Although I have never considered myself to be the blogging type (in fact, putting my thoughts in front of all of cyber-space feels a bit strange), my husband thought that I should put all my time spent thinking about ballet (and ignoring him) to good use. So there was born the idea of this blog—to write about the ballets that I see or read about, and the dancers whose careers I follow. But this first post is also about a small part of my own journey, in particular my recent trip down memory lane to visit two special places that made ballet and music so relevant to my life.
I received my first professional ballet training nearly 25 years ago from Kathy Chamberlain at Chamberlain Performing Arts in my hometown of Plano, Texas. I don't remember exactly how I landed in Kathy’s class at the age of 13, but I remember thinking that I was not going to make it through that first class. Kathy trained at the School of American Ballet and teaches based on a Balanchine style. Her class was harder than any class I had taken, and her dancers were so good (many of her students are now dancing professionally all over the world). Last August I decided to pay Kathy a visit at her studio for the first time in many years. We spent an hour catching up, talking about her students, her company and where life had taken us. What a special person and teacher! Our visit motivated me to continue reconnecting with my past as a dancer.
I left home to attend the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) for my junior year of high school and spent two and a half years studying at the school. It is a unique place not only for its ballet training, but also for its multidisciplinary community of artists. Set in a conservatory-like atmosphere, students in the high school and college programs study one of a number of disciplines such as dance, music, visual arts and drama.
Even though UNCSA is only slightly more than a five hour drive from my current home in Washington, DC, I had not been back to visit since 1995. It was with much anticipation that I loaded up the car last December with my three year old son and a good friend (a ballet-loving lawyer like me) and headed to Winston-Salem. In addition to seeing the school, I was looking forward to seeing Gillian Murphy, UNCSA alumna and principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre and Gonzalo Garcia, New York City Ballet principal dancer, who would be guest starring on the opening night of UNCSA’s annual Nutcracker production.
Upon arriving to campus, we were taken on a personal guided tour to see the developments on campus since I left in 1995. Although I was eager to see how the campus had changed, I longed to see the ballet studios where I had started and finished so many days as a student. There they were, upon me as if I had never left; in fact, it seemed as though the studios had not changed a bit in all those years, right down to the casting/schedule board in the same place on the wall. Before leaving campus, we caught a glimpse of Gillian and Gonzalo warming up in one of the studios to prepare for the evening’s performance.
UNCSA’s annual Nutcracker is a marvelous collaboration between the Schools of Dance, Music and Design & Production, with 100% of ticket proceeds benefitting the student scholarship fund. The ballet is accompanied by the UNCSA student orchestra, this year conducted by guest conductor Charles Barker of American Ballet Theatre. It was to be my son’s first Nutcracker (and his first full-length ballet), so my bag was stocked full of distractions to ensure that I would not have to make a rapid exit. From the moment the overture started and the first party guests arrived in Act I, he was captivated by the story, which was skillfully portrayed with a level of detail unmatched by most Nutcrackers I have seen.
The beginning of Act II revealed the first view of Gillian, reigning over her Kingdom of Sweets with all the warmth and grandeur that should embody the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Seeing her on this stage at the height of her career could not help but evoke memories of her dancing the same role as a prodigious student, nearly 20 years ago. The student corps sailed through the Waltz of the Flowers with sublime ease, the dancers looking as if there was nothing else in the world they would rather do. Gillian’s and Gonzalo’s rendering of the pas de deux was flawless and transcendent. As the audience rose to their feet during their bows, it seemed only right and fitting that my son’s first Nutcracker was one so artfully performed by my school.
Here are a couple of pictures:
Here is a recent video about UNCSA (added on February 12, 2014):
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