by Jock Soto
Peter was on his usual prolific tear at the time, instituting all kinds of innovative programs and initiatives for the company and constantly choreographing new ballets. He had me working with him on a sequence of very different ballets—Fearful Symmetries (with Heather and Merrill Ashley), Delight of the Muses (with Darci), Jazz: Six Syncopated Movements (with Heather), and Sinfonia (with Darci and Wendy Whelan and Yvonne Borree)—and I felt that in our choreographing sessions we were communicating better than ever. During this period, when I was working so intensely with Peter and ping-ponging as a partner between Heather and Darci, the NYCB choreographer Richard Tanner also tapped me to work with him on two beautiful new ballets—Ancient Airs and Dances and A Schubert Sonata. Dick is very smart and very musical, and his choreography is quite intricate and fast. Working with him on a pas de deux with Heather was especially exciting because, although he was very involved and demanding, Dick left a lot open to us dancers. As if all of these challenges weren’t enough, another amazing opportunity—and one of the greatest honors of my career—came my way during this same time period when choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett began working on her ballet Chiaroscuro with me and several other dancers. I was completely oblivious to the special tribute Lynne was paying me as we began working; all I knew was that I was constantly onstage and working with a series of dancers who came and joined me in a fascinating and demanding ballet. I really loved it. It wasn’t until after the premiere that I understood that Lynne had envisioned the ballet specifically as a tribute to and a showcase for me. I was stunned. We had never really talked about it, but somehow she had intuited essential qualities of my Native American heritage—an earthiness and spirituality, and the intricate relationships within a large clan—that I’m not sure I was even aware of myself.
Learning all of these new ballets one after another in such an insanely busy whirl was demanding, but I was growing more confident about my own creativity, both as a dancer and as a collaborator in the exciting process of choreography. I could feel my skills maturing into a fluent, almost patented language that allowed my fellow dancers and me to use our bodies to paint an emotional landscape onstage. I have never been able to explain the alchemy of dance very well—maybe because motion and steps, not the alphabet, are the foundation of the language I speak best. But I could always feel the magic when the dancing and the music emulsified (to use a cooking expression) to create an entirely new artistic and emotional experience, and I loved the process of getting there. In fact, the process was itself the miracle.
Sadly—and, in retrospect, almost comically—during this period when my reputation as a principal dancer and my partnering experiences onstage seemed to be hitting new highs, my partnering adventures offstage were hitting new lows. I remember some dance critic commenting during this period that I performed with “more focus” when I was partnering. I’m not sure that I appreciate or agree with this assessment of my dancing, but the statement certainly applies to my private life. I am one of those people who seems to do much better in a steady relationship with one person. My breakup with Ulrik had been long overdue, but this did not mean that when it finally happened I landed in a happier and more well-adjusted place. On the contrary. The combination of having almost no time for a personal life and very little experience at “playing the field” resulted in a sequence of ill-advised romances that I sometimes refer to as “My Mistakes.”
Probably everybody has some passage in their romantic history that makes them cringe to recall. When I look back on this period of my life, my catalog of cringe-worthy mistakes goes something like this: the Screamer, the Architect, the Hollywood Agent, the Wannabe Pop Star, the Famous Painter, the Gossip Columnist, and the Velvet Mogul. Summarizing it so coldly makes it sound like I was doing a brisk business, but most of these encounters were very brief. With the Screamer, for instance, I knew it was a no-go from the moment I had to cover his mouth—which, as I recall, was before we had even begun to undress. The Architect was handsome and older than I, but dating various people at once, which is not my style. The Hollywood Agent and I were never really dating per se, but he was amusing, and he seemed to like to stare at me, which gratified my ego. It seems worth mentioning here that many dancers, even though they are part of a profession that depends on grace and beauty, do not think of themselves as uniquely attractive. This has certainly been true of me—I have always been, and will always be, insecure about my looks. In 1990, People magazine included me in its annual roundup of the “50 Most Beautiful People in the World”—but my attitude about this was, What does People magazine know? I assumed they had to fill their performing-arts quota for the annual list that year. Over time I have trained myself to look into a mirror without really seeing myself. I look for form and posture in an abstract and artistic evaluation of movement, without seeing my specific body.
The Velvet Mogul was the last—and by far my favorite—in the list of my so-called mistakes, and only a mistake in the sense that I think we both knew before we began that there was no way we would be together forever. We met at a Calvin Klein show and became infatuated with each other, but our ages, backgrounds, and lifestyles were just too disparate for things to work out long term. I had been around plenty of wealthy people during my years at NYCB, but none matched the grand scale on which the Mogul operated. If I was on tour, or if he was out of town, he would sometimes send his plane to fetch me, and he liked to literally shower me with gifts. All of this was really fun, and a little crazy, but what I liked most about the Mogul was that he was always very kind, and he always treated me with the utmost respect. He was a truly good and intelligent person, with a really big and generous heart. We got along.
During the period when I was seeing the Velvet Mogul, I began touring the country during my time off from the company, performing with several of my fellow dancers as part of a special group Heather had organized. Heather had designed excellent programs that the audiences seemed to love, and these tours were generally wild and fun road trips in which we got to travel together, not to mention make some very welcome extra cash. Sometimes the Mogul would send his plane to pick me up from wherever I was dancing on these tours—Lincoln, Nebraska, or Palm Springs, or Miami—and then I would grab Lourdes, Heather, Damian, or whoever was around, and while the rest of the troupe got on a bus to head to the next venue, we would fly out to Beverly Hills or some other place for a few days of fun. It was always amazing to disembark from the plane and find the Mercedes limos waiting for us on the tarmac. People who have that kind of money really do live differently, and it was a kick to go along for the ride for a while—but even as it was happening I knew such a life would not work for me over the long haul. It wasn’t long before we broke up, and while we didn’t speak for a while afterward, in the long run we have remained cordial. Whenever our paths cross it is always nice to see him. He is a good man, and I wish him well.
The truth of the matter is that although I made what I consider a number of dating mistakes, there was truly no one who would have been an appropriate partner for me at that particular time in my life. What I needed was time alone—something I had never really had since hooking up with Ulrik at age fifteen—and time to figure out where I stood in my dancing career. Some big and daunting changes were looming in the not so distant future—no one talked about it much, but we all knew they were coming. I had reached an age when I couldn’t just wing it and bounce through life with the blithe, carefree, que será, será reflexes that had served me so well from childhood through my early twenties. I needed to pull back, find myself, think things through, and try to make intelligent plans.
One of the saddest and most difficult experiences during this period of my life, and also a major factor in my general feeling of confusion and doom, came when I learned that my former boyfriend John had been diagnosed with AIDS. AIDS is such a cruel disease, and it had taken so many special people in our world already. For any gay man there was also always the constant fear factor—would this awful and unp
redictable disease get you, too? By then everyone was well aware of the AIDS threat, and everyone I knew who was gay got tested regularly and we were all very careful. But the disease is an insidious and ruthless enemy. I have always been very lucky, but many others have not been so lucky. It was heart-wrenching to watch John growing weaker and weaker over the months, and on the day he finally died I was absolutely flattened with grief. I was scheduled to dance Jerry Robbins’s The Cage with Heather that evening, but at 7 p.m. I was still in my bed, unable to think or move. Our ballet was the second on the program, and at some point, as time was running out, Heather called me.
“Honey, you have to get out of bed,” Heather said gently. “Get out of bed and come to the theater.” When I got to the theater, Heather was already in her wig and makeup, waiting for me in my dressing room. She sat me down and wet my makeup sponge and began to apply my makeup for me. The Cage is about a Queen (of the insect world) who is teaching a Novice (Heather) how to seduce her intruders and then kill them. I was dancing the part of the Second Intruder, whom the Novice happens to fall in love with, before killing. I remember lying on the floor after the pas de deux with Heather, staring up into her eyes just before she has to kill me, and wondering at the strange and sad turns life can take—and at the powerful imperatives of performance. I was about to have my neck broken and get stomped to pieces by Heather in an artistic portrayal of a death onstage at Lincoln Center. A very dear friend of mine and Heather’s had just died, in real life—and there we were, dancing a fake death. No matter what, the show must always go on.
Life was getting more serious. Everyone was older and everything was changing. Peter Martins and Darci Kistler married in 1991, Heather and Damian were settled into a cozy relationship, and Heather, Damian, and I had become an inseparable trio. I think the three of us were all ready for something new and were craving more stability at the same time, and in 1993 we realized that as a result of our freelance tours around the country we had amassed enough cash collectively to take an extraordinary step that would placate our urges for both novelty and stability. Joining forces with another great friend, Hamilton South, we bought a country house in upstate Connecticut and set about creating the domestic pitter-patter of a “normal” life and home. When Hamilton decided that he wanted a private homestead of his own, Heather and Damian and I bought him out and quickly regrouped as a solid little trio of happy homemakers.
We were the owners of a beautiful home on twenty acres of land, and although our dance schedules did not allow us to spend long stretches there, we did manage to have wonderful times whenever we could get there. Heather and Damian took up gardening with a vengeance, and set about creating a paradise with acres of glorious flowers and bushes and trees. Heather and I launched into a serious cooking phase, and began inviting friends to regular dinner parties at our bucolic retreat. In the winter when it snowed we would sled down the hill all the way to the end of the driveway. In the spring the tulips would arrive in abundance, and in the summer we would sit on the terrace and watch the sunset while our dogs—we had golden retrievers, mine was named Absolut and theirs was named Q—cavorted on the lawn.
As idyllic as our Connecticut homesteading seemed on the surface, over time I think all three of us could feel a spider’s web of tensions being spun between us on other levels. It was a complex situation that I’m sure some shrink would have a field day dissecting—a sort of poor man’s Hamlet. Heather and Peter, my surrogate mother and father, had split and now Heather was with Damian, one of the company’s up-and-coming talents. For years Heather and I had been unbelievably close, but every day Heather and Damian were growing closer and closer. They were a heterosexual couple, while I was a single and, at that particular moment, roving gay man. But bigger and more unspoken than any of these conflicts was another huge and frightening change that we all knew was looming: Heather was closing in on forty-one. She had many other interests tugging at her—she had been designing costumes, working incredibly hard with the nonprofit organization God’s Love We Deliver, gardening, cooking, and writing. In the fall of 1994, she went to Peter and told him she had decided it was time to retire.
I was horrified at the thought of dancing without Heather, and that last season with her was very emotional and tough. I couldn’t believe she was leaving, just like that. It seemed impossible. I had watched dancers retire before, but this was different. Heather was a ballerina whom I’d watched with awe since I first got into the company, marveling at her combinations of edginess and smoothness and the way she manipulated complex movements to create a surreal beauty. Heather was the gifted partner with whom I now danced to create the same kind of surreal beauty in dozens of ballets. She was at the center of my career and my art, and I felt we were at our prime. And now she was going to step down, just turn the faucet off and shut down her magic. I could see that the decision made sense for her, but it terrified me.
The night of Heather’s retirement performance, January 15, 1995, was one of the saddest and most emotional nights I ever experienced. We danced Balanchine’s Bugaku and Peter’s Valse Triste, and we danced them well—but I was trying so hard not to cry the entire time we were performing. I wanted every moment to last a lifetime. I remember running offstage after our last steps together and bringing armloads of roses back to her and bowing on one knee. We had had fifteen years of dancing together, and of being great friends offstage as well—it was fully half my life at that point. A long, long time. When I looked up I saw tears glistening in Heather’s eyes, too, and I saw that she was still in every way and in every moment exactly what Balanchine had once called her: his “wild orchid.”
Life takes some very strange turns, and one of the strangest in my case has been that for the past several years, Heather and I, who were once so close, have not spoken much. Over time the two of us have had so many experiences together, and now life has taken us each in our own direction. But one thing we will always have is our memories of our performances together. Those special moments onstage, the great premieres and the opening nights, will never fade. And as long as I live I also will never forget the day of my own retirement, ten years after Heather’s, and the look on Heather’s face and the tears in her eyes as she threw me flowers from the audience. She threw roses, a big beautiful bouquet of pink and yellow and white roses that she and Damian had grown in the garden of the Connecticut house we once shared.
As I think back to the years when Heather and Damian and I were trying to make a cozy family nest for ourselves in the Connecticut countryside, I am once again haunted by questions about where my real family was nesting during the same years. For the most part, their visits had remained as rare as ever, but at one point during this period their nomadic ramblings brought them east, and they decided to settle in Mashantucket, Connecticut. We were all excited at the prospect of seeing one another more regularly, and they actually did visit me several times at the country house that Heather and Damian and I shared. We spent both the Fourth of July and the following Christmas together there that year, and I remember that for me it was strange—and in many ways stressful—to suddenly have family present at these major holidays. Old tensions that had been dormant for years quickly came to life. One example that stands out occurred during their Christmas visit, on Christmas Day. My mother was wearing a pretty, all-white outfit, and just as we were sitting down to Christmas dinner my father turned to her and announced that she looked like a fat marshmallow. I got so angry that I screamed at Pop and insisted he apologize. Mom and I were both always watching our weight, and my strong reaction may have been because, in part, I took the “fat marshmallow” comment personally. But a more important factor in my anger was the long-standing feelings I had toward my father. Given his performance as a husband, in my opinion my father had no right to criticize my mother, ever, about anything. Whatever my reasons for yelling at my father back then, the memory of that moment breaks my heart now. I saw him so rarely, and for everyone’s sake I wish I had controlled my t
emper.
Shortly after that Christmas visit, my parents hit the road again, heading back to points west and resuming their restless travels, and our experiment with living near one another was officially over. Curious to know where they had come from before that short Connecticut stint, and where they went afterward, I decided to consult my mother’s computer files. The answers I found to the blanks in my memory surprised and touched me. Before coming to Connecticut my parents had been working as managers of a mobile home park in Arvada, Colorado, and then as managers of the Gig Harbor RV Resort in the state of Washington. “Joe and Jo are self-starters, dependable, consistent, energetic and resourceful organizers. Both are effective communicators, friendly and recognize priorities and work well together to meet deadlines,” my mother wrote in her introduction to their joint résumé. It was after these two stints that Mom and Pop moved to Mashantucket, Connecticut, and when they left Connecticut they went west again, where they lived in Many Farms, Arizona; Gallup, New Mexico; Canutillo, Texas; Pasadena, California; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. And these are only the stops that made it into Mom’s résumé.
Reading my mother’s résumé filled in more than the geographic blanks in my memory. I learned all sorts of things about what she had been doing while I was dancing my heart out in New York and playacting as landed gentry at my new property in upstate Connecticut. In Mashantucket, Mom worked with the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Elders, as an arts-and-crafts and Native regalia researcher and instructor; in Many Farms, Arizona—the same valley where her father had grown his famous tomatoes so many years ago—she submitted a proposal, received approval, raised $285,000 in funding, and founded a nonprofit organization called the Many Farms Senior Wellness Center. In addition to her long list of standard office and secretarial skills, Mom notes her expertise in “native regalia, sewing machines and other sewing methods, bead work, kiln work, paints and other arts and crafts.”
