Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina (13 page)

I was fifteen years old and nervous about leaving home on my own. I’d been on a plane only once before, the previous year, when I’d flown to South Dakota to be a guest dancer in a production of
The Nutcracker.

Charles Maple, my erstwhile partner at Cindy’s studio and former soloist with my dream company, ABT, had invited
me
to dance with him in a revised production of
The Nutcracker.
I was ecstatic! My first traveling dance gig, at fifteen years old, was
a major accomplishment, though I have to admit I was most excited about flying for the first time. I had worked for months with Charles, learning his choreography. When we arrived in South Dakota, which was about as foreign to me as Beijing or Genoa would later be, we entered a studio filled with maybe a hundred young girls, all of them white. This was not unusual for me. I was ready to work. The girls and their parents had odd looks on their faces. I didn’t know why.

Charles pulled me aside. “Don’t be alarmed,” he whispered, “but I need you to act as though you are trying out for the lead part of Clara along with the other girls in this room.” I was very confused . . . and a little hurt. Why was I here, if not to dance the part I’d practiced? Charles taught the choreography and the dancers followed. I pretended to be learning it for the first time.

After a long grueling “audition” day, Charles and I headed to dinner. He explained to me that though he knew how gifted I was, and how perfect I’d be to portray Clara the way he intended, he had to bring me here to show them how great I was in the flesh. Otherwise, they’d never be able to see past my skin color. I played the part of Clara in two performances in South Dakota. By the end of the day, it’d been clear to even the most competitive dancers and parents that I deserved the role. Everyone was warm, friendly, and complimentary of my talent.

I learned maybe a decade later that Charles was extremely fearful about that trip. He took a big risk in bringing a black girl into what could have potentially been a very racist environment. Today, I think the risk was well worth it. Showing people—who may not even have been aware of their subtle prejudices or doubts, that I was just as capable as them because
of the color of my skin—that they were wrong was more powerful than any minor discomfort I might have felt.

But that was just a few days. My stay in San Francisco would last six weeks.

Cindy’s friend Kate accompanied me on the one-hour flight up the coast. But she flew right back to Los Angeles after dropping me off at the University of San Francisco dormitory, where San Francisco Ballet summer intensive students were housed.

Pulling my gray suitcase behind me, I found a handwritten sign on my dorm room’s door:
I’M KAYAKO
, it read.
KINDA QUIET AND SHY UNTIL I GET TO KNOW YOU.

I felt relieved. That sounded just like me.

Kayako would be my roommate for the summer, and she truly was like me in many ways. She was part black and part Japanese, and she had grown up in Lakewood, Washington, a small town near Tacoma. I felt as if we had been placed together on purpose. How often do you find a black girl in ballet? But whether our pairing had been by design or the result of fate, I was glad to see her. She would become one of my dearest friends.

Kayako was a lot taller than me, and a little bit lighter in complexion, with skin that was more like cream than cocoa. And she had a beautiful mane of wild, curly jet-black hair.

The next day, grabbing breakfast in the dormitory cafeteria, we met the girl who would become our other confidante, Jessica. She was Asian American and also towered over me, probably by a foot. But while she looked years older, she had a goofy sense of humor, and we’d sit around cracking one another up with corny jokes while munching on Snickers bars. I would become even closer to her than I was to Kayako.

The three of us would hang out, exploring San Francisco whenever we weren’t in the ballet studio. We went to the arcades on Pier 39, pitching balls through hoops to win stuffed animals and nibbling cotton candy and Dippin’ Dots.

We took the bus out to Great America Amusement Park and rode roller coasters with names like the FireFall. We went to the movies and saw
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer,
sifted through tights and leotards at the Capezio dance store, and window-shopped in Union Square, gazing at high-priced outfits that we could never afford.

Though all three of us were close, Kayako seemed more mature than Jessica and me. Unlike me, she had a boyfriend right away, a boy who was also a student in the summer intensive program; I was still too awkward for even a childish summer romance. I remember often leaving our room so the two of them could make out. I’d wander over to Jessica’s or down to the common area and watch TV.

While we spent just about all of our free time together, I didn’t see Jessica or Kayako much during the day. I didn’t have any classes with them. Despite my limited training, I had been placed in the highest levels of the summer program, with the most advanced students. Lola de Ávila, the school’s associate director, insisted on it.

In any ballet program, incoming students have to take a class that will allow the staff to determine where the students should be placed. Quickly figuring out the right spots for dozens of students is a daunting task.

The first things teachers focus on are your body and the quality of your movement. With my long, thin legs that sloped backward and my supersize feet, I had the ideal body for ballet.
And my movement—fluid, fearless—came naturally. Seeing that, the teachers that summer—and in summers to come—felt that I belonged in classes with those who were the most experienced. There hadn’t been enough time for them to assess my true strengths and weaknesses, but they understood that what I did know, I could articulate with precision.

Summer intensive programs are also a critical rung on the ladder for young dancers aspiring to one day be a part of American Ballet Theatre, the Joffrey, or any of the other prestigious ballet companies in the United States. At the end of a program, the artistic staff usually selects a handful of the best-performing students and invites them to attend their school year-round, with the hope that they will one day be good enough to join the actual company.

I think that before I had taken my first class, Lola de Ávila and the artistic director of San Francisco Ballet had decided that they intended to offer me a year-round spot. That would explain why they had been so generous, offering me a full scholarship to their summer program that covered not only my tuition, housing, and equipment, but even my flights to and from San Francisco. A slot in their school was mine for the taking.

My reputation as a prodigy had preceded me. But despite my gifts, the reality was that there were huge holes in my knowledge of ballet. I had started so late, and was so green, that there were many terms, steps, and even productions that I had never heard of.

It was clear that I had much to learn from the first day I walked into a class. The other students—most of them white,
some of them Asian, and from Russia, Japan, and Spain, as well as from cities and small towns throughout the States—had been dancing their entire lives. And it showed.

We took classes on
pas de deux
and variations, in which you took a solo from a well-known ballet and learned a particular interpretation. The other dancers had performed the variations that we learned many times, but I hadn’t danced most of them even once.

The first ballet that we studied was
Sleeping Beauty.
Of course I’d heard of the classic fairy tale, in which Princess Aurora, cursed by an evil fairy, is doomed to prick her finger and die on her sixteenth birthday. She is rescued by the Lilac Fairy, who counters the spell with one of her own to ensure that Aurora only falls asleep. Princess Aurora is ultimately revived by a prince’s sweet kiss.

But I didn’t know Tchaikovsky’s balletic retelling, the slow rhythm of its
adagio,
the broad, bounding leaps of its
grands jetés.
I’d never seen the ballet before and wasn’t familiar with any of the choreography.

I also quickly found out that summer that I lacked stamina. I wasn’t used to being on my feet, dancing in pointe shoes, for hours each day, and my body ached from the rigor. By the time we were done with our classes in the late afternoon, my feet would be red and swollen. I’d hobble back to the dorm, barely able to walk, let alone do one more
plié.
Jessica would meet Kayoko and me at our room, and we’d fill small trash cans with ice and water. Then we’d plunge our exhausted feet into the chill.

But the teachers embraced me, pushed me, nurtured me—Lola de Ávila most of all.

San Pedro had a large Latino population, and many of my friends and schoolmates had parents or grandparents who had immigrated to California from Mexico or Central America. But I had never met a Spaniard before. I assumed Lola, trained in Zaragoza, Spain, would look like my neighbors back home: brown-skinned and raven-haired. But she didn’t look that way at all.

Lola was very pale, with aquiline features and a short brown pouf of hair. She was petite and spoke with a beautiful, lilting accent.

She had originally been taught to dance by her mother, Marí de Ávila. She went on to perform in
La Sylphide, Giselle,
and
Raymonda;
to partner with Rudolf Nureyev; and to teach at the National Ballet of Spain.

After I was offered, and accepted, the scholarship by San Francisco Ballet Company, Lola called to speak to Cindy and me. She told us how happy she and the other directors were that I was coming and told us what I should expect when I arrived. Those were the types of details that most schools would simply put in a letter. It was rare, flattering, and comforting that the associate director would take the time to call and relay that information personally.

That’s the way Lola would be throughout the entire summer, constantly hugging, holding, and guiding me. She was a wonderful teacher, always accepting of where I was in terms of what I knew and didn’t know, taking the time to explain it all and giving me the time to absorb it.

PETIT ALLEGR
DESCRIBES A
series of small jumps and quick footwork. It differs from the
grand allegro,
where the leaps are high and your legs are extended fully. There are many ways to execute it, from the very basic to a combination of intricate steps. But basic or advanced, there were many steps I hadn’t learned and was now seeing for the first time.

In my classes, I usually followed along by watching and imitating the other, more experienced students, not really knowing the steps that I was doing but able to do well enough. Yet in class when we did
petit allegro,
I was just lost. Finally, I moved to the side and stood alone because I couldn’t keep up. For the first time, my abilities failed me.

That’s when Lola walked over, gently grabbed me by the hand, and led me to the front of the class.

We stood together.

“That is a
brisé,
” she whispered in my ear, describing the rapid swishing of one leg in front of the other as you leap to the side, breaking down the
petit allegro
into tiny bits so I could grasp it, master it.

“This is a
temps de cuisse,
” she said, describing the motion, placing one foot in front of the other, then jumping with both feet before landing on one.

As shy as I was, I normally would have been mortified at being led to the front of the class, without a chance to practice first, unsure of the lesson being taught. But the ingenue who had cringed when Cindy stood her in front of the group at the Boys and Girls Club to stretch and shape her limbs had vanished. As Lola whispered in my ear—
“soubresaut,” “échappé sauté”
—I felt exhilarated, as if I was cracking the code that would lead me to a wonderful treasure. I listened and watched, learned and echoed.

About two weeks after the start of the program, I began to have occasional private meetings with Lola in her office. It was too early for the company to issue an official invitation, but I think she wanted me to start thinking about what it would be like to stay and study with the school for the entire year. It was an actual school where all the young dancers took classes in English, history, science, and mathematics, but our academics would be bookended by ballet. There would be
fouettés
and formulas,
relevé
and similes.

Lola was not the only instructor who took a particular interest in me. My
pas de deux
teacher would use me as his model for the class, much as Charles had done, lifting, holding, and turning me in front of the other dancers.

“You see,” he would yell in his baritone, holding me aloft with one arm as I stretched my body like an arrow. “This is what a classical line looks like. Extend! Balance!”

In ballet, appearance is critical. That may seem superficial or frivolous, but in an art form that is visual, and so much about grace and suppleness, it definitely matters.