The Sugarless Plum: A Memoir (8 page)

That summer, I stayed in New York taking classes until August, then went home for a month to visit with my family. When I got back at the beginning of September, Madame Gleboff informed me, as well as Catherine and Kelly, that we were being made apprentices. I could apprentice for up to two years, during which time I would still be enrolled as a student at SAB. I would be expected to take company class, but I could take classes at SAB, as well, and perform in the end-of-year workshops. I could also perform in as many as three ballets with the company; if I performed in four they had to give me a full contract.

It goes without saying that what should have been one of the high points of my life was, in fact, extremely bittersweet because of the extreme devastation and grief being felt by the entire company.

Entering company class that fall was like arriving at Mount Olympus after Zeus had died, with a younger, less-experienced god now in charge and all the other gods feuding. Peter Martins
and Jerome Robbins had both been named ballet masters in chief. Peter would be mainly responsible for artistic direction, and he would cast all the Balanchine ballets. Jerome Robbins would be responsible for casting his own ballets. Although I loved Peter and was thrilled that he would be in charge, not everyone was as happy as I was about Peter's promotion.

While Balanchine's general rule was that all his dancers study at SAB, Peter had been an exception since he was already an international star when he joined the company as a principal dancer in 1970. There were many dancers at NYCB who had worked with Balanchine far longer than Peter and who clearly resented taking direction from him.

In addition, there was a pervasive sense of uneasiness throughout the company. Balanchine never fired anyone; dancers who could no longer execute virtuoso steps were moved into character parts. Now no one knew if Peter would continue that policy. Beyond that, no one really knew whether or not Peter liked them, and as a result, dancers young and old were wondering whether they would continue to be cast in the roles they'd been dancing, or, in the worst case, asked to leave the company.

As it was when Balanchine was alive, company class was held in the main rehearsal hall on the fifth floor of the New York State Theater. When I entered for the first time, standing at the barres that lined the windowless walls, I saw dancers whom I'd watched onstage as an awestruck student at SAB. In addition to the members of the corps, there was Suzanne Farrell at one barre,
Merrill Ashley at another, along with Darci Kistler, Heather Watts and Ib Andersen. Everyone was following the usual preclass routine, stretching and working to get their muscles warmed up, but the air was thick with tension.

I couldn't help being nervous. It didn't help to remind myself that I'd worked at SAB with both Suzanne and Peter and that they liked me. I also wanted to be accepted by everyone in the company who had been Balanchine dancers. I wanted to prove to everyone that I was good enough to be there, that I would have been chosen by Balanchine, and that I wasn't there only because Peter had picked me.

Peter taught company class most mornings, and despite the air of uncertainty, everyone was professional and working hard. Everyone was there to dance, but we were all on shaky ground, and there was a palpable tension in the room. I felt as if I had been once again thrust into the midst of a dysfunctional family. The company was my family now. Everyone in the room was an authority figure to me, and I wanted them all to be okay both with the situation and with me—but the situation was not okay.

My guardian angel in those trying times turned out to be Joseph Duell. Joe knew that Peter Martins had far too much on his plate. On top of all of his new responsibilities as director and taking on the impossible task of trying to fill Balanchine's shoes, he was still performing and would have little time to guide new dancers. So, during what is called “center work,” when we have
finished our work at the barre and the class is divided into several groups, Joe took it upon himself to watch me, and after each combination he would give me incredibly helpful corrections.

 

In the midst of this difficult time for the company, I was chosen to perform my first role with New York City Ballet. I would be one of eight corps de ballet ladies who would dance behind four demi soloists and a leading couple in the fourth movement of Balanchine's
Symphony in C,
a classical “tutu ballet” with music by Georges Bizet. It was a perfect first ballet for me. There were no turns and no long balances, just quick movements and exuberant energy.

The night before my first performance, I was, of course, both nervous and excited. When the phone rang in the apartment I was sharing with Stacey, I figured my mom and Romy were calling to wish me good luck. My mom tried to sound normal but I could tell immediately that something wasn't right. I finally pried it out of her: Gent was dead. He had apparently fallen into a ditch and injured himself so badly that the vet had to put him down. She hadn't wanted to tell me, but she also knew that if she didn't call I'd know something was wrong, anyway, and maybe worry even more.

I was in shock and sick at heart. Gent was dead, and suddenly the anxiety I was feeling about my performance didn't seem very important. I needed to be a professional and learn to dance under any conditions, no matter what I might be feeling. I may have wanted to cancel the performance, but I knew I couldn't do that. It simply was not an option.

My feelings had never stopped me from dancing before; rather, dancing was what I had put my feelings
into.
The classroom and the stage were where I sorted through my emotions and found clarity through movement. Performing was where life made sense, where all the sorrow and uncertainties around me faded away.

When it came time to perform the next evening, my grief was transformed, and I reveled in every step I took on the stage—a pattern that was to continue throughout my professional life.

At the end of my first season as an apprentice, in June 1984, I was made a full member of the corps de ballet. I had just turned eighteen. I went from taking two classes a day and rehearsing for one workshop performance at the end of the year, to taking an hour-and-a half morning class, rehearsing up to six hours a day, and doing eight performances over the course of a six-day week.

In the winter season, which runs from November to March, the company would be dancing at least forty-five ballets and perhaps as many as seventy-five or more. As a new member of the corps, I would dance in many of them. When I was preparing for a workshop at SAB, I'd had a month or so to learn a new ballet and many more months to perfect it. Now I was learning and performing entire ballets in a matter of days.

 

The ballets were taught and rehearsed by Rosemary Dunleavy, who was the main ballet mistress. I was amazed at the way she
could literally remember every person's part in every ballet—all the counts steps, and intricate patterns. And she did it without looking at notes or a video. It was mind-blowing.

Rosemary taught clearly and concisely and made it easy to learn. We spent entire days in the studio with her, and she was the one who would choose which corps dancers would be featured. She noticed that I was a quick study and seemed to like me. I was lucky, because Rosemary was the one who cast the members of the corps. If she liked you, she could give you choice corps roles; if she didn't, she could also make sure you didn't get them. Or, even worse, she could see to it that you didn't dance very much at all.

Some rehearsals were to learn new parts; others were final orchestra and costume rehearsals for the ballet that would be danced that evening. The corps, soloists and principals each rehearsed separately to learn their parts and the technique of a particular work. The entire ballet was often not put together until the final rehearsal—literally hours before it was to be performed.

Evening performances began at 8:00 p.m. After I'd applied my makeup, I would change into my performance pink tights, and put on my warm-up clothes—leg warmers, parachute pants and a zippered parka—and stretch. If I wasn't in the first piece, I liked to warm up at one of the backstage barres so that I could see what was happening onstage.

Ballets choreographed by Jerome Robbins, Mr. B or Peter Martins generally run twenty to forty minutes, with a full night's program comprised of three or four of them. One of the best
things about being in the corps of City Ballet was that we danced as much as the soloists. In many classical ballets, members of the corps pose more than they dance, but in Balanchine's plotless pieces, we danced a lot and we danced hard. It was incredibly exciting and exhilarating, but it was also exhausting and made for a pretty grueling schedule. I had to learn to pace myself. It took time to figure out how to dance full out during morning class, again in rehearsals, and still hold something back for the performance itself.

What I found was that the sheer excitement of being onstage—the lights, the costumes, the music, the power of the choreography and the energy of other dancers—brought me to a level of energy I never dreamed I had. Although Balanchine was gone, his spirit was alive in his ballets, the teachers, his dancers and all those who had worked so closely with him. At many performances, Lincoln Kirstein was seated in the first row of the first balcony, and even though it was difficult to see particular faces in the audience, I could always see Lincoln, and I could feel his larger-than-life presence.

 

After performances, no matter how tired I was, how much my feet hurt or how much I was craving sleep, my mind would not turn off and I'd lie in bed humming the music of the last piece I'd danced or going over the steps I would dance the next day. Sleep had never come easy for me. As a little girl in Thailand, I'd often awaken in terror in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to sleep. Now my inability to get a full night's sleep
was due in part to sheer excitement and in part to overexhaustion and a racing mind.

The same year I joined the company, Romy, who was by then fifteen years old, received a scholarship to the winter program at SAB. When she first arrived, I was still living with Stacey, so she shared a room with my friend Catherine in another apartment in the same building. But when Stacey decided to move out on her own, it seemed natural that Romy and I would find a place we could share. More than just sisters, we were becoming best friends, and now, when I got home after a performance, I knew she'd be there waiting to talk. I still had trouble sleeping, but having her there made me feel calm and safe, and eventually I'd doze off.

My first review was in
Dance
magazine and was written by Joan Acocella, who would go on to become the dance critic for
The New Yorker
. “Zippora Karz, who always looks shiny and clean—as if she were going to a party and her mother just did her braids—glows visibly from whatever corner of the corps she's occupying. One always sees her, hails her, loves her go-for-it eagerness. She seems ready to eat the entire repertoire,” Acocella wrote. Even though I was a bit embarrassed to be described as some kind of super-scrubbed Goody Two-shoes, it felt great to be singled out.

I was hungry for the feedback because, while at SAB, I had always received corrections and constructive criticism after every rehearsal and in every class, it was different in the company. The person responsible for the corps was Rosemary, who had many dancers to watch and tend to and who was not, in any case, inclined to stroke us. Corrections from Rosemary were rare and came only if we were visibly out of step or doing something obviously wrong.

Her compliments, on the other hand, were so infrequent that I still remember the one occasion when she came to the corps dressing room as eight of us, seated along one side of the table, were removing our makeup after a performance. She said, “That was excellent, girls! Nice job.” After she left, one of the other dancers turned to us and asked, “Who are you and what have you done with Rosemary?” We all cracked up laughing.

 

The next “first” for me was a big one—dancing a leading role in
The Nutcracker
. Every ballet company needs to raise money, and most of them, including City Ballet, rely on the revenue from their annual performances of
The Nutcracker
. Balanchine choreographed his own version in 1954, and it soon became the company's custom to perform it exclusively from Thanksgiving until after New Year's Day—to sold-out houses for every performance. In fact, the proceeds from
The Nutcracker
financed everything else we danced in the course of a season.

The first time I had danced it as an apprentice, I was given two roles in the first act: the maid in the opening party scene, which was actually a nondancing part, and a snowflake that appears on the journey to the Land of the Sweets. Being a snowflake definitely had its hazards. We all held pom-poms in both hands as we danced, and one girl's pom-poms would often get entangled with another's, at which point there would be a silent battle for who was going to hold on to her pom-poms and who was going to let go. And then, as the Snowflakes danced, the prop people scattered little paper snowflakes onto the stage. During intermission,
they swept up the snowflakes to be reused at the next show. This meant that as a snowflake, you could get hit on the head by an errant earring or hairpin that had been swept up after the previous performance.

One night, during my second
Nutcracker season
, I was at the resin box during intermission, securing my toe shoes for my second-act appearance in the “Waltz of the Flowers,” when Rosemary came over to me, whispered that Peter wanted me to watch the pas de deux, and walked away. I wasn't sure I had heard her correctly. There are many pas de deux in
The Nutcracker, but
only one that was ever referred to as “the” pas de deux. Was that really the one she wanted me to watch?

The grand pas de deux, danced by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier, which comes after all the other characters in the Land of Sweets have danced, is the grand climax of the entire ballet. The Tchaikovsky music starts softly as the Sugar Plum Fairy, wearing a light green tutu and being led by her cavalier, begins the dance. That evening, after I had danced in the “Waltz of the Flowers,” I stepped into the wing and watched my idol, Suzanne Farrell, partnered by Adam Luders. Their dancing was majestic and romantic, and I watched them in awe. This couldn't have been the dance Rosemary meant me to watch. I couldn't possibly be ready to dance it.

 

Each night, after the final rehearsal of the day, we dancers went to our dressing rooms to put on our makeup, and Rosemary went to her office to work out the schedule, which listed where each
of the company's one hundred or so dancers needed to be at every moment of the following day. Only Rosemary's famously computerlike brain could figure this out.

 

The schedule was posted during the evening's performance, so we never knew in advance what it would be. On this particular night we all gathered around as usual to see what tomorrow would bring, and there it was. Usually my name was posted with numerous other names for a corps rehearsal with Rosemary. Now, according to the schedule, Peter Boal, my friend from SAB, and I were to rehearse
The Nutcracker.
In the section of the schedule that tells you who your rehearsal mistress or master will be, I saw the name Peter Martins. Everyone knew that Peter Martins only rehearsed dancers in principal roles. So it was true; Rosemary
had
meant “the” pas de deux. Balanchine was famous for plucking dancers from the corps to perform leading roles, and now Peter was doing the same for me. I was excited, overwhelmed, embarrassed and uncomfortable all at once. Would I live up to his expectations? How would the other dancers who had danced the part for Balanchine feel about my performing it now? I was still as concerned about being accepted by the rest of the company as I was about my ability to excel.

Most dancers, at some point in their training, are taught the solos for
The Nutcracker
. Luckily, I had learned the choreography for the Sugar Plum Fairy from Suki at SAB, and Peter Boal and I both knew the choreography for the grand pas de deux.

When you learn a leading role for a workshop as a student, you
try not to fantasize about performing leads as a member of the company. But dancing Sugar Plum on the stage of the State Theater was the dream for all of us. So when I read the schedule that night, it seemed like a dream come true—not only because I'd been called to learn Sugar Plum, but also because it meant that Peter was thinking of me as someone who could dance leading roles.

When I got to rehearsal the next day, Peter Martins was already there, and Suzanne Farrell was watching from the wings. Peter went through the entire pas de deux with us, correcting every step and giving countless directions. Because not only was he a danseur noble (literally a “noble dancer”), he was also one of the greatest partners of all time, we both naturally savored every direction and correction he gave us. Balanchine didn't want the man nervously hovering behind his ballerina, looking as if he were waiting to grab her. The man was to stand at a distance and come in at the last possible second, gently gliding his hand around his ballerina's waist for a turn or a jump. The audience shouldn't notice him. I'd watched Peter perform this magical “disappearing act” numerous times with Suzanne and his other partners. Now the directions he gave Peter Boal were based on the idea that in certain parts of the pas de deux, a good partner will make himself as invisible as possible, presenting his ballerina so beautifully that the audience's focus is entirely on her.

And all the while Peter worked with us, Suzanne watched silently from the wings.

For us, just rehearsing with Peter Martins was incredibly
special and signified what he had in mind for our futures, but neither of us dared to speculate about whether or not we'd actually be cast to dance our roles in a performance. The next day, casting was posted for the following week. And there we were, cast as the Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier in Balanchine's
The Nutcracker.

It was absolutely unbelievable, and we had less than a week to prepare. In most companies, principal roles are cast weeks or even months in advance, but at City Ballet, it was always one week before. As we continued to rehearse the pas de deux with Peter Martins, Suzanne continued to look on.

For the solo, I worked with Rosemary, who picked the role apart, giving me notes on every single step. Her corrections included what to do with my hands, my feet, my head, even my pinkie finger. Rosemary was a great technician and I learned an enormous amount from her, but I was getting overwhelmed by the details. I felt so pressured to be technically perfect that I couldn't focus on the nuances of phrasing, musicality and the feeling of the work, all of which, in combination with technical brilliance, are what allow one to give a magical performance.

Suzanne had always made me feel that I didn't have to adhere to anyone else's preconceived idea of perfection, and I needed her help and her attitude now. One day, I asked if she would come to the studio with me for fifteen minutes. A great dancer does not necessarily make a great coach, but I trusted Suzanne and knew she would know just how to guide me. She was becoming my Balanchine.

Suzanne taught as she danced—from the heart. She could see that all the pressure was taking a toll on my expressiveness and musicality—the very qualities that had prompted Peter Martins to cast me in the role and two of the most important qualities any ballerina can bring to the stage—and she wasn't happy. “Go home and listen to the music,” she told me. “Close your eyes and see yourself dancing. Feel the music. Feel the dance. See it.” Her words were inspiring and comforting. When I got home I put on my Walkman and dimmed the lights, but the visualization wasn't easy for me. The first few times I tried to see myself dancing as I listened to Tchaikovsky's score, I saw myself falling down. At that point I would stop the music, quiet my fear and do it again—over and over until I could see myself dancing the steps the way I dreamed of doing them. I also tried to see myself enjoying the role and, most important, dancing it from my heart. Hundreds of visualizations later, I saw a flawless performance in which I embodied Tchaikovsky's music with passion and soul, just like Suzanne.

 

In the few days remaining before the performance, I tried to stay calm. During the day I was so busy rehearsing that I didn't have time to get caught up in my anxiety. In the evenings, I was busy dancing my usual parts as a snowflake, a marzipan shepherdess and occasionally a flower in
The Nutcracker
. But trying to sleep at night was hopeless. Romy talked to me until she had to close her eyes, and when I finally dozed off my anxiety manifested in disturbing dreams.

The night before the performance, I dreamed that I was
standing at the top of an icy mountain with my skis on. The slope was so steep that the mountain dropped straight down in front of me. As I made my way toward the perilously steep slope, I realized I didn't know how to ski. Then I realized that I was completely naked. That's how I felt: totally exposed and vulnerable, unprepared to tackle what I was about to do, and out of my element. But frightened or not, with or without sleep, the performance would go on.

 

My mother came to New York for my first solo performance along with Sheila and two other teachers from her studio, Chris and Marilee, who had always been my great supporters. I was afraid that having them there would add to the pressure I felt, but it actually helped knowing they were in the audience, and I was glad they had come.

Peter Boal and I were nervous and shaky as we stood in the wings like third graders before a big school play. From the other side of the back stage area Heather Watts and Jock Soto waved to us, wishing us good luck. Dancers in a ballet company have a rare camaraderie. There are rivalries, of course, and while I knew some of the others were upset that they hadn't been chosen, I felt incredibly supported by everyone. We are like a team, and when each of us is dancing our best, the team as a whole is lifted to a higher level of performance.

All of our training and rehearsing pays off in the performance, that moment when, despite whatever nerves you might feel, your mind and body take over, you focus on the moment and you just
let go. When the performance began that night, something took over inside us. The turns I kept falling off of when I began visualizing now went beautifully. The more we danced the freer we became. When it ended, what made me most happy was that despite the pressure and my fear that I wasn't ready, I had been able to get my mind out of the way and dance from my heart. At moments it felt as if I had allowed something greater and grander than myself to be expressed through me.

Afterward, Peter Martins would describe his impression of my performance to Sheila in three words, “Simple, pure and unaffected.” Clive Barnes, reviewing in the
New York Post,
wrote, “Both Karz, a controlled yet exultant dancer, with a rhapsodic, flowing line and beautiful placing that punctuates her dance with split-frozen seconds of sculpture, and the elegant Boal, showed a great deal more than promise. These two are potential stars.”

Joe Duell came up to me onstage immediately after the performance, hugged me and said, “This is your home.”