A Body of Work Read online

  The fifteen or so of us would look at each other, dumbfounded and petrified, trying desperately to remember the last combination he had given. We would work on the exercise feverishly, thrown into order by the shock that, once again, he was upset enough to leave the studio. Minutes later we would negotiate who would be the sacrificial lamb, the one designated to walk to his office and tell him, “We are ready to work.”

  Whenever I was selected, I sheepishly entered his office and told him we were focused enough to begin again.

  “Are you sure?” he would ask.

  “Yes,” I’d say under my breath before racing back to the studio to join the rest of the nervous students.

  He would then return at his leisure and resume his class. You could have cut the tension with a knife. There were no lazy mistakes after he returned. Walking out on us invariably gave him the results and attention he demanded.

  * * *

  I WAS ALWAYS nervous about going to class. The vast vocabulary of steps was entirely new to me and I imagined myself the only one who couldn’t pick them up. That feeling of being left behind, flailing about in my desperation to keep up, would plague me. But in fact, as the year progressed, I absorbed the combinations like a thirsty sponge. My new uniform, tight as it was, started to fit like a second skin.

  It was a gradual transition but a major shift in my mentality and focus. In the jazz world, individual expression is rewarded more than technique and perfection. I could express myself completely, and doing so had helped me find the confidence I desperately needed. Yet now I was intrigued with this classical art form, and increasingly devoted to classes with Mr. Han. I had no belief that my work displayed talent. That I was any good at all. The year before, a teacher from another jazz studio had told my parents that I had more talent than any kid in her school. I didn’t believe her and thought she was just trying to get me to train at her dance studio. But I really didn’t care whether I had any talent. It wasn’t my focus to be the best. I was simply obsessed.

  So the day came when I was sitting across from Mr. Han in his office, ready to shed the jazz world I was so comfortable in. I was eager to begin training more seriously with Mr. Han. If he was happy that I finally had taken the plunge to work with him full-time, he hid it well. He looked at me dryly and explained that, yes, I had talent, but I was starting a serious study of classical ballet a lot later than most dancers did. I was still growing, and was all legs and no muscle or real strength. I was nowhere near the level that other boys my age were in the rest of the country.

  I never forgot those few words, which gave me the impetus to propel myself into hours on end of sweat-filled work in the same studio I had stepped into years before for my botched Nutcracker audition. It was time to play catch-up. I was thirteen at the time.

  * * *

  AFTER I FORMALLY joined the ballet school, I worked privately with Mr. Han six days a week. Classical ballet was like my black hole, a gravitational force pulling me in deeper and deeper. I was attracted to the idea of perfection, to the fact that there are precise ways to execute every turn, jump, and step. I savored the nonnegotiable structure of the work. I couldn’t get enough.

  I always felt a sense of dread coming into the ballet studio at night, knowing what taxing work was ahead of me. Mr. Han would look at me and say simply, “Let’s go.” No smile, no question of whether I was tired, no small talk. Down to business straightaway. There was no pianist, not even any recorded music. There was just Mr. Han’s voice commanding me. The only distraction was the low, constant buzz of the cheap fluorescent lights flickering high above on the ceiling.

  We would start at the same exact point every time. The en dehors pirouette: a stretch of the foot to the side, plié, raise the foot to the knee, and turn outward, away from the leg you’re standing on. I would push for five or six rotations each time, and every time I was corrected.

  After about twelve repetitions on each side, we would move on to en dedans pirouettes: stretch of the foot to the front, plié, foot to the knee, and turn inward toward your standing leg.

  I would do that twelve times each, right and left, and we would move on again. Attitude pirouettes: stretch of the foot to the front, plié, leg raised to the back, knee bent, and turn. Seven times each, right and left. This would go on until I completed almost all styles of pirouettes in the classical idiom.

  Mr. Han would stand five feet from me and pick me apart. I absorbed all of his criticism. I never questioned a correction or new approach. I had total trust in what he asked of me. I would never make excuses or complain about fatigue. I would have felt weak if I did, like I had failed him. My only goals were to execute the steps perfectly and to please him, which I believed I rarely did.

  * * *

  WE WOULD METHODICALLY progress from small turns to bigger turns, from small jumps to bigger jumps. Every private lesson was almost exactly the same. At times another teacher would pass by and watch for five or ten minutes from the doorway, interested in the progress being made. But most of the time it was just Mr. Han and me.

  When I began this serious training, I was totally uninformed about the ballet world: steps, great dancers, ballets, choreographers, the history of classical ballet. I didn’t know a good dancer from a bland one, or a mediocre physical build from a perfectly proportioned one. As I worked more and more intensely with Mr. Han and saw how hard he pushed me, I knew that I needed to meet him on equal ground. I had to push myself just as hard. Nothing was good enough in his eyes; therefore nothing was good enough in my eyes. There were always nuances of the work to dissect and analyze.

  From time to time my parents would come early to pick me up and tiptoe into the studio, silently settling themselves in two chairs in the corner. They were always welcome to watch. I specifically remember one time when my parents were there and I was executing a manèges around the room. For a manèges, a dancer performs virtuosic steps in a huge circular pattern around the studio or the stage. I would start in one corner of the room, leap and split my legs, then land and turn and leap again as I made my way around the studio’s perimeter. Mr. Han would make me do this over and over, correcting the smallest details. After the seventh time, I was bent over, gasping for air. I couldn’t go on anymore, or sweat off one more ounce of body weight, or conjure up energy for one more series of jumps. So Mr. Han pushed even harder.

  And when I had gone beyond my limit and hit the maximum level of fatigue, he slyly looked over to my parents, grinned, and asked, “How’s Mommy and Daddy doing?”

  “About to call Child Protective Services,” my mother joked.

  She and my father were stunned and wide-eyed as they watched, sitting on the edges of their chairs. What was happening in this studio? Why was all this self-inflicted pain something their son craved and couldn’t get enough of? They didn’t know what to say or do other than what they had always done: nurture my passion. And trust the man guiding it.

  They saw the happiness I felt when I was dancing. They never asked Mr. Han to treat me more gently. Because they cared deeply about me, they said that if I ever wanted to stop I could. But the fact that I came back for more, again and again, was their indication that something was working. So they never objected when Mr. Han was putting me through his tough regimen. And they trusted him completely to guide me properly through the work.

  * * *

  THE PRESSURE THAT I put on myself both physically and mentally certainly had its rewards. My obsession with dancing was fed six days a week. But I needed a release from the extreme stress accumulated during those long hours of sweating away in black tights.

  In those days, I was skinny, with short, spiky blond hair. I dressed like a raver kid in enormously baggy jeans paired with patent leather skater shoes and tight-fitting thrift store T-shirts. I had grown from being the depressed, desperate-to-fit-in kid in middle school to being a free-spirited beanstalk demanding attention with my clothing choices. I was constantly kicked out of class at ASA for laughing and encouraging
my friends to pay attention to me and not to the teacher. I was the human equivalent of a golden retriever, begging to be liked.

  The only times I was obedient were the six sessions a week when I worked in the ballet studio with Mr. Han.

  And so, on as many weekends as possible, I would climb through my bedroom window and sneak out to raves on the outskirts of Phoenix, staying out until the early morning. The late nineties was the peak of the rave scene all over the country. The pulsing house music was a magnet for many people who craved the freedom that raves supplied. Getting my parents’ approval was out of the question. Their answer, on the one occasion I decided to properly ask permission, was “No, honey.” They were understandably and categorically opposed to late-night parties that crept into the wee hours and were packed with people high on drugs.

  So there I was, covertly planning the getaway with two of my friends from school. The issues were always the same. Who would drive? When would we go? And most important, where would it be? Raves were always held in fairly distant, unfamiliar locations, the address given through a hotline that you called hours before the party started.

  Abandoned warehouses were the most popular venues, and the three of us would head to a part of town we hadn’t dared go to before, curious and unstoppable, like hungry little mice scampering for that perfect morsel of food. As we drove through the darkness of the night, we knew we were close when we heard the first faint sounds of the pulsing bass. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. The methodic pull of techno. We were immediately transported.

  The crowd was a far cry from the group I usually associated with. The disciplined bun heads and ballet girls who never saw this hour of night were replaced by “candy kids” named Sparkle, Comet, and Sunshine, all draped in neon plastic necklaces and pacifiers. Ecstasy and Special K were the drugs of choice. I never even considered taking them, and oddly, given their widespread use, was never even offered any. My personal ecstasy was the music: the deep thumping bass, the extreme volume that negated the possibility of verbal communication. It was a realm that bore no relation to my everyday world and offered an absolute release from all forms of responsibility.

  One popular venue was a place called the Icehouse, a former ice holding warehouse. I loved dancing in the cavernous rooms of that abandoned building, one of which had no ceiling so you danced gazing at the stars.

  The smell was a mixture of perspiration, Vicks VapoRub, and cigarettes. I danced without a break for hours. I would leave the raves in the nascent glow of the morning light drenched in sweat. I crept back through my bedroom window undetected and would immediately fall, comatose, into my bed.

  Come Monday, I would be totally rejuvenated and ready to return to the unforgiving regime of black tights and Mr. Han.

  CHAPTER 7

  As my ballet vocabulary broadened in those years with Mr. Han, I began to learn the basics of partnering a ballerina, a crucial skill for a male dancer. I started with the basics of holding a dancer as she balanced on one leg, promenading her around, and putting her into a small fish dive (basically a dip). These were just the baby steps of a career-long education in the subtle nuances of supporting a ballerina. But it was a bumpy road to begin with nonetheless.

  For the year-end school performances I was given The Sleeping Beauty pas de deux with Brittany, one of my best friends. We were very close outside the studio, but as rehearsals inched on, we became each other’s worst enemy. I had one opinion on how we should execute a step and she had an opposing one. We were angsty teenagers who didn’t like to be proven wrong in front of our teacher. We both were convinced that we knew what we needed from each other. We had no idea what we were talking about.

  Mr. Han put up with this behavior for about a week before he walked out, as abruptly as he had always done in class. “You need to learn to get along on your own,” he said as he left. We looked at each other dumbfounded. What were we to do now? He wasn’t going to help; he would come back when we’d had enough time to sort out our differences.

  From then on, at the start of our rehearsal, he would come into the studio for mere seconds, make sure we had the music to rehearse to, and then leave us to our own strategies. We had no idea when he was coming back. We had been abandoned. There was no one in front of the room to tell us what to do or to mediate our passive-aggressive drama. We were forced to work together and communicate through our teenage self-righteousness. After a few days, those tiny things that had messed us up before became nonissues. We learned to admit mistakes and take responsibility when something went wrong. She made it work on her end, and I on mine.

  In the process, we both learned an important lesson about how to enact a partnership. It was a key precursor to what I would need to implement when I became a professional.

  * * *

  MR. HAN TAUGHT the Vaganova method, which was created in the first part of the twentieth century by Agrippina Vaganova, a former dancer with the Mariinsky company. (It is still regarded as the foremost technique, and The Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg is considered the greatest ballet school in the world.)

  There is no positive reinforcement at that school. There are no parents calling the teachers and asking them to go easier on their child, or suggesting their kid be complimented once in a while. If a parent has an issue with the method of training or complains that their child should have a more prominent role in a school performance, the student will be shown the door.

  Mr. Han was of this ilk. He did not offer celebratory congratulations for work well done. He went against most methods in America, where kids are doused with positive reinforcement, which makes them all too aware of their strengths and far too unaware of their weaknesses.

  Though Mr. Han’s method of training was ideal for me, it certainly wasn’t for everyone. You would see, from time to time, a student deflate in a puddle of tears.

  He would receive a flow of phone calls from parents who wanted him to go easier on their child who was complaining that he or she wasn’t having any fun in class.

  “Through hard work, you find joy,” he would reply.

  Ballet is hard. He was teaching his students discipline, focus, structure, and through those qualities, independence and self-assurance. If they didn’t become dancers, they could implement the rigor his training required in other areas and professions. His goal was to teach, not coddle. If that was what they wanted, they would have to find it elsewhere.

  I benefited greatly from this method of teaching and upheld its principles throughout my career.

  “Hard work always pays off,” I like to tell young aspiring students. “So be the hardest-working person in the room.”

  A crucial lesson Mr. Han taught me, which has stayed with me my entire career, was the value of self-criticism. He instilled in me the firm belief that whatever I did could always be done better. He taught me to question the work in front of me and strive for better results.

  However, at times I can still confuse that with my dancing simply not being good enough. I need to remember that I can always learn from critique, but there does come a point where I need to trust that my performance is, in fact, good enough, even though I recognize that it could be better. This prompts me to keep striving as all dancers must do if they want to avoid becoming complacent or stale or, most dangerous of all, satisfied.

  So I’m glad he never showered me with the compliments I would have liked to hear at that time. I was never even told that something I was executing was good. When it was good, he would say nothing and simply push me further, forcing me to go beyond my own ideas of what was possible. If he deemed my exercise worthy or at a level that momentarily pleased him, he would ask for more. More turns, more height in my jump, better quality.

  I trusted him completely, and since I never knew what was good and what wasn’t, I had to rely on that trust. I had no frame of reference, no one to whom I could compare myself. There were no other boys consistently in my class. Those who came in at one point or another would leave a
few weeks or months later, either too bored or too challenged by Mr. Han’s demands. And when I watched videos of male dancers whom I looked up to, I never imagined attaining their stature. They jumped too high and danced too well.

  So I just worked. Nonstop. There was no other way. I went blindly into the ballet world, with 100 percent commitment. A commitment I never questioned.

  * * *

  AT SIXTEEN AND well into my third year of training with Mr. Han, I went away to my first summer intensive program, which was held for four weeks in Vail, Colorado. It would be attended by dancers from other schools around the country. I was a nervous wreck. The thought of dancing in the same class with other boys from professional schools terrified me. Could I execute the steps as well as they inevitably would? I was convinced they’d be dancing circles around me, that I’d be lost in the back of the studio. They would have huge jumps and soft landings and execute multiple pirouettes. Clean, crisp, masculine technique. I would be outdone in everything.

  Again, I just worked as hard as I could. To my relief, I wasn’t flailing about as I had imagined. The steps were manageable and I was on par with the other boys.

  I was surprised to find that there was some attention paid to me in class by the teachers. They seemed to see something in me I didn’t see in myself, and they made attempts to nurture whatever it was. This was my first indication that maybe I did have some talent for ballet. I was stunned. It was a significant milestone.

  * * *

  I’D ALWAYS HAD the greatest respect for Mr. Han and his taxing, relentless methods. After a month spent with other teachers, that respect deepened. For the first time, I had a clear sense of how far his rigorous teachings had brought me.

  I’m still amazed by how I responded to Mr. Han’s fierce method of teaching. He and I accomplished so much in the four years I worked with him. I never questioned any aspect of the training. I never defied him, stood up to him, or talked back to him. If he had complimented me I would have believed him and this would have created ego, an assumption that what I was executing was sufficient. The edge, the sharpness, the hunger I had when working in the studio with him would have diminished, and the relationship would have become more relaxed and therefore less effective.