Don't Think, Dear, page 11
But Balanchine noticed her; it would have been impossible not to. With her high cheekbones and blond hair, the young Carol Sumner could look icily unattainable, even haughty; or she could crack a wide, dimpled smile and look adorable. (A critic for the Asbury Park Press once complained that she was “too cute.”)
Right away, he singled her out for solo roles—Sacred Love in Illuminations, Marzipan in The Nutcracker. She was still relatively new to ballet, but what she lacked in technique, she made up for in sheer power of will. And besides, if Mr. B thought she was ready for these roles, then who was she to argue? One day, the wardrobe supervisor, whom the dancers knew as Ducky, pulled her aside. “You know where you’re going?” Ducky asked. He pointed to the ceiling. “You’re going straight up.”
As Carol grew more secure in her dancing, she worked up the courage to share some of her opinions with Mr. B. He started taking her out for dinner, and a friendship blossomed. The dinners migrated from restaurants near the theater to his condo on the Upper West Side. He would make them a salad, pour a glass of wine, and tell her stories about his life back in Russia. Mostly, though, they talked about ballet.
Carol came to SAB with her natural talent and her good looks—but she gives Balanchine all the credit for what she became. “He literally made beautiful women,” she said, and she loved him for it. Even Balanchine’s staunchest defenders tend to see his obsession with Suzanne Farrell—and his refusal to let her husband dance—as an embarrassment. But not Carol. “I was really on Mr. B’s side,” she said. “After making Suzanne look like that, and giving her those beautiful ballets, how could Paul Mejia steal her out from under Mr. B?”
“I was a Balanchine girl,” she said. To be a Balanchine girl meant not to be anyone else’s. Carol was often asked out on dates, which she sometimes accepted, and which sometimes turned into affairs. But her boyfriends had to understand: ballet, and Balanchine, would always come first. She bowed out of the balancing act that ensnares so many women; she had a playbook on how to engage with the opposite sex.
There is a photo of Carol and Mr. B—she looks like she’s in her late twenties—standing together on the sidewalk outside the stage entrance. Balanchine is dressed conservatively, in a dark jacket and tailored pants, while Carol’s pale arms and upper legs are bare; she wears hot pants that end at the top of her thighs and go-go boots that don’t quite reach her knees. Her hair hangs down her back in a long, tight ponytail with the distinctive swoop that suggests it’s just been released from a bun. Half of her face is hidden by big, movie-star sunglasses. Her back is to the camera, and she smiles coyly over her shoulder, while Mr. B stands beside her, squarely on both feet, facing us. It’s a striking image—for the beauty of the two figures, and for the play of the light: the pale stems of her legs and the dark lines of his, like the keys of a piano, or the costumes in Agon. But the most striking aspect of the picture is the link between its two subjects. One of Mr. B’s hands rests on Carol’s cheek; the other is tucked casually in his pocket. He isn’t looking at her, but at someone, or something, outside the frame; she, too, is following his gaze. His fingers are hidden behind her face, but they seem to be tilting her head just so: the gesture makes me think of a breeder presenting his favorite steed. But Carol is grinning, posing, colluding: she is undeniably delighted. She is relishing her role as coquette.
“You’re a really good girl,” Rachel’s director said. She was twenty, and she was about to learn whether her contract would be renewed. Just a few days earlier, she had been thrown into Swan Lake at the last minute, learning an injured colleague’s part just half an hour before the curtain rose. Rachel had a reputation for picking up new steps right away, and she had danced three different parts that night—the kind of heroic feat often rewarded with a promotion or at least a chance at solo roles or, at the very least, not being fired. But her boss continued: “We really like you, but you’re in a terrible condition.” He told her to work on her body over the summer and come back for another assessment in the fall. He couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t lose weight; perhaps, he offered generously, it was outside her control. He told her to go to the doctor and have her thyroid checked.
Rachel was too stunned to reply. Ever the “good girl,” she mumbled her thank-yous and held in her tears until she had left the room. She thought about what the summer would hold: about how she would weigh herself every day, log all of her food, and punish herself with extra sessions at the gym. She had worked toward this job all her life; she was supposed to be living her dream. But when she thought back on her first year of company life, she remembered how she had been passed over for the roles she wanted and knew she could do. She remembered how she had called her mom, frightened, after she’d caught herself standing at the top of a flight of stairs and wondering how hard she would have to jump to get time off. And in the days after her meeting, she felt a new emotion bubbling up: rage. She looked at herself in the mirror, and she saw her body as it was: a fit, healthy size two. For what may have been the first time in her life, she went back to her director and said: No thank you.
It was only after she had flown home to New York, after she had moved in with her parents and woken up in her childhood bedroom, that it hit her: she had no job and no plan.
A few years ago, in the course of promoting my first book, I found myself in a small studio at the back of the Guardian’s London office, posing for a photo to run alongside a Q&A I’d given a month or two earlier. I tried to remember what I’d said in the interview and started sweating through my freshly applied makeup; I knew I had stumbled over my words, picturing how they would look in print before they had even left my mouth. The day of the photoshoot was so much easier. The photographer, a man, told me to look this way and that, to touch my hips, cross my arms, clasp my hands behind my back, and I happily did as I was told. (I thought back to the middle school afternoons I’d spent watching the contestants on America’s Next Top Model learn how to “smize” and told myself they were finally paying off.) At one point, the photographer told me to lie on the floor with my head on a pillow, and then did something that surprised me: He asked if it would be okay for him to come closer, and for him to adjust my arm. I wondered if I’d heard correctly; I might have asked him to repeat himself. I didn’t hesitate to say yes.
At twenty-seven, of course, I could hardly attribute all of my ideas about men and women and boundaries to ballet. In her book Girlhood, the writer Melissa Febos coined the term “empty consent” to describe the unwanted touches that women—who have “spent their entire lives being socialized not to upset or disappoint people”—endure. It’s easier just to give in than to protest “the impulsive fondling of pregnant women’s bellies, hugs from mere acquaintances, sex that we simply aren’t in the mood for.” Unwelcome touches have haunted Febos throughout her life—from age eleven, when an aggressive neighbor pulled her into a bathroom and fingered her, to last year, when a stranger at a party rested his hand in the small of her back.
Febos worked in a BDSM dungeon in her twenties, and she wonders whether the experience of constantly tolerating touches that didn’t turn her on could have eroded her sense of autonomy. Sex workers are experts at feigning pleasure—at arousing others while suppressing their own desires. For centuries, ballet dancers were seen as naturals for the sex trade: in nineteenth-century France, wealthy men were invited into the foyer where the dancers rehearsed so they could check out the goods up close. The underage trainees in Paris were so frequently sold to upper-class men—often by their own desperate mothers—that the spread of syphilis was blamed on ballet.
In the early 2000s, the sex predator Jeffrey Epstein scouted for victims at New York ballet schools, including an Upper West Side studio where I took open classes. Young, precarious, naïve about the world, and accustomed to following orders: ballerinas-in-training were the perfect victims. Epstein’s lackeys would lure young dancers to his mansion under the pretense that he was looking for a personal trainer or a private dance instructor. A woman named Lisa told the New York Times how, as a seventeen-year-old aspiring dancer, she had gone to Epstein’s town house, expecting to teach a dance class; how, instead, Epstein had offered to buy her pointe shoes and then assaulted her. Epstein abused Lisa for years, stopping only when she no longer resembled a teenager—at which point, according to court documents, he told the twenty-five-year-old “to go to her dance studio and find other dancers.”
* * *
Carol loved Balanchine, but he could be possessive. “He was very grabby,” she said. “He was always wanting the girls. He’d be arrested now, he’d be in jail now.” She laughed heartily. “It was good for us innocent ballerinas.” But Balanchine didn’t like it if Carol showed interest in another man. At one point, she developed a crush on a fellow company member. “Let me experience something,” she thought. “Let me be in love, or attracted.” But Mr. B scolded her: “You know, dear, why do you cast pearls before swine?” He didn’t need to worry, though. Carol was satisfied with her life. She already had a man who loved and understood her: who appreciated not only her beauty as a woman but as a dancer. “And you’re never gonna get anything like that again,” Carol said, sounding wistful. “There’ll be some hitch to it, some catch.”
Carol saw the relationship as pure, but Balanchine was also her boss. In 1964, six years after joining the company, he promoted her from corps dancer to soloist. But Ducky’s prophecy never quite came true. “I would love to be a principal,” Carol told John Gruen in 1970. “Naturally, it’s what every ballet dancer works for.” Carol was a stalwart, not quite a star. Newsweek described her as “the backbone of the company,” and she was often mentioned in reviews, but rarely in more than a few words. A typical write-up noted “Violette Verdy and Carol Sumner also dancing well,” or “Carol Sumner and Sara Leland were good.” When Carol retired in 1976, she was still listed as a soloist. She makes a cameo in Suzanne Farrell’s memoir, and appears as a footnote in Jacques d’Amboise’s five-hundred-page I Was a Dancer: “Carol Sumner, a very attractive ballerina with NYCB, danced in the company for years, and later became a teacher.”
As her stage career wound down, Carol discovered that she still had a purpose: she could further Balanchine’s legacy by teaching the next generation. She set up her own academy in Connecticut, modeling it after SAB, and trained her students in the Balanchine technique. Over the course of a decade, she built the school into a local powerhouse and SAB feeder, though she eventually wearied of the interpersonal drama involved in managing and fund-raising—she believes she was persecuted for her loyalty to Balanchine—and shut it down.
“We dancers all knew that we should leave our boyfriends three blocks away and then walk to the theater,” an anonymous Balanchine dancer told Linda Hamilton, a clinical psychologist who, before going to grad school, spent nineteen years with the New York City Ballet. “And no kissing on the streets!” In spite of her best efforts to hide her relationship, she was found out. “He was furious,” she said, and Mr. B retaliated by taking her out of ballets.
Hamilton specializes in treating dancers and has for decades been a leader in issues like body image, sexism, and competition in ballet. Since 1992, she has written a popular advice column for Dance magazine, fielding questions from young readers wondering how to get a more pronounced arch, how to avoid being typecast, how to deal with teachers who yell at them and bosses who try to seduce them. Many of her advice seekers fear that dating would interfere with their work. In her 1998 guidebook, Advice for Dancers, she quotes a young dancer who is desperate to crush her feelings for a castmate. Hamilton consoles her with a somewhat clinical recommendation: so long as it’s only an infatuation, “you could be back to normal in as little as six weeks.” In the meantime, Hamilton suggests she channel her feelings into her dancing.
Hamilton devoted a chapter of her book to the challenges dancers face in forming relationships. “When I was a dancer, I remember being told that marriage was taboo and that even having a cat would detract from my work,” she wrote. But she insisted that times had changed and it was, in fact, possible to have both. As evidence, she cited two dancers who might serve as “role models.” Mikhail Baryshnikov—who is a once-in-a-generation celebrity, and also a man—found time to have four children by two women. And NYCB principal Darci Kistler is “now happily married to the artistic director of the company, Peter Martins, and has a lovely baby girl.” Advice for Dancers was published six years after Martins was arrested for beating Kistler.
A few years ago, I wrote a profile of Alexandra Ansanelli—a celebrated dancer whose star was still on the rise when she suddenly decided to retire from the Royal Ballet, baffling her colleagues and fans. When I met her seven years later, she was living with her parents and working as a medical assistant on Long Island; I wanted to understand why she had given up the life she had worked so hard for. When she quit ballet at twenty-eight, she told me, she had only ever kissed a man onstage. Her commitment to her art had been total. From a young age, “I really just gave up life to pursue ballet,” she said. At twelve, she left her cozy world on Long Island—her Quaker school, her soccer teammates, and her science classes—to live in Manhattan and train full-time at SAB. Four years later, she was dancing with the New York City Ballet. She could have coasted on her natural talent and striking beauty—with her dark hair and pale skin, she looked like a porcelain doll—but she never stopped pushing herself. If she ever had a free hour, she would go across the street to the performing arts library and watch videos of her idol, Gelsey Kirkland. After curtain call, she would stay up all night, reliving the show, and go to class delirious the next morning. After eight years at NYCB, she moved to London to join the Royal Ballet. Although Alexandra spent four years in England, she rarely strayed outside the three-block radius of the Royal Opera House and her apartment. She had few friends, let alone a romantic partner; her first kiss was in a pas de deux. Her colleagues tried to include her, but she kept her distance, wary of other people’s demands. “I don’t think I ever had a very deep connection to one person, because I was very involved with myself,” she told me. “My marriage was to my work, and it was impossible for me to give emotionally to anyone else. The balance that I wanted, I didn’t want to wait to have.”
Carol is in her eighties now, and she suffers from no such regrets. When I messaged her recently and asked her how she had been, she said she had kept busy during the pandemic, “analyzing comments on FB, mostly about Mr. B and the old NYCB.” In her black-and-white profile picture, she is glamorous and young, dancing in Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15. Her profile is like a museum of Balanchine and the glory days of New York City Ballet: archival photos from the 1960s and ’70s—Carol in the studio with Mr. B; Carol in an arabesque onstage—which inspire lengthy reminiscences, technical debates (“This moment is a sissonne, not a glissade, no?” elicits eighteen replies), and tributes to Carol’s beauty. (“Now there is a Balanchine ballerina,” one woman commented, on a photo of Carol balancing on one leg; “This is just adorable. It makes me feel young again!” wrote another, on a photo of Carol—looking, with her bangs, like Audrey Hepburn—sitting cross-legged on the floor and gazing up at Edward Villella, who hangs in the air in a split leap.) One discussion of Balanchine’s musical genius ends when Carol writes: “Off to teach a Mr. B style class!”
Last summer, Carol and I met for lunch near her apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. I hadn’t seen her in years, but she looked just as I remembered: hair still blond, eyes still lined, lips still painted red. At one point—we were discussing Balanchine’s Serenade—she demonstrated, there at the café, a port de bras: lifting her arm gracefully above her head and tilting her upper body back behind the table. The old look came over her face, the one I remembered: the illusion of youth. She was performing still.
When Carol looks back on her career, her only regret is that she didn’t give herself more completely to Balanchine. “You know, he liked me as a woman,” she said. “A lot.” But she resisted. She had wanted to protect a sliver of time, of space, that was hers alone; she wanted her freedom. She knew that if she succumbed, she would have to give up everything—flirting with men and going on dates, caring for her many cats and dogs. Now she sometimes wishes she had given in; she wonders if she could have been Mrs. Balanchine Number Six. But she tries not to dwell on what might have been. “I was so happy being in the Company and I’m still a happy person because I got what I wanted,” she wrote on Facebook.
After catching up for a couple of hours, Carol and I made our way from the restaurant to her apartment around the corner. It was a short distance, but it took a while; she seemed to know everyone on the block. She stopped to say hello to a group of young men—her neighbors—gathered around a boom box on the sidewalk, and seemed delighted to find herself in the midst of an impromptu dance party. We walked into her lobby, and Carol introduced me to the woman who worked behind the front desk. “Doesn’t she look great?” the woman said to me, nodding at Carol. “I tell her she needs a man in her life.”
Just Try to Look Nice, Dear
“Perfect,” she croaks. “It was perfect.” Nina Sayers’s voice is barely audible as she collapses onto a mattress behind the just-lowered curtain. A few feet away, the audience roars. Nina is in her late twenties, and her entire life has been building toward this: her triumphant debut as the Swan Queen. Now she is bleeding from the gut, soaking the gauzy layers of her ivory-colored tutu, but she doesn’t look like she’s in pain; she looks elated. Mortal injury is a small price to pay for her perfect body, her perfect technique, her perfect performance in Swan Lake. Like a robot that has achieved its programmed purpose and has no more reason to exist, she dies.
