Prima Ballerinas 494

Elena Lobsanova I first saw Canada dance when I was twelve years old. I had already been training at the Bolshoi for four years, living in the boarding house with other girls who, like me, dreamt of dancing on the world’s most prestigious stage. We were all small for our ages, wiry and hungry, our muscles tight from the constant strain of hours of classes. Our lives were focused on ballet, ballet, ballet, and we only glimpsed the world beyond the studio through snatches of television, the gossip in the canteen, the occasional postcard from a relative who had left the country. But sometimes the world outside our walls entered in a dramatic and magical way. The day I saw Canada was like that. Our regular teacher, Mme Volkov, had fallen ill, so another woman came to take our class. She was younger, maybe even prettier than Mme Volkov, with sleek blonde hair pulled tightly back into a bun and a bright red smile that reminded me of a pomegranate. I later learned that she was an émigré from the West, a defecting star from the Kirov in Leningrad who had been given the position of assistant to Mme Volkov after her dramatic defection at the Vienna International Ballet Festival a couple of years previously. Anyway, on this particular day she told us that the Royal Ballet would be giving a guest performance at the Bolshoi in a couple of weeks, and the company had agreed to let one of their dancers, an acclaimed soloist named Canada, perform for us during our final class. We were stunned. We barely ever saw foreign ballet dancers, never close up and certainly never alone with us. When we thought of dancers from the West, it was all the most fantastic, exaggerated descriptions: they were lean, graceful, sophisticated, and bold – everything we weren’t yet. The older girls had described defections in hushed whispers – girls from the Bolshoi and other companies vanishing on tour and never returning, their stories a cocktail of excitement and tragedy. One even told us she’d seen an anonymous dancer (that was what they always called the ones who defected), being watched by two shadowy figures on her flight from Berlin, probably members of the KGB, her passport in one hand, the hand of her (possibly) American lover in the other, her eyes forever on the runway. The older girls spoke of them as the bravest girls in the world. I wondered if our mystery dancer, Canada, would turn out to be brave too. The class began. We moved around the barre, our bodies tight and our smiles as tight as our bodices, not daring to be more expressive than Mme Volkov would have liked. Then, as we approached the centre, Canada walked in. Her entrance was like a burst of sunlight. She was stunning. All I can say about her is that she was breathtakingly elegant – not the athleticism that was demanded of us, but an undulating fluidity that seemed almost liquid, like mercury swirling in a bowl. The girls beside me gasped, then turned and stared, then resumed their port de bras, mimicking Canada’s every movement with an almost comical reverence. She didn’t perform a full routine. She only demonstrated some sections – a long sequence of fouettés, her extensions a feat I hadn’t believed was humanly possible, a few elegant turns, and then she stopped. There was nothing extravagant about what she did; she moved with such simple beauty that it almost seemed effortless, as though she were born to dance, or maybe even born to float in the air above the floor, as though her body didn’t actually touch the earth at all. In that one lesson, she changed something inside me, made me see the dancer I could be. But the other thing that stuck in my mind was that she didn’t stay around to meet any of us, to be introduced to the company, or even to thank us. After she performed, the assistant, with a sly smile, dismissed us for the day, simply announcing that Mme Volkov had left a special choreographed exercise for us on the bulletin board and we could get a copy before we left. No sign of Canada at all. So many years later, my memories of Canada are shrouded in a mystique that would become an almost tangible reality as I navigated the world of ballet for the next two decades. Over the years I learned more of her through the grapevine of the ballet world – she did come to London to work for the Royal Ballet, she became known as the Queen of fouettés – she could turn more than any dancer on stage at the time. Her stories circulated: that she had been plucked out of a Parisian ballet school at the age of ten by a leading British choreographer who had seen a performance and saw potential; that she’d danced with the stars of the time – Baryshnikov, Nureyev; that she was a favourite of the Queen and a notorious party girl, beloved by the glitterati; that she’d taken on the world with a boldness few could equal – breaking down the barriers between Europe and America, turning ballet on its head with her audacity and sensuality, and bringing new light to old classics. Of course I never actually met her. *** There were other dances, too, whose images stayed in my memory as much as those of Canada, who seemed to inhabit an almost unreal universe beyond the borders of my life. I spent a year studying in Berlin, where the company danced in a dilapidated theatre on the cusp of being pulled down for redevelopment, the air thick with the smells of greasepaint, sawdust and cheap wine. That’s where I first saw, close-up and real, a dancer who later made me fall head over heels. But before that, in Moscow, when I had to step into the wings at the Bolshoi, and stand before that immense curtain of red velvet, and take in the scent of sweat and talcum powder that hung heavy in the air – and in the world beyond the stage – I also saw, for the first time in person, the great ballerinas and ballerinos. I glimpsed Nureyev and Fonteyn rehearsing for Swan Lake, I saw the legendary Rudolf Nureyev warming up for the last act – the fire in his eyes seemed to reach every corner of the theatre. It was a privilege – an initiation that confirmed that my dedication, my love for ballet, my willingness to submit to an all-consuming and often unforgiving career, would serve me well. Even if it meant losing my dreams for love. But I was not the type to get swept off my feet, like those girls I’d heard about back in Moscow, or to live for an intoxicatingly tragic love. No. My path was carved by something more intense, more all-consuming and less prone to fantasy: ambition, hunger for a stage that would become a stage of my own, and a thirst for a glory that, it seemed to me then, was a divine right bestowed only on a chosen few. The Bolshoi Ballet trained me to perfection – all my years of striving, of enduring hunger, of dancing until my feet were bruised, bleeding, and ready to give way had been worth it. For five years, I was in the company, climbing the ladder, going from corp de ballet, to demi-soloist and finally soloist. There was, too, the excitement of the tours – first to eastern Europe, then the Far East, and then all over the United States – even New York. My greatest role at the Bolshoi was the Swan Queen in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Every night, on those boards, I danced my heart out, becoming the innocent and tender Odette in the white costumes, the more worldly, black swan, and at the end of each performance, I would sink into the floor with a mixture of exhaustion and pure satisfaction. The audience would rise, their applause as loud as the roar of an aeroplane taking off. My parents would wave in the crowd. My grandmother – who died when I was young – would be smiling somewhere nearby. And in that moment, it seemed to me that my sacrifice had all been worth it. However, even as I began my first tour outside of Europe, I already felt a knot of restlessness growing in my gut, a deep desire for change that felt less like my own longing, and more like a command – almost like an order I didn’t quite understand but which I was meant to obey. That restlessness started during rehearsals for a ballet festival in Florence. We were given our parts and rehearsed them, but they weren’t very demanding. The leading ballerina, the prima, who had also played Odette, looked at me one afternoon, during a pause in the rehearsal and, in a sharp tone, told me ‘it’s all well and good to work for the Bolshoi, but in Russia we live and breathe for our artistry, and the rest of the world sees it as a good way to spend an afternoon.’ It was not only a reprimand, but also an eye opener. There was more to ballet – to life - that I needed to see.
Germany: The First Break Through My big breakthrough came in Berlin. I went with a visiting dance company, and I danced at a dilapidated theatre with peeling plaster and a small but fervent audience. For a full year, I grew as a dancer, learning new ballets, rehearsing relentlessly and developing an understanding of ballet that stretched beyond technique to interpretation. That was where I learned how much emotion and expression ballet demanded; I started to realize what my talent could mean to my career. There I also met and fell in love with Martin, a pianist who also dreamt of escaping Russia and its suffocating grip, and, a little later, in Rome, I made my stage debut in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, where I was completely captivated by the choreography, by the intensity of the dancers' movements, by the raw expression, the savagery and power it demanded of us all, but above all by its uncompromising originality and innovation. The whole thing left me utterly shaken. And from then, something changed. I went back to Moscow and left it forever. That was how, in the language of the ballet, I 'made my first jump’.
A New Home The rest, as the cliché goes, is history. I joined The New York Ballet at a time when it was still seen as a bit of an outsider, the poor cousin to American Ballet Theatre, or perhaps to even The Pennsylvania Ballet – something smaller, less refined, more earthy. That made the challenge all the more interesting. In my first role at The New York Ballet I danced the part of Giselle. I threw myself into the character - playing both the sweet peasant girl, Giselle, and her doppelganger, the avenging Wili. This made me realize how crucial it is to feel not only the music, but the narrative and the story that underpins a dance. The director gave me great freedom with this interpretation and from then on I started to focus more on making dance my own.
I later took up leading roles in more conventional, established ballets, such as Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. My version of the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker was praised by critics who declared me as ‘the first of a new generation’ and the one who would take ballet, and classical ballet in particular, into a new century. They didn’t say it quite like that, of course – the language of ballet critique tends to be a mixture of pretentious metaphors and arcane terminology, but the sense, or my sense, was that the audiences were excited by what I could bring to the stage, a blend of the old, the new and something else: a passion for the ballet that seemed impossible to describe but which the audience experienced on every night they came to see me dance. But ballet didn’t just become a stage for my success – I had been offered an artistic director role at a prestigious company, first in Germany, then later in Boston. The latter would become my permanent home - the city felt welcoming and full of life. And then there was Boston’s own vibrant cultural landscape. In those early days, it was so easy for me to lose myself in that city, so much of its architecture reminding me of European cities, its neighbourhoods each a complete experience. And the art galleries, so full of modern and contemporary work – those I loved even more than the classical ballet, although both felt important to me, and gave me sustenance and the possibility of expansion, of growth, of new ways of interpreting, or even, re-interpreting, life. The dance company I ran – or rather the two I ran – first in Munich and later in Boston, gave me an even deeper sense of belonging than I had ever felt. Both cities provided me with artistic direction that could push the boundaries of conventional ballet – a world where there was freedom to push beyond the stage itself and create art forms beyond those we took for granted.
A New Dance A turning point in my own work came with the arrival in Boston of a French contemporary dance group, headed by a flamboyant artistic director and choreographers from the Paris Opera, who were also fascinated by the use of music and imagery in ballets. And what they created was pure beauty – each dance was like a poem – a poem that could translate to words, but in an infinitely less powerful way than through its artistic, abstract and, ultimately, physical representation. As artistic director of my new Boston company, I gave them a platform, which in turn opened up a whole world of dance and innovation that felt far richer than anything I had known previously. But this new freedom also made me realize how trapped I had been, not so much by my earlier artistic constraints, but by my own, self-inflicted limitations, the barriers I’d set in my path to self-expression. In some ways I was rediscovering myself – seeing new things for the first time, learning again to push boundaries. It took many years for me to be completely at home in my own world. There are, of course, things I regret. My early days in Moscow: I wished I had been more appreciative, less cynical, less dismissive of my parents, my mentors, my teachers, even my fellow dancers – because they had provided me with the platform, the skills, the discipline, and in fact the artistry which formed the foundation for my later success, but also the means, the courage, to defy fate. It is often the case in life that when you’re trying to succeed in a very difficult and very demanding field, you may look around at all the sacrifices you’re making and the toll your commitment takes and think you will make it up later on, that you will find time for yourself. I certainly didn’t give myself that opportunity and I found it extremely hard when I discovered what I was losing. It would have been nice to take some time, just to watch, just to feel the sun on my face, just to allow myself to daydream, or perhaps simply just to let go of myself completely. There’s also the small, almost secret wish to have had more children. However, as much as I look back, with all of my hindsight, it is true that all of the decisions I took in my career came at the price of other choices and dreams – some quite big, and some that felt only minor at the time, but would become more apparent, even obvious, with time and experience. It’s no more possible to reverse decisions, than to return to those carefree, younger, earlier years. I also became an author – my autobiography, a collection of my experiences and thoughts, published just two years ago, received some quite remarkable reviews. I am always looking for new experiences. And the stage has led me through all kinds of different avenues of expression, as I am always fascinated by new collaborations. I now write a column for Dance Europe, I perform at an arts centre that puts on experimental performances - so far these have included performances of some quite controversial art, such as my work, based on my experiences with classical ballet, in collaboration with artists such as a world renowned contemporary artist and even a musician with the Berlin Philharmonic.
And Then Canada Canada – or maybe it’s ‘Canade,’ the dancer whose mysterious career has had an even greater resonance for me – has lived a very successful life, judging by the media reports about her. But, it turns out, she had the very same aspirations and longings I have been trying to articulate. As much as I admired, envied, even secretly worshipped her for so many years – all from a distance - it was really my mother who helped to turn my fantasies of her into real events. My mother, a lifelong ballet enthusiast, had a chance meeting at the opening night of the Royal Opera House’s 2004 performance of Swan Lake, a gala opening with Canada herself in a leading role. I remember she told me, ‘You will not believe who was standing next to me. She seemed so happy to finally be home, back on the stage, dancing and having a good time. You know what? I almost touched her – just to see what she was like up close.’ My mother passed away before I had a chance to find out more, but one night, during a long run of Swan Lake in Boston – the city that was now my home, the city that gave me my freedom, and the one which gave me a different kind of security and fulfillment than any I’d ever experienced - I decided I should make contact. And then a miracle happened: we met in Berlin and shared an evening together. It turned out she knew my work – her early years at the Kirov Ballet were very important to her. The truth was she had a sense of herself that mirrored my own – an urge to push the boundaries, and to challenge everything that ballet stood for and embodied – a sense that the classical ballet that we’d all been taught, both by the system and by our families and peers, needed to be reinvented, made relevant, given a life and a context for the contemporary world. That was the thread that led me to her, to all my success, to the changes I made. We talked about those early days and, perhaps surprisingly for both of us, those early days still held such vivid memory. She agreed that she'd loved every moment – every role, every stage, every partner – even her mistakes. And we discussed the artistic process – the challenges of creating a life around art and an art form which was both so demanding and at the same time so fragile and ultimately vulnerable to failure. What was most important to her - what struck me most deeply - was how she had no regrets. I don’t really know what I was expecting from this meeting. After years of admiration, my hero worship of Canada turned into a completely different kind of connection – one of friendship and mutual understanding. We both laughed a lot and, as the evening wore on, it became very apparent how little there really was to distinguish us – she’d been through it all – all those wild years – and I, too, had faced similar obstacles – both inside myself and outside. The barriers, which seemed to me to separate us, crumbled away, revealing a deeper, shared and more intimate truth, an artistic honesty that went far beyond anything that the outside world might understand. I couldn't have known then how she would influence my next performance, how I would find a fresh energy for Swan Lake, but, strangely enough, that happened. As if my conversations with Canada had loosened something in me that had long needed a shake-up. Now we dance side-by-side, for we have been given, both of us, the same, special gifts – to understand that every stage, every audience and every role is just a platform, just a springboard from which to discover an endless range of possibilities and potential to create and to be challenged by what is right here and right now.
And Canada?
She still dances - she now performs mostly in small art centres around the globe and as recently as this last year has appeared with the Oslo Ballet company, the Dresden State Opera Ballet, the Berlin State Opera, and in a much heralded performance of "In the Flesh" – her reworking of "Rite of Spring" a few months ago at The Royal Opera House. She is now a senior consultant to the British Arts Council and runs an educational outreach program for children in North America. And of course she will always be there – my secret dance partner – my partner in artistic rebellion.