In his element: at age thirty-two, Christopher Stowell has added artistry and interpretation to the virtuoso technique that launched his career with San Francisco Ballet, performing at Manhattan's City Center, October 20 to 25

Dance Magazine, Oct, 1998 by Caitlin Sims

In preparing for parts, Stowell worked on putting more of himself into roles along with perfecting his technique. "What I needed to work on and still work on all the time, just because that's my nature, is to dance a little more evenly and heavily, and to establish myself and my personality onstage, not to be just a body that is moving, but a person, a man, who is different from an instrument, as opposed to just believing that the cleaner I do the step the better it is. I realized that I was missing out on a whole range of things by worrying about my Fifth Position, which in some works just happens not to be crucial."

Adding these elements made his interpretations more rich, varied, and individual. "I really like parts where I can get lost onstage--not forget where I am but get involved. Several people have choreographed parts for me like that, and they have been very special for me because I feel like I can do them a little bit differently every night, it's not all hinging on the hard step. One piece I really liked was Helgi's Meistens Mozart. I have a solo in it that is interpretable; I can respond to the varying tempi or my mood. I remember doing that ballet when I was upset about stuff in my personal life, and I did it totally differently. I remember Helgi saying, `Wow, it was really interesting tonight,' and I thought, `I bet it was--I was furious.'"

Tomasson's commitment to developing new work for the repertory, both of his own and of leading choreographers such as Christopher Bruce, David Bintley, James Kudelka, and Forsythe, also has stretched Stowell artistically. "I've created a lot of my repertory rather than always doing things that were created on other people," Stowell says. "I like working with choreographers who instead of saying, `You can do turns, so we're going to give you the parts that have turns,' create roles on me that I can interpret physically and musically. The bravura roles are exciting, especially when you are young and they bring down the house, but sometimes people don't develop into everything they could be, they're just one-trick ponies. That didn't happen to me."

In fact, Stowell sees himself more as an artist than as a dancer. "I am a dancer because that's my medium. You call people `artists,' but you don't know if they are painters or they work with clay or whatever. I happen to work with dance, but I think it could have been something else. For example I have always identified with theater.

"Some dancers always have their dance bags glued to them--they walk a certain way, and that's part of their identity. I don't feel like the physical side is part of my identity. I am an artist, and a part of a tradition and a group of other committed artists, and I want to create art--that is my identity."

Now at age thirty-two, Stowell realizes his limitations as well as his strengths. "I'm looking for ways of expanding as a dancer," he says, "even though I'm not going to jump higher and I'm not going to turn more--you can't keep up all of the virtuoso things that you did when you were twenty. If you are sharing a part with someone ten years younger, they are going to be able to jump higher longer. There might be seventy-five things they don't do as well, but jumping is a good quality in dancing sometimes. The audience thinks, `Wow, he really got off the floor.' I used to be that guy, but I'm not as much that way anymore. I don't want to be. But I'm still a part of the organization I work for, and if they need me to do a part like that, I do it. But I want to be able to take risks and it is hard to do that in white tights, standing in the middle of the stage. In roles that I can interpret I feel like I really have something to offer that other people don't."