Feature Stories

Shaping Dancers, Shaping Lives

“Mentor” was not a description Helgi Tomasson had ever applied to himself until recently—and he winces at the thought. “Does that mean I’m getting older?” he asks with a smile. “All of a sudden I find myself in that position—people are looking toward me. I think Julia [Adam, a former principal dancer] thinks of me as her mentor, and Yuri [Possokhov] is saying, ‘Come and look at this—tell me what you think.’ And three of my dancers are running companies already!”

Adam and Possokhov are two of the young choreographers who have benefited from Tomasson’s generosity in nurturing new talent. But Tomasson has touched the lives of more than one generation of dancers, both personally, with his warmth and concern for them as individuals, and professionally, developing artistry in eager young novices and guiding former dancers in new careers as teachers, ballet masters, choreographers, and artistic directors.

Two of those dancers who are now directing their own companies, Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Christopher Stowell and Boston Ballet’s Mikko Nissinen, credit Tomasson with influencing them in ways they’re only just recognizing. Just as Tomasson didn’t watch Balanchine thinking he’d someday follow in his footsteps, neither did Stowell and Nissinen consciously emulate their artistic director. Looking back on their years at SF Ballet, both say they were in the best possible place at the best possible time; now, they find themselves guided by his past example and supported by him in the present. Nissinen says, “I went to San Francisco Ballet because of him and his values. Integrity is represented in his work and in his point of view toward the Company. The Company comes first, always. I’m trying to push those same values.” He describes his years with Tomasson as the best of his
professional life as a dancer, ones that forged a lasting relationship. “There’s a kinship between us. He created a new work for me when I was director of Alberta Ballet, and he has been extremely helpful and supportive of me all the way. And that’s a wonderful feeling.”

Stowell spent his entire dancing career under Tomasson’s wing. “We started work [at San Francisco Ballet] on the same day,” he says. “It was a blessing for me to be there because he had a vision of what he wanted to do, and now I understand the struggles before him.” He describes Tomasson’s approach as a director as “being intelligent and providing what was necessary for the Company. Doing things like full-length classics right away made a statement that we were like other major ballet companies. That’s something I’m doing now here in Portland—I welcome people to compare us, to see how we do. Because I was at San Francisco Ballet, that seems tangible and realistic.” The most important lessons he learned from Tomasson, he says, are “to persevere even if it’s difficult or uncomfortable for you personally, to think of the organization before yourself, and to remember that ballet is a form of theater.”

Ashley Wheater, ballet master and assistant to the artistic director, recounts how Tomasson has supported him as a dancer and through his career-ending injury into a fulfilling role as ballet master. He joined the Company in 1989 after dancing with major companies in London, Australia, and New York, so he was hardly an impressionable youngster. Still, Wheater says, “it was so invigorating to work with someone who was so challenging, who gave me a huge repertory. I had danced The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Swan Lake many times, but working with him on his own productions brought out a different way of moving. He taught me that dancing can be so much freer. As a dancer himself, Helgi had a real air of freedom and ease of movement, and that’s what he’s instilled in all of us.”

In his 16 years with the Company, Wheater has witnessed firsthand how attentive Tomasson is to young artists’ development. “He’s taken many young people and invested a lot of time in them. When Yuan Yuan [Tan] came to this company, she was so young. I’ve watched Helgi encourage and nurture her,” the ballet master says. “I think that’s something very special with him—he doesn’t imprint how you should do something; he encourages you to find your way. If you put a seed in the ground and water it, you have to allow the flower to go its way, to bloom. You can force it, but it’s not the same.”

The same far-reaching attitude Tomasson has shown in developing his repertory shows up in how he shapes a dancer’s career. He believes in giving people a chance—perhaps, he says, because he was given one himself. “I came from a country with no dance history, so I relied on someone giving me a chance as a dancer, first in Copenhagen, then in the U.S.,” the director says. “I feel I ‘grow’ dancers, in many cases. And that takes patience. People say, ‘Why are you putting that dancer in that role? It’s not fantastic.’ Well, you have to start them somewhere. Two or three years down the road, people will be saying, ‘What a wonderful dancer!’ If I feel that they have it in them, I will give them a chance. It might not be 100 percent the first few times, but let them do it.”

Principal Dancer Gonzalo Garcia was given that chance when Tomasson cast him in a role he himself had danced, the lead in Prodigal Son. “It was maybe my second year in the corps,” says Garcia. “I loved the ballet and wanted to do it, but I felt pressured because Joan Boada and Guennadi Nedviguine, who were already established dancers, were dancing it. I remember being terrified, finishing my shows being happy that I had done it but thinking, ‘It’s not ready yet; I can do better.’ Then we brought the ballet back the next season, and I was a much more seasoned dancer. But without that chance he gave me, I wouldn’t have danced it as well as I did the second time.”

Joanna Berman, a former principal dancer who had joined the Company a year before Tomasson was hired, credits the new director with challenging her to develop as an artist. “If I had continued down the path I was going, I would have been a very different dancer. The things he wanted to refine in my technique needed refining. He helped me figure out, by his example, his coaching, and the roles he gave me, how to move more quickly and develop more attack in my movement,” Berman says. “I benefited from being forced to move in certain ways—being forced to do Ballo della Regina, for example. He didn’t give it to me because it was meant for me; he gave it to me so I could work on the things I needed to work on, which I think is awesome.”

Not discounting his boss’ skills in the studio and the boardroom, Wheater thinks Tomasson’s greatest strength is that “he is a very caring person. When my career came to an end due to an injury, from the minute I had the problem Helgi said, ‘No matter what happens, I want you to stay here. You have so much to offer the Company as a teacher, as a coach.’ He never wavered, and I am forever grateful for that. When I’d had my surgery and was lying at home in this steel brace from my head to my waist, going out of my mind, he said, ‘Why don’t you come in?’ So I took Joanna Berman and Igor Zaletsky into the studio and rehearsed them in Swan Lake. And it was amazing. Even through all the ups and downs of other surgeries on my neck, Helgi has always visited me in the hospital. He’s always been there. You can talk to him, and he listens. He really listens.”

Berman agrees. “Early on I had some major injuries, and Helgi always let me know that there would be a place for me when I was well. ‘Just get better,’ he’d say. I think that was enormous. I never felt like I’d better get back or I’d be out, or wondered if I’d fall out of favor. It just happened again, with a young dancer who got injured right before the London tour. Helgi told him, ‘Your health is the most important thing to me and you don’t need to worry about disappointing me. Just get better.’ And that dancer felt he could take the time to focus on his recovery. It’s worth a fortune.”

Perhaps Tomasson’s attentiveness to his dancers, his deliberate effort to build rapport, is what gives the Company its remarkable sense of family. The dancers’ warmth and camaraderie crosses all ranks—an important element in a company where choreographers are as likely to cast corps members as they are principals in lead roles. “He’s created a company that’s harmonious and happy,” says Principal Dancer Katita Waldo. “I think the dancers in this company are proud to be in it.”

Wheater sums up what it’s like to be under Tomasson’s wing: “People leave, and within a year they want to come back—I’ve seen it so many times. They want greener pastures, then they realize it’s as green as it gets here. It’s as green as it gets.”


Cheryl Ossola is a freelance arts writer and editor, and a contributing editor for Dance Magazine.