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Rosalie O'Connor
American Ballet Theater
Interviewed by Alexandra Tomalonis
published in Ballet Alert! (No. 33-34) 2003
copyright © 2003 Alexandra Tomalonis
Rosalie O’Connor is rapidly becoming one of the finest dance photographers working today. A member of American Ballet Theatre since 1987, O’Connor began photo-graphing ballet while recovering from a serious injury. Now retired as a dancer at a ridiculously early age, she’s turned to photography full-time. Her photographs show an insider’s view of the art form she loves, not only because she knows the ballets from having danced them, but because she understands dancers, and can catch a dancer in just the right mood, and just the right moment, which gives her pictures an unusual, and very beautiful, intimacy.
Photo: Rosalie O'Connor American Ballet Theatre’s production of Antony Tudor’s Lilac Garden. Photo: Paul B. Goode.
In April 2002 O’Connor had her first photo exhibition in The Halsted Gallery in Detroit. Her photography can be viewed in two separate ABT photo galleries at www.abt.org, as well as on her own website, www.rosalieoconnor.com.
I recently spoke to O’Connor by phone about her career.
How did you become interested in ballet?
When I was three and a half, I was at my pediatrician’s office having a regular checkup and my mother was concerned because I was not only flat-footed, but also was extremely hyper-extended in my knees. She asked the doctor what could be done to help strengthen both my arches and my knees and legs, and he said ballet class would be great.
Tell me about your training.
I was trained in Cecchetti method from the age of four, in New Orleans. Harvey Hysell was the director of the New Orleans Ballet. I was at his school and he became my teacher when I was twelve. I also had Vincenzo Celli and took private classes with him. I learned strict Cecchetti method, with a different class for each day of the week. And I learned that some things that you think are impossible can be achieved through repetition. Repetition builds strength, and throughout my entire schooling, I was always told that I had lots of potential but that I was weak, so it was constantly trying to get stronger.
Do you remember much about Celli?
Celli was tough. He pounded the beat out with a stick. He could also be crass. I was taking class with adult beginners, and I remember he told one woman she was “all over the place, like syphilis.” If he got close enough, he’d whack you with the stick. He was very strict, but he was very good.
How did you come to ABT?
I went to SAB at age of twelve, and then for four consecutive summers. My teacher (Hysell) was very against it, and he said that he had to undo everything when I came back in the fall.
Did he tell you what he had to undo?
Specifically ports de bras and how the foot stood on pointe, the placement of the foot in the pointe shoe. In City Ballet, they want you to go over on the toes, and Hysell wanted the toes to be straight, as with the shank, so that you were really lifted out of the pointe shoe.
In those summer courses, I was being exposed to being in proper pointe classes, technique classes, and variation classes, so I felt that there was a very healthy competition and exposed too the real dance scene, which I had only seen in books. I was taking open classes in David Howard’s studio, or Robert Denvers. My parents were terrific, very supportive. For four years, they alternated teaching summer courses at universities to pay for my classes. They would work all day at the NY Public Library and then pick me up. For the two summers that my father was with me, he was the only father and the mothers loved it.
And then I got to work with David Richardson in1986 when he cast me in Balanchine’s Nutcracker in Stamford, Connecticut, and in 1987, he asked me to attend the big cattle call that ABT had that spring. It just so happened that SAB asked my level to attend, too, so we all went over. I had my heart set on joining NYCB, but that year, Peter Martins took fourteen male and female dancers into the company, and I was not one of them. But Misha [Mikhail Baryshnikov] wanted a group of us, Ashley [Tuttle], Sandy [Brown] and me, among a few others, to come and take company class.
So we attended company class at the Met, which was thrilling, and it went well, and Misha invited us each to stay, offered each of us a contract. So I approached Peter Martins and I just wanted to double check with him that I shouldn’t stay at the school another year, and he felt that having just taken so many people in for the American Music Festival, he thought it was more important to have a year of performing experience than to stay at another year at the school. This was when I was seventeen.
Misha actually sent Sandy and Ashley and me to study for the summer with Jurgen Schneider. We called it Arms Camp. It was to deconstruct those four summers at SAB. Misha knew that we had to work a little bit before he could throw us into Giselle act 2 or Swan Lake act 2. He arranged for it and he paid for it. He was very good to us. We had a whole month without income because the company was off, and Misha paid us personally for that month. I still have a copy of the check!
My very first day at ABT, I was put into the Waltz of the Flowers of his Nutcracker and I had an audition with Agnes DeMille and Terry Orr, and I was chosen for those ballets.
What is the life of an ABT dancer like? What’s the routine? (class, rehearsing, etc.)
You have an hour and a half class which starts at 10:15 in the morning, and then you have a 15-minute break. The teachers at the moment are affiliated with the company, but in the past, there's been an array of guest teachers. When we first joined, Misha had men and women separated, and he would teach on occasion, and I think the men’s classes were stronger. Then generally you’d rehearse 12 to 3, either separate hours, or, if it was a new piece, on one particular piece, then an hour lunch from 3 to 4, then resume at 4 and continue til 7. So it’s a 6-hour rehearsal day. This is during rehearsal period.
Was there a teacher whom you found particularly helpful?
The person who really helped me was Maggie Black, whom I worked with outside of the company, and also I worked with both David Howard, and twice, I coached privately with Gelsey Kirkland, and that was wonderful.
How did that come about?
I approached her when she was teaching in Connecticut at the old Allegra Kent studios. I went out there with Jeremy Collins, and we took her class, and she was so blown away that two ABT dancers would get on a train and come to take her class that she became very friendly. And after a year had passed — she had coached Jeremy and me doing the Nutcracker together, Sugar Plum and Cavalier, and she did that for free. She was incredible to work with, so much energy, so much detail — it’s the type of thing you’re so thirsty for. There was no snobbishness, no suggestion that I wasn’t on her level. Never, ever condescending, just generous with details.
And then Jane Hermann brought her into ABT and she taught for awhile. That was controversial, because she was so demanding. I was very friendly with her at the time because I was one of the only people she had a connection to, and she coached me and Clinton Luckett on Giselle Act 2. We performed an excerpt from that of at Marymount Manhattan College at an RAD exam.
You danced several solo roles. Which particularly interested you, or were particularly difficult – or suited you? Talk a bit about learning them as well as dancing them.
I was first cast in the Summer variation in [Ben Stevenson’s] Cinderella. That was a huge honor for me, because the other fairies were soloists. Ben Stevenson taught and coached the entire ballet. He was specific, very articulate and extremely visual in his coaching. He made this short solo, which is really a throwaway solo, became a story for me. “Now you’re parting the water and seeing at your reflection. Now you notice a little bird on the ground and you look.” And every bit of detail was in the choreography. He was very demanding, but it was all worth it. And he was that way in the corps rehearsals, and that’s why I loved the waltz in Act 2. He made the corps feel very important in that ballet. It’s puffy, it goes on for awhile. But it was so much fun.
What was difficult. Hmmm. Doing the Big Swans in the Blair production of Swan Lake. That was a big challenge for me. I only did that role three times, Italy, Japan and New York, and then Kevin told me he didn’t think I was appropriate for it, and I was relieved. My jump did improve. It got stronger. That role demands a lot of stamina, the [entrechat] sixes. It was so difficult and I couldn’t do everything well. Your stomach would almost turn before you went out on those first chords.
I had a lot of favorite roles: Rosaline in Romeo and Juliet, Little Red Riding Hood in Sleeping Beauty, Effy in La Sylphide, the Passerby in Fancy Free, Ranch-owner’s Daughter in Rodeo, and the lead Nocturne couple in Fall River Legend, Bathilde in Giselle, the Queen in Swan Lake, Ludmilla in Merry Widow, the Aiya in Bayadere.
What choreographers particularly interest you?
Tudor, especially Lilac Garden and The Leaves are Fading. I worked with Sallie Wilson on Tudor and toward the end, Donald Mahler.
I worked with Agnes De Mille in The Informer and Fall River Legend. Agnes was very intimidating for a woman in her late 70s, early 80s, in a wheelchair. To be that terrified of somebody. Her voice was booming. When she didn’t get attention, she would rap her ring on the mirror. She was very descriptive. There was a section in The Informer which she likened to moving like a spider, for example.
She would also question what you were doing. In Rodeo, as the Ranchowner’s Daughter, I came out before the twilight scene, and I was watching the sky. I had this dreamy expression — “What are you doing? Why are you doing that?” She wanted the eyes down at that point. She wanted it more introverted. She was very specific. She would say, “Terry [Orr], show them.” Terry was her legs. As a dancer, it was very easy to work in those rehearsals. She would vocalize and he would demonstrate, and you would do it until she got it the way she wanted it to look.
I like her ballets. They’re very solid. They’re so much fun to dance. Fall River — the story, and how she tells it, through mime and the sets. One of those master sets. She just clearly outlined the sequence of events.
And Mark Morris, because of his personality, his sense of humor. He has a real vision of what he wants, and the talent.
What were your particular challenges?I had four foot surgeries during my career. And the second surgery was the most devastating. It came at a time when I was dancing a great deal and I was involved in all of these ballets that I’ve loved: Theme, Cruel World, Leaves are Fading, Fancy Free, Merry Widow, Cinderella, and Bathilde. It was a full plate of really wonderful parts, and parts where I was really dancing, such as Theme and Cruel World.
What happened?
I had a bone spur in my right foot for about a year, and Dr. Hamilton and I agreed that it would need to come out. However, given all that I was dancing, we kept putting it off, and it would flare up, because the spur was so large. It got better in the spring of 1997, and I was feeling stronger, and then suddenly in company class, at the Met Opera, I took off for a jump in a fast combination and as I took off for the jump, I felt almost a burning and then a snap, and having had many little injuries, I thought I had probably broken my foot, and I came out of the air and hobbled to the side of the room. I sat on the floor and I remember Marion Butler coming over to me and asking if I was OK. I said I’d just broken my foot. Clinton L scooped me up and ran to the company therapist, Peter Marshall.
I ruptured in the same moment the first metatarsal ligament and the lis frank ligament. And this was really a tremendous injury. It was over Memorial weekend, so nothing could be done. And as I iced, I just kept hoping that they were wrong, and I talked myself into it feeling better. But it became clear when I did the weight bearing x-ray that it was a doozy. I was operated on, and they had to insert hardware, a screw and two metal pins, and I was on crutches, non-weight bearing with a cast to the knee for four months.
I received tremendous support from my friends and from the company. In fact, I received an enormous bouquet from Michael Kaiser, then our Executive Director, and I sent a thank you back to him saying how amazed I was, and he sent word back that this was an “enormous injury and it deserved an enormous bouquet."
I was out for nine months total, and they didn’t how well I’d be able to dance when I came back. I started back privately with Simon Dow. Simon and Robert Turner, a physical therapist, are the people who got me back from that injury. It was hard work!
What did you do?
I started with hydrotherapy, which meant sitting with my foot in a tank of water, trying to write the alphabet with my toes. And with the foot in a flex position for four months, it had no give. They had to take the hardware out and once I could stand on my left foot, they took the spur out of my right foot. So that was three surgeries. It made me wish I had made the time to take care of the bone spur earlier. To have compensated with my entire body for this bone spur for an entire year, that amount of time to harbor a spur like that catches up and affects your whole body. You’re in a weakened state.
During the entire nine months, I went to Pilates three or four times a week, and that was with the late Robert Fitzgerald. That’s what kept my body in shape, and he would put weights on my cast for leg lifts. It was serious training.
How did you come back?
The first role that I came back to was the lead Nocturne couple. That’s one of my fondest memories. Just to be on two feet, moving. It took about twenty-four private lessons with Simon, and the company allowed me to come back slowly over that next year. Kevin [McKenzie] and David Richardson were very understanding of the level of injury I had. I did get back to the corps of Theme and the Summer Fairy. There was certainly a difference in my foot. It is weaker, and even now, on occasion, I’ll feel bones shift, and it will feel a little bit off, so there is some permanent disability there. However, I was able to get back.
It was during this injury that you started taking photographs, wasn’t it?
Yes. So there was some good that came out of this. I had photographed since age six, and in all the cities that ABT has traveled to, I’ve always had a camera with me, for my own tourist purposes. Photography is a medium that I love. I was a subscriber to Dance Ink, I saw that there was a photography contest and I decided to enter. And ABT launched its web site and they asked me to do a photo gallery. At first, I said no. I didn’t have the right equipment, all sorts of excuses. But having unlimited access to rehearsal, performance and backstage, I decided that this was something not to be passed up on. And that’s how it started.
So when I got injured in May of ‘97, it was the photography that carried me through and kept me connected to the company during the time when I didn’t really know what the outcome would be from the injury.
What are your fondest memories?
Once at SAB and there was a variations class with Danilova. It was in ‘85 or ’86, and I had a horrible blister. She took me after the class into the staff dressing room, and she sat me down and she had this powder called BFI powder, and she said it was really the cure all, and if you sprinkled that on, it would dry up the blister. And she gave me the little container, which I still have.
Second, to be able to actually perform Fancy Free, because I wrote my senior term paper on it (at Professional Children’s School), I had researched this ballet. I loved this ballet. I would see it as much as I could at City Ballet, and the first time Jean Pierre [Frohlich] taught it, I did the run through. And he said, “You’ve done this before, right?” And I said, “No, I’ve just watched it for years.”
And then there was the first performance back in Washington after my injury, which was the lead Nocturne couple in Fall River Legend, with Clinton Luckett.
Performing opposite Freddie Franklin [as Madge the witch] as Effy and realizing what a special moment that was. He is so present and engaged when he’s on stage.
Being Bathilde to Susan Jaffe at her last performance. She’d chosen a lot of people — Julio to do Hilarion; he wanted to do that. Angel did Wilfrid. Kathy Moore came back and did the mother. I felt that there were certainly previous Bathildes who all could have easily come back that night for her, but she told me she wanted me to do it, and that was, in my last season, extremely meaningful.
So there are a lot of wonderful memories.