by Jock Soto
Luis looked up at me and smiled. “I’m done!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands three times. “Oh no, you’re not,” I thought to myself, as I surveyed the incredible chaos and destruction. But the Christmas meal that year was absolutely sublime, and I quickly realized that supreme talent sometimes comes with a cost. In addition to our passion for food, Luis and I soon discovered a shared passion for the performing arts: he was all about opera and I was all about ballet, but once again our different areas of expertise complemented each other.
After Luis and I got to know each other better we moved in together, and a series of positive changes and a sorely needed sense of stability came into my life. We lived at first in a tiny but charming walk-up studio in an old building on Eleventh Street in the Village, above a restaurant called Gene’s. Gene’s is about a hundred years old—seriously, and I think some of the patrons have been eating there since the place opened. It serves a mean vodka martini in a glass that always reminds me of a goldfish bowl. The owners are very pleasant and they used to lend Luis and me little round tables for the small dinner parties we often hosted.
Stability couldn’t have come at a better time for me. Luis’s presence and our domestic life together was a huge comfort and support to me later that year when my mother was diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo a series of operations. And it was Luis who helped me through the difficult walk-up to my retirement. I had reached an odd point in my career, because in many ways I was doing some of the most interesting work I had ever done. In addition to Chris’s new ballets, I was partnering Darci in several new ballets by Peter—such as the very sexy and provocative Guide to Strange Places and his Tl Gaisma. Between my commitments for the regular season, I was still being booked on fascinating trips abroad and special gigs at home. My understanding of my art was more intricate and sophisticated than ever—but, undeniably, my body was breaking down. I tore each of my calf muscles several times in my last years at NYCB, and coming back got rougher each time. Often I would have to skip rehearsals, or instead walk through my pas de deux briefly and then spend the rest of the day getting my body ready for that night’s performance. The performances were still sublimely exciting. But the pain afterward was extreme. It’s terrible to have to let go of the thing you love most in the world—but I knew the time for change was coming.
MY LIFE TOOK an important new direction on that June evening in 2003 when I met Luis at the Park. At the time I never would have guessed that five years later, in the King Cole Bar at New York’s St. Regis Hotel, my whole life would change dramatically once again. On that evening Luis and I and our friend Nancy had just finished a delicious dinner at Il Convivio, and Luis talked us into stopping at the St. Regis for a nightcap. After arriving and settling in, I made a quick trip to the men’s room, and when I returned, Luis—in pure Luis form—had ordered a bottle of ’95 Krug champagne. He had also pushed aside the table from in front of our sofa and was down on one knee. I looked at Nancy quizzically as I sat down, and then at Luis. He gave me a big smile, and then he produced a beautiful ring and proposed.
I was absolutely stunned—so stunned that the first thing to come out of my mouth was, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!” Perhaps not the reaction Luis was hoping for. So then he asked me if that response was a yes or a no. (He later confessed that he had asked Nancy to be there with us that evening because he was so nervous about proposing.) I immediately shouted, “Yes!” And then I began to sob. It wasn’t until the waiter came over and said, “Congratulations” that I realized that this was all actually happening. And then I began to sob even harder.
In all the years that I have lived in New York I never thought that I would get married. Even in this modern and sophisticated city, the notion of two men getting married still seems to be strange to many people. (Though I have to admit, in recent years when I have browsed through the marriage announcements in the Sunday Times and spotted a picture of two recently married men, I’ve sometimes shed a secret tear.) I cannot believe that in my midforties, more than three decades after my father caught me dancing in front of the mirror and lip-synching to “People” from Funny Girl, I am finally going to be Sadie, the married lady. I have never been so happy.
The day after Luis and I got engaged I decided to say nothing about my news at school, but I noticed the boys eyeing my ring finger all day. In my last class, when I saw two of them sort of nudging each other, I asked what was going on. One of them approached me shyly and asked about my bling. I couldn’t hold back. I confessed that, yes, in fact, I was engaged—and when they all broke into wild applause, of course my eyes filled with tears again. It is an unusual family I have built for myself here in New York, but a close one and a dear one. I explained to the boys how Luis had contacted my friend Johnny Reinhold, the art collector and jeweler whom I’d known since my Warhol days, and had him design a ring with thirty-seven black diamonds set in white gold, and with one ruby on the inside (for Luis). It is an exquisite ring, to celebrate the beautiful life we hope to have together. I know how much my mother loved Luis, and I only wish that she could be alive to share in this happy moment, too.
Everything in life can feel so haphazard and arbitrary at times, but as I get older and as I examine things more carefully I am beginning to realize how beautiful and complex our relationships become over the years. I can see this both in my family of origin with its sprawling clan of aunts and uncles and cousins that still lives primarily in the western territories where I was born, and in my eclectic adoptive family of NYCB colleagues and other friends here in New York. Over the years my two branches of family have intersected and intertwined in many ways, and members of each branch have been with me through many of the challenges and triumphs, as well as the trials and disappointments, that life has dealt. Now that we have a house in New Mexico that we visit when we can, the various relationships in my once very separate worlds of dance and family seem to be cross-pollinating more and more. I find it fascinating the way love and trust and acceptance and forgiveness grow with and through the important relationships we forge in life, and how even occurrences that may at first feel like happenstance often become part of a profound and beautiful design. As I write this I am reminded of Pop’s story of how he and Mom first met in a bar that played salsa music, and how he knew right away that they were meant to be together. Life can be so haphazard—and it also seems that, in my family at least, it can be a risky move to visit bars. If you step out for a quick drink with a friend you may wind up changing your entire future. In my case, not a day passes that I don’t thank God for my One Last Nightcap at the Park.
A New Year’s Eve Feast and Dance Party
WHEN LUIS AND I were first living together in our tiny studio apartment, we used to throw small dinner parties for friends all the time. But the year I retired from NYCB we decided to try something more ambitious—a New Year’s Eve party for twenty-two. We moved all of our furniture into the hallway, rented two twelve-foot tables, blocked off the kitchen with a curtain we nailed up, and sat everyone formally.
I remember it being one hell of a night. We served scallops with two sauces, filet mignon with Luis’s gorgeous demiglace and morels, sautéed green beans, and Gruyère scalloped potatoes with tons of cream and garlic. For dessert we had crème brûlée. After dinner we all danced until the sun came up, and then we collapsed. It took us about a week to clean up the mess, but it was judged by all to have been a fine way to launch the New Year. So fine, in fact, that Luis and I have hosted a similar party every year since. The main entrée changes from year to year—sometimes we do a roast lamb or a beef Wellington or a turkey instead of filet mignon—but one dish that remains a constant is the Gruyère scalloped potatoes. Rich, creamy, and oozing with cheese, this dish makes any meal seem significant. People can never get enough.
Gruyère Scalloped Potatoes
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SERVES 8 GENEROUSLY
This is a recipe that I have been making for years, but recently Luis show
ed me a great shortcut. You place the sliced potatoes in the cream before it’s scalded and start the cooking process on top of the stove, and then transfer them to an ovenproof casserole, add cheese, and bake.
2 cups heavy cream
4 pounds russet potatoes
6 cloves garlic, finely minced (a lot more if you love garlic)
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground white pepper
A pinch (just a pinch!) freshly grated nutmeg
½ stick butter, softened
2 cups grated Gruyère
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
In a large pot, carefully bring the cream to a slight simmer, and then turn off the heat.
Peel the potatoes and cut them into about ⅛-inch slices (you can slice them thinner if you happen to have a mandoline, but never, ever use the slicer attachment of your food processor). Drop the sliced potatoes into the scalded cream as you work, to prevent them from turning color. Add the garlic, salt, pepper, and nutmeg with the potatoes and cream, and mix well with your hands.
Spread the butter all over a large ovenproof casserole to grease it, and pour in the potatoes and cream mixture. Top the assembly with the Gruyère, cover the casserole with foil, and bake for about 1 hour. Remove the foil, and continue baking for another 45 minutes—if the top starts to go past the “golden brown” point, cover with the foil again.
You’ll know the gratin is done if you pierce it in the middle with a knife and the knife pulls away with no resistance. It’s preferable to let it cool for about half an hour so it won’t be too runny—but I have never known anybody to object if this is not possible.
NOTE: For fancier presentations or do-ahead dinner parties, let the gratin cool to room temperature, and refrigerate it overnight. The next day, you can cut the gratin into squares or ovals using a cookie cutter and wrap them individually in foil. To reheat, place them on a greased sheet pan in a preheated 425-degree oven for about 30 minutes. They will hold their shape beautifully and you can plate them easily.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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Coda
When you get, give…. When you learn, teach.
—ANNIE HENDERSON, MAYA ANGELOU’S GRANDMOTHER
When I think back on my retirement performance on June 19, 2005, I often find myself in the moment when Wendy and I were getting ready to go onstage for our last performance together, dancing the pas de deux from After the Rain, the ballet Chris had choreographed on us only six months earlier. Operating on pure adrenaline—flying through costume changes and getting quick massages for cramps in my hands and legs between ballets—I had already danced Jerome Robbins’s West Side Story Suite, Peter Martins’s Barber Violin Concerto, and Lynne Taylor Corbett’s Chiaroscuro. I had two ballets to go. I wasn’t sure what would happen.
Wendy had acknowledged by then, in both media interviews and in our own conversations, that she felt “shook up” about the end of our partnership. I felt “shook up,” too, and especially so at that moment. For a dancer, the process of performing can be so unpredictable and tumultuous, and so many of the emotions that go coursing through the Bermuda Triangle of body and mind and spirit are unavailable to the tidy world of spoken words. But Wendy and I had found a language for sharing our emotions, and a way to float in and out and around the physical and spiritual beings we each encompassed, allowing our two beings to merge into one. I doubted I would ever again find an experience like the one I was about to share with Wendy, one last time, and the finality of that fact and that moment seemed almost incomprehensible.
Wendy and I stepped onstage, and as we stood there waiting for the curtain to go up, I hugged her. She hugged me back. I said to her what I had always said to her before we began, “It’s going to be a different story tonight.” And she said back, as she had always done, “I will meet you there.” The curtain lifted and the moment we began to dance I knew that I had nothing to worry about. Wendy and I stepped into the world where music and movement meet, as we always have, and we danced a new story—a story that existed only once, right there on that stage, in that moment of time.
As I finished my last, tender, heart-wrenching pas de deux with the sublime Wendy Whelan I got a glimpse of the whole company standing in the wings, waiting to join me for the fifth and final piece, the “Royal Navy” section of George Balanchine’s Union Jack. I tried not to think about the fact that this was the last time I would share the stage with all of my amazing colleagues, who had become dear friends and my surrogate family here in New York, but it was such an emotional moment for me as I changed into my little sailor suit backstage and then headed out. My fellow dancers and I threw ourselves around the stage with wild and giddy abandon, on the verge of giggles and tears all at once it seemed. We did our big leaps and turns, and we waltzed and horn-piped and jigged our way through the killing emotion of it all—and then, with a robust finale from the orchestra pit, it was over. The audience was roaring, an avalanche of flowers was descending upon the stage, everyone was in tears. As I stood there, numb with sadness and so many other emotions, I looked out once more to find my family in the nearby orchestra seats, and once again caught my mother’s eye and basked in her smile.
A few minutes later, when I finally got to give my mother and father a hug backstage, my mother lingered in my arms, leaning against my chest. “I’m exhausted,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “I was sending you all my strength.” I could feel her exhaustion, and I knew that what she said was true. She guided me through this day as she had guided me, even from a distance, through almost every step of my life. I straightened her wig and the two of us giggled while crying into each other’s necks, weeping as if I had just fought a world war. And then, though I have never been one to brag, I granted myself my own highest praise. I smiled at my parents and said, “It went well.”
The infinite potential for creativity that dance offers is what has fascinated and nourished me for years, and it was the unparalleled thrill of expressing such creativity moment by moment onstage that I most dreaded losing on that June night when I retired as a performing dancer. Would I have the appetite and the openness and the enterprise to find another pursuit that would let me tell a different story every day? Would I have the good luck to find people like Wendy and Heather and Darci and all the other gifted dancers I had worked with over the years, whom I could love and trust and with whom I could share the wonder of it all? And if the answers to the first two questions were no, would I be able to stand it? In the months leading up to and immediately after my retirement, all of these questions seemed so upsetting I didn’t let myself think about them much. I kept my head down and marched forward.
But one of the things I have discovered since retiring is that some of our most important lessons in life can only be fully absorbed in hindsight. I can see now that during all those months when I thought I was avoiding the tough questions about my future, I was also gathering answers to those same questions. I remember a period when Luis and I were first together, for instance, when we would sometimes argue the comparative merits of ballet versus opera. Luis is a huge opera fan, and I, of course, at that point at least, was ballet all the way. I did not understand Luis’s obsession with opera—I was used to seeing gorgeous bodies dancing around, creating impossible visions. And I particularly didn’t understand his obsession with Wagner. As a result, when he decided early in our relationship to take me to my first Wagner opera—Tristan und Isolde, an opera that runs a marathon five hours—I was very dubious. I didn’t have a clear idea of what I was about to experience, but I was quite certain I wasn’t going to like it.
Five hours later, when the curtain fell after the final aria, I was completely overwhelmed with emotion. I was shaking and tears were running down my face. The beauty of the singing and the glorious sound of the orchestra had taken me completely by surprise and had moved me deeply, both emotionally and physically. I was amazed at the magic I had just witnessed, and stunned by the talent and stamina th
e artists had displayed. Within the passage of those five hours I had come to understand the beauty of opera, and appreciate the hard work and purity of expression it must take to reach a level of artistry such as I had just seen.
The feelings that overcame me at that performance of Tristan und Isolde, I realize as I recall the experience now, are almost identical to the feelings that overcame me when I watched Peter Martins lead Suzanne Farrell onto the stage to perform the second movement of Symphony in C on the day of Balanchine’s death. And this simple discovery—that is, that different experiences in life can be linked by the quality and the kind of emotions they evoke—is both amazing and liberating. It suggests, among other things, that there are many different paths to many different fine places in life.
Finding and exploring these many paths is what I have been trying to do since retiring as a dancer, and I am happy to report that if you are alert and open and interested, you can find many opportunities for creativity and meaningful expression every day in this long dance called life. On June 20, 2005, the morning after the day I retired, I began my classes at the Institute of Culinary Education and a year later I had my degree in restaurant business management—just as I had planned. I have always enjoyed cooking, but now more than ever I understand the ways in which the disciplined and applied art of cooking resembles that of choreography and dancing. All three are about the quality of the ingredients used, the creativity that goes into the way they are combined, and the timing and precision with which the prescribed actions are executed. All of them involve performances that have a beginning, a middle, and an end—as does the career of a dancer. Of course, the parallels between cooking and dance are not unknown. Balanchine’s love of food and his dedication to the art of cooking were renowned. When Mr. B’s fourth wife, Tanaquil Le Clercq, published The Ballet Cook Book, she quoted Balanchine on the qualifications of a true cook: “No matter what he does, he must not rush, yet he must not be late, and the finished product must be exquisite. You need patience, and finally you have to appease your public’s appetite. Besides this, it should be inexpensive enough to be accessible, and, in itself, the whole must be pretty and there must be a lot of it.” The same qualifications, of course, might easily be applied to the challenge of creating a successful ballet company!
