Quarterly Columbus
Ballet’s rising
stars
Making the leap from apprentice to performing artist
Winter 2013
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table of contents from a storied stage
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fit to dance
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in the wings
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from the editor This issue goes behind the curtain to reveal the struggle and sacrifice required of young dancers whose dream is to perform. Pre-professional ballet students who are on the cusp of a budding career give up traditional, four-year high schools to spend hours perfecting their posture and pirouettes in studio. They work hard, dancing six days a week, rehearsing late into the evening while maintaining a limited social life and time away from the stage. In a piece about maintaining peak physical condition, it is clear dancers demand excellence from their bodies every day. That kind of physicality often comes with the risk of injury, something Hope Davis and Mariah Nierman are hoping to curtail with their innovative exercise physiologies and preventative medicine tailored specifically for dancers. A dance career is often a short-lived one. Carrie West, a veteran ballerina with nearly two decades of performance, looks to the next steps after a spending a lifetime on stage. With a young family requiring more of her time, she prepares to dance the final steps of a celebrated career. — Abigail S. Fisher
adviser editorial board
terry eiler michael bou-nacklie, claire harbage, taehoon kim, kate munsch, will parson, heather rousseau, megan westervelt, erica yoon Winter 2013
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from a
storied stage Veteran dancer Carrie West shares insight from her extensive performance career and talks about taking the next steps Words and pictures by Abigail S. Fisher
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ith her long limbs and slender frame, Carrie West is every bit a classical ballet dancer. She exudes the gracefulness expected of a seasoned artist who has performed Aurora, Sugar Plum and Juliet in some of ballet’s greatest stories. Now, at 36, West, who is nearing the end of her performance career is preparing for her transition off the stage. Though it is not unusual to hear of famed classical dancers performing well into their 40s — New York City Ballet’s Darci Kistler danced until she was 45 — West is practical about the end of her stage career. Having joined BalletMet in 1998, West worked her way to the top of the company performing principal parts in major classical productions. Columbus patrons often recognize her as the Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, but she is also found working behind the scenes as a representative for the dancer’s union through the American Guild of Musical Artists. That responsibility is nothing to be taken lightly. Mentoring the next generation of young dance stars is critical to the art’s success, West believes. “It’s important that we teach the younger generation that they are adults and they should be treated that way — they have to stand up for themselves,” she said. “You treat people how to treat you. I think that’s very true in this profession.” Like many classical ballet dancers, West began her formal training as a girl. She was 9 and in an advanced dance class at her home studio in Sacramento, California. Watching her classmates practice techniques to strengthen their feet and ankles at the barre in pointe shoes, West longed for her first pair of shoes. “I was just like a horse behind the gate — waiting
to get out there,” she said, remembering her classmates practicing steps and spins in the center of the studio. “When I finally got my shoes, they tried to make me stay at the barre, because I hadn’t had the prep training yet,” she said. “They finally let me go out into the centre and I just had so much fun, I enjoyed it so much — it never hurts when you’re little. At that point, it’s just fun.” Under the tutelage and mentorship of Barbara Crockett, a retired principal dancer from San Francisco Ballet, West was pegged for more advanced study — she was 12 when she spent her first summer at the San Francisco Ballet school’s intensive five-week ballet course. Summer ballet studies, or intensives, are critical in the development of a dancer’s performance career, West notes. Young dancers aspiring to make it to the stage full time will often begin advanced study by spending their summers immersed in classical technique, repertoire and pedagogy under the direction of seasoned professionals. Training at the legendary School of American Ballet in New York City, Houston Ballet and San Francisco Ballet, West spent her summers being groomed for a career in dance. “The summer programs are really important to get out of your bubble,” she said. “It’s important for students to go because you’re going to be exposed to different dancers, other techniques.” At 12, West became an apprentice with the Sacramento Ballet and continued to study under Crockett. At that time, the company was small and apprentices were mostly high school students spending their afternoons in rehearsal with company members, she said. With only about 10 full-time company members, apprentices filled the corps roles in most productions, giving West lots of stage time. “That got me more involved than I would have been Winter 2013
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otherwise,” she said. “I think that’s how I caught the bug.” Dancing the major variations from The Nutcracker eventually led to West principal roles. She performed the Sugar Plum Fairy at 17 and was offered a job dancing with the company when she finished high school. “I was dancing a lot, I felt like it was such an easy transition,” she said of joining the ranks of the Sacramento Ballet, where she met her husband and former Russian Bolshoi dancer, Dmitri Suslov. The couple relocated to Columbus and BalletMet for a more performance opportunities and the chance to dance principal roles under then artistic director, David Nixon. It was in Columbus, where West blossomed as an artist. Having grown up dancing in her home studio, West felt stymied as a performer. She was being typecast as a perpetual student in the eyes of company directors and wanted the chance to expand her performance repertoire. “The atmosphere here is very different than it is in Europe,” she said. “In general, [ballet] doesn’t get the respect, you don’t earn a lot of money — it doesn’t have the prestige.” Though it was clear she would never get the fame and attention that a European dancer would, West still felt she had the opportunity to become a great artist, a more well-rounded ballerina who was able to develop roles and characters in conjunction with a choreographer. “I really love the story ballets — that’s more my niche,” she said. “I learned a lot at Sac Ballet, but it was more about the physicality. I wanted to do more emotional roles. Working with Nixon and developing those roles as he was creating them was a lot of fun.” Experimenting with classic characters such as Juliet or Lucy from Dracula expanded West’s repertoire. “You get to be somebody no one would expect you to be — it was fun to surprise people,” she said. Dancing a single, developed role through an entire ballet is what West lives for. It is that moment, at the end of the performance, before the exhaustion creeps in, that keeps her coming back to the stage. “That character development to the very end is so rewarding when you finally get to that finish line and you’re taking your bow — that’s when you feel like you’ve accomplished so much,” she said. “The best for me is when I get to do those characters; and I hope the younger generation gets to do that too.” Now, with nearly two decades of performance under her belt, West is beginning to take the next steps in her storied career. With a 2-year-old daughter to put things into perspective, West said she relishes the time with family. But leaving dance behind? It’s difficult to hang up her pointe shoes for good. Ballet is such an all-encompassing job, West said, that she hopes she can find a career she is just as passionate about. “I go back and forth,” she said. “I’d like to get into development and grant writing and help make money for the company. But on the other hand, I feel like it’s our responsibility for people who have done a lot in the profession to carry it on to the next generation, so I feel some responsibility that I should probably be teaching.” For now, West will still be dancing principal roles at BalletMet, preparing for another season of Sugar Plums and grand pas de deuxs. “It’s a really hard profession because at some point, you have to move on.” ■ 6
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Ballerina Carrie West dances at the front of the studio during company class led by Canadian choreographer James Kudelka. West often dances the company’s major classical renditions including The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker.
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fit to dance what the body sacrifices for the art
Words and pictures by Abigail S. Fisher
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ancers push their bodies to extremes each time they are in the studio and on the stage. Though an eloquent turn or a gravity-defying leap makes them ethereal to watch, no dancer is immune to injury. With a career demanding peak physical fitness, injuries are to be expected. At The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s program for performing arts medicine, co-directors and athletic trainers Hope Davis and Mariah Nierman are aiming to decrease the number of dance injuries and health issues commonly face by performing artists. Their small, downtown Columbus office caters
exclusively to a dancer’s health assessment and physical rehabilitation. Davis and Nierman, both former dancers, say having a working knowledge of the intricacies of ballet enables them to form close, trusting relationships with their patients and get dancers back on their feet faster. “I think that’s the common thread throughout dance medicine,” Nierman said. “[You find] a lot of people who were previous artists themselves and then something along the way happened. For me, it was a series of small injuries.” But staying off the stage led Nierman to another way to stay connected with the dance world. In turn, she said, her previous years of dance training have improved the quality of care she gives to her patients. Winter 2013
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“You don’t have to sit there and explain what a plié is. You can say it and they get it,” she said, speaking of the small steps dancers take on the road to rehabilitation. For Davis, building trust is just one additional step in the recovery process. “There’s an uneasiness with dancers going into the [doctor’s office]. They already have an apprehension [when they walk in] thinking we’re going to tell them to quit, so I think that speaking their language starts to break down that wall a little bit,” she said. The performing arts office of the medical center oversees all of the health and physical fitness for the professional dancers at BalletMet. Davis, who danced throughout college, is onsite at BalletMet’s rehearsal studios with the company a few times a week, backstage at all the performances and leads a fitness class every Wednesday for the pre-professional students. In it, she encourages strength training and stretching that will force dancers to use their muscles in a different way. This prevents injury, she said. “To be honest, you’re working with a population that puts their bodies to the extreme every day for six hours a day,” Davis said. “So to be realistic, there will be injuries — you’re not going to be able to avoid every injury. We talk about hydration and cross-training and all those things are preventative [measures] for us.” Davis recalls a serious injury that kept her out of the studio for nearly a year. She remembers visiting dozens of doctors, all of whom told her that her dancing days were done. “That just wasn’t an option for me,” she said. I think in the future, we’re going to find out preventative medicine is a lot more helpful than curative medicine.” Prevention also has economic benefits. A professional dancer who is injured in rehearsal or a performance gets worker’s compensation. Dance companies are often responsible for all of the health and rehabilitation costs associated with a dancer’s injury. Time off stage is income lost for the dancer and the company. To help dancers understand the intricacies of keeping their bodies in prime physical condition, Davis hosts lectures and assessment screenings with professionals and advanced ballet students at the BalletMet academy. The flipside of have a more informed patient pool can result in a hyper vigilance about injuries, Davis said — especially in students. “Because we make them more aware [of their bodies], they come to us with something that they never would have noticed before: minor, non-dance threatening stuff,” she said. “But it is fun to walk down the hallway and hear these kids give each other adequate advice.” Above all, Davis and Nierman encourage dancers to listen to their bodies. They know their physical limits better than anyone else, but a determined dancer is often reluctant to give in to injury. “While we very much understand the dance world, we’re looking at them [to assess] health and wellness. I’m not here to determine your level of talent,” Nierman says. “I’m here to help make you be the most successful you can be.” ■ 10
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Emma White, 16, has her right foot examined after she strained her right flexor hallucis longus tendon. The injury kept White off her pointe shoes for about two weeks before she was able to rehearse with her classmates.
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in the
wings Words and pictures by Abigail S. Fisher
There is an air of calm that sweeps across the stage just before a dancer enters the wings. It is dark except for a hint of light backstage that illuminates a path from dressing room to stage. It is when 18-year-old ballet dancer Tino Sauter feels most anxious.
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obbing his head to the music pumping through his iPod, he moves his hands to mimic what his feet will do on the stage, does a few stretches then walks into the wings for his cue. Though he’s only been training since 15, Sauter knows he was meant to dance. “When people ask me what I do, I say I’m a dancer,” he said. “I’ve only been dancing four years, but those four years have felt like a lifetime. In a way, that’s when my life started.” Sauter began his dance training at the suggestion of his father, who surprised him one afternoon with a pair of dance pants. His parents owned a business below a dance studio and after repeated begging from the
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studio’s artistic director, Sauter appeased his father and reluctantly tried a jazz class. “I was bored with nothing to do, so I went and hated it,” he said. “It was the worst thing ever.” Living in a small Virginia town of only 6,000 people, arts culture, particularly ballet, was like a foreign language. No one went to see ballet in his hometown, and it was perceived as being feminine and girly, he said. But when a girl he was attracted to needed a partner for the upcoming Nutcracker performance, Sauter’s interest in dance was piquéd. “My parents are gay, so people would always make fun of me for that — that was a big thing when we moved to Virginia,” he said. “People always teased me, so a little
Left: Tino Sauter, 18, spots fellow trainee Heather Thomas in a pirouette turn in the peasant pas de cinq dance from Giselle during a showcase performance featuring BalletMet’s trainees and pre-professional students in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. Right: Madeleine Miller, 20, waits in the wings for her cue during a rehearsal at the Peggy R. McConnell Arts Center in Worthington, Ohio.
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Susan Dromisky, center, director of the pre-professional program at BalletMet Columbus, chats with Madeleine Miller, 20, left, during a short interlude in a Friday morning ballet class. There are 14 advanced students the program, most of whom aspire to become professional dancers after a year or two of vigorous technique training at the academy.
teasing for dancing was nothing to me. I didn’t care.” He still vividly remembers his first ballet class: seeing girls balance on strange-looking shoes and wearing formfitting tights. “I put my hand on the barre and of course did the wrong arm,” he said of the beginning ballet class exercises. His teacher was demonstrating pliés, an exercise of stretching and bending the legs in various positions of the feet, and the movement just clicked. “It came very natural to me. I was using port de bras [the carriage and movement of the arms] naturally, it was just the way I did it,” he said. That first ballet class was the beginning of Sauter’s love affair with dance. He watched every YouTube video and clip of male ballet dancers he could find. The next day on the ride to school, he told his father he wanted to be a dancer. Beginning classical training at 15 is considered late in the ballet world, but Sauter immersed himself in the art form. He auditioned and attended summer programs 16
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in Philadelphia and New York City and eventually transferred to the Nutmeg Conservatory for the Arts in Connecticut to study ballet full time. “I found what I loved to do,” he said. “I was unhappy in Virginia — kids teased me a lot.” In dance, Sauter could escape. He found his confidence, his voice. Given the chance for multiple performance opportunities at Nutmeg, Sauter began auditioning for professional companies across the United States and in 2012 landed a traineeship with BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio. He stood out among more than 350 other dancers who were competing for a handful of spots at a company that promised performance and daily mentorship with professional dancers.
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he trainee and pre-professional programs at BalletMet give young dancers a glimpse of company life. Trainees work with the company every day — they take company class, are given a modest salary and often perform corps roles in all of the productions. But, like the
pre-professionals, they are still learning. “Students have to have something — they have to have enough to sustain a career,” says Susan Dromisky, director of BalletMet’s pre-professional program. “It doesn’t need to be a full-fledged classical ballet company, but they have to have a gift, what I call the soul of a dancer.” Dromisky is a realist who has high expectations for her students. Now in her 15th year of teaching at BalletMet, Dromisky has taught students who have gone on to perform at prestigious companies: Hamburg Ballet in Germany, National Ballet of Canada and Houston Ballet II. You have to love the process of learning a dance, spending hours in a rehearsal studio, to break into the business, she said. “With me they have to be mentally ready to perform everyday. Emotional talent is huge — if they’re not emotionally invested, they will not survive.” The Canadian dancer spent her professional career in
Toronto with the National Ballet of Canada and touring Europe’s premier performance halls. Now in her early 50s, she’s long since retired from the stage, but is compelled to stay immersed in a world that she dearly loves by educating the next generation of artists. Teaching, she says, fell into her lap. Mavis Staines, artistic director of the National Ballet School, urged Dromisky to consider a teaching position within the school. “I come from a family of educators and that’s the last thing I wanted to do,” she said. “I had never considered that. It’s not that I didn’t love dancing, I just felt the family at that time was more important.” Teaching became Dromisky’s passion. She now relishes the time she spends in the studio, molding students into future professional dancers. “The moment I enter that studio and begin teaching, all negativity dissipates immediately because you’re focused on your students. They give back to me more than I feel I could ever give them,” she said. Winter 2013
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There’s not a better feeling to me than being on stage. It feels free. I don’t feel human in a way. I feel powerful. — Tino Sauter
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he sun is just setting in a high school theater in Reynoldsburg, Ohio when dancers in the performance ensemble begin to claim their territory inside a crowded dressing room. Tonight’s performance showcases a medley of classical and contemporary works staged by Susan Dromisky and other senior faculty. The student dancers have been diligently rehearsing for the past six weeks and are eager to get on the stage. Dromisky sits in the theatre taking notes and chatting with the house manager. It is the first time young BalletMet dancers have performed in the space. The stage, while expansive, was designed for musical recitals, so a portable dance floor has been taped down. It will be an adjustment for the dancers — they must modify their movements into a much more confined space than offered at the studio. A few pre-professional students, pre-pros ,wearing a combination of street clothes and dance attire, filter out onto the floor. They take cautious steps as they test the floor’s slickness with their pointe shoes. The girls glissade with halted enthusiasm across the stage and practice a few steps en pointe to ensure their shoes fit securely. Dromisky is ready to begin the dress rehearsal. “Music, go.” It’s the cue for dancers and the sound technician that the dance will begin. Madeleine Miller, 20, dances with other advanced students in a selection from Helsted’s Napoli Suite. After weeks of intense rehearsal on this variation, her solo is virtually perfect. It is the last time she will dance it.
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ackstage, Tino Sauter is bathed in eerie blue LED lights. He’s in full costume, save for the jacket slung over his arm, quietly going over the steps for the Sleeping
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Beauty pas de trois with two other trainees. He’s in his head, doing his pre-performance ritual: walking around in a circle, facial exercises to help him smile on stage — little things, he said, to help him clear his mind and prepare for an eager audience. “Obviously there’s an initial nervousness,” he said. “What if I fall? What if I forget?” The anxiousness, the nervousness that accompanies him before any performance evaporates as soon as he enters the stage. It’s the moment when Sauter comes alive. “There’s not a better feeling to me than being on stage,” he said. “It feels free. I don’t feel human in a way. I feel powerful.” It’s a long way from the timid kid he once described as himself. On stage, he dances with two other trainees, partnering both in a physically demanding role of sautés, arabesques and spotting their pirouettes. After a quick costume change, he returns to the stage with a powerful and emotional solo performance of Donald McKayle’s Rainbow Etude. Originally choreographed in 1995 and often performed by a modern dance ensemble at the University of California Irvine, the dance depicts the struggles of African American convicts working on a chain gang. “A lot of times, especially with that solo, I feel the character. I feel that chain gang guy who’s very sad,” Sauter said. Depicting a character though dance can take an emotional toll on the performer too, Sauter notes. “It also depends on what you’re performing and how you feel. Sometimes I could literally cry — it’s definitely a feeling like never before.”
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If they feel they’re sacrificing, then they’re thinking about the wrong thing. They should want to be here every day. They should want that desire. — Susan Dromisky
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he final piece is a Greek traditional featuring six of BalletMet’s 14 pre-professional students. Choreographed by Dmitri Suslov, a former dancer with the Bolshoi in Russia, the dance is a lesson in stamina. Their arms hang in the air, their legs twist in circles on the floor, each movement speeds up in conjunction with the tempo. It’s a long four minutes to the final bow — an exhausting piece to dance at the end of an already athletic performance. Once the dancers gracefully exit the stage, it’s a dash to pack up their makeup kits and costumes in the dressing room and jump in the car to head home. Tonight, the girls are watching “Vampire Diaries” at 16-year-old Caila Darche’s apartment. It is off the stage, in the relaxed atmosphere of a dancers’ apartment, that the girls are teenagers once again. They browse through a selection of digital pictures their friend and injured dancer, Lindsey van Tartwijk-Fix, shot of the performance. “I’ve seen her do an attitude pirouette that I’d never seen her do in my whole entire life,” van Tartwijk-Fix said of another dancer. The self-critique doesn’t stop once the dancers leave the studio. Looking through the pictures, they catch the tiny mistakes that only someone who has worked on the same choreography for weeks would notice. The physical and mental demands of training several hours a day requires a young dancers to have a maturity beyond their teenage years. For Dromisky, this is no surprise. She left her home to train with the National Ballet School more than 1,000 miles from her home in Thunder Bay, Ontario at 13. But, she is quick to note that her dancers are not sacrificing their youth for the studio floor. “If they feel that they’re sacrificing, then they’re thinking about the wrong things,” she said. “They should want to be here every day. They should want that desire.” Winter 2013
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Above: A group of young preprofessional dancers huddle together in Caila Darche’s Columbus apartment to watch an episode of “Vampire Diaries.” Training with the same girls for years forms close-knit, familial relationships, says pre-professional program director, Susan Dromisky. “You absolutely bond like family.” Below: Ballet decorations line the walls and bookshelves inside Darche’s home. Left: A pair of canvas ballet slippers and a cell phone sit on a stool in the studio during ballet class. Dancers often keep several pairs of canvas and pointe shoes in their bags.
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he studio is cooler in the morning with a few patches of sunlight hitting the gray floor. Dancers gravitate toward the patches of light to stretch and warm their muscles for another day of dancing. About half of the students are no longer in four-year high schools, giving up traditional academics for study in ballet variations, pedagogy and advanced movement. Other students are detouring from a more traditional route of college and are beginning the process of auditioning at ballet companies across the country. That’s the goal for Madeleine Miller, a 20-year-old Jupiter, Fla., native who is in her second year of the preprofessional program at BalletMet. The intensive dance program grooms young dancers for the professional world with an arduous schedule of class, rehearsal and performance. Most dancers are working in the studio six days a week to perfect steps and movements they’ve been doing for years. At 16, it is not uncommon for a dancer to say she’s been training and studying ballet technique for 10 or more years. In her first year of the program, Miller was adjusting to a new city, a new way of dancing. For someone who often struggles with exuding the confidence of a seasoned performer, an additional year to train and perfect her technique was an obvious choice. “I really felt like I could use more training. I wanted to be stronger going into audition season,” Miller said. Mentally, overcoming her audition fears has always been a struggle. But Miller enjoys one quality often found in dancers — perfectionism. Spending eight or 10 hours in a studio in front of a mirror, constantly adjusting miniscule positions of the arms, head and feet, it’s not surprising that aiming for the ideal is a constant struggle. “I hold back a lot [for] fear that I might make a mistake,” she said. “I do better when I’m comfortable. Auditioning is such a foreign thing — I’m not aggressive in that atmosphere, so I’m working on defeating that.” But all the aggravation that a lack of confidence creates is worth it — performance is what Miller, like so many of her fellow dancers, lives for. “Performing is definitely my favorite thing to do — it’s what makes me love it,” she said. “Getting into the character, I love the struggle that comes with it. There’s a lot of nervous energy, but the feeling afterwards is great.” ■
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