The Dancers Segment for Chalk Dancers – rough

for the “Chalk Dancers’ project and for the Facebook application Gotta Dance 2

most recent work – January 2009

- work in progress

Taking up the brush this new year.

All the best for the season and the coming year.

Study for Chalk Dancers

Chalk Dancers is still a work in progress.

Chalk Dancers

video here:

Some recent adventures animation

skisies

drink

smoke

gown

the gown 2

If the Shoe Fits…

Occasionally it comes out of the drawer, this really spent old ballet slipper. My last pointe shoe, I only kept one, so I would not even try again, once over, a thing should be done with. Stoically as I try to approach the past, this memory, kept well and alive in the drawer, takes me in hand and opens a flood off feelings, loss, joy, the sense of flight only dancers and birds know.

So I put the shoe on the foot, and sat a while.

After taking a few photos, trying to do an old and dear friend justice, I put back the slipper, Frank’s masterpiece (of Angel Ballet Shoes in Toronto) custom made for my foot, gently tucking in the satin ribbon, and with my lip between my teeth holding back the flood of feelings again, closed the drawer on the past.

more photos of the slipper and other recent photos: www.fllickr.com/photos/aletteke or just click on either image.

A Whole Month as a Dancer

Away from home. A little frightening at 14 but I had an inner drive wanting to dance as much as ordinary mortals want to eat, drink and sleep. I did not want to dance, I had to, and then, in the late 60s, New York City was where a girl, badly wanting to dance would have to try and make it, before you were 16 and far too old to make it.

Arrangements were made, suddenly I had parents in New York, far away from “home”. Two men, who both worked as choreographers and directors, thrust into the role of parents to a 14 year old girl. They shared a very fashionable apartment on the upper west side, and I had my own room. It never occurred to me those days that Ron and Paul were gay. To me they were two men, lifelong bachelors who lived together. Period. They did not flaunt their sexuality, probably because tolerance even in NYC was minimal except within the confines of the theatre.

I was 14 but no one knew by looking. I could have been 20. I was tall, confident and looked like all the other little dancers. NO one questioned whether I was in the country legally or not. Frankly I don’t know if there was proper paperwork. something was worked out between my parents back in Canada and my new foster parents in New York.

Frankly, I think my father was glad for the break of being a parent and my mother had already moved back to Europe for a year r so with my little sister. Apparently the news of her older daughter (that would be me) being raped by he friend (or the vicious lie she considered that to be) required a lengthy vacation abroad. I was blessed with a mechanism to shut it all out and boldly move life forward leaving that wretched baggage behind. Ron had seen me dance, offered me a spot in a touring company he was artistic director for. After a summer doing back to back musicals in a tent theatre he suggested the new arrangements. I think I was his good deed. He will always be my hero.

Though my dream was to be in the ballet, ballet was the long shot and I knew it. There was a lot going against me succeeding. For one I did not have the impressive pedigree of most 14 year old prospective ballerinas. No scholarships at prestigious schools. NO letters of recommendation by teachers whose own careers would make one gasp. Nothing. My background was a series of stops and starts with good but not exceptional schools. The stops and starts had to do with how many times my family moved, and the lack of interest my parents had in me having any kind of career in dance. I was also taller than most girls in ballet and my knees and elbows were overextended. The ballet was populated by short ballerinas and even shorter danseurs.

Still, here I was in NYC, age 14, with a roof over my head, and an offer of a part time job sewing tutus to pay for taking classes, keeping me in pointe shoes and leotards. If I clocked enough hours I could even take a master classes at the Julliard, or at the Gelabert Studio. It didn’t take an awfully long time for my resume to be come respectable enough to take more and more master classes and more and more auditions for apprenticeships.

Living with Ron and Paul was a real education, not just in dance but in career management. Ron explained the rules of life.

Rule 1: You are not a dancer unless you can earn a living wage with it, so you never, ever, ever dance for free, never. Donating your time for a worthy cause is a good thing only if it guarantees a stepping stone to more and better work, and attach a dollar value to the time donated.
Rule 2: As long as your dance skills are equivalent to the pack of lies in your resume, and the pack of lies can’t be easily checked, lie, once you have the credits, drop the lies.
Rule 3: If it helps, change your name. In the midst of Russians taking a whole lot of dance jobs away from American girls and given that I still had a thick Dutch accent I put “sova” at the end of my name. When a few years later it became unpopular to hire Russian dancers (there was a strike at the American Ballet Theatre protesting the hiring of Alexander Godunov and the defection of Barishnikov when we had perfectly capable Americans like Fernando Bujones). My name changed again and I worked with a coach to get rid of my accent.
Rule 4: I could stay as long as I was working and I had to go home to finish the school year at my highschool in Canada as per arrangement.

There was the predictable, no drinking, no boys and no staying out all night with friends. Little chance of that. I sewed, I danced I did my school work on time. Ron and Paul introduced me. In time they became like proud parents. I( was ever conscious of earning their respect and my keep. I walked their poodles, and their friends poodles. I ran errands. Unlike my real parents they took and interest. Even as inconvenient as coming to watch me dance far away in Pittsburgh, one of them showed up for every opening, hell, even in Baltimore.

There was an audition for a Broadway show requiring tap dancing skills, which I had none. I had seen a couple of Shirley Temple movies and nothing else. My mother thought tap dancing terribly lower class and no daughter of hers would engage in such pedestrian pastimes. I ran home to get my tights and leotards soaking in the sink, change into dance pants and tank top and beg Paul for some of his time to teach me enough tap to pass for knowing what I was doing.

Paul called someone who fixed up some tap shoes in my size I could pick up on the way. Typical of Paul he ordered them in red. He gave me the name of a good tap teacher on the way to the audition, step, shuffle kick, tap, turn, and so on. All put together in time for the cattle call. Paul may not have been thrilled to by a “dad” but he always came through.

Not the ballet, but my first steady paycheck in New York at age 14. Dancing seven shows a week there wasn’t time for a social life, just some hours here and there making more tutus for the New York City Ballet.

So ended the first month of my life as a dancer. It was 1968, my resume was still a pack of lies and I was considering changing my name to something Russian and I had same sex parents, I hadn’t been this happy in years.

Moved to Paint

The spirit finally just took possession of me last night, must be the magic of Mayday, and I painted furiously between eleven and three in the morning. I am not unhappy with the work so far, and I am ecstatic to have finally painted again. hanks to all of you who’ve expressed your confidence in me that I would paint again, those little nudges go a long way to keeping me on track. For those four hours I felt no pain, no miseries of any kind, it was wonderful.

aletta

Tights and Yarns

“Kerri is going to Prague for the competition and we need a dancer for the corps while she is gone. Ms. Sharpe suggested you would be just right and available.” She took a deep and purposeful breath, “Just so you know, I think she is wrong, I don’t think you’re up to it, but we are desperate.” I was unsure how to react. I wanted with all my heart to throttle her until her last phony accented British breath. I also wanted to yell at her that I was bloody well up to the task but the bitch was still pissed that I had rejected her lesbian advances. Neither would have made for a very good career move. I was sixteen, if I did not break from the back row now I would be far to old to see another chance. I might not have liked her, but I needed her to give me this chance. Putting on my most demure smile, I made eye contact, stretched out my hand which she took and shook.

“Thank you so much for this opportunity, I will not disappoint you or Ms. Sharpe.”
She peered at me along her very long aquiline nose, through her dainty bifocals, “
See that you don’t.” I found myself in a near curtsy and backing out of her office. I turned slowly to face the hallways where a small flock of my classmates had gathered. They shuffled into a group hug and wished me well. At the end of the stately hallways was the rehearsal hall. I could hear the pianist doing his warmup runs, and the clip clop of pointe shoes.

Renny walked with me, chattering into my ear “you will get to meet HIM, oh you are sooo, lucky”.

To be honest I wasn’t feeling very lucky just now. What I was feeling was numbness with gusts of outright fear. The company was just starting rehearsals of The Sleeping Beauty with the incomparable premier danseur and recent Russian defector Vaclav Merinski. After touring in Europe with Britain’s most beloved Dame Margot he was now here. To us little would-be ballerinas he was a god. The Beatles were nothing to us, Vaclav was the sun and the moon. The honour to rehearse with him and, God willing, perform with him.

Quite rightly my fellow students of the dance were envious and eager to hear what my day’s experiences were. Rennie tugged at my sleeve, “Tonight you’ll tell use everything, everything..” she giggled, which set the whole lot of the giggling and they waddled off to class, even between classes they practiced their turnout, and looked like ducklings the way it made them walk.

The door to the rehearsal hall had never looked this big before. I was overwhelmed, terror struck at having to walk in and fall in for the absent Kerri. Kerri was competing for the gold medal in Prague. She was better than all the other girls in the corps and they despised her for it. Perhaps this is why they were suddenly so very sweet with me, I did not pose a threat. Yet.

It wasn’t long before rehearsal started, without Vaclav. Apparently he did not dance until 11 am. We rehearsed. Hard work, Ms. Sharpe rehearsed the corps and we were released by 10 am and the remainder of the morning was spent rehearsing principals only. So I took the remainder of my academic classes and returned after lunch for the afternoon’s rehearsal.

I had shared some stories and a salted pretzel with Rennie, who was gushing about Vaclav this and Vaclav that. She had seen him from the classroom window, arriving by limousine. ” He might notice you, and Martine might sprain her ankle, and he’ll choose you.” “Rennie, you read too many of those romance novels. Life just does not work that way.”

I slipped as unnoticed as possible into the fairly packed rehearsal studio. Vaclav was rehearsing his solo, and choreographing as well, He spoke in a fairly high tone, something you might not expect from a Russian. He never stopped moving, not even when he spoke. His very pale skins had small rivers of sweat pouring off him. I pitied his partner for being soaked in his sweat hour after hour. Still, undeniably he was great, e every bit as great as his review said and far better than any of our own danseurs. He leapt effortlessly, carried his partner as if no more than the weight of a small bird. He never tired.

When I wasn’t dancing or in class I sat in the rehearsal hall and knitted, I learned the choreography inside out by watching. Most of the warmup sweater and tights I knitted were bought right off the needles by one of the other dancers. They were made in colours you couldn’t just buy in the dance shops,the legs were extra long and the waists extra high, just the way a dancer liked them. I was happy to break even on the wool plus enough money for another pair of pointe shoes or some groceries. Some deals were struck including a few packs of cigarettes. I had just taken up smoking to avoid being the one staying behind to polish up the mirrors while the others took a smoke break. Now I took a smoke break too. Unlike Kerri, whose parents financed half the annual repertoire, I bought my own shoes and master classes and if I did not knit my tight I just couldn’t afford any hundred dollar Capezio tights.

The first night I sat with my roommates and told them in great detail about the production and Vaclav in particular. He was great, he was sweaty and he was loud. No matter how much reality I gave them they were still lapping it up with daydream eyes and romanticised ideals of Vaclav. At night they no doubt dreamt of Vaclav. Not me, I dreamt of dancing and forgetting the choreography and everyone laughing at me.

Rehearsals were going very well. There was only one problem, Vaclav’s brown knitted tights. He wore those warmup tight, probably knitted by his mother in the Ukraine, each and every rehearsal. Probably they were only laundered by his mother in the Ukraine. We noticed they were stuffed in his locker at the end of rehearsal and back on him in the morning. The odour was becoming more and more pervasive. Of course no one tells a god that he reeks, not even his dance partner.

Making matters worse was his steady diet of raw meat. Twice a day the local Russian restaurant brought him his special Steak “Tartar”. Very likely he at more of it at night when he held court in the same restaurant drinking and telling loud stories with other Russian defectors, musicians, scientists, writers.

Just four weeks into the rehearsals the production was near perfection. No-one could say anything about Vaclav’s abilities as a choreographer or as a dancer, but increasingly he was becoming a topic of locker ridicule for the way he smelled and poor Martine was beyond uncomfortable dancing so closely with him. Martine herself would smell pretty ripe at the end of rehearsal. Still both would shower and the tights were boxed into the locker at night. Those damn tights. Those horrible, stinking tights.

“Martine” I tugged at her sleeve as she was about to leave for the evening, “Martine, we should take those tights and throw them out. She looked at me with a big grin, “No, we couldn’t”. She bit her lip. Vaclav with a number of hangers on passed behind us and left the building.

“Can you get them?” I prodded her. Martine darted into the locker room and tossed them in the garbage bin by the door. We ran out the door giggling like guilty schoolgirls. Pretty much what we were, schoolgirls en pointe

What a nasty surprise that the next morning Vaclav was wearing them again. Apparently he had found them in the garbage when he came back to get something last night. He shook the whole thing off and business as usual. Poor Martine.

Later that evening Martine called me at the house. “Can you knit him a replacement pain of tights, just like the ones he has now? I’ll get you the wool” It was a Friday and if I applied myself the whole weekend I should be able to knit them. I did.

Monday we waited for Vaclav to leave the building, we took the old tights and burned them in the alley behind the company. It didn’t take much to have them take flame. The replacement tights I had made were put in the locker.

I was sick to my stomach on Tuesday knowing what we had done. The corps had rehearsal from 8:30 to 10:30 and Vaclav would arrive at 11. I imagined this might be the last day I danced with this or any company, Martine too.

We both held out breath as he entered amid the usual fanfare. I had worked magic with the needles, the fit was perfect, and he was wearing them. He said nothing, rehearsal after rehearsal, either he had not noticed or he did not care. By the week’s end we moved into the theatre fro dress rehearsal and by the weekend we opened to wonderful reviews and packed houses. Two weeks later it was over. Karri came back with a gold medal and reclaimed her rightful place in the corps. Martine started work as a soloist in South Africa with a new company and I moved to Belgium to study and dance. The few times in many years we have met, we reminisce over the night we burned Vaclav’s tights. None of us worked with Vaclav again, he retired not long after Sleeping Beauty.