The Sugarless Plum: A Memoir (17 page)

Now the culture of City Ballet was changing in many ways. In keeping with the times, the atmosphere of the company had become less formal, and while that meant that a certain element of mystique and glamour was lost, the company also felt more familial and comfortable.

 

Although I didn't know it at the time, and I would continue to perform for six more years as a soloist, I was also changing, finding a new path for my future and my life after performing.

While I was taking courses at Fordham, I had thought that I
might someday do something in the fields of health or psychology. I had never thought about teaching dance for a living after I retired, but I had always enjoyed teaching at Sheila's studio whenever I went home to L.A. Now I was finding that I loved coaching, as well. When Romy performed and I wasn't onstage, I would watch her from the audience or from the wings and give her advice if she asked for it. Sabrina, the long-legged dancer from Julio's Gyrotonics class, had also become a close friend, and she, too, often asked for my feedback. I was amazed to discover how much information I actually had. To my own surprise and delight, I discovered that simply by watching them move, I could figure out what worked best for them and find ways for them to execute steps more easily and beautifully. Maybe this would be a way for me to stay connected to dance when my own dancing days were over.

Looking back, it sometimes seems that I'd spent my entire career thinking about when to let go, but now the time had really come. I was ready. I had been in the company for sixteen years. Over the course of those years, I had suffered common injuries: ankle sprains, knee problems, hip problems. Although not one of them was career-ending, cumulatively, they had taken their toll.

The most profound experiences of my life had come through dance. For my sixteen years with City Ballet, dance had been my focus. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, my self-definition, my identity, had been wrapped up in being a dancer. That was now changing. To continue dancing at the level I had been, my commitment would have to be absolute, and it wasn't anymore. By this point I regarded dancing as “what I do” I no longer saw it as “who I am.”

Whatever came next, I realized, I would experience myself in a new and interesting way. I was ready for this. More than ready. It
wasn't that I no longer cared about performing. I still loved it. But my path had taught me to accept changes. It had taught me to be open to the unknown with all of its remarkable possibilities.

 

One significant change that directly influenced my decision-making process was the fact that my relationship with Ulf had ended and I had begun seeing someone who lived far from New York.

I had thought Ulf and I would be together forever. Every relationship has its compromises, but we loved each other. After five years, however, we were growing further and further apart, and even though we were still living together, we were fighting more than we laughed. Ulf was a romantic. For all the years we were together, he not only wanted to be as important to me as my dancing, he wanted our life together to be the
most
important thing. He simply didn't understand why I couldn't leave the stage, why we couldn't move someplace else, live with the land and grow our own food. For years, I hadn't been ready to leave, and by the time I was getting to that point, it was too late for us.

I met Kip at a psychologically based spiritual workshop I took when the company was on a two-week break. I didn't go there with any thought of meeting someone new, nor did Ulf, at the same time, go to Germany to film a television series with any thought of meeting another woman. But it happened for us both. Maybe we were both ready to really find love with someone else.

Although Ulf had always supported me whenever I brought up the idea of retiring, I had never felt that he truly supported my life as a dancer with City Ballet. Truthfully, I didn't think he liked
the part of me that was driven to perform at that level. He loved me, but he didn't want me to be pushing myself so hard. He didn't understand why it was so important for me, and he saw the toll it was taking on my body. I felt that understanding immediately from Kip, because he was a performer himself and knew what it was to have that burning desire to be at the top of your profession. I hadn't fallen immediately when I first met Ulf, but for whatever reason, I fell hard when I met Kip.

When I first noticed him in the workshop, I had no idea what he did; for all I knew this dark and long-haired, handsome man could have been a gas station attendant. But he wasn't. Kip turned out to be a double-platinum-selling rock musician who had gained his fame in the eighties during the big-hair band craze. While I was doing
tendus,
he was living the life of a rock star. But he knew what a
tendu
was more than most, having taken ballet himself.

I didn't think he'd notice me, but I was wrong. He did notice me, and we had dinner together the last night of the seminar. The next morning, Ulf called me from Germany. He had been with another woman but was sorry and wanted to come home to me. “I just met someone,” I told him. There was a long silence.

I had planned to meet Ulf the next week in Germany. I had no idea what was ahead with Kip; I didn't even know if he'd call me when I returned to New York. But I knew it was over with Ulf. We both knew it. I did meet him in Germany, and when we returned he started looking for an apartment.

Ulf moved out, and Kip, who lived in Santa Fe, did call me back.
We began a four-year long-distance relationship. Kip understood who I was on every level. He was in tune with me artistically, emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually, and I was in heaven. For the first time in my life I even lost my appetite. Happy or sad, I had always eaten. But this was different.

Kip would fly to New York whenever he could and I would fly to him whenever I had a break in schedule or had to take time off because of an injury. Although we wanted to be together, we both knew that I had to keep dancing until
I
felt it was time for me to leave. Once I left, there would be no going back, and I never wanted to wonder if I could have done more. I didn't want to regret the decision once it was made.

As our involvement grew my heart was increasingly pulled away from the stage. Finally, my life offstage began to feel as important as my life onstage. For more than a year, I carried on a dialogue with myself about whether I should stay or go. Ultimately I accepted the fact that the emotional core of my life wasn't onstage anymore and that, in any case, my body had already made the decision because I was becoming injured more and more often.

 

My last performance for City Ballet was in the role Lynn Taylor-Corbett had created for me in
Chiaroscuro, but
very few people knew it. Except for my closest friends and, of course, Peter Martins, I hadn't told anyone I was leaving. By then I'd been spending more and more time in Santa Fe, and I'd been injured a lot, so many people had probably gotten used to my not being there and assumed that I was leaving. But, for whatever reason, I chose to go out quietly.

As my own life was changing, so were the lives of my family. Grandpa Jack had passed away soon after the birth of his first great-grandchild, Shoshana, who was the first of six children born to my sister Michele and her husband, Paul.

Romy and Catherine left the company four years before I did, and both moved back to California. Catherine attended Stanford University, where she met her husband and started her family. Romy married her longtime boyfriend, Alex, and moved back to Los Angeles where our mother would move, as well. Soon, Romy gave birth to a son, Gabriel. My brother, Gary, and his wife, Sarah, also began their family.

 

As for me, I moved out of the city and moved in with Kip. At first, all I wanted was to take some time to rest and reflect, to be a normal person who actually had time for a romantic relationship. I had met someone who gave me the possibility of a full life without the stage, and I was looking forward to it.

After twenty years of getting up, taking class and rehearsing all day, I luxuriated in not having to wake up at a specific time, get myself to the theater and push my body through morning class. It was an important choice for me to not get a job right away, so that I could relax and recuperate from a lifetime of dancing. I did, however, begin teaching a couple of days a week at a local ballet school and enjoyed my minimal involvement with the world of ballet.

I hadn't really figured out what I was going to do next, but I wasn't immediately concerned. So many years of being told where to stand and how to stand and dissecting every little movement had taken their toll on my psyche. At the moment, it felt good just to “be,” with no pressure and no expectations. At night, I'd dream I was in rehearsal taking direction or getting corrections before a performance. Suddenly I'd turn to Rosemary, the ballet mistress, and yell, “I won't do it anymore.”

What did concern me a bit was the possibility that my sugars would go up without the constant exercise. As it turned out, they did go up some, but not as much as I'd feared. I maintained a healthy eating plan and continued a daily workout consisting of Continuum movement, yoga, ballet stretches and barre exercises. The most immediate and noticeable improvement was in my ability to sleep. Not exercising at night, eating dinner and going to bed earlier helped me to unwind and stay asleep longer.

For the first time I was able to really give myself to a relationship. While my relationship with Ulf had been great for a long time, I had never been entirely available in terms of either
emotions or time. Between my schedule and my diabetes, I'd had two full-time jobs.

Now I was available, present, and I was exactly where I wanted to be. The truth is, I never looked back. I didn't miss my days at the theater. My closest friends were no longer there. My mother and Romy were both back in California, and I spoke to them on the phone every day. I was glad to be in a life that felt exactly right and to think about what was next for me.

 

I had not, however, cut my ties to Balanchine completely. When I was leaving the company, one of the few people I told was Susie Hendl, who was on the board of the George Balanchine Trust.

The Trust was established in 1987 to preserve and protect Balanchine's great ballets. Today it is headed by Barbara Horgan, Balanchine's former personal assistant, Susie Hendl, Karin von Aroldingen and Kay Mazzo.

It had never occurred to me that teaching for the Trust was something I should even inquire about, but when I called Susie, she said, “You know, I think you would be really good at staging ballets. Why don't you give it a try?”

Balanchine ballets are danced all over the world and are a vital part of the repertory of every major and regional company, many of which feature all-Balanchine programs. When any dance company, or any school anywhere in the world, wants to stage a Balanchine ballet, they must get permission from the Trust, which then assigns and sends what is called a
répétiteur. The répétiteur
teaches all the steps in a given ballet, and coaches and directs the ballet in the manner Balanchine intended it to be danced.

Dancing Balanchine requires tremendous speed and attack, the latter being the ferocity with which you use your legs and the energy you put into every step. It can be quite challenging to dancers trained in different styles, although it's equally exhilarating and freeing.

 

When Susie made her suggestion, I felt torn. Not only did I want a break from what I'd done for so many years, but also, having struggled so hard to be perfect, I didn't want to inflict that dynamic on anybody else. I didn't yet know that I would have a gift for helping to unlock other dancers' potential and help them feel good about themselves while they were striving for excellence.

Susie, however, wasn't letting me off the hook. She persisted, and I really wasn't in a position to turn down a paying job. I met with Barbara Horgan, and a few months later she gave me my first assignment: staging two ballets for Goucher College.

You don't have to be a professional dancer to dance Balanchine, and the Trust has always been incredibly generous about allowing his ballets to be experienced by many levels of dancers, including those at ballet schools and universities.

The first ballets I was assigned to teach were
Concerto Barocco
and
Serenade. I'd
had the honor of dancing leading roles in both of them.
Serenade
was one of City Ballet's signature pieces, and it had always been one of the Balanchine ballets I cherished most.

Interestingly, Balanchine had originally choreographed it for
SAB students in order to teach them how to dance together on a stage and how to shine while dancing as an ensemble. It is a unique work, into which the amazingly adaptable Balanchine incorporated random events that had occurred in the studio. One day a student fell and he put that in. The day male students showed up, he worked them in, as well. On another day a girl came late and this, too, became part of the ballet. Later, asked why he had used seventeen girls in the opening sequence, he said it was because that was how many showed up the day he was choreographing that section.

I had danced
Serenade
for many years. The music and steps were in my body and, beyond that, in my soul. Only now I would be responsible for knowing the counts and steps for every dancer, corps as well as principals. Karin von Aroldingen lent me her handwritten notes in which she had specified all the patterns, steps and counts for every single part. There were sixty-six pages of notes and I studied all of them, then watched videotapes of different performances over and over again and took my own notes. I danced around my living room until I felt comfortable with each person's role.

Balanchine often changed the steps to accommodate different dancers; maybe this ballerina had a better extension to the front with her right leg while another was better with her left. The beauty of a live performance is that every night and each cast are different. Did the dancer in that video intend to go in that direction? Was a particular move choreographed or was it a spontaneous decision? Or could it have been a good-looking
mistake? Balanchine encouraged his dancers to express their individuality. Performances from one year had different patterns at various places than the same ballet performed in a different year. As the
répétiteur, I was now responsible for deciding which
version was best suited to the dancers I was directing.

It was a privilege and an honor for me to be able to impart Balanchine's brilliance and greatness to these younger dancers who were, for the most part, experiencing his magic for the first time. From the first step I taught, I knew I loved teaching and coaching. I loved the looks in these young dancer's eyes when I showed them the step; I loved seeing their elation when they danced them. This was not about being perfect; it was about the joy of dance.

It moved me to realize that my years of dancing Balanchine's ballets and working with the greatest teachers had enabled me to become part of that vital, creative chain of individuals who pass ballet along from one person to another.