Dancing 2,600 miles from home - Young Dancer - one student's experience at Canada's National Ballet School - Biography

Dance Magazine, Nov, 2003 by Ann Murphy

In January, then 14-year-old Samantha Stevenson left Petaluma, California, forty-eight miles north of San Francisco, headed to the airport, and boarded a Canada-bound plane alone. Six hours later, the sandy-brown-haired, leggy ninth grader returned to school in Toronto's downtown neighborhood of the Village. The National Ballet School, the state-run, residential feeder school for the National Ballet of Canada, has an excellent reputation as a ballet training center, and Samantha wants, more than anything, to be a ballerina. There, she took ballet six days a week and had a rigorous academic course load, plus music theory, singing, and body conditioning.

It's a long way to go just to go to school--2,600 miles to be exact. Yet Samantha made the trip to NBS several times a year, until deciding in summer 2003 that it was time to rejoin her family. In September the 15-year-old's commute decreased to a mere half-hour jaunt south of Petaluma, to San Rafael's Marin Dance Theatre.

Samantha wasn't always a dancer, and California wasn't always home. The slight, shy teenager started out as a soccer-playing gymnast. "Then we enrolled her in a Y program that offered jazz and tap], and she loved it," says Michael Stevenson of his only daughter. (Samantha has an older stepbrother.) "The following year she tried a dance studio, and she had to take ballet in order to take jazz. After that, [the choices were] all up to her."

And she chose ballet. "I like the movement, the freedom of being able to move. And ballet is a challenge; you're always working on it," says Samantha.

Samantha's pre-professional dance career began six years ago when she auditioned for NBS's summer program. The family was living ill the town of Oakville at the time, ninety minutes outside of Toronto, when Samantha was awarded one of the coveted summer school slots. At summer's end, she was invited into the year-round school, one of only 150 students from Canada and abroad, and, at age 9, one of the youngest ever accepted.

Laurel Toto, a ballet instructor for NBS and the children's rehearsal director for the company, taught Samantha for four years. "When I first saw Samantha, I was amazed by her charismatic presence. She had stage savvy; she would make things work onstage. As Marie [in The Nutcracker], she was fantastic--she really delved into the character."

But Samantha has proved that she doesn't need a story line to shine, although she admits that narrative ballets are her favorites.

Toto recalls, "1 remember watching her [in Mozartiana] from the wings: The music entered her body, and there was such a joy in her movement. She was flying around the stage.

"I loved having her in class," continues Toto. "She's always laughing--her eyes crinkle up when she laughs--and she's very flexible, hypermobile really." Samantha's strongest attribute, according to Toto, is how she "interprets personality through movement. She gives you an understanding of the character."

School days at NBS begin early and end late, extending well into the evening during rehearsals. For a year, Samantha and Michael commuted by car three hours each day, six days a week. The time on the road was exhausting her dad, and Samantha found it nerve-racking: She never knew if she'd arrive in time for her 8:30 A.M. class or get home soon enough to do any homework.

So the Stevensons decided that the sensible thing Jot Samantha to do was to board at the school. For the first year, Samantha went home on weekends, but then Michael and Leslie, Samantha's mother, moved to California. Samantha was all for the upcoming move, Michael says--as long as she could stay at NBS. "She's an independent thinker," he laughs. So for four years, Samantha's dorm room was her home.

"There are three floors of girls, and on each floor there are twelve rooms, and there are about two or three girls to a room" which, the self-possessed teenager explains, "can be squishy.

"We'd usually wake up at 7:30, and we'd have [academic] school from 8:30 to 10 A.M., and then ballet for two hours." School uniforms and a dress code for ballet are mandatory, and the curriculum includes fitness training, nutrition, and exercise physiology.

As hard as it was to be apart, the Stevensons took it in stride. "We talked on the phone at least once a day," says Leslie, "and I asked her, 'What did you do today?' But it'd be hard to get anything out of her. Sometimes she'd be chatty, and sometimes she'd be in the middle of something." Samantha rolls her eyes, then agrees she was often impatient to get back to her friends or her schoolwork.

"We were fortunate enough to get together fairly often," adds Michael, "every six to eight weeks. I think what made it easier was that the whole school's in the same position. None of the kids there live with their parents."

"You'd have to be competitive in class, but in residence it was fun because you'd have your friends around," explains Samantha. "You'd get homesick sometimes, for those everyday things you do with your parents, but [the students] supported each other." She adds that house parents and homework tutors also offered support.