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Zehr
auditioned for the National Ballet on a break from performing with
the Houston Ballet a few years ago. She wanted greater opportunity
to dance more classical roles than she'd had in Houston, so she
set out to try her luck with Britain's Royal Ballet, the English
National Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada.Artistic director
Monica Mason at the Royal was interested, but felt she couldn't
prove that Zehr was better than other European community dancers,
as immigration laws require. Canadian Wayne Eagling at the English
National Ballet offered her a contract, but Zehr found the terms
rather
vague.
Kain, who was trying to find funds to
hire another Houston applicant, principal dancer Zdenek Konvalina,
told Zehr that she thought the Florida native was extraordinarily
talented, but she just didn't have the money for even a corps de
ballet contract.
Zehr was disappointed but impressed by
how "honest and open" Kain was. Somewhat reluctantly,
Zehr decided to accept the English National Ballet contract after
all. Just in the nick of time, Kain found and persuaded some sponsors,
and then got on the phone and hired both Konvalina and Zehr for
the 2006-2007 season.
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This modern fairy tale suited Kain
as much as it did Zehr. "When I became artistic director,
I dreamed that wonderful dancers from around the dancers,
our artistic staff, our repertoire and our quality of life
in Canada," she says. "And, in my first year, here
were Bridgett and Zdenek! It was my dream come true."
Zehr and Konvalina had already
danced the leading roles in Stanton Welch's Swan Lake together,
and Toronto had another glimpse of the charms of this pair
in the exquisitely sensuous Façades section of Jerome
Robbins' Glass Pieces last November. "It'll be
fascinating to see how far she can go with her talent,"
Kain says. "She's had excellent training, she's very
refined and she's intensely musical."
Zehr, born and raised in Sarasota,
Florida, has ballet in her genes. Her mother had been a professional
ballet dancer, and Zehr and her older sister, Rachel, grew
up with a passion for dance, heightened for Bridgett when
she first saw The Nutcracker when she was five or six.
Her mother didn't push Bridgett -- as she says, she didn't
need any pushing -- but the family was sufficiently strapped
financially that serious dance training seemed beyond their
means.
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Enter the fairy godmother: the DANCE:
The Next Generation programme of the Sarasota Ballet. The family
had qualified for the free school lunch programme in Sarasota public
schools, and one day a letter came home inviting everyone in the
free lunch programme to audition for free dance classes. Bridgett
and Rachel jumped at the chance, especially when it transpired that
they would be given up to seven years of training plus free transportation,
tickets to artistic events, practice clothes -- the works. They'd
have the opportunity to perform in the Sarasota Ballet Nutcracker,
and after their seven years of training, on the defensible grounds
that young people who study dance for seven years probably have
enough discipline to succeed at anything, they would be guaranteed
full scholarships to the University of South Florida.
Bridgett's first year in the programme
was rough; there were about 70 kids in the studio trying to learn
from a Russian teacher who punished raucous behaviour by making
the offender stand for 10 minutes with arms straight ahead at shoulder
height, developing deltoids if nothing else. But one two-hour class
a week merely whetted Zehr's appetite.
Those who survived into the second year
fared better, with more classes and ferocious concentration on technique.
"I discovered I could do the steps and I loved it -- I became
obsessed!" Zehr recalls.
Friends sent dance videos to help assuage
Zehr's hunger for the art, and she memorized the choreography and
performed the dances ceaselessly. Her favourites -- not bad for
a child -- were Balanchine's Tzigane, created for Suzanne
Farrell (something I'd love to see her do now); Balanchine's The
Four Temperaments; and a virtuoso pas de deux performed by American
Ballet Theatre stars.
She proved so talented that she attended
the Harid Conservatory in Boca Raton -- "a very strict boarding
school with very good training" -- where she won the first
Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation Fellowship. Intensive training at
the Houston
Ballet's Ben Stevenson Academy followed, and then Zehr decided to
head for New York.
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"I wanted to
audition for American Ballet Theatre," she says, "but
I arrived without even a hotel room. Finally I stayed with an
ABT friend. Fortunately I knew enough to take company class
twice so they'd really get a good look at me." John Meehan,
the company's artistic director of education and training at
the time, was very interested in Zehr but told her she'd have
to make up her mind whether she wanted Houston or American Ballet
Theatre -- he wasn't about to steal her from fellow Australian
Stanton Welch. Zehr returned to visit Houston expecting to go
back and join American Ballet Theatre, but when she saw the
Houston company perform her beloved Four Temperaments,
she decided to accept Welch's offer of an apprenticeship. |
Some apprenticeship: Zehr was first cast
in William Forsythe's In the middle, somewhat elevated, worked
with Patricia Neary as first cast Calliope in Apollo, and
danced the Snow Queen in The Nutcracker, all as an apprentice.
Other roles followed, including Odette/Odile, and despite her dislike
of competition -- "I don't like to be judged; all that matters
is that you dance with your heart" -- Zehr participated in
the Shanghai International Ballet Competition, becoming a finalist.
Perhaps precisely because Zehr dances
with her heart instead of ambition, in her first year with the National
Ballet, Kain chose her, along with first soloist Keiichi Hirano,
to represent the National Ballet in the Erik Bruhn Prize competition.
Alas, it was not to be; Zehr was dancing on a stress-fractured foot,
so she had to be replaced (by corps de ballet artist Tina
Pereira, who won).
Like many talented dancers, Zehr is so
passionately in love with ballet, and so reluctant to let down the
side when other dancers cancel because of illness or injury, that
she doesn't take ideal care of her instrument. One hopes she's learned
that lesson for good following two additional disappointments: the
same vulnerability prevented her from performing in a new pas de
deux to Prokofiev with principal Nehemiah Kish, created by Christopher
Wheeldon for the premiere of his new company, Morphoses, last summer.
Ironically, again Pereira stepped in. And when I spoke with Zehr
in January, she was hobbling around in another foot cast -- this
time, I fervently hope, the last she'll ever have to wear. (Always
with a positive attitude, Zehr showed up for the interview with
a pile of books -- including Michael Ondaatje's Divisidero,
which Karen Kain was lending her for the duration.)
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Zehr, supremely flexible, strong,
musical, with an elegant line that goes on forever and a completely
convincing intensity onstage, is one of those dancers you
simply can't take your eyes off. Tall and slender, she has
a seductive almost ethereal purity in adagio and a diamond-like
crispness and sparkle in allegro. She can make the most extreme
and angular positions of contemporary choreography look graceful,
inevitable, inimitable, effortless. In works like Tetley's
Voluntaries or MacMillan's Song of the Earth
(Fourth Song, Of Beauty) she takes your breath away. I ask
her where that intensity comes from.
She's not quite sure herself, but
suggests, "I'm quite insecure and shy offstage -- rather
easy to intimidate! Rehearsals are better -- I have a strong
work ethic and I'll try anything in rehearsal -- but I still
feel a little bit shy. In performance, onstage, I'm freer,
more confident, than in any other situation."
It seems that she cannot be anything
other than completely honest and
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forthright in performance, a generally
admirable quality but one that amused and exasperated choreographer
Eliot Feld when he set his A Footstep of Air on the company
last year. As That Mischief, Woman, Zehr was meant to be sensuous
and self-absorbed, completely oblivious to the havoc she was creating
for the salivating yobbos around her. In the midst of rehearsal, Feld
suddenly burst out, "Bridgett, stop smiling!" Needless to
say, Zehr was very much embarrassed, but she'd been having such a
good time that it was almost impossible for her to conceal her joy.
Zehr's Giselle, which has been seen so
far only by Saskatoon, Victoria and Vancouver, was by all accounts
a triumph. As Kain says, "She was born to dance Giselle,
and what she brings to it is exactly why it's worthwhile to keep
performing
the classics."
Zehr explains, "It's a real challenge
living up to a ballet like that. I see the characters as real people.
Giselle is young, beautiful, frail and shy, very eager to please
and she's in love for the first time. I can identify with that."
What she finds hard is "the
mad scene and dying, and how to make them look real. Some Giselles
want to wear a flower in their hair and look pretty as they die.
I don't! You can't hold back and you can't look pretty."
Commenting on Act II, Kain says, "Physically,
she was extraordinary -- so fresh, so spontaneous. Her interpretation
was very original, very heartfelt, not like any I've ever seen before.
She danced like a young woman of today." Kain adds that Zehr
danced better and better in each performance, working to improve
anything that hadn't been just right, but not overly obsessed with
any flaws. "She knows her strengths and her weaknesses, and
she has the right priorities -- that dance should
be heartfelt and truthful."
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Asked whether she has any interest
in trying her hand at choreography, Zehr answers, "I'm
a little scared of that. I worry that I might just do the
same thing over and over. I'm not sure I have enough imagination
to create something entirely new. I wouldn't want to make
something predictable or literal -- the unexpected is what
appeals to me." She might attempt to make a ballet for
a company workshop, but she's less hesitant about teaching:
"I've always known that some day I want to teach."
Kain finds Zehr "very intelligent,
very strong, very determined," and in return Zehr finds
Kain, "the best artistic director anyone could wish for
-- and the best human being." In the passion, the directness,
the musicality, the complete conviction of Zehr's performances,
one can see something of Kain and rejoice that people like
Kain (and Evelyn Hart and Rex Harrington -- "such artists")
are around to nurture such amazing talent.
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As Kain says, it will be a great pleasure
to see how far Zehr can go with such gifts, with such a seemingly
instinctive ability to dance with her heart. <end>
[top]
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"'[Irek]
is full of energy; he is open-minded, brave and generous.
The company is very excited [to have him as a director]. You
can just feel it everywhere.'"
The
Third Chapter
Irek Mukhamedov
went from Moscow to London and to Athens, where he is now
the new artistic director of the Greek National Opera Ballet
By
Regina Zarhina
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On
October 23, 2007, four months after the mysterious departure
of Lynn Seymour, Irek Muk-hamedov was appointed artistic director
of the ballet troupe of the Greek National Opera in Athens.
Strange, firstly because the Greek
National Opera Ballet is the sort of company, let's be honest,
of which very few people outside of Greece have ever heard.
Secondly, what was Lynn Seymour,
one of the brightest British (of Canadian origin) ballerinas
doing there?
And, thirdly, Irek Mukhamedov?
In Greece? Artistic director?
Mukhamedov, with wife, Masha, and
children in tow, arrived in Athens in August 2006, personally
recruited by Lynn Seymour to be the chief repetiteur for the
company. It was a peculiar choice for both. Besides being
alumni of the Royal Ballet and once serving as MacMillan's
creative influence, Seymour and Mukhamedov did not have much
in common and, although grateful, Mukhamedov could not help
but muse at the invitation. However, it could not have come
at a more opportune moment in his life and career.
Up until just a few years ago,
Mukhamedov's life read like a fairy tale.
Scouted by ballet masters in the
remote city of Kazan, near the Russian Ural mountains, the
little boy found himself among an elite group of students
taught by the famous Bolshoi Academy teacher Alexander Prokofiev.
Having to compete with such danseur noble types as Alexei
Fadeychev, the son of the Bolshoi leading man Nikolai Fadeychev,
Mukhamedov replaced an injured Fadeychev at the graduation
performance. That earned him a place in the Moscow Classical
Ballet
and secured an opportunity to remain in Moscow rather then
being assigned, as a non-native, to some remote theatre in
the provinces.
At the Moscow Classical Ballet,
Mukhamedov found a mentor and a father figure in Naum Azarin,
a talented pedagogue who turned the promising young dancer
into a major star. In 1981, against the wishes of company
directors Kasatkina and
Vasilev, Azarin prepared Mukhamedov for the prestigious and
extremely demanding Moscow International Ballet Competition.
Azarin carefully selected Mukhamedov's repertoire in order
to better show off the incredible athleticism and heroic qualities
of his dancing. Work was hard, but reward was sweet as Azarin's
gamble paid off.
After the first round, Mukhamedov
placed seventh and caused talk among the judges and audiences
alike. After the second round, he was in fourth place. However,
it was his performance in the third round, in the Don Quixote
pas de deux, peppered with incredible, never-before-seen tricks
and jumps that earned him the coveted Grand Prix, making him
the first male dancer to ever win the title.
Next came a personal invitation
from Yuri Grigorovich to join the Bolshoi Ballet, but not
as a member of the corps de ballet, but as a principal dancer
who would make his debut in Grigor-ovich's best ballet, Spartacus.The
role of Spartacus, initiated by Vladimir Vasiliev in 1968,
was and still remains perhaps the most demanding male role
in the existing classical repertoire. Coached by Nikolai Simachov,
Grigorovich's trusted repetiteur, Mukhamedov's debut in Spartacus
came in December 1981 and was a huge success.
Although the
role of Spartacus has been and continues to be performed by
many talented dancers, Mukhamedov personified the heroic part,
making it his signature role. Mukhamedov overcame comparisons
with Vasiliev and Lavrovsky, and is generally considered,
in this role, to be "the" leading exponent of the
Soviet style. Other Grigorovich ballets followed: Ivan
the Terrible (perhaps Mukhamedov's favourite ballet),
Golden Age, Raymonda. An excellent partner,
he was entrusted with the Bolshoi's leading ballerinas, including
Natalia Bessmertnova, Grigorovich's wife. (Watch Mukhamedov
and Bessmertnova dance the Grand Adagio in Spartacus
at the Bolshoi, in a performance circa 1982: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z2gSeGNzyk.)
Although short and stocky by Bolshoi standards, he was also
given prince roles in the classics Giselle and The
Nutcracker.Within just a few years, Mukhamedov became
the Bolshoi's most prized possession and its main attraction.
When the Bolshoi toured the world extensively, earning hard
currency for the impoverished Soviet state in the 1980s,
Mukhamedov's image was on every poster and in every language.
In 1990, Mukhamedov signed a contract
with the Royal Ballet and moved his young family to England.
Although the Soviet Union was already on the brink of collapse,
Mukhamedov's departure was considered a defection, and he
curiously
continues to describe it as such even today. At the Royal,
he found a new mentor in Kenneth MacMillan.
MacMillan was ecstatic at the prospect
of working with Mukhamedov and he once told him that he staged
Mayerling (in 1978) as if knowing that, one day, he
might dance in it. While Mukhamedov's Bolshoi characters were
larger than life,
befitting the enormous Bolshoi stage, MacMillan gave Mukhamedov
a chance to scale down the drama to the size of the Royal
Opera House stage. Unfortunately, in 1992, MacMillan died
of a heart attack, backstage during the premiere of his
Mayerling, revived for Mukhamedov. He left the dancer
with a wealth of new repertoire, including Vershinin in Winter
Dreams, both Des Grieux and Lescaut in Manon, the
Foreman in Judas Tree, and, of course, Rudolf in Mayerling.
In addition, the former Soviet
superhero had also added to his repertoire Balanchine's Apollo
and Prodigal Son. Although Balanchine's choreography
is far from dramatic, Mukhamedov proved to be a true dancing
actor, capable of delivering the
subtlest of nuances. He also shone in classical roles that
he would have never been given in Moscow, such as The Sleeping
Beauty. Among his partners
at the Royal were Leslie Collier, Viviana Durante, Miyako
Yoshida and Darcey Bussell. He was well respected by colleagues,
revered by critics and enormously popular with audiences.
His guest appearances with other companies
are significant but not numerous. "He doesn't like to
dance away from home," says Masha Mukhamedov, who was
in charge of organizing the very successful tours of Irek
Mukhamedov and
Company from 1992-2001.
As he approached 40, Mukhamedov pondered
the unnerving question of retirement. Departure from the stage
for someone of Mukhamedov's calibre is never easy, but the
way the Royal Ballet had dealt with one of its biggest stars
is almost tragic. As An-thony Dowell, the Royal's longtime
artistic director, was making his departure, and Ross Stretton,
his short-lived successor, was accepting the reigns, Mukhamedov
received a message that his services were no longer required
by the Royal Ballet. He was denied even the courtesy of a
personal meeting or a farewell performance. He was, understandably,
bitter.
"I have prepared myself for the
past three years that each performance was my last. But it
was a big disappointment to hear it in this way," he
said in a 2001 interview for the Telegraph. "I felt maybe
I have been something in the Royal
Ballet. But eventually it looked like I was a nothing. I was
kicked like a nothing."
He returned later at the invitation of
Monica Mason and toured Russia with the company, dancing in
MacMillan's ballets at the Bolshoi Theatre. In 2004, at 44,
Mukhamedov made his final appearance with the Royal Ballet
in Mayerling. And there was not a dry eye in the theatre.
Mukhamedov had to reinvent himself now
and so tried his hand at choreography: Swan Lake in
Warsaw, Spartacus in Hong Kong, as well as smaller
undertakings. He dallied in cameo appearances, such as Drosselmeyer
in Christopher
Hampton's wacky Nutcracker; he taught at the Arts Educational
School in Tring and master classes around the world among
other things. In 2005, he stumbled upon a teaching position
at the newly relocated Elmhurst School for Dance in
Birmingham. When Masha Mukhamedov was also offered to take
on a class of advanced girls, the move to Birmingham looked
promising indeed, both for the dancer and for the future of
English ballet.
Although both Masha and Irek enjoyed
teaching just as much as the students enjoyed learning from
them, ceaseless conflicts with the management of the school
forced them to follow in the footsteps of numerous colleagues
who have
come and gone from Elmhurst.
Next came the invitation from Greece.
The Greek National Opera Ballet is an offshoot of the Greek
National Opera, a company with a considerable international
reputation. It is run by the Greek government, with what seems
at times to be a
rather limited understanding of the peculiarities and requirements
of ballet. Dancers, supported by a strong union, have contracts
that guarantee employment until the age of 48 and workdays
are mercifully short. In the recent past, Russian
stars, such as Igor Zelensky and Oleg Vinogradov, were invited
to stage and restage the classics, but the results were not
particularly encouraging.
In 2006, Stefanos Lazaridis, a highly
decorated opera designer, was appointed artistic director
of the Greek National Opera. Although of Greek origin, Lazaridis
was born in Ethiopia and his professional association was
mostly with English
National Opera and Royal Opera in London. In an effort to
raise the standard of the Greek ballet company, Lazaridis
invited Lynn Seymour to head the ballet company.
Seymour is considered by many to be one
of the finest ballerinas of the last century. She triumphantly
returned to the stage after the birth of her third son, only
to quit again a few days before a scheduled appearance. She
tried her hand at choreography, to mixed reviews, and she
brieþy directed the Bavarian State Opera Ballet at the
end of the 1970s. Seymour, arriving in Athens in spring 2006,
was gone by June 2007, citing insurmountable problems with
Greek bureaucracy. Lazaridis followed, but not by choice.
In spite of their apparent and spectacular failure, they did
stir things up in the sleepy bog of Greek ballet.
"Greeks know and appreciate good
ballet," observes Mukhamedov. Performances by touring
stars sell out within hours, in spite of limited advertising;
in other words, there is an educated and eager ballet audience.
With the arrival of Seymour, an interest was stirred, a hope
was born. With the succession of Seymour by Mukhamedov, there
is a deÞnite buzz and a firm
reason for optimism. After all, it is a historical peculiarity
that nearly every national ballet theatre has been created
by a foreigner (Petipa in Russia, Balanchine in America, Kylián
in the Netherlands, and the list goes on).
In spite of the grandeur of his status
and richness of his professional experience and associations,
Mukhamedov is approachable, caring and generally very down
to earth. Children love him, and he does sometimes prefer
their company
to serious and "boring" adult conversations. He
would never seek to be popular, yet he is loved, as if in
a Soviet cliché, by the simple folks.
Attending a rare function at the Royal
Opera House, he is greeted so fullheartedly by the ushers,
the ticket ladies, the custodians and the costumers that one
cannot help but wonder at the sight. It is easy to picture
Mukhamedov, one of
the greatest male dancers of the 20th century, buying a round
for these folks at the pub down the street.
Stratos Papanoussis, one of the senior
dancers with the Greek ballet company, says that for the dancers
of his generation, "Irek was a hero. We all wanted to
be like him. But now, what's even more important is Irek's
human side. He is full of energy; he is open-minded, brave
and generous. The company is very excited [to have him as
a director]. You can just feel it everywhere."
But when it comes to practising ballet,
Mukhamedov is unforgiving and unrelenting. Always polite,
in class he is demanding, often to the point of rudeness.
His knowledge of technique, of repertoire, of how things are
supposed to be done, of how hard one must work, of the dedication
required for this profession is unmatched. He is infinitely
amused at people's lack of knowledge and understanding, and
his desire to help, to remedy the situation, is both sincere
and impatient. "He wants to communicate with the dancers,"
says Papanoussis. "He doesn't forget he was once a dancer
himself."
Directorship is a new challenge for Mukhamedov,
but he is enjoying it enormously. "I am truly happy and
grateful for this opportunity," he says. "The task
is to find the right repertoire for this very interesting
company. There is no national ballet school here and, as a
result, this is not the company whose primary interest should
be in producing classical ballets.
Something neoclassical, modern, something to fit its temperament
-- that's what we need. We need to have more performances
and productions so the dancers can grow, and there are some
really interesting dancers here."
Mukhamedov is not bitter any more but
gracious toward England, his adopted country. He is grateful
to the Royal Ballet for giving him his career, what he calls
"his second chapter."
Perhaps Greece is his "third chapter."
<end>
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