Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina (23 page)

There were no other black women at ABT for me to connect with. And my dear friend Leyla soon left the corps. So I often hung around the black boys who came through the
company, one or two at a time, lighting for a short while before inevitably moving on.

Danny, Jerry, Dante, Jamar. They all came and went while I stayed.

And then there was Eric Underwood. He was the one with whom I forged the strongest bond.

Eric had grown up in Washington, D.C. in a lower-income but loving family, like mine. Also like me, he had been led to ballet by what only could be serendipity. Or was it destiny?

He was already fourteen years old when he went on an acting audition for a spot in a local arts school. He was trying to avoid going to his neighborhood school, which was violent and lacking academically. The acting tryout didn’t go so well, but when Eric walked out, he saw some girls getting ready for their dance audition, and he suddenly thought that was something he could do.

He made it, and that was it. Eventually, Eric would perform with Dance Theatre of Harlem and ABT, and he is now a soloist with the Royal Ballet in London.

We clung to each other. We’d grown up listening to the same music: New Edition, Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey. We had our own secret code, whispering to each other in the lingo we spoke with our siblings back home. We were like brother and sister, bonding over our shared affection for R & B and hip-hop. And we had our own “’hood” thing, on Friday nights, going to Red Lobster or BBQs, where we’d feast on shrimp, burgers, and ribs to our hearts’ content.

There was no translation needed with Eric, no need to explain. If we heard something that seemed a bit callous, a bit racist, we would exchange glances, and there was comfort in
knowing someone else had heard the bad note, the off key. We were the only ones who understood the weird moments that arose because we were African Americans in a lily-white world.

One day, Eric had a meeting with Kevin McKenzie about his hair.

When Eric returned from Kevin’s office, he tapped me on the shoulder, and we quickly walked together outside.

“He wants me to grow my hair long.”

We both roared with laughter, giggling until our eyes watered and our stomachs hurt.

Eric had tried his best to explain to Kevin that if he grew his hair, it wouldn’t grow long. Rather it would grow “out.” We laughed because we knew if he’d done it, he would have had a huge afro. Was it more fitting to have a short hair cut in the eighteenth-century setting of the ballet, or to look like a member of the Jackson 5 dancing on
Soul Train
in the 1970s?

We were able to make fun of it all, though the harsher reality was that we were constantly misunderstood. It could be exhausting. As black people, we are supposed to tiptoe around situations, to shrug off insults that are at times naive, at times intentional. It’s like another dance to perform, making sure that the white people around us never feel guilty or uncomfortable.

Surrounded by dancers who were sometimes my friends and often my competition, I felt more alone than I ever had. But gradually, a group of women began to emerge in my life who became sounding boards and pillars I could lean on when it all felt like too much.

The woman I considered my first real mentor after I’d joined the corps was Victoria Rowell, a former ballet dancer turned actress who continues to be involved with ABT.

Rowell had endured her own challenges as a child, having spent time in foster care. She grew up to dance with ABT’s Studio Company before moving on to modeling and acting. She has appeared in numerous television shows and films, but she’s perhaps most recognized for her role as Drusilla Barber on the soap opera
The Young and the Restless.

ABT had traveled to Hollywood for a handful of performances. One night, after I came off stage feeling stressed and exhausted, I found a note with my name stuck to the pin board.

“Please call me,” it read. It was signed Victoria Rowell. Below her name was her phone number. I knew of her, of course, and was awestruck that she had reached out to me.

Being in Hollywood, I was only an hour or so from Mommy’s apartment . . . but still a world away from my family. Though I know they would have tried, I believed it was impossible for my mother and siblings truly to understand the unique pressure I was under. My late-budding body had suddenly bloomed, and I was still in the midst of my struggle with my weight. I was pushing through grueling practices, all the while trying to quell the self-doubt crowding my thoughts. I was also a bit embarrassed. This is what I had wanted: to dance with ABT, to be a professional ballerina, to live in New York City. I’d almost run away from home to pursue it. Now that I had it within my grasp, how could I complain? And Mommy was so proud, more effusive than she had perhaps ever been. I didn’t want to let her down.

So I welcomed Victoria’s invitation. When I called, she asked me to come to visit, and she sent a car to take me to her beautiful house in the Hollywood Hills. I believe her children
were already sleeping, but Victoria and I sat up talking nearly all night.

I saw a beautiful, successful black woman, a ballet dancer who was now not only making her way but thriving in the cutthroat world of Hollywood. I remember thinking,
There
is
actually someone out there whom I can relate to.
She was the first person to take the grown-up Misty, with her grown-up experiences, her grown-up challenges, under her wing. We have had many conversations over the years, often on the phone, sometimes over a hearty lunch or dinner. She remains an angel in my life to this day.

Another mentor of mine is an African American woman who was a member of ABT’s board of trustees.

Susan Fales-Hill, a descendant of a
Mayflower
passenger, is akin to black royalty. The biracial daughter of Broadway chanteuse Josephine Premice and Timothy Fales, the scion of a New England family whose roots date back to Plymouth Rock, Fales-Hill is a prominent socialite with all the poise, polish, and pedigree that goes with it. She’s the type of woman who’s a must-invite to every charity gala, and she resided with her banker husband and daughter on the swanky Upper East Side. Yet Susan emanated a light that wasn’t inherited, but was entirely her own. She is a graduate of Harvard, a published author, and worked as a writer on
The Cosby Show.

She is also perceptive. Susan could see that I was faltering, questioning my purpose in ABT. One day she took me aside for a chat.

“You know, many of the board members talk about you,” she said with a warm smile. “They feel you are one of the most promising dancers in the company. That you have a future that is unbelievably bright. I agree.”

Susan would eventually become my sponsor, one of those behind-the-scenes patrons who make sure dancers have all that they need, from emotional support and guidance to simply someone to chat with at company events. It is a wonderful, ongoing gift. But what I cherish most were her words of reassurance, her ability to recognize and feel my pain, and her desire to share with me kind words, from not just her but from others on the board, to lift me up. She made me feel as if I had a vital role to play within ABT. She gave me the strength I needed to keep pushing, to keep waiting for my turn in the spotlight.

DESPITE MY KINSHIP WITH
Eric and the other black dancers to occasionally pass through ABT, and wonderful mentors like Susan Fales-Hill and Victoria Rowell, I continued to feel frustrated and mostly alone. I was putting in eight-hour days, straining my body beyond the point of exhaustion, but the harder I pushed the more I felt I was standing still.

The bitter truth is I felt that I wasn’t being fully accepted because I was black, that Kevin and other leaders of the company just didn’t see me starring in more classical roles, despite my elegant line and flow.

My Balanchine body was no more, I was crumbling under the pressure from the staff, and I felt there was no one I could approach to guide me. None of my teachers or mentors back home—not Cindy, not Diane, not Elizabeth—had ever danced in a company on the level of ABT. I was no longer a big fish in a small pond, and I was sinking.

I began to contemplate leaving.

I briefly considered moving over to the New York City Ballet, the company that George Balanchine had founded. I was casually acquainted with one of its dancers who offered to talk to the company’s director, Peter Martins, and encourage him to come see me perform. I told him that would be great.

That I even entertained the thought showed how desperate and unwanted I felt at ABT. The New York City Ballet was the only company that rejected me for its summer intensive program back when I won an L.A. Spotlight Award at the age of fifteen. It was also the company where the great Aesha Ash languished, eventually leaving and joining a company in San Francisco after never rising above the corps.

Clearly, I was grasping at straws.

Then there was another option that emerged in the summer of 2004 that was far more appealing and that, for a moment, I seriously entertained.

Arthur Mitchell was the legendary cofounder of Dance Theatre of Harlem, the first African American classical ballet company.

He had been New York City Ballet’s first black dancer and was its only African American performer for fifteen years. During that time, he became a principal, dancing in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Nutcracker
, and
Agon
, a ballet where the
pas de deux
was choreographed specifically for him and the ballerina Diana Adams by George Balanchine himself.

But after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Mitchell went home to Harlem, wanting to introduce the art form he loved to the children there. A year later he launched Dance Theatre of Harlem in a church basement.

Dance Theatre of Harlem had offered me a scholarship to
attend its summer program the year I won my Spotlight Award, and a few years later, when I had moved to New York and was dancing with ABT, my friend Eric Underwood told me that Arthur wanted to meet me.

The two of us went to Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Manhattan studio to take a class with the company.

One of the many great things about ballet is that the structure of a basic class is consistent throughout the world, be it barre, center, the slow movements that are
adagio
, or the whip-sharp motions that are
allegro.
At Dance Theatre of Harlem, Eric and I danced the complicated combinations that you’d find in any class for professional dancers. And afterward, I took another class, in
pas de deux.

Arthur, soft-spoken and regal, observed me. I later jotted down his words of praise in my journal.

“He had a lot of good things to say about my dancing and his company,” I giddily scrawled. “He reminded me of how special it is to be an African American ballerina. [He] said don’t let them take you over. Walk into the room knowing you are the best. Shoulders back, chin up. Their attitudes will totally change.”

That is something I will always remember: “Walk into a room, knowing you are somebody, somebody special. Don’t ever let them smash that or pull you down.”

A couple weeks later, I once again made my way to Dance Theatre of Harlem’s studios and took another class. There were the same demanding expectations, the same intensity emanating from men and women at the top of their art. But there was also a comfort knowing that if you stood out, it was for how you danced, not for how you looked. Afterward, Arthur wanted to speak with me.

He offered me a soloist contract. He wanted me to be his Giselle.

Arthur also told me of the first time he’d seen me dance.

“He said he was in the hospital a couple years ago when he saw this girl on TV,” I wrote in my journal. “ ‘She was sitting there with so much confidence, so much spark,’ he said.
‘That was a ballerina.’ ”

But, he said, looking at me now, he knew that ABT had sapped my spirit, had doused that spark that had once entranced him.

“ABT had taken that from me,” I wrote in my diary. “I need that back. I need to always have that confidence inside the theater.”

I knew Arthur was right. I had always been a performer who came alive onstage. Now, I was technically proficient but lacking the fire that had taken me from the Boys and Girls Club to the Metropolitan Opera House in four years.

He told me that I could get it back, that such a spirit was something that burned within black people. “You have it,” he said. “You can’t be taught it.”

I thought that Dance Theatre of Harlem might be the answer, that it would be so much easier to be in a company where I stood out because of my gifts and not the color of my skin. At last, I’d be the lead in the classical ballets that I loved:
Giselle, Sylvia, Cinderella.

I wanted to run away from ABT and into Arthur Mitchell’s arms. Why not? I admired him immensely and cherished his comforting words. Dance Theatre of Harlem was a legendary company, bursting with talent. And I wouldn’t have to fight anymore. I would be able to dance the classical parts that I
loved, Kitri, Clara, Aurora. It was so sweet to hear positive feedback and not the criticism that I felt floated around me, whether spoken or unsaid.