Julia Adam - San Francisco Ballet dancer/choreographer

Dance Magazine, May, 2001 by Kathryn Roszak Castle

CHOREOGRAPHER OF DREAMS TAKES FLIGHT

"In creating my dances, I found my voice. I suddenly know how things should be," says San Francisco Ballet dancer/choreographer Julia Adam, beaming with an alluring self-confidence. Adam radiates a bright combination of assurance and poise these days. But it was not always so. At 35, Adam has undergone a dramatic makeover as a performer, and she credits her newfound role as choreographer for the transformation. Relaxed and thoughtful in a girlish-pink top, charcoal capri pants, and sunglasses that nicely offset her striking blonde looks, Adam talked in the dancers' lounge at SFB. It was a typical dancer's day off; she had just come from a chiropractic appointment.

"Dancing didn't come easy to me. I had an inability to lose myself as a dancer. There was always a fear because I was interpreting and trying to acquire the director's voice. I also wondered, `Who am I?' As a dancer you look at the girl next to you, and you see a similar body, the same length of leg, the same breasts. How am I different from this person beside me? What makes me separate?"

It's startling to hear this from Adam, who has carved out a unique position for herself as a principal dancer precisely because of her highly individual interpretations of such dramatic roles as the dance student who gets murdered in Flemming Flindt's The Lesson and the tortured wife in Kenneth MacMillan's The Invitation. Her comedic flair has been brought to the fore in Peter Martins's The Waltz Project and most recently in SFB's spring season smash, the sexy Black Cake, choreographed by Hans van Manen.

Adam grows more animated as she explains, "The competition and discipline in ballet are so intense due to the sheer number of girls. There is a real lack of self-esteem. There's a feeling that if I get hurt, I'm replaceable. Becoming a choreographer has changed my dancing. It's helped me as a woman and as a performer. Now I have a voice." This new voice has revitalized Adam's joy in dancing. "I love portraying an actual character as opposed to dancing in abstract works. I'm an actress who dances. When I'm acting, the public gets it. I get response."

Her foray into choreography has gained her no less a response, winning the hearts of critics, audiences, and dance companies alike. Last season she was one of four San Francisco Ballet choreographers commissioned by SFB Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson to create world premieres as part of the company's Discovery Program. (The others were David Palmer, Yuri Possokhov, and Christopher Stowell.) Her ballet Night, inspired by the art of Marc Chagall, was a runaway hit then, and is now slated to be performed by SFB on its spring tour in Pads and Spain.

"After Helgi met with all of us, I went across the street to the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House and asked myself, `How can I fill this space?' And I thought, I can fill this space with dreams. Night is a dance of flight inspired by lovers flying and images coming out of my own dream life." Adam carded Tomasson's New Century/New Talent concept one step further and brought in the new designer/composer team of Benjamin Pierce, also a principal dancer at SFB, and his brother Matthew. The result was a ballet full of surprises: unexpected groupings such as three female dancers embodying a three-headed woman, and groups of men portraying boats, waves, and a bed for principal dancer Tina LeBlanc. The most unusual moment comes at the ballet's end when LeBlanc is suddenly held aloft as if she has awakened from her stream-of-consciousness dream.

Adam is deeply intuitive about her work. Could she have known in dreaming up her Chagall-inspired piece for SFB that her work would then travel to the Palais Gamier in Pads, famous for its own stunning Chagall-painted ceiling? Now Adam's work is in demand everywhere. She has just choreographed for ABT II and will create works for the Joffrey and again for SFB next year.

As lofty as all this might seem, Adam's start in choreography is amusing. "In 1993, SFB didn't tour, and there was a choreographic workshop during the layoff. When the casting went up, I was devastated. No one wanted to choreograph on me. I called my mom up and she said, `Why don't you choreograph something yourself?.' So I did a piece [The Medium Is the Message] for Joanna Berman, Anthony Randazzo, and me." Looking back, Adam sees earlier influences. "While I was training at the National Ballet School in Toronto, we studied composition in art, writing, and painting. I was very focused on becoming a ballerina, but I was always interested in making things. I was good at geometry and math. My mother, Merle Adam, who studied at SAB and danced at the Radio City Music Hall, took me to Ottawa and I saw everything: Bejart, Bausch, Netherlands Dance Theater. We were an hour and a half from Montreal, where there was avant-garde dance, I have a gift, but I'm also educated.

"Then at the National Ballet School, a woman named Victoria Simon came and set Balanchine's Serenade. I really understood then that I had a sense of space. I could tell if someone way behind me that I couldn't even see was off. I understand space and how `the machine' of a dance works."