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Not everyone wants to push themselves to that brink of breaking, but it’s what you commit to when you’re a professional—the very present reality that you may break instead of bend.
I shower and flip to the Food Network just to have some background noise as I try to relax my mind, wind down my body.
We kids were practically spilling out the front door and windows of our small apartment,
But it blared so often that the longer we lived there, the less we noticed it, and it faded into the background, like a heartbeat.
Generations lived and died there, unwilling to pull up the roots that their grandparents had buried deep in the sandy soil.
But what looks perfect is often just an illusion, like the dancer with a strained hamstring who wears a smile instead of a grimace when she lands as delicately as a butterfly despite her pain.
I was a nervous child. And my unease, coupled with a perpetual quest for perfection, made my life much harder than it needed to be.
It wasn’t like Mommy was a scold. But you had to earn her praise, and I craved it desperately.
As a professional, you have to endure a tremendous amount of criticism and judgment leading up to a performance. You can barely take a step in rehearsal before the dance mistress will clap, stop you, and give you a critique. But during the actual performance, when the music swells, and the crowd hushes, it’s all up to you—how high you leap, when you breathe. There’s no more time to worry or try to make it better. It either works or it doesn’t. You land with grace or you stumble and fall. That absoluteness, that finality, is freedom. And the stage was the one place where I felt it.
about showing up for Spanish class unprepared for my oral exam because I’d somehow forgotten that it was finals week.
My arms were rounded, floating, strong enough not to drop my imaginary sphere but soft enough not to make it pop.
It’s because, while we know we’ll never achieve perfection, we have to keep trying.
It’s what makes ballet so beautiful, that razor’s edge of timing and technique that is the difference between leaping and landing perfectly, or collapsing to the floor.
In Don Quixote, Kitri was the innkeeper’s daughter, sensual and full of fire, refusing to marry the wealthy nobleman and wanting instead to be with Basilio, the barber. She communicates her sass and spunk with every move, gently turning her torso while tipping one shoulder—an épaulement—all the while seductively opening, closing, and waving her beautiful fan.
Paloma Herrera was one of the youngest stars in the history of ABT. Born in Buenos Aires, she was fifteen when she joined its corps de ballet, seventeen when she was promoted to soloist, and nineteen when she became a principal dancer.
Romeo and Juliet or La Bayadère.
KCET, a local TV station. The program was called Beating the Odds
That’s what you need to stand out on the stage. Many dancers have a body that’s capable, that has the facility to perform, but they get onstage and they don’t have “it,” that blissful spark that makes it impossible for the audience members to get the performance out of their heads. For me, even in the classroom, it was always showtime.
Though this was not the way most schools taught you to approach ballet—prioritizing a basic understanding of your placement, lines, and strength—my training at the San Pedro Dance Center was based on movement, music, and performance. Very few develop these qualities, even after a lifetime of training. I had it from day one.
The accent in the music came and with it so did the lift of my chin to match.
When I’m on the stage, I always want to appear clean, and strong, never out of control. That is what it means to be a professional. And that day, at the Spotlight Awards, I learned you should always have a backup plan, so you can always deliver a performance that is sharp and refined. Even if your body fails, your performance never will.
Onstage, the lights change your balance and focus and warm the air enough to soften stiff pointe shoes. A costume adds weight and restrictions to a dancer’s movement. The live orchestra and often temperamental conductor challenge you to now think on your toes if there is a sudden change in tempo. And then there’s your own excitement, the rush that comes with a live performance. Often, instincts tempt you to react in opposition to the choreography your body knows so well.
I had a tiny head, a long neck, boatlike feet, a compact torso—an appearance that would be imperfect by most conventional standards of beauty.
To more quickly push my second foot beneath my first as I leaped in an assemblé, to make sure that when I swept my pointed foot around in a circle in my ronds de jambe, I etched the letter D, instead of drawing a squishy sphere.
coda.
California coast instead. Now, a year later, I was ready to take
But one day, I was walking down the street, earbuds in my ears, bopping to a long-forgotten beat, when I caught a man looking at me strangely.
OUTSIDE THE CONVENT’S DOORS was New York City, with its dirty streets and omnipresent cacophony that sounded like an orchestra endlessly tuning its instruments.
The company occupied two floors of a building downtown, at 890 Broadway.
There were air conditioners installed in the windows, but we dancers didn’t want them turned on for fear our muscles would get cold and stiff.
The hallways smelled of sweat and age.
Her jet-black hair was pulled into a loose bun. And she had one of her legs planted on a chair by a wall, stretching.
“What do you know anyway?” he screamed at me. “Dancers are dumb. All they do is use their bodies, not their brains.” His words stung. I remember feeling so hurt, I could barely respond.
I feel as if I’m always trying to prove, whether I’m performing onstage or doing interviews with people who don’t know much about dance, how intense, multidimensional, and unique this art form is. How much thought it takes, and how much love.
Having a musicality in the way you move, allowing the audience to see only the magic and not all the nuts and bolts, is what makes you a star.
Rarely had running ever solved any of our many problems. There may have been a temporary respite, a momentary sigh of relief. But then we’d look up and find ourselves in a situation that was arguably even worse, leaving us with too much time to ponder what we had done, why we had done it, and how would we ever recover.
Few things elicited passion from me like ballet, and I think that I unconsciously feared that talking about how much ballet meant to me, how much I needed it, might break down my emotional dam and force to light other things with the power to cause me pain.
We were reflective. We didn’t want to flee. We wanted to take the situation and turn it over in our hands, to gaze at it and try to figure out how to make it better.
Prince perform in a jam session at an after-party. The night was endless. Prince must have played for four hours straight—that’s how much he loved his art. He could compose and rehearse it all day, then play at it all night. As a dancer, I completely understood that passion.
I could have achieved ballon and never come down.
She is humble, hilarious, and so full of funny, poignant tales that she never repeats one.
And I can’t describe how it feels when you finally get someone to focus on your talent and not the superficiality of the package you come in.
