Feature Stories
San Francisco Ballet’s Cultural Connection
Dancers of Spanish heritage fill the ranks of many American dance companies, and San Francisco Ballet is no exception. Admired for their technique, artistry, and dynamic stage presence, Cubans and Spaniards comprise roughly one-fifth of the Company’s principal dancers and soloists. With Don Quixote concluding this year’s Repertory Season, the time seemed ripe to talk to some of them about their training, what brought them to the United States, how they feel about 19th-century Russian conceptions of Spanish dance, and their contributions to the Company as masters of Spanish style.
Given the large number of prominent Hispanic ballet dancers, it’s natural to wonder what kind of training produces so many artists of this caliber. Looking first to Cuba, we find an emphasis on the basics. “They try to keep the tradition as it was created by Louis XIV,” says Principal Dancer Joan Boada about the National Ballet School of Cuba. “[The technique] is pretty much Vagonova, but Alicia Alonso [director of the National Ballet of Cuba] worked with Balanchine and Robbins and other great people, so she got a different approach than just Vagonova. Little by little, professionals went to other schools and companies, so they had more options in the methodology of teaching ballet. We also study modern and Afro-Cuban dance and get exposed to Spanish style, the French minuet—all the basic folkloric dances.” He emphasizes that the ballet training establishes a solid foundation that dancers later can expand on. “[In school], everybody tries to look the same. After you join the company you can experience new things, but everybody has the same base. It’s like putting on primer so everybody looks the same, and afterward you can spread yourself with the colors.”
Cuban ballet schools also share a unique degree of homogeneity. Take class anywhere in the country and you’ll find the same approach to teaching. “What they did was incorporate all of the methods that people had about teaching ballet into their schools,” says Soloist Moises Martin, a Spaniard who cites Principal Dancer Lorena Feijoo and her mother, ballet teacher Lupe Calzadilla, as his sources. “They combined everything—the best of the Italian and Russian training, things they liked about the French school. And teachers would get together and talk about why one thing was working for one group and what worked for another, and at which age students should learn the steps.”
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 Joan Boada and Lorena Feijoo dancing Don Quixote. © Erik Tomasson |
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That emphasis on foundation is also typical of schools in Spain. “It’s just hard work and hard work,” says Corps de Ballet Member Dores Andre, who trained at Estudio de Danza de Maria de Avila in Zaragoza. “They tell you what you’re doing wrong with no flowers around it. But it’s honest, and when you know that person cares about you, you don’t take it personally. It’s all about making you a better dancer.” Comparing training in Spain to that in the United States, she says, “We like the tricks—the pirouettes and all that. I feel like we have more classical training, and here they can move better and they have beautiful legs.”
Soloist Jaime Garcia Castilla, who studied flamenco and traditional Spanish dance followed by ballet at the Royal Conservatory of Professional Dance in Madrid, also describes his teachers as no-nonsense taskmasters. “They just give you the right training and push you. They correct you every single minute. It’s something they give you so you know how to work with yourself and push yourself to the limit.”
Spain’s major company, Nacho Duato’s Compañia Nacional de Danza, is quite contemporary—which means that ballet dancers who want a classical company must work abroad. “You won’t ever dance [a classical repertory] in Spain, so you know you’re going to have to leave at a young age,” says Andre. And to get into a company, “you have to be at the top.” In Europe, large classical companies are few and are notoriously difficult to get into without training at their schools. Dancing outside of the European Union means obtaining a visa, which can be difficult, so “companies have to have a reason to hire you,” says Andre. SF Ballet is a magnet for these dancers because of its classical base and diverse repertory.
Most Hispanic ballet dancers grow up with some exposure to traditional Spanish dance and an acute sense of cultural identity. What, then, do they think of the Spanish-style dances that pepper classical ballets, particularly those of the 19th century? Perhaps the earliest example of Spanish dance in ballet is Fanny Elssler’s performance of the cachucha in Jean Coralli’s 1836 Le Diable Boiteux. Others include Marius Petipa’s Spanish-themed Paquita (1847) and his Spanish dance in Swan Lake (1895); Lev Ivanov’s Spanish divertissement in Nutcracker (1892); and Alexander Gorsky and Petipa’s Don Quixote (1869), with its seguidilla, fandango, toreadors’ dance, and Mercedes’ sinuous taverna dance. The 20th century brought Roland Petit’s Carmen (1949).
Petipa’s French roots and knowledge of Western traditions no doubt influenced his ballet adaptations of Spanish, Hungarian, and Polish dances. And according to SF Ballet’s dancers, he got a lot of them right. Talking about Don Quixote, Principal Dancer Ruben Martin says, “It’s very well accomplished. Because it’s a story ballet, the dances have the essence of the real Spain. Like the seguidilla—in Spain you don’t see people in the streets playing tambourines, but the essence of the dance is [there], even though it’s stylized for ballet. And the fandango reminds me of the jota, the regional dance of my area [Aragon].”
Andre points out that though not all productions are equal in depicting Spanish life accurately, SF Ballet’s Don Quixote does it well. “The costumes are simple and nice and pretty traditional, not all black and red! Sometimes you see [a production] and you go, ‘Oh my God, what do they think of Spain?’ It can be done really badly,” she says. Boada says a production’s authenticity depends on who sets it.
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Jaime Garcia Castilla in rehearsal. |
But according to Garcia Castilla, no production of Don Quixote is truly authentic. “It’s Spanish, but it’s not Spanish; it’s the classical version, not the seguidilla or fandango that I learned. But it’s kind of an honor that somebody took Spanish culture and put it in a huge ballet.”
Part of the responsibility for correctly interpreting Spanish dance in classical ballet falls on the dancers, says Feijoo. “It has to do with your knowledge of the culture. When I see things done by people who don’t really know, I want to say, ‘That’s not it.’ For example, the use of the fan [when Mercedes hits Espada, the toreador]—it’s about sharp hits, not breaking the fan on the guy’s shoulder. And some girls fan themselves in an agitated way, but usually there’s a wave to it. To eyes that are not used to seeing that, it may look OK.” She goes on to describe how Spanish dancers can inform what they do without changing the steps. For example, when Espada slaps his thigh, she says, he’s “inviting the bull in. You may see on the video that it’s just a slap, but that’s not it. You have to put a bit of your artistry in, make it suit you and give it meaning.”
Drawing on your culture is important, agrees Ruben Martin, “if you’re going to discover the aesthetics of a role.” Growing up in a culture characterized by bullfights, flamenco, and regional dances gives Spanish dancers an innate set of reference points for Spanish roles. The images that surround them throughout childhood color their posture and movement, and they embellish their parts with nuances and attitudes that their fellow dancers often emulate. For Espada, Ruben scrutinized flamenco movement. “Flamenco takes a lot of things from bullfighting. Bullfighters are a little rough in their moves—the aesthetics are not quite there. But flamenco dancers have adapted these movements and poses into their dance.” He emphasizes the importance of the chest in conveying arrogance. “The chest is always forward. Giving the role that attitude makes it more interesting,” he says.
The Company’s Hispanic dancers are a resource for other dancers in ballets like Don Quixote—and for the choreographers as well. Ruben explains that Co-Choreographer Yuri Possokhov looked to Sergio Torrado (a former soloist), Moises Martin, and himself for ideas to make Espada’s to read or dance authentic. “He’d ask us what would look cool, or we’d tell him when something wasn’t really Spanish and show him something different. Or someone would do a step with more of a Spanish sauce, and he’d say, ‘Show me that again!’ There was a lot of exchange of ideas.”
Moises drew on boyhood memories of watching bullfighters and applied their posture—“very straight, with no fear”—to Espada. “They have to be daring, almost cocky, and I’m not a cocky person at all,” he says. “I try to take the idea about how matadors should be and incorporate that.”
In ballet, elements of Spanish style center on the upper body while the feet remain classical, and Spanish dancers “know the vocabulary,” says Andre. “Like the port de bras—the arms are more rounded, and how the hands move is not the same. They’re slow and then sharp.”
“Even if you don’t know the right steps, you know how to move, how to fake it, and how to play,” says Garcia Castilla. “So every time [the artistic staff] gives a correction in seguidilla or fandango, how to focus or move the arms, you already kind of know it. You have it inside you.”
The authenticity of the dancing aside, Don Quixote’s characters are typically Spanish, Ruben Martin says. “The way the father does all the mime relates very much to how I see the Spanish personality—very loud and outspoken and exciting and dramatic,” he says. “The father, Kitri, and Basilio are like that. When we have a goal, we really grab onto it, and I think Sancho Panza’s loyalty to Don Quixote shows the determination of Spanish people.”
The discussion of personality traits begs the question of whether being Spanish or Cuban shapes any of these dancers as artists. Ruben says it does. “Perseverance is one of my family’s qualities, and I think it’s typical in my town, [Zaragoza]. You’re stubborn; you have to really go for what you want. I started dancing late [at age 14], and I knew I had to take advantage of my time.” But his brother Moises disagrees. He considers himself more introverted than the typical Spaniard and credits “a lot of years and experience,” not his culture, with defining his dancing.
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 Dores Andre dancing the Spanish variation in Nutcracker. © Erik Tomasson |
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For Andre, it’s about being the center of attention. “It goes with the personality,” she says. “Usually Spanish dancers are dramatic—not in a bad way, but exaggerated. We’re like, ‘Look at me!’ That makes you have a kind of charisma.”
Both Feijoo and Boada believe that the Cuban mentality carries over into their work as dancers. “People tell me I’m easygoing; I’m always open to suggestion,” Boada says. “That’s true of a lot of Cuban people. We are happy all the time, pretty much. We have problems, but we don’t bring our personal lives into rehearsals and the show. We have so much trouble in Cuba—it’s really tough. But things will come to you if you are open; if you are negative, nothing will come to you. In America, life is hard; everything is about making a living, making sure that your kids will go to college. In Cuba we don’t have those kinds of problems. The little bit we have is given to us, so we don’t have that mentality behind us. And it reads in us as dancers, of course.”
“[Cuban] people don’t play it stoically, like ‘Oh, we’re so unfortunate,’” comments Feijoo. “We’re just like, ‘This is life. This is our challenge.’ You bring that sense of living to the ballet.”
These dancers’ strong sense of national identity means that the Spanish dances in classical ballets can offer them something extra—an artistic connection to their culture. “Some ballets, even though they are challenging, don’t have that extra thing, that connection,” says Ruben Martin. “There are certain [ballets] in a dancer’s life that mark the excitement, the way you feel onstage, and Don Quixote is one of them.”
Top: Moises Martin in Don Quixote. © Erik Tomasson