Balancing Acts

Three Prima Ballerinas Becoming Mothers

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• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781616892548
• eBook ISBN: 9781616894269
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Design History & Criticism

There are few jobs more rarefied or as physically and mentally demanding as prima ballerina. And yet, despite very real professional risks, three dancers from the world-class San Francisco Ballet all decided to have children at the pinnacle of their careers. In Balancing Acts, photographer Lucy Gray takes readers on an unforgettable fourteen-year journey with these ballerinas, capturing their remarkable grit and determination.In dramatic black-and white photography, Gray documents their struggles to balance the demands of family and work—from their tireless preparation in rehearsals and dazzling mastery of craft displayed on stage, to their time spent relaxing at home with family and even while giving birth. In extensive interviews the dancers and their husbands discuss their stories with great candor, providing remarkable insight into the life of a ballerina and the everyday challenges and joys of mothers everywhere.

THE DANCERS

Front row, from left: Kristin Long, Tina LeBlanc, and Katita Waldo; back row: Parrish Maynard and Gonzalo Garcia, in a dress rehearsal of The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude (William Forsythe) at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. (2001)

For their work in William Forsythe’s The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, Tina LeBlanc, Kristin Long, and Katita Waldo, with colleagues Gennadi Nedvigin and Roman Rykine, received the 2002 Outstanding Achievement in Performance—Ensemble award, given by San Francisco’s Isadora Duncan Dance Awards Committee.

“We have a little joke in the company about this dance. We say only a mother can do Vertiginous because, having given birth, she’s the one who’ll know how to breathe through these lightning-fast routines.”

— FROM TINA’S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

From left: Kristin, Gonzalo, Parrish, Katita, and Tina in The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude. After the curtain comes down, the dancers catch their breaths.

Moments later: Gonzalo, Tina, Kristin, and Katita. Ballet master Ashley Wheater (with his back turned), who has recently retired as a dancer at San Francisco Ballet, knows how to give notes that make the dancers laugh. He would later become the artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet. (2001)

All have sons: Katita Waldo and James Crutcher; Tina LeBlanc and Marinko Jerkunica; Kristin and Kai Long, backstage after a performance of The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude. (2002)

“For anyone who is thinking about having a baby while you’re still dancing, we’re here to show you that it can be done.”

— FROM KRISTIN’S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

KRISTIN LONG

Cyril Pierre and Benjamin Pierce lift Kristin Long offstage. (2000)

KRISTIN LONG | APRIL 2002

When I was really little I danced around like a nut. I was probably a lot like Kai in that way. We used to go to country-western concerts. We’d sit in the front row, and I would never be in my seat. I’d be standing up and totally getting down.

My mom was a housewife. My dad worked for the family bus company. I wonder how I got this far in the arts, because they had nothing to do with the arts. We didn’t even listen to music that much. We listened to music like every other family, but it wasn’t a big part of our lives.

My mom and dad enrolled my older sister and me in gymnastics. My dad was very athletic; I’m sure he wanted us to do something athletic. They decided to enroll us in ballet, just to check it out. So I did gymnastics and ballet, and went back and forth. After a year, that was it: no more gymnastics. I wanted to do only ballet. I was eight. It was weird that there was a good ballet school in Altoona, Pennsylvania. I probably became the first dancer who ever made it from that school, professionally. I was just obsessed.

My older sister quit ballet about a year after she started. She just didn’t like it; she essentially became your normal teenager. I was never your normal teenager. I went to ballet immediately after school, and I was there from 4:00 to 9:00 p.m.

By thirteen I would go away every summer to study. The School of American Ballet was very hard to get into; I got in one summer and I hated it. It was all about how you looked rather than how you danced. Down to “Your head’s too big for your body.” It didn’t make you feel like you wanted to dance. It was all about if you were skinny enough, if you had arched feet, the whole thing. If I’d grown up in New York, where they were concentrating on your head size, I might have quit. I was never your beanpole little girl. Growing up in a small town and not knowing how scrutinized you could be in this profession pushed me to keep doing it, to keep loving it.

I came out here to San Francisco when I was fifteen to study with the San Francisco Ballet. I had a great time, and I loved it, and then I got a full scholarship for the year. My parents knew from my ballet teacher that if I was going to pursue ballet, I needed to do these sorts of things.

It happened perfectly. I couldn’t ask for anything more, because I got here, and Helgi [Tomasson] really, really liked me, right away. He saw me in our student demo, which happened in May, then I started working with the company. A dancer got injured before they were going on a tour to the Kennedy Center, and so they took me. Then they were going to Hawaii, and someone else got injured, and I essentially did a soloist part. Helgi had faith in me. He liked the fact that I was gutsy and I seemed so natural.

When I was about twenty I went through a really hard time because I suddenly realized: Oh, my God—this is all I’ve ever done all my life, and I don’t have another life. When I was going through that period, it was bizarre to me that the only place I really felt comfortable with myself was onstage. Outside of that I didn’t know who the hell I was. I didn’t have Kristin without the ballet. That was really scary. It was a horrible time for me.

By the time I was twenty-three, I thought, You know what? I don’t love to dance. I was dancing only to be thin. I’d go to aerobics class before ballet, at six o’clock in the morning. So I took a leave of absence. I said to Helgi, “I don’t want to dance. I’m not happy dancing. I need to be happy. I need to figure this out.” That’s when I got to know that Kristin could be someone other than a ballet dancer. I didn’t need to be so overly obsessed with dancing, because it brought me down. Balance was good. And then it was thrown in my face when I had Kai, because I had to have balance. Had I not had Kai, I might still be obsessive.

I’d just come back from my leave of absence in 1995 when I broke my foot. I was living in San Francisco, and Michael was living in New York. We were engaged. I went to New York for the holidays. A month later: pregnant. Total surprise. I thought, “This is not the greatest timing to have a baby,” but I still wasn’t sure I wanted to continue with my career. I was st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• The Dancers
• Epilogue
• Reviews
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author