The Sugarless Plum: A Memoir (9 page)

Right after my performance in the grand pas de deux, I went back to rehearsing my usual corps de ballet roles. After one of those rehearsals the following week, Rosemary called me aside and said, “I know that Sugar Plum was a big deal for you and you danced well, but it will probably be a while before you dance anything that big again. I don't want you to get depressed about it. For now, you should work on getting technically stronger.”

Getting that kind of feedback from Rosemary was unusual, and I appreciated it. More often, you aren't told why you're not being cast again; the roles just go to other dancers. And, in any case, I knew that I needed to get stronger. So long as I was being considered for principal roles in the future, I could wait. In the meanwhile, I was performing every night in ballets that were challenging and inspiring and would help me develop the strength I required.

As it turned out, however, I didn't have to wait as long as I'd anticipated. Jerome Robbins always had an eye out for new talent,
and he had come to see my
Nutcracker
performance. I obviously made an impression, because a few weeks later he chose me to dance a lead in his epic ballet
The Goldberg Variations
, set to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He'd originally choreographed the role for Gelsey Kirkland, one of the world's greatest ballerinas. I was surprised and extremely grateful that he had noticed me and chosen me for the part.

After I'd rehearsed the part with ballet mistress Sally Leland, Jerry said that he wanted to rehearse me in my solo himself. The idea of dancing for Jerry was exciting, of course, but also terrifying.

Since Balanchine's death, Jerome Robbins was the living genius and master choreographer for City Ballet, producing amazing works all the time. Watching his ballets evoked in me the same depth of feeling I experienced watching Balanchine ballets. But while Balanchine was a kindly, endlessly patient presence, Jerry was unpredictable, unsettling and utterly intimidating. His volatile temper was famous throughout the dance world. There is a well-known story of an incident that occurred when, years earlier, he was directing
Billion Dollar Baby.
He had been yelling at the cast, and as he verbally tore into them, he kept backing up slowly but surely toward the orchestra pit. The entire cast saw what was happening but no one said a word. Instead, everyone stood silently by as Jerry fell backward into the pit, injuring himself quite severely, and nobody had tried to stop it.

But working with Jerry was worth it. He could push, mold and inspire a performer to achieve his or her highest potential. And even he had a sweet, gentle side, and when he was nice, the whole
room lit up. Everyone was happy when Jerry was happy, and everyone—including me—wanted to be part of whatever he was creating.

 

The rehearsal for my solo in
Goldberg
was the first time I had ever been alone with Jerry. I had started to dance the beautiful piano piece when suddenly I hit a slippery spot on the floor and I fell flat on my face. It took me a second to realize what had happened. And when I looked up at Jerry, expecting him to ask if I was okay, he yelled, “Get up!”

I was flat on my stomach and getting up wasn't easy. I tried but couldn't. Again, Jerry yelled, “Get up!” A moment later he yelled louder, then still louder.
“Get up! Get up!”
Finally, I managed to get back on my feet, brushed the dirt off my stomach and started again where I'd left off.

Much as I wanted Jerry to like me, much as I hoped he'd be inspired by me and one day nurture me as I'd hoped Balanchine would have done, I really wished he weren't so mean and temperamental.

 

With the promise of dancing a lead for Jerry and future leads for Peter, I took Rosemary's advice to heart and did whatever I could to increase my muscle strength. “Be strong” had become my constant mantra. I was obsessed with working my body as hard as was humanly possible, adding Pilates, weight lifting and yoga to my already intense schedule. In class, during our center work,
instead of resting like most of the others while the second group danced, I danced with both groups. I wanted to be strong enough and consistent enough to dance leading roles. Overall, however, I was happy. I was no longer nervous in company class and I loved performing every night. It seemed to me that I was much further along than I had even dreamed of being at this point.

Just one thing was really bothering me. Joe Duell had suddenly stopped correcting me in company class. When I said hello as I passed him in the hall, he stared blankly ahead and ignored me. Now I wondered if I'd done something wrong. Was Joe disappointed in me?

This was particularly upsetting because Joe had always been there, correcting me in class, saying hello in the hall, and once, when he saw that I was struggling, he even asked me to lunch. Back in the fall, before I'd been chosen to dance Sugar Plum, the company had gone to Washington, D.C., to perform at the Kennedy Center. I loved the experience of seeing new places, performing for new audiences and bonding with the other company members in ways that you don't when you're not on the road. But on that particular tour, the lack of feedback had really gotten to me. I was feeling particularly insecure and even a bit depressed. As usual Joe Duell noticed and suggested that we go to lunch. Even though I'd never had a problem talking to people, I was nervous. Could I tell Joe what I was feeling? I knew that Peter and Rosemary had the entire company of dancers to think about, and I didn't want to complain or seem ungrateful. I don't remember what we talked about at that lunch, and in the end, I'm not sure
it really mattered. It was enough that Joe had taken the time from his busy schedule to be sure I was okay.

But I do remember that something very odd happened at that lunch. A fly kept landing on Joe's forehead. It kept circling around, and I kept waiting for him to swat it, but he didn't. At one point, while he was eating, it actually flew onto his lip, and still he did nothing. As he continued to speak, it stayed there. I tried to listen to what he was saying, but all I could focus on was the fly on his lip. How strange, I thought. He didn't notice it.

I thought of that incident now as I worried about the change in his behavior. I had enough self-awareness to realize that because of my own insecurities, I was making this all about me. But what if his problem had nothing to do with me? I always knew when something was bothering my friends, and I was always able to reach out to them. So why couldn't I reach out to him? I vowed to myself that the next time the opportunity arose, I was going to ask him how he was doing. He could tell me or not, but at least I'd have made the effort—as he had for me in Washington.

Every day I'd look for a chance to speak with him alone, but he'd become elusive. Then one day we were waiting for the elevator together—just the two of us. I kept telling myself that this was my chance, but I just couldn't do it. I froze, and I didn't know why. If he'd given me the slightest opening, I might have mustered up the courage, but although we were standing next to each other, it was as if I wasn't even there with him.

The next day, during stage rehearsal for
Symphony in C
, I sat at the very front of the stage with Stacey and the other dancers, waiting to rehearse our parts while Joe rehearsed his. As we sat
there watching him dance, I whispered to Stacey how concerned I was about him. She took me by the hand and whispered back, “Something's not right. I can't look at him. He seems all cold and clammy.”

 

The day after that, while we were in the dressing room getting ready for a matinee performance of
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
an announcement came over the loudspeaker: “All dancers come to stage level immediately.”

Everyone froze for an instant and then rushed to the elevator. The last time that announcement had been made to the company, it was to announce Balanchine's death. Something was terribly wrong and everyone could feel it. Some of the older corps women burst into tears, thinking that Lincoln Kirstein must have passed away.

The elevator was too small to accommodate everyone at once, and when I finally arrived at the stage level the first person I saw was Lincoln, towering above everyone else in the middle of the stage. Then I heard screams and gasps. Everyone looked shocked and horror-struck as they fell sobbing into one another's arms.

I found Catherine Oppenheimer, one of the last women Balanchine had taken into the company, standing off to the side, tears streaming down her face. “Joe killed himself,” she said.

He had jumped out the window of his fifth-floor apartment. He was twenty-nine years old, and I could only imagine the kind of pain he must have been in to do such a thing. I couldn't believe it.

He had been scheduled to dance that matinee. As always, the show went on.

Luckily, there was only one week left in the season, because after Joe's death I was finding it more and more difficult to keep going. Instead of warming up my muscles before the performance, I sat in a chair feeling as if I were stuck in mud. On Mondays—our day off—I generally did errands, cleaned the apartment and sometimes took a yoga class. On the Monday after Joe's death, I sat in bed all day staring at the TV.

The last day of the season, Lincoln, Peter and Jerry called a company meeting. I knew that Lincoln had been especially close to Joe, and the loss must have been terrible for him. Now the three of them told us that they understood what a horrible time this had been. They wanted us to go away and rest, and not to think about ballet during our two weeks off. In effect, they were giving us permission to let down and fall apart. I felt that I already had. Now, with their blessing, I went home and didn't think about ballet for two weeks.

 

For some dancers who are in peak condition, a two-week break will not drastically affect their form; I wasn't one of them. When we returned after the break, I had lost muscle response, particularly in my toes. I wasn't yet ready to take on a full schedule. I needed time to get back into shape mentally and physically, but I didn't have that luxury.

During the first week of rehearsals for the spring season, Jerry picked me to learn the only pas de deux in his playful work
Interplay
. When Jerry really liked a dancer, he wanted her for everything, and soon I was also learning a leading role in his masterpiece
Dances at a Gathering
.

For
Interplay, I
was to be third cast understudy, which meant that during rehearsals I could stand behind the other soloist and principal dancers while I tried to get myself back into shape. One day that first week, however, Jerry surprised us by showing up unannounced at rehearsal. We were still learning our parts, and I was still struggling to find my toes again. So, when Jerry said that he wanted to see all the casts for the pas de deux, I knew I wasn't ready. I looked at the clock and I prayed that we would run out of time before he got to me. But luck was not on my side, and to my dismay, there was just enough time left for me to dance.

When it was over, I knew that I hadn't done well. Actually, I was surprised that I had done as well as I did. Still, considering how good it needed to be for Jerry, it was pretty bad.

“You'll see,” one of the older corps members had recently
warned me. “One day you're in and the next you're out. It will happen to you, too. Jerry does that.” While I appreciated her attempt to prepare me for what had happened to her, I was secretly thinking that it would be different for me. Now I couldn't believe that one less-than-perfect rehearsal would cause him to drop me. Soon enough, however, I discovered how right she had been.

The Goldberg Variations
was to be staged again toward the end of the season. Since Jerry had been pleased enough with my performance to then choose me for
Interplay,
I was naturally assuming that I would be cast again. When I asked Sally Leland if I should start thinking about rehearsing it on my own so I would be ready when Jerry wanted to see it, she smiled and put her hand on my shoulder. “Don't worry about rehearsing it,” she said. “He's going to use somebody else.”

The next day, when I looked at the rehearsal schedule, I saw that a younger corps member had been cast in the role. At twenty years old, I was already a has-been and I felt incredibly rejected. I knew I hadn't danced well in the rehearsal for
Interplay
, but I still didn't expect to be canned so quickly. I was heartbroken. I didn't want to accept it.

 

A few weeks later, I was rehearsing a corps de ballet role in yet another of Jerry's ballets,
In G Major
, when, as I was coming down from a jump, I lost focus for a split second. My foot twisted. I limped away. It turned out that I had broken my metatarsal and sprained my ankle. That put an end to my spring season, and I flew home to Los Angeles with my foot in a cast.

 

I was home for three months and gave myself permission to relax. I went to fraternity parties with my older sister, Michele, and her friends, got drunk and actually went on a few dates. It was a relief to be a normal twenty-year-old, to be around people who knew nothing about executing a perfect
tendu
, and who hadn't even heard of Jerry Robbins.

It was also the perfect time to heal the grief I'd been feeling ever since Joe's death, and to reflect on the feelings of rejection Jerry had triggered in me.

My aunt Rhonda had become a trainer for a program called the Loving Relationships Training, which, like many such programs in the eighties, focused on the notion that our thoughts create our reality, and that by becoming aware of our unconscious thoughts and changing them, we can change our reality. My mom and I took the course together, and it turned out to be an opportunity for us to heal some of our issues—specifically what had happened with Dave—and a powerful bonding experience for the two of us.

Taking those seminars taught me how much my sense of self-worth was directly related to whether or not Jerry and Peter were pleased with me. I realized I had a lot to work on. For my mother, the whole experience was so liberating that she decided to enroll in a six-month course that met weekly in New York. And so, at the end of the summer, she joined Romy and me in the city.