Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina (20 page)

Now I claimed my identity—I was Misty, the ballerina from ABT! For the first time I was loud, even boisterous. The little girl whose stomach would tremble if she had to give a book report now had an opinion about dance, about music, about everything. I would argue constantly with Renata Pavam, a Studio Company member from Brazil, about who was the better boy band.

“’NSYNC!” I’d yell.

“Backstreet Boys!” she’d yell back, before we declared a truce and went out to get burritos at Señor Swanky’s.

Renata became one of my closest friends and is still with me in the company today as a member of the corps.

But my very best friend in the Studio Company was Leyla Fayyaz. She and I had been the two girls chosen to be apprentices with the main company in China, and we had formed an instant bond. We both loved hip-hop, and we spent much of our free time jamming to Eminem.

Will the Real Slim Shady please stand up?

Leyla and I roomed together in China and throughout our tours with the Studio Company. She was beautiful—of Cuban, Lebanese, and Persian descent—and I thought she had the perfect classical technique and style. We called each other soul mates. We explored New York City together, first as bewildered young girls gawking outside the handful of peep shows that remained in Times Square, and then as young women, going to lounges and dating boys for the first time. We explored the
city with all the wide-eyed wonder of visitors from a foreign land. By the time my first full year in New York City came to a close, I had fallen in love with it. Still, Leyla and I leaned on each other desperately. We ventured from the strict structure of ballet, as that was all we knew, to explore the grand world that is Manhattan. Once, we were even stopped by a police patrol in Central Park. They thought we were teenagers ditching high school. We had to explain that we were ballerinas with ABT and show our Metropolitan Opera IDs to back us up. We remained close friends even when she left ABT only after a year to attend Hunter College, and I was there with her as she dipped her toes into the world of study sessions and final exams. I spent many nights with her in her dorm. Not only were we both curious young women, Leyla was also a late bloomer in life, as so many ballerinas are. I couldn’t have survived without her. She now works as a segment producer for the FOX 5
Morning Show
in New York City.

When I was nineteen years old, I was promoted to ABT’s corps de ballet.

The corps is an integral part of a dance company. They’re the base that helps to weave the tale, coloring the Pasha’s dream in
La Bayadère,
filling the forest in
Giselle.
But for most ballerinas, the goal is to soar beyond it, to stand out enough to get a featured part, and hopefully, one day, to become a principal—that small band of stars who are always cast as Kitri, or Sylvia, or Aurora. Advancing from the Studio Company to the corps was like going from the minor leagues to the main team’s second string. The chance to be a starter, to be first, was now within reach, if you could just pitch, tackle—dance—your way there.

Within the Studio Company, there had been rigor and a constant quest for perfection, of course, but there had also been a strong sense of camaraderie.

Now I was one of the cattle in the corps. It was intensely competitive. No one in the main company knew that I was a prodigy, nor did they care to find out. Here, my reputation didn’t precede me. I had to start from scratch. It was as if each day, in class or rehearsal, I was auditioning, proving myself, for the first time. There was no room for excuses, no coddling because I had come to ballet late. There was no Cindy to root me on, no Lola de Ávila to hold my hand. Many members of the corps were several years older than me (older than those in ABT’s present-day corps), and I felt that I had to grow up fast.

I don’t think I stood out for the lack of time I’d spent training, but I did have to learn how to pace myself, how to get along with my dancing peers while also fighting for the chance to dance soloist roles. I was intimidated and I felt my voice beginning to shrink inside once again. I felt that the other dancers, and even some of the instructors, were constantly judging me, and that many wondered why I was there at all. Perhaps some of it was in my head, but, despite my camaraderie with Leyla and my love for ABT, I felt very much alone.

Ballet has long been the province of the white and wealthy. Our daily, toe-crushing exercises make pointe shoes as disposable as tissues, and they can cost as much as eighty dollars a pair. I came from a family that didn’t always have enough food to eat, and I was nearly fourteen years old when I saw my first ballet. Most of my peers had grown up immersed in the arts, putting on their first tutus not long after they learned to talk. They had summered in Europe while I didn’t get my first
passport until I was seventeen. Their families had weekend homes. I had spent part of my adolescence living in a shabby motel.

But I also stood out in another, even more profound way. I was a little brown-skinned girl in a sea of whiteness.

Being “the only one” had never bothered me before. Going to temple with Bubby and Papa, peering out from the Bradley’s family photographs, vacationing with them in San Diego, I had rarely even thought about how different we looked from one another. But I also realize my blackness didn’t stand out to me because it had never stood out, at least in a negative way, to them.

IN SOME WAYS, BALLET
companies are like the military, hierarchical and rigid, with long grueling days spent exerting yourself physically.

ABT, like most companies, has a school for students that it hopes to cultivate. Then there is the Studio Company, which is a training academy of sorts for the most promising upcoming dancers. After a stint at that level, most are invited to join the main company, as I was.

The main company consists of the corps de ballet, the roughly fifty members of the company’s chorus, and then the top tier of soloists and principals who are ABT’s stars. There are no quotas, though the number of soloists tends to hover around a dozen, while there are roughly twenty principals.

ABT has a spring and fall season. In the fall, we perform for three to four weeks in New York, our hometown. While our stage used to be at the City Center, a stone’s throw from
Carnegie Hall, we now perform at the Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, near our spring season home at the Met. The spring season spans eight weeks, and sometimes in the winter, we have a
Nutcracker
season, for roughly four weeks, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Though the performance seasons are only a few weeks, we are working all year long. Rehearsals begin in mid-September, and we go on tour, whether around the United States or overseas, as soon as two weeks later. We tour almost constantly, in between our rehearsals in New York City and for two weeks after we complete our spring season in July.

We have about two months off during the summer, but in all, we work thirty-five weeks a year, though those weeks are not consecutive. Eighteen of those weeks are spent rehearsing, and the other seventeen we are performing on the stage.

It is during those off weeks, which we call “layoffs,” that I usually do freelance dancing engagements to continue honing my technique and return stronger to ABT for the new season.

Our physical regimen is strenuous. During the weeks the company is working on its repertoire for the season, there’s a ninety-minute ballet class every morning to warm the dancers up for the day. Then we rehearse from noon till seven. Most days we get a lunch break from three to four, but not always. For every other classical ballet company at ABT’s level, class is mandatory, as much for the company to guarantee that their dancers are staying on top of their training as for the dancers’ own convenience. But at ABT it’s up to you to take class. Because there are around eighty of us in the company, we would split into two classes for our barre and center work. Though they happen at the same time in studios one and five, you can
pick whichever you like better from day to day, whether it’s to train with a certain teacher or avoid a classmate’s bad mood. We rehearse as a company Tuesday through Saturday, with only Sunday and Monday off.

The schedule is even more intense during the actual performance season. We’ll go to the theater to take our morning classes, and then rehearse and perform from ten thirty a.m. to eleven at night. That’s the routine, Monday through Saturday.

Even during layoffs, I will still go to ballet class in the morning, and I’ll also work out, doing Pilates and perhaps cardio a couple of times a week.

Exercise and ballet class are critical, not only to stay fit, but to demonstrate your prowess and technique so that when it is time to cast the season’s ballets, you are kept in mind. As a member of the corps, standing out in class or during the group numbers on the stage is the only way to be singled out for a starring role. We don’t audition for parts within ABT. The closest thing to a tryout comes only when a choreographer is creating a new ballet. Then, you and perhaps two dozen others might be selected to help with the work’s creation process. As you and the other dancers learn the same movements, the choreographer is able to determine who best fits and executes the evolving part. You want to show you can pick up the movements quickly and are able to adapt to whatever changes the choreographer desires.

But generally, the path to a starring role is less clear and largely beyond your control. Kevin will watch you, silently, in class and onstage, and then decide whether or not to give you a chance. Soloists and principal dancers will usually be told what roles they will be dancing throughout the year, or which they
will be learning for future performances, during the mandatory assessment meetings all dancers have twice a year with Kevin and the assistant director. They’ll then have a steady, rigorous schedule of rehearsals to learn and perfect their parts.

The process to reach the pinnacle within a company by becoming a principal or soloist is similarly subjective and, I’ll admit, a bit mysterious when you’re going through it. Though some European companies hold annual auditions for those positions, within ABT, you again are simply observed over time. Then, one day you may be among the fortunate few to get a tap on the shoulder, or an urgent phone call, beckoning you to Kevin’s office, where you hear the news that you’ve been promoted.

I WAS JUST STARTING
my climb toward becoming a soloist or principal, the ink barely dried on my first-year contract, when my honeymoon abruptly came to an end.

By then, other choreographers and companies had begun to notice me, and I went for all that I could during that first year’s layoff, flattered by the invitations and hungry for every chance to hone my technique.

Often the rehearsals began late and extended deep into the night. One of those late evenings, I was at the Juilliard building in the Lincoln Center complex working with a choreographer on a piece. I remember that it was a contemporary work, so my body was moving in ways that I wasn’t used to.

Suddenly, extreme pain exploded in my lower back.

Foolishly, I danced in pain for a couple of weeks before finally going to the hospital for an MRI.

It turned out that I had a stress fracture in my lower lumbar. It was the type of injury that is usually far more subtle, with the breaking occurring over time. Once you notice it, the injury has been building for a year or more. It was unusual that I’d caught it as soon as it happened.

I had never been hurt before, but I knew I had been unusually fortunate. Injuries are extremely common in the ballet world. Every day there is someone who suffers a stress fracture, a pulled muscle, a neck spasm because we are constantly dancing, dancing, dancing. In a company like ABT, we feel fortunate to have so many talented dancers who can fill in as understudies when somebody has to pull out.

But an injury can be as psychologically painful as it is physically painful. One day you’re on the stage and you’re the star. The next day you’re out with an injury and someone else is on the stage, dancing your part. And you’re forgotten.