Everything Is Beautiful At The Ballet

20 years ago to the month, I piled into a van with a bunch of Columbia, MO, ballet students and moms to travel to St. Louis. I was dressed in ruffly pink and nervous to see Mikhail Baryshnikov and a bevy of his ABT women dancing at the Kiel Opera House. We sat in the nosebleed seats, giddily passing around the one pair of opera glasses so that we could pick out faces as the troupe danced through selections from Swan Lake, Don Quixote and Apollo.

Afterwards, we stood outside the stage door to fawn over Baryshnikov as he made a mad dash for his limo, then hung around longer to watch all of the lithe ballerinas pile into a red van behind him. I wanted autographs but was too shy to ask, so my mother grabbed my program and climbed into the van, passing around my program to the likes of Deidre Carberry, Susan Jaffe, Leslie Browne, Cheryl Yeager, and one Julie Kent, a gifted teenager who had just been accepted into the Corps of ABT and was enough of a phenom to catch Baryshnikov's eye. She finished off her curly-cue signature with a huge smiley-face and I was instantly enamored.

That night was one of the watershed moments in my dance career where I realized how badly I wanted a performing career. All of my dance camps and study and pain and glory come back to a realization I had in that performance.

Last night I came somewhat full circle. ABT was appearing at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, Miami's newest arts complex with a stage second only to the Met in size. My friend, who is an ASM, is dating a member of the theater crew, so we both got to go hang out backstage to watch the proceedings. It was a last minute thing so I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. I didn't think I'd know anyone in the company - I've been out of the dance world for what seems like years.

I went through public transportation hell to arrive at the stage door right as the show was starting. My friend led me backstage and I stood behind a huge set piece watching boys in peasant outfits jump up and down and girls in white, feathery tutus and long leg warmers tie up their pointe shoes and tape the knots. I love the bustle of back stage, which I've spoken of on this blog many times before. ABT is a huge company, and dancers were in every corner of the massive backstage space. As the curtain rose and the music increased in intensity, the lights pierced the dark corners of backstage and all of the dancers doing sautes and swinging their arms in the wings put on a game face and marched out on stage. One tiny Asian girl in a long tan skirt came right up to me, stuck her foot on the set piece and adjusted the knot on her pointe shoe. It's been a long time since I've been back stage for a ballet performance, and the last time I was the one stressing over my pointe shoe knots and the height of my changement.

My friend and I eventually went out and sat in the first box, which was reserved by the ballet. We were as close to the stage as you could get without being on it. As I picked up the program on our seat, I noticed that Julie Kent would be playing Odette/Odile. I was instantly transformed to the same wide-eyed 10-year-old from so many years ago.

I forgot how much I adored Swan Lake with its full corps of white swans and its virtuosity in the leaps and turns of the male lead, the 32 fouettes of Odile and the 4 cygnets with their interlaced arms and syncopated diving sissones back and forth. Like every other ballet student since Petipa's time, I learned the white swan pas from Act I and could go through every movement in my seat as it happened. I was reduced to tears as Odette turned around and bourreed off left, the traveler closing in front of her, at the end of Act I. I leapt out of my seat as Von Rothbart, in a flash of pyrotechnics, turned back into his monstrous green form in front of his trapped, wings-flapping masterpiece at the end of Act III, and my heart stopped briefly as Odette leapt to her death in a beautiful (no pun intended) swan dive off the precipice at the back of the stage. It was a glorious evening.

And Julie Kent was every bit as beautiful as she was in 1986, but carried with her a maturity and presence that came only from 20 years of character-building performances, publicity, dealing with the touring life, being a mother, etc. She was a woman on the brink from the moment she appeared in the fog of Act II and she carried me along with her.

Afterwards we went to the cast party in the Peacock Rehearsal Room. The room was set up like a swank club replete with black and white sofas, a Brazilian band, moving lights and an open (yes, open) bar. I ate endless sushi and sipped a scotch on the rocks while watching beautiful young dancers wiggling to the dance beats pounding through the room. As I sat and people-watched, I wondered why opera companies don't provide this for their cast and crew. You could feel the morale increase among the crew and dancers as they dined and danced. It's such a simple thing and yet so many places seem to forget about all of the "little people" who make these shows what they are.

I miss the dance world sometimes. As cut throat, backstabbing, painful, and caddy as it is, I still dream about it. As Julie Kent stepped out for her paged bow she was covered in flowers being thrown onto the stage, the audience hooting and jumping up and down. She singled us out to bow to since we were sitting so close and I was instantly transformed into a swooning little girl.

I must go see more GOOD dance.