Artist Spotlight

A Nicolas Blanc in Jenkins' Thread. (© Erik Tomasson)

9/30/2008

Principal dancer Nicolas Blanc was born in Montauban, France. His training included work at Paris Opera Ballet School, and before joining San Francisco Ballet as a soloist in 2003 he danced with Zurich Ballet, among other companies. He was promoted to principal dancer in 2004, after just one year with San Francisco Ballet. Blanc has danced principal roles in Balanchine's Symphony in C and The Four Temperaments, and created roles in a number of works including Tomasson's 7 for Eight and Blue Rose as well as Possokhov's Study in Motion and Wheeldon's Quaternary. Here he talks about the ballet's 75th Anniversary Season, his interest in choreography, and his dreams for the future.

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Backstage: You've been with San Francisco Ballet for five years now. What changes have you seen in the company in that time?

I have seen a company that has always been very creative  with an incredible energy. I think what is amazing is the fact that we are exposed to so many different choreographies, and we can only get richer from that. I think that what is very important to remember always is to keep the eyes opened to diversity. So that has been very fantastic.

Backstage: The ballet has finished with the 75th Anniversary Season repertory performances, and now you're gearing up for the American Tour. Is there any city on the tour you're most looking forward to visiting, and why?

Well I would definitely say New York. This is a big center for dance, and everything is very vibrant over there, so I definitely look forward to dancing there. And probably Chicago; I have never been to Chicago, and I hear that Chicago is a very interesting city as well.

Backstage: What role did you most enjoy during the 2008 Repertory Season?

I liked very much to dance the one of the roles in the Jorma Elo piece, Double Evil. It was very challenging stamina-wise; the movements as well were intricate. It's a piece of refinement, and I'm very attached to that. So that was great. I enjoyed a lot Thread, actually, the role that I got to do in Thread from Margaret Jenkins during the [New Works] Festival. It was something very different—it was not about the turnout, the technique itself; the approach that I was trying to create was more about the profoundness, and also what is felt and what can be sort of seen from inside out. It was more about how from a very simple gesture, adding a very big dimension to it. So that was interesting.

Backstage: Once the American Tour is finished, the Ballet will be in high gear preparing for Nutcracker. What do you enjoy most about Nutcracker every season, and what do you think the ballet means to the audience?

I think the audience is always delighted to come see the Nutcracker; it's Christmastime, it's about festivities; throughout the whole ballet you have a very light atmosphere. So, I believe it's always very pleasant for the audience to connect with that, with the prettiness, the costumes—exquisite. The choreography is refined; we have also the battle scenes with the mice, so it's adding a little bit of suspense as well. You want to always remember that as a dancer, the commitment is to bring magic and to call everybody on stage, in a way. It's sort of like, oh, come and dance with us! We are here onstage, and it's togetherness, in a way. And this season, my mother is traveling from France. And so it's going to be very special for me, because it's been a long time; we have not been spending Christmas and New Year's evening together for a long time. So I must say that also adds a little bit of excitement to it.

Backstage: When was the last time your mom saw you perform?

I'm trying to remember now. I think that was, surprisingly, in Negrepelisse, in my hometown, where my parents live. It was in 2004; I got the medal of the city there and so I put on a little show, and people were just delighted to see me again.

Backstage: You've shown an interest in choreography and have created two ballets for the San Francisco Ballet School. How does that fit into your vision for the future of your career, and do you think you'd like to commit yourself to choreography when you're finished dancing?

Definitely, yes. I think the change that I've seen at least for myself is the choreographic interest has been growing, and growing, and growing, and so that's really great. I have the feeling that me as a dancer and me as a choreographer, it's very linked together. I'm still very much evolving as a dancer. It's difficult to explain, but I think that somehow what I discover still as a dancer, it seems to me that things are also shifting to what vision I could develop as a choreographer. So I see myself very often trying to get to the roots of what I could create as a dynamic for the dance. Because the world of dance has been exposed to plenty of choreographers,  many, many different styles, and we come to that point where we could ask ourselves, what else new could we see, could we bring, could we experience? And this is a very, very big challenge.  So, I think that the most important thing is to be very honest to yourself and to let things flow—again from inside out, without trying to apply certain criteria. It takes a risk to think "Ok, we don't know if it's going to work, if people are going to like it, if the dancers are going to respond." I see the choreography very, very much as an exchange between the dancer and the creator himself. So it's like a painter, or like a sculpture; it's molding things. And, and in the case of a choreographer, that comes through demonstrating it, so that's why I was saying that probably the dancing side of me is adding to that choreographic side, because if I can demonstrate things I think it's much easier to have the dancer respond to it. Not only demonstrating it, but also finding the right images, finding the right sentence. It's almost finding the metaphors for it. So the dancer would get inspired by words as well. I'm very, very attracted to that idea that choreography and literature—words—are very linked for me together.

Backstage: So what choreographers have inspired you the most?

It's an odd mix. I think that I have a great, great respect for Balanchine. I feel very connected to his style, because there is a side of me that is very attached to that. The clarity of the steps, and the musicality of it. The odd mix comes from the fact that I could name Balanchine as someone that is somewhat very into the neoclassicism, but also someone like Mats Ek—I had the privilege to dance Don Jose in Carmen, from Mats Ek, and I was very young at that time. I was only 22. That was a brand new discovery for me, and something that was very much outside my definitions and out of what I would know from before. I think that Christopher Wheeldon has a fantastic way to combine refinement—again I'm very attached to that idea—[and] clarity, but also this mix between the classical language and the subtleties, I think you say. So I've been very inspired by these different layers, as a choreographer, of subtleties. And Helgi's also a choreographer, and I enjoy dancing his pieces—Concerto Grosso and 7 for Eight. I like his sense of intimacy, sometimes, in his ballets.

Backstage: What ballets are you most looking forward to during the 2009 Repertory Season?

What comes first in my mind is the pas de deux of Emeralds. I love the music, I think the steps are beautiful; it's about elegance. And I really want to connect with that again. Maybe it's my French roots that are talking about, you know, that elegance that we always try to seek in France, even in the 21st century. So, Emeralds, and I was talking about Chris Wheeldon—I'm learning one of the pas de deux in Within the Golden Hour, so I'm really looking forward to that because I'm already very much, for myself, finding details that I want really to bring onstage. I look also forward to dancing Melancholic in Four Temperaments again, from Balanchine; it's a role that I danced four years ago. I'm kind of interested to see how, after four years, I'm going of course to see what are the changes within myself. What I bring back from four years ago and what I also, what comes to my mind now and to my body, and what I can express, all of it. And definitely the role that we just learned in July, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, from William Forsythe.

Backstage: What did you do during your summer break this year?

I went back to France to see my family, and I went home to my house that I keep renovating. I've been starting renovating that Middle Age, 15th-century house since 2005,  precisely, and so there is still a lot of work to be achieved, but every time I achieve, step by step, something is happening, and that's great.

Backstage: Do you do the work yourself?

I do some of the work myself—with my dad, we did—but I did hire professionals also that have knowledge to restoring the right way, because in the South of France with all that history you have to be very picky about who you pick in terms of what method they would apply to restore either beams or fireplaces, or stone walls.

Backstage: I bet it's beautiful.

I take great pride of that. It's somewhat a modest house, but I've been always very connected with history. It's very much in the family. My dad was always restoring antiques, and he's also painting, and I don't know, somehow my parents have been transmitting to me this sense of history. And so I'm very attached to that.

Backstage: What do you like to do during your spare time, besides work on your house?

I like to read a lot. I'm a big, big fan of Marguerite Yourcenar, who was French, but she has been spending most of her life in America—in Maine, actually. And her writing has been transforming me as a human being, a lot. Definitely made a huge impact on me. So I like always to read things from her. And I like to cook as well; I don't have enough time for that, but I like to set elegant dinners. Let's call it like that.

Backstage: What are you reading right now?

Right now I'm reading The Abyss from Margaret Yourcenar. I read it in French, but I'm trying to read more in English, also. Actually I've been starting a book by Doris Lessing in English. I need to be not stressed at all to read and take time, and so I have my dictionary on the side, you know. I'm very attached to music. When I was 8 I was starting with judo. That didn't work for me, and I was thinking what I liked about judo was the physicality of it. Dance is also very physical. What was missing, I think, is the music environment, the musical environment. I like always to listen to music. It's very rare when I go home and it's silent. I'm always turning music on, and I'm a big big fan of Brahms. He is a composer that I'm very linked to, I think.