Raymonda Day 1

Photo by Paul Kolnik

Today was the first day of City Ballet’s Saratoga rehearsal period, and while the rest of the country watched the US play in the World Cup, I spent the afternoon with twenty panting, flushed women. The cause?  Balanchine’s Raymonda Variations.  It is so damn hard! Raymonda is probably the worst ballet to have to rehearse on the first day back after a layoff; however, it is the perfect ballet with which to kick off this blog because it has represented so many firsts for me over the course of my career.  The ballet’s second variation was my very first ballet solo.  Patricia McBride coached me in the role for the Chautauqua Festival program when I was thirteen years old (and only in my second year on pointe—which seems soo risky to me in hindsight).  I still wear the earrings that she gave me as a merde gift for performances today.  Ironically, I can’t wear them for a ballet like Raymonda—they are huge and dangly and more suited to accompany big dresses like the ones in Vienna Waltzes and Thou Swell!   

Raymonda’s first variation –“the hopping solo”—was among my first solo roles when I joined the New York City Ballet too.  I danced it often, beginning in my first year as a corps member, and I loved it.  That solo marked the beginning of my specializing in a lot of our repertory’s solos based on hopping on pointe (like Generosity in the Sleeping Beauty, Spinner in Coppelia) which unfortunately also lead to my big surgery.  Eventually, I developed a necrotic cuneiform in the middle of my arch on my hopping foot.  After some painful years of ballet while several doctors tried to diagnose my

problem, I came across Martin O’Malley at the Hospital for Special Surgery who finally figured out what was going on in my mid-foot.  He performed an experimental bone graft procedure (taking bone marrow from my hip to patch up the holes in my feet!) that took me away from ballet for a year but also, miraculously, extended my career.

This past spring season, Raymonda was back to commemorate another first.  It had been part of the company’s 1964 inaugural season at our home theater and it was returning to the rep in celebration of the building’s fiftieth anniversary.  The ballet hadn’t been performed since I recovered from my operation, but I doubted that I could still hop on pointe after the reconstruction of my foot.  I gave it the good old college try—largely out of curiosity, to be quite honest—but it was a serious no-go.  Luckily, City Ballet’s head ballet mistress Rosemary Dunleavy was very understanding and taught me another solo instead.  So, after just shy of twenty years (!) of being in and around Raymonda, I had another first and I debuted in the ballet’s sixth variation or “jumping solo” in May.   

I feel like I know Raymonda intimately at this point, but the funny thing about Balanchine ballets is that even when you think you know everything about them, something new comes to light.  I did a lot of digging into the history of Raymonda this spring which has only made me respect the piece even more.  Stay tuned for some of my impressions as my colleagues and I get our butts in shape for the Saratoga performances…