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company. Socially, I was shy at the beginning, but it didn't take long for me to become a bit more outgoing. I totally immersed myself in that world at the expense of everything else, so the learning curve occurred quickly. I don't necessarily recommend joining a company that early. Oddly enough, I never felt confident with myself, my education and ability to socialise until much later when I made real efforts to learn as much as possible about other things outside of ballet.
What were the differences between dancing for American Ballet Theatre and The Royal Ballet?
In reality, by the time I joined The Royal, I could see that basically, companies were much the same. There were the “rebels” (those who were union reps) and the "bun heads" (those who were completely obsessed). The differences were that the ABT performs far more than The Royal and therefore, I remained in shape by virtue of performances alone. At The Royal, I felt that the company was more adept at the story ballets but the energy of the dancers at ABT were at a higher level.
It would be interesting to note what, if any, difference people noticed in my work and whether I had acquired any of The Royals' strengths at a loss to my American ones. I don't actually know myself, as I stopped reading reviews when I returned to the USA in 1989-90.
The repertoire didn’t seem that different, it just seemed like another classical ballet company to me, but that’s what I was looking for. However, there were big differences between living in New York and London at the time. The little conveniences were different. Things are open all the time in New York and available, but they weren’t in London at that time. In New York I had a huge amount of choice when it came to masseuses, physical therapists and pilates instructors. I found them harder to come by in London. The availability of open classes was different also in the two cities. There was only Pineapple Studios in London then. If you wanted to take extra classes there wasn’t the choice you had in New York.
However, in London I went to more theatre and concerts, possibly because I wasn’t working so much and when I was working in New York I was too tired. I was concentrating on becoming a Ballerina and had no life (laughs). In London my social life played a much bigger role.
You have worked with many amazing artists. Who has challenged, taught and impacted you the most?
Nureyev was a big influence, but it was for a short time. I got to dance with him, but it was very brief. After Nureyev it would have been Mikhail Baryshnikov, because he became director of ABT after Lucia Chase. Also, even before that he played a huge role in my career. When he was staging his Don Quixote he was looking for people to do secondary leads, the flower girls or the Mercedes role. I had been with the company for four years and up to that point Lucia Chase hadn’t promoted anyone from within the company, she kept bringing people in. There was nobody coming up from within the ranks, but Mikhail said ‘give her a chance. Look at what she can do in this solo.’ I did it and I got to do the opening night flower girls! Then I got to do Mercedes and after that he said, ‘let her learn Kitri.’ If he had not done that I really don’t know how much longer I could have spent in the corps. I was losing the joy of standing on the side lines. I was honoured to be a corps member at the ABT, but at the same time I was aspiring towards more. He really pushed for me, and went out on a limb. Had he not done that the rest would not be history.
Then Mikhail left and went to the New York City Ballet and Anthony Dowell came in to dance with the company. In 1979, he asked if I could be his Kitri because Natalia Makarova was injured and Gelsey Kirkland wasn’t available, and he didn’t want to dance with taller girls as he had a shoulder problem. He thought it might be easier to lift me. We had become friends, so I was able to benefit from working with him and he was great, just great. And then obviously later he invited me to The Royal Ballet which was a big, big deal.
But in between that time of going to the Royal and working with him at ABT, Makarova did La Bayadère and she chose me for the Gamzatti role. I was the first person in the West to dance it. It was amazing and I was not nearly ready for it. She terrorized me. Even to this day, I am still intimated by her. Her opinion means so much to me. I was this young thing, and she was older and I respected her so much! She’s fascinating and demanding, I would have done anything for her, with my feet in first position of course!
Those four people would have been my biggest influences, plus my earliest teacher.
What are some of your most memorable performances?
My first Don Quixote with Anthony Dowell was fantastic. It was my very first full length ever and I did it with such a great artist who was fun, a wonderful partner and dancer, and someone who I admired. The entire Corps de Ballet sent me a bouquet of flowers with a note saying ‘you deserve success because we know how hard you’ve worked and you give us hope.’ I have saved that. It was the best thing.
Also my first Swan Lake was memorable. The night before Elizabeth Taylor was staying at a hotel near me and she sent me a bottle of Champagne. She asked me if I was nervous and I told her I was scared to death, but she responded ‘you’ve been working for this your entire life. That would be like me working to become an actress and never doing Shakespeare, this is what you’re doing it for!’ To do my first Swan Lake and know that Elizabeth Taylor had given me words of advice was amazing!
And also my last Giselle, at The Met in New York, was great. Things just felt like they came together the way they should have. I hadn’t thought that it would be my last performance, so there was no pressure.
What was your most embarrassing moment on stage?
There were many, but one I think I can tell without being really humiliated was with a former director of the Australian Ballet, Ross Stretton. He was still at the Joffrey Ballet and not yet with a full time contract with ABT and we were doing Nutcracker. He was quite concerned that he’d get his contract with ABT and Baryshnikov was out front. I was Clara and was put on a sleigh that Ross had to push and follow the snow flakes. The sleigh didn’t work very well, and he gave me a shove, without any chance of rehearsal. It tipped over on stage and I fell out! I was laughing so hard and I couldn’t stop. We were meant to do a grand jeté off stage, but he couldn’t grab my waist to do it because I was heaving with laughter. The poor thing, I think he was sure that he’d never get his contract because of it. This is one of my favourite memories, it was so embarrassing.
In your career you have talked about many opportunities coming up because of other dancer’s injuries. What injuries did you have to deal with?
I was really lucky as I didn’t have an injury until 1980, so I spent 6 years injury free. I had a hamstring problem. When they filmed La Bayadère at the Met (Metropolitan Opera House, New York) I had torn my hamstring, but I didn’t know what it was. I knew I had trouble walking, so dancing was a little more difficult. I managed to get through the telecast, but then I couldn’t dance anymore, my hip was killing me.
Later when I was at the Royal Ballet I was doing Manon in Russia. There’s a slide at the end of the bedroom pas de deux. We danced that ballet on a canvas that laid directly on the wooden floor. My foot got stuck in a dip in the wood and my partner Jonathan Cope pulled me, thinking he could get me out of it with a little more force. But my foot was stuck and when he pulled I tore ligaments and broke my foot. That was in rehearsal. I was meant to be dancing the next night but I couldn’t dance for 5 weeks. I had torn everything in my left foot. It took me a good nine months to recover from that because it should have been put in a plaster but the people in the Russian medical facility said there was nothing wrong with it, but it was broken and torn with nerve damage! I think that really put an end to a good portion of my career and took a few years off.
Then I was working in ABT, when I came back, and I was working on Swan Lake with a very inexperienced partner. I was hyper extended back in the arched position with an attitude and he was promenading me around. For some reason he decided to let go and I fell backwards with my neck backwards. The momentum I was having was so fast that it was like a whip lash. I herniated a disc in my neck. I kept trying to keep going. I was fine and then the next week I had numbness in my fingers. Without any common sense, I was trying to get through class and was still going to do Swan Lake, but when I finally mentioned it to the physical therapist at ABT he said that I had to stop immediately as it was very serious and could be permanent. Then I was in a neck brace for 3 months and traction. I had no idea that it could have been that serious, but fortunately they caught it.
An injury that occurred when I was a little girl was actually the thing that made we want to retire. I was running away from boys chasing me. I was at a swimming pool so I ran and jumped into what I thought was the deep end, but it was the shallow end and I shattered a bone in my right foot. I was young and I recovered, but that little chipped bone floated and all those years later when I was 36 or 37 it caused a problem. I had no idea. Every now and then it would bother me a little bit, but nothing serious, and then one day I landed from a jump and my foot swelled up. They kept trying to extract the fluid and no matter how much they would extract the pain was still there - it was like there was something blocking it. They did x-rays and the doctor said that there was a chipped bone in my foot, on the verge of falling off and that it must have been from a previous injury years and years ago. We traced it back to when I ran from the boys. I couldn’t pointe my right foot at all, so that prevented me from doing certain roles, and then with the left foot being weak from the previous injury I started to think that continuing on was just silly. So that was the thing that really made me stop because I couldn’t dance the way I wanted to.
Were you mentally prepared to retire when you did?
Yes, I had been thinking about it for five years. I had married my husband in 1990, I met him when I went back on a holiday to England, so between 1990 and 1995 I was still dancing and commuting back and forth to England. I had asked Jane Hermann who was the director of the company at ABT at that time if I could take less weeks in a contract so I could spend more time in England. So I took a 20 week contract, which was very short, but that meant that choreographers couldn’t necessarily work with me and I found that very frustrating. So then of course I was cast in the same repertoire over and over again. It wasn’t very interesting and I wanted to have kids and have a life, so from about 1991 I was starting to think about it. I wasn’t that old, but my repertoire was very hard on my body. There was so much jumping, and it was really taxing. By the time I was 36 I thought it was silly and I had had a great time, so I was ready to retire. I just had such a fantastic time! I had met so many fantastic people through the dance world that I am still friends with today. That is probably the most valuable thing I came away with.
When you retired from performing, did you know you wanted to move on to teaching straight away?
No, I had almost a two year break completely doing nothing and not knowing what I wanted to do. Initially in the Baryshnikov company tours Mikhail would ask me to teach company class. He would do an exercise and we’d take turns, and then one day he said ‘you take the whole class today’. I thought, ‘You’re kidding me?’ I was totally unprepared. But I guess he thought it was right from me. He encouraged me to teach. I have him to blame. (laughs)
I started teaching at a summer school here and there before I stopped dancing. I actually quite enjoyed it, but I always thought in the back of my mind that I’d do something else, and I wanted to learn other things, I still do. But then I had my son, and very, very quickly I thought I couldn’t just stay at home and be a stay at home mother. I was not at all prepared for the demands of motherhood. I just needed a little time to myself. I was asked to teach at a local school, an hour once a week, and I thought that my son and I could survive with that, and we did. Then it grew from there and it worked out well.
What are the different joys and rewards from performing and teaching?
The rewards from performing are a self centered thing, because it really involves what you accomplish. Of course there’s a team effort in a company, but still it’s the accomplishments of what you’ve done on the stage that night. But for me, the accomplishments were always more in the studio. What we feel as performers are the things that are tangible, the technical elements, but you can’t really tell what you’ve given the public, or what they feel.
What you get as a teacher is a huge amount of satisfaction. It’s completely different and far more satisfying. For me it’s very important that I teach. It’s rewarding when you give a student one little hint of correction, and then see the look on their face when they get it - when it works and they feel they’ve accomplished it. When it clicks, you can see that. That’s so fantastic.
What’s your advice to dancers today?
Firstly, in my day I would not have wanted to do jazz, contemporary or anything that didn’t resemble classical ballet, but nowdays you must! The repertoire is so varied and being able to do jazz, contemporary and all the in between is so important. Don’t look down your noises at other disciplines, because you are going to have to be very versatile these days. Study and absorb as much as you can from all the different teachers. Also, go out and live a bit of a life, if you can.
What are your interests outside of dance?
Any kind of music, I listen to music a lot. I love reading. I am a voracious reader of all sorts of subjects and I didn’t do enough of that as a dancer. I’ve been reading as much as I can.
I don’t have a huge amount of spare time, now that I have a child, but I’d like to go back and study piano again. I did that as a child and I let it go for such a long long time, having music around me is really very important. Music and reading inspires me.
In closing, tell us your thoughts on the International Summer School?
I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since I’ve been here! It was a wonderful experience! I was impressed at the level of teachers that Jacqui Dumont brought to the summer school. The standard of boys was fabulous and the facilities at McDonald College were great. The kids were very serious and worked very hard. I am impressed by the standard of the teaching of the dancers that attended. I have done the summer school with the Royal Ballet in London, and after being here I can tell you that you’re definitely not in an underdog position here in Australia. It was a delight all the way through.
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