention of Alan Gordon, the head of the union, who asked him to come and work full time as the New York area dance executive. However, just before James was to tell Peter of his decision to stop dancing, Peter surprised James after a performance one night and promoted him to principal dancer. It seemed like a “God thing.” James felt that he couldn’t turn down the opportunity to be a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, so he ended up putting off Gordon’s invitation and dancing another three years.

  Eventually, in 2005, James felt that it was truly time for him to retire. Male ballet dancers tend to retire in their midthirties because of the wear on their bodies; principal women tend to retire around age forty. His body was hurting, and he was weary of a dancer’s unpredictable schedule. Plus, he wanted to have a “real” job before we started trying to have a family, something we both hoped for. Since a dancer’s career ends so early, he wanted to feel like he had established himself in another job and could support our family before we began trying to get pregnant.

  His last performance was in Saratoga Springs, where the company has its annual summer residency at the outdoor Saratoga Performing Arts Center. The new job hadn’t been finalized until the spring, so James didn’t give anyone very much notice of his retirement. The program for his last show happened to be perfect: he was already scheduled to dance principal roles in both Peter Martins’s Barber Violin Concerto and Balanchine’s Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet. The second-movement Intermezzo section of Brahms-Schoenberg was a part that James and I had danced together for years, and it was very special to both of us. It is wildly romantic and requires a very strong man to do all the lifts, throws, and dips that the choreography requires. James and I were so coordinated together after years of dancing this movement that we were able to take many of the steps to the extreme. It was very satisfying for both of us and was a part that really showed off James’s skill as a partner.

  Barber was another ballet that James and I had danced many times together, but only in guest performances outside the company. Unlike James, I had never been cast in this ballet at City Ballet because Peter felt that a taller bal
lerina should dance the role. James was cast to dance this last performance with Darci Kistler, but we made a special request to Peter that I be allowed to dance the pas de deux with James just this one time. Peter agreed amiably, and Darci as well, so we were allowed to dance both of these pas de deux that had become personally important to us for James’s last show.

  I will admit to being a little weepy during the performance as I attempted to burn every part of the performance into my memory. James, I think, had decided not to think about the implications of the day until after it was all done. Besides, both of the roles he was dancing were physically very difficult, and male dancers usually do only one of them in any given performance, so he was more concerned with staying strong and dancing well for this, his last show.

  Because he had chosen to retire in Saratoga, without any big public announcement, James meant for this to be a low-key private retirement performance. The weather, however, decided that just would not do—perhaps God was giving James a big send-off.

  During the first movement of Brahms, dark green clouds rolled in across the sky and a strong wind picked up, blowing the curtains of the scenery around the stage of the outdoor theater. The girls’ knee-length tulle skirts billowed as they executed Balanchine’s already moody, windswept movements. As James and I waited in the wings for the upstage curtain to lower during the transition into the second movement, I heard the rumble of thunder and saw bits of leaves and flowers skittering across the stage in sudden gusts. When James and I ran onstage and took our opening pose, I saw that the sky had cracked open to pour torrents of rain on the grassy lawn behind the roof-covered general seating. People were running for cover, a river was running down the aisles of the theater and gushing into the orchestra pit, and some audience members closest to the outside edges of the roof had opened up their umbrellas right there in their seats.

  It certainly made the Intermezzo more tempestuous and romantic. It also made James and me relax. We looked at each other, smiled, and knew that we needed to remove the pressure to have a flawless, special last performance together. We should enjoy dancing together and enjoy the performance as a single moment in time, to be lived and treasured just as we had done so many times before.

  Throughout our first entrance, lightning and thunder increased in frequency as the storm grew stronger. The climax of the storm came during James’s solo, just as he was completing the phrase, which ended in a big double saut de basque to the knee. There was a giant, stage-shaking boom of thunder, and the theater suddenly lost electricity.

  Now, since it was a matinee performance, we were not plunged into complete darkness as we would have had it been nighttime, but because of the storm it was still very dim and certainly an unusual situation. True to the professionalism of the dancers of City Ballet, the three corps ladies who were onstage dancing at the time kept going as if nothing had happened. Even though the orchestra faltered a bit because their pit lights had gone out, the dancers kept their rhythm and maintained their grace. Then, just before James and I were to return for our final entrance, the generator kicked in and the stage lights came back up.

  The rest of the performance took on a dreamlike quality for me as the wind blew the curtains of the set around and I was tossed and turned around the stage by my husband. I felt such a burst of pride for James and his career and a huge sense of gratitude for the times we had danced together both before and after we were married. Dance careers are short, and their end seems sudden, no matter how much thought and preparation may have gone into the decision to retire. For James, this was the end of a career he had pursued since he was a child, something that he had excelled at and a field in which he was an expert. But it was also a beginning; he would be entering the workforce in a whole new way and have a chance to advocate for dancers across the country.

  It was certainly an ending for me too. I was deeply sad to be losing James not only as a dancing partner but also, and more importantly, as a companion at the theater. We had been given the opportunity to travel around the world together as dancers of the New York City Ballet, and now I would be traveling without him. I was surprised to discover how much I relied on him for so many small things; perhaps this would be another chance for me to grow some more. I at least had to figure out how to get myself from the hotel to the theater all by myself when I was in a new city.

  —

  James’s retirement also held the promise of a new beginning for us as a couple; once he had started his new job, we could start planning a family. God had given James a wonderful transition, with no lag time between jobs; he retired from dancing in July and started his new job at AGMA in September. We were ready to begin thinking about babies.

  We were still living in a one-bedroom apartment at the time, but the week after James’s retirement and right before we were to go away on vacation, we got a postcard informing us that the studio apartment next door to us was up for sale. We realized that this might be our only chance to afford a two-bedroom apartment: we could buy the studio next door and combine it with our apartment. So while on vacation on the Outer Banks, we negotiated the purchase of the studio.

  The following year and a half was filled with a great deal of upheaval: James started his new job and dealt with the very difficult transition from dancer to nondancer; we bought the studio, hired an architect, and then moved out to a temporary apartment while our home was completely gutted; I tried to adjust to hardly seeing my husband during the week when I was used to seeing him all day, every day. What was supposed to be three months of renovation ended up taking over six, and we still had to do many of the changes in our apartment ourselves. Renovating in New York City isn’t fun, especially on a budget. But ultimately, we found ourselves the proud and exhausted owners of a two-bedroom apartment.

  One change in our life that helped us through the stresses of that time was the new church we were attending: Redeemer Presbyterian Church. After we got married, James and I sought a church where we could have a new beginning and an identity as a couple, and Redeemer was a wonderful fit for us. Though I’d loved All Angels’, I knew it was important to find a church that James and I felt equally at home in, and James was drawn to Redeemer. The church had great teaching and a community that was outreach-minded and generously welcoming. Since the Christian walk is never finished, and James and I were very aware of many areas in our lives that still needed healing and grace, we knew we would need to have a consistent Christian community. As we struggled with the changes in our lives, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, we clung to God and the structure we found at Redeemer for stability.

  Despite all of this upheaval, the show certainly had to go on, and I was hard at work at City Ballet. I felt more confident in myself as an individual at City Ballet, more grown up. While earlier in my career I’d been silent and subservient toward the ballet masters and Peter in particular, now I felt that I could have real conversations with them about the roles I was to dance and how I was to dance them. I felt assured in the decisions I had to make for myself, even on the rare occasions when they brought me into conflict with the artistic staff. One memory stands out for me: the moment when I realized that no one at the company, not even Peter, had the power to make me lose my sense of self-worth anymore.

  We were in a two-week run of Peter Martins’s full-length Swan Lake shortly after James retired, and I was dancing the Swan Queen in the first week. I was also scheduled to dance one of the divertissements in the third act, a pas de quatre that Peter had choreographed, on some of the shows where I was not the Swan Queen.

  The role of the Swan Queen is very difficult, and usually dancers portraying her don’t do other parts during a run of the ballet. But I was a new Swan Queen, and they wanted me to remain in my old parts even while I danced the lead. Normally I would have done my best to do this, but this time, I was hurting.

  An old injury in my foot was starting to bother me, and I was becoming worried that I
would tear my plantar fascia, the muscle that runs along the bottom of the heel, once again. After my first performance as the Swan Queen, I woke up the next morning and could hardly walk. I realized I should pull out of the pas de quatre. I figured this was a logical choice; it was much easier to replace me in the relatively short divertissement, which had multiple casts, than to rehearse my partner with a new Swan Queen for an entire full-length ballet. I had put in six weeks of rehearsals, a great amount of time to City Ballet’s way of working, into the role of Swan Queen. I did not want all of that work to be for nothing. Plus, the particular style of steps in the pas de quatre, short, half-skippy mazurka steps, really aggravated my foot.

  For a week I’d been warning the ballet master in charge of the pas de quatre that I might not be able to do it, but he avoided me and resisted me and then finally said I would have to talk to Peter. From this, I gathered Peter would not be happy. The old me might have tried to dance through the pain, just to please management and make it easier on everyone, but I asked to see Peter anyway, knowing that it was the right thing to do for my body.

  Peter knew why I was coming and greeted me already angry. Now, I know that Peter has a great deal of pressure on him at all times; running a major ballet company isn’t at all easy, and there are multiple stresses and problems that bear on every situation. I’ve had a long and complicated professional history with Peter, and we have had both good and bad moments. His mood could have nothing to do with the people around him at any given time—he might have had a bad board meeting or learned that funding for a certain project needed to be cut. I’m sure the responsibilities he faces are very difficult at times. But for whatever reason, that day our meeting didn’t go well.

  “Peter,” I said, “I think I have to pull out of the pas de quatre. My foot is really bad, and I think if I do all the performances, I’ll possibly injure myself and be out for the entire season.”