Personal Coaches: How to find them, and how they can help - ballet

Dance Magazine, Dec, 2000 by Joseph Carman

There is an unwritten rule in the ballet world that proper coaching is essential to the growth of a dancer. In Russia, where age-old roles are handed down from generation to generation, coaching takes on a certain mystique. In the U.S., young dancers can seek out coaches on their own, but there are questions. How does a dancer find the right coach? How much will it cost? Which roles should young dancers prepare for when they enter ballet competitions?

Whatever the logistical concerns in hiring a freelance coach, there are plenty of reasons to get personalized help in a profession that frequently leaves dancers to their own devices on stage. Winthrop Corey, a former principal dancer with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and now director of the Mobile Ballet Company in Alabama, has coached many dancers for competitions and has seen the positive effects of the coaching process. "When you are in a class with forty people, you don't get that individual attention," says Corey. "If you're in the corps de ballet with twenty-four girls, you don't get it. Dancers need an eye. To have that opportunity is so important."

Christina Theryoung, who was coached in Raymonda by American Ballet Theatre ballerina Cynthia Harvey for the New York International Ballet Competition, finds it "a lot easier to work one-on-one with a coach during a rehearsal, because it is so personal."

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre member Christopher Rendall-Jackson, whom Corey coached for the New York International Ballet Competition, says, "Everyone needs the guidance, to be shaped ... in a coaching session, you have to start working on the artistic side--that's the other half."

Most coaches agree that the best way for dancers to find their ideal coach is to keep eyes and ears open and to approach the teachers they know. "The ballet world is small," says Eleanor D'Antuono, a twenty-year ABT veteran who recently directed the New York International Ballet Competition. "Coaches are known mostly by reputation. Dancers ask me for help because they trust my taste." She also notes that as a dancer, she sought help from respected artists like Alicia Alonso and Rudolf Nureyev.

Dancers can expect coaches to approach and initiate the working process in different ways. After teaching the steps, Corey looks for the dancer's underlying temperament. "I have to get a feel for who they are and then try to use that to their best advantage," he says. He gives the example of a young dancer, a South American pyrotechnician who came to him to be coached in the role of Sleeping Beauty's Aurora. "We had to go carefully through the transition steps, utilizing her great flair for energy, but tempering it to make it right for Petipa," he says.

According to D'Antuono, most dancers who request coaching from her are already proficient technically, so she homes in on details immediately. She also stresses that what dancers most often want is "to know the essence of the role."

Master ballet teacher David Howard (now teaching at the Joffrey School in New York), who has coached a galaxy of ballet stars including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gelsey Kirkland, Natalia Makarova and Sylvie Guillem, uses a layered process for his coaching sessions. After selecting variations or pas de deux that are appropriate for the dancers, they view videos from Howard's arsenal of videotapes to find a version that will work best. "What I do within the range of the solos is tailor-make the variations for the people so they look right doing it," he explains. (For purists who think there is only one historically correct version in ballet, Howard recalls Baryshnikov's statement to him about the Coppelia wedding pas de deux, "There is no original version.") Howard also works with a pianist to get the tempi right for the dancer and spends time on nuances, such as entrances and exits from the stage, even final bows. Overall, he says, "You look at the dancer and see the strengths and weaknesses they have."

When a dancer hires a coach, it is generally understood that the working process is directorial in nature and that the dancer needs to trust the coach's suggestions. There is a tendency for many young dancers to sell the dancing or miss the subtleties of a role. "That's the job of a coach, to say `No, we're not going to do it that way, because it is not correct,'" Corey says. "It is extremely important for the coach to relay the style and temperament to the dancers." Howard even cites the case of coaching Gelsey Kirkland in The Sleeping Beauty and insisting repeatedly that the port de bras be executed in the traditionally structured Petipa style, rather than a looser Balanchinian mode. Nonetheless, the dancers need to retain a sense of their individuality. "You always take what the coach says to heart and make it your own," says Theryoung.

It is often easier for students to grasp more modern choreography like the Balanchine ballets than older works, particularly those in the romantic repertory, such as Les Sylphides or Giselle. "I would say that those nineteenth-century works are the most difficult, because they are not given in the classroom. That style is not trained," says Corey. D'Antuono concurs: "You have to be quite a mature dancer with a lot of background to bring life to it. The challenge is to keep it interesting in a modern world." It is for those reasons that coaching dancers in such works is so valuable. "It's all about the quality," says Howard. "You want them to become a more artistic dancer."