Ballet Confidential: A personal behind-the-scenes guide

By David McAllister

Beyond the formidable combination of tulle and lycra, how much can an audience ever truly understand about the demands of being a ballet dancer? What really is the pain and pleasure of pointe shoes and jockstraps? Can a wardrobe malfunction derail a scene? What happens when injury sidelines a principal dancer mid-show?

Here is your tell-all guide, an all-access pass for ballet lovers and the ballet-curious by internationally acclaimed dancer and former artistic director of The Australian Ballet, David McAllister.

From toe acting, to the perils of partnering and onstage/offstage romances, David answers in intimate detail everything you have ever wanted to know about ballet but were too afraid to ask.

'One of the most celebrated artists of our time lifts the curtain on ballet's intoxicating pursuit of perfection. What a brilliant book! Filled with insider knowledge for the ballet lover or the newcomer, you will be whipping through the pages wanting to hear more of David's wisdom and humour behind bringing the art of ballet to life.' - Sarah Murdoch

'Nijinsky did WHAT with a scarf? Who dared call Anna Pavlova 'the broom'? Dancers stuff Chux Superwipes WHERE? For those of us who love the ballet but are too scared to ask the silly questions - David is our friend. Let him take you behind the velvet scrim for a pas de deus into ballet paradise.' - Catriona Rowntree

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson Australia Pty Ltd
• Release date: Jul 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781760763312

Book preview

Beginner’s call

‘LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, this is your beginner’s call. All beginners for Act I, this is your call to the stage. Thank you.’

That was the call I used to wait to hear every day when I was a dancer, and indeed then as artistic director as it signalled the beginning of a journey. The culmination of years of training and dedication, the weeks of preparation for the performance that was about to start, and the opportunity each night to take our audience away from their daily lives and into a world filled with imagination and splendour. But today, it’s your welcome to Ballet Confidential – a personal behind-the-scenes guide that will have you romping through the unique and wondrous world of ballet.

For all of you who love ballet, Ballet Confidential will reveal the inner workings of your treasured art form. A chance to get a few insights into life behind the curtain with all its messy humanity and humour. An opportunity to have some of those questions that you always wanted to ask answered, and those confusing gestures that you never quite understood explained. For those of you who may think ‘ballet-land’ is not a place you would choose to spend too much time in, I challenge you to use this as a guidebook into our often misrepresented world. A way to demystify the supposed secret knowledge needed to enjoy ballet. A chance to clarify that there is no special club, or secret handshake involved, or indeed any gender bias in play. I’m aiming to provide you with an entertaining frolic backstage that may entice you to come and experience a ballet for yourself, a sort of ‘try before you buy’ handbook.

I’m familiar with this kind of thinking regarding ballet – I have a similar engagement with sport. I never really ‘got’ it – probably due to the fact that I was terrible at it. When it came to hitting, catching or throwing a ball, regardless of shape or size, I was completely hopeless. My hand-eye coordination was so bad I doubt my ability could have even been measured on any scale of competency. I was so inept that when it came to picking teams in phys. ed. at school, I wasn’t the last to be picked, but rather the one assigned to the scoreboard! As you can imagine, my sporting prowess never progressed, and so my interest pretty much flatlined. Thankfully over time I gained some understanding of a few sports while bonding with my dad watching the cricket and tennis over many long, hot Perth summers. As my knowledge gradually grew, I learnt the more you understand, the more you can appreciate the skill and achievement. This revelation underpins my hope for this book: that some inside knowledge may convert serious sports aficionados into bolted-on ballet fans.

My passion for movement took rather a different path. Following an early childhood characterised by an almost pathological need to dance to any music I heard, matched with perpetual attempts to be the centre of attention, I was bitten by the ballet bug. Its genesis came from seeing footage on TV (commercial TV too – those were the days!) of Rudolf Nureyev dancing Don Quixote with The Australian Ballet. It was my ‘miracle at Fatima’, my ‘burning bush’ moment (you can see I was also brought up Catholic), and I was hooked for life. Not that I am immune to a great sporting spectacle; I love watching the opening of the Olympics and always end up a blubbering mess as the athletes walk out. My desire to watch, however, is usually inspired by the ‘show’ and the urge to check out the team uniforms; once the actual competing begins, the appeal quickly fades. I see the intrinsic role that sport plays in bringing people together and I celebrate the pride along with my fellow citizens when our flag is raised and the anthem played. But I feel that same way when I see a great performance in the theatre. I am transported by the endeavour of our artists, their creativity and artistry on show each night of the week, not just once every four years. Don’t get me wrong, athletes go to superhuman lengths in their training and preparation to be at their mental and physical peak to ensure they compete successfully at these important international events. But so do their creative counterparts. Though not winning medals, artists present – in various forms – our human triumphs and frailties and define our cultural uniqueness. They can hold a mirror up to society and present a ‘looking glass’ into a better future, or highlight the grave consequences of slipping down a darker path, and at times show us who we really are. That reflection can be extremely revealing. This is a powerful thing.

That’s why it baffles me that sport is viewed as fundamental to our cultural identity while arts are seen as elitist. Is this just an Australian thing? If so, then that was not always the case, especially if you look at the importance of storytelling, dance and songlines within the First Nations cultures on this continent. Maybe it is some postcolonial chip that sits on our collective shoulders? I think it can also be blamed on a lack of understanding of our creative pursuits. It took sitting next to the great John Eales at my very first Rugby Union match for me to have any comprehension of what was happening on the field. I found it an amazing spectacle when I began to grasp the goal of the game and the rules that governed the various stops and starts. Instantly what had been just a ‘theatrical arena’ experience became so much more enjoyable when I understood what I was watching. The jury is still out as to whether I was converted into a devotee, but I do now take much more interest in the Wallabies’ fortunes.

When it comes to ridicule and parody of our artistic endeavours, ballet is always ‘first up to the plate’ for mockery and denigration. It is an art form that celebrates grace, and in doing so, its technical difficulty is masked by an ethos that revels in the illusion of ease. Additionally, its performers remain mute. Each of these elements often leaves ballet wide open to misinterpretation. Words like elitist, irrelevant and boring are often flung our way and yet hordes of young people from all socio-economic backgrounds roll up to dance classes across the world each week. They face the ballet barre with energy and enthusiasm, in numbers that rival and at times eclipse that of sports. Is it that the historical female bias towards ballet brings out the loudest patriarchal voices and makes ballet an easy target? Footballers in tutus will always get a laugh. Hmm? Time to tip the scales and get some enlightenment happening. Maybe as our male-dominated codes see the rise of women triumphing in their arenas, ballet might also get the opportunity be seen in a more balanced light.

Right, time to step off my ‘soapbox’ and fill you in on the past four hundred or so years of ballet’s existence. This will be a very abridged and completely personal voyage through the art form’s history.

A potted history

We have the Italians to thank for the first formal ballet performances. The word ballet comes from the word ballo, which in its original Latin form means to dance. It was Catherine de’ Medici who, on marrying King Henry II of France, brought this Italian spectacle to Paris in the mid 1500s. It truly flourished, however, under King Louis XIV whose passion for the art form made it de rigueur for his courtiers to dance. It was Louis who arranged for the form to be codified into a technique, establishing L’Acadèmie Royale de Musique. This organisation was the incubator of the Paris Opera Ballet, and this is why all ballet terminology is in French. As with all new fashions (Dior’s New Look, the miniskirt, acid wash jeans), other European courts wanted a piece of the action and there were soon ballet companies in Sweden, Denmark and Imperial Russia to name a few.

The French émigré Marius Petipa swung the art form’s focus from France to Russia more than a century later. During his 32-year reign as ballet master of the Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg he created some of the most recognised ballet repertoire, including The Sleeping Beauty, La Bayadère and later The Nutcracker. His revision of Swan Lake with Lev Ivanov became one of the most loved works of all time and his ballets continue to underpin the offerings of ballet companies across the globe.

Serge Diaghilev, who was neither a dancer nor choreographer, but was an all-round art lover and entrepreneur, took the next great leap forward for ballet at the turn of the 20th century. Diaghilev gave voice to a young group of creative artists who were railing against Petipa’s formulaic, full-evening works that consisted of the same basic scenarios: set dances and predictable outcomes situated in various ‘exotic’ surroundings. At a time when travel was limited there was much cultural appropriation, and no matter where a ballet was set the leading dancer would always end up wearing a tutu, with only some decoration on top to delineate whether they were in Spain, India or Egypt. The musical choices were also remarkably universal with melodious Viennese waltzes being the standard fare provided by the likes of Maestro Ludwig Minkus.

The young guard who Diaghilev supported wanted to create a new, more progressive take on Russian ballet, making use of authentic dance genres when it came to setting works in other cultures, and creating shorter individual works that could be seen in a mixed program. This was a deviation from the epic three-act story that would always end with a lavish wedding in the final act, featuring the ‘grand pas de deux’ for the romantic lead couple.

In 1909 Diaghilev gathered choreographers including Mikhail Fokine, artists Alexandre Benois and Léon Bakst, and a group of the Imperial Theatre’s greatest Russian dancers, featuring Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsarvina and Vaslav Nijinsky, and presented them in a program of these short works in Paris. This was the birth of the Ballets Russes. Lasting only twenty years, this company changed ballet in the new century, refreshing and modernising the art form to suit the changing social and political times. Several years after the death of Diaghilev and the collapse of his company, a new iteration of the Ballets Russes was formed in 1931 by impresarios René Blum and Wassily de Basil. Reviving favourites from the Diaghilev repertoire they continued the Diaghilev legacy to create new works by choreographers Léonide Massine and George Balanchine and to push boundaries. This company, starring its ‘baby ballerinas’ Irina Baronova, Tamara Toumanova and Tatiana Riabouchinska, broadened the touring circuit of the Ballets Russes to include visits to North and South America and venturing as far as Australia for three tours in the late 1930s.

Both Ballets Russes’s companies planted seeds that would flower into the international ballet scene that has flourished since the early 20th century. Ninette de Valois and Marie Rambert, both dancers with Diaghilev, started schools and companies in London that set the foundations from which British ballet was built. Pavlova, who only danced in the first Ballets Russes season in 1909, started her own company and toured more widely than any other dancer of her generation, dancing across nearly every continent. This expansion of ballet throughout the world led many dancers to establish schools and companies around the globe. International teaching associations like the Royal Academy of Dance and the Cecchetti Society were founded by former dancers and ballet masters to formalise the teaching of ballet. In Australia the foundation of professional ballet companies can be linked back to the tours of the Ballets Russes – the émigré’s Edouard Borovansky, Hélène Kirsova and Kira Bousloff all remained in Australia at the end of various tours and formed the country’s first professional companies. The West Australian Ballet has continuously performed since it was established by Bousloff in 1952, and the Borovansky Ballet was the company that preceded the formation of The Australian Ballet in 1962 after the Borovansky Ballet’s final season in 1961.

By the mid-20th century, ballet had become a truly international art form with companies as far-flung as Japan, South Africa, Australia and China. Balanchine’s New York City Ballet developed what was to become the ‘American style’ of ballet with a stripped-back aesthetic and boundary-pushing classical choreography. Balanchine (also a Ballets Russes alumni) continued the Diaghilevian approach of fostering creative collaborations, such as his ongoing partnership with composer Igor Stravinsky, and with young new creators, such as Jerome Robbins. In Britain, choreographers like Sir Frederick Ashton, Sir Kenneth MacMillan and John Cranko built a new raft of narrative ballets each in their own individual ways. Europe saw the fusing of ballet with contemporary dance in works by Hans van Manen, Jiří Kylián and American Glen Tetley. William Forsythe in the later 20th century again shifted the dial with his physical and physiological approach to movement, an influence that continues in ballet in the 21st century.

Ballet has never looked more diverse or creative than it does today, with new works being created in all corners of the globe by artists from every continent. Continuing to encourage increasing numbers of women and people of colour as creators in this art form is imperative in the new millennium, and there is a steady stream of new voices being heard. Today artists like Crystal Pite, Wayne McGregor, Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky, Cathy Marston, Justin Peck, Alonzo King and so many others are shaping the future of ballet by their work in the studio.

In Australia we have three professional ballet companies, an ecosystem of contemporary medium and small companies, and independent dance artists who constantly define our own Australian dance identity. While our continent has seen dance on its earth for over 60,000 years, ballet has been a relatively new arrival. Bangarra Dance Theatre draws on First Nations culture and since it was established in 1989 it has become the most prominent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performing arts company in Australia. Stephen Page was the director for most of its history and has nurtured a whole community of dancers, designers, musicians and choreographers, including his successor Frances Rings and the current director of the Australian Dance Theatre, Daniel Riley. We are very lucky in this country to have a dance company that tours the globe bringing the unique First Nations culture from this continent to the world.

There you go, that should get you through any pub quiz questions on the origins of ballet that you may encounter. Mind you we missed some of the most famous names, like Margot Fonteyn, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Misty Copeland, but they may well come up over the course of the book. Now let’s dispense with the overview and delve into some of the often hidden aspects of ballet, maybe busting some of those myths that have arisen over the years.

The power and the pashing

PEOPLE OFTEN ASK me if I miss performing. It is a hard question to answer as I totally loved being on stage. Having that wonderful rush of endorphins as you stood in the ‘wings’ waiting for your entrance, wondering if what you had worked on and perfected over many weeks was going to be delivered without a hitch, never lost its allure. That said, after flying to San Francisco following my very last performance, sitting down to watch the first class in which I didn’t have to pull on the tights and face the barre somehow felt like a release. It was wonderfully liberating. Little did I know it was also going to be so physically enhancing, to the tune of around ten kilos! My body also lost all that strength and flexibility that I took for granted, but that is a whole other story.

The one thing I miss to this day though is partnering, or to use correct ballet speak, performing the art of the pas de deux. The literal translation is ‘dance for two’ but somehow this act of sharing the stage with another dancer feels like so much more. It is the opportunity for some of the most dramatic physical and emotional risk-taking you can share with another dancer. When you have that deep connection with your partner, it is a place where you can really lose yourself in the moment. In that very special environment, you forget there is an audience watching, and the emotions that are woven into the choreography become real. It is the act of leaving your domestic life and becoming Romeo and Juliet, or Albrecht and Giselle, only reuniting with the ‘real’ world as the curtain falls. But there was quite a journey to get to the point in which ballet narrative became so starry-eyed.

When ballet began in the courts of Louis XIV, only the male courtiers danced. (I know, controversial!) It was seen as the height of elegance to be able to move with grace and perform all the intricate dances of the time. So important was the need for male courtiers to dance well that they took lessons, which is how the art of ballet developed and codified. The ladies of the court could dance in the queen’s ballets and at other social occasions but were excluded from the king’s far more exulted performances known as the entrée grave. This was the highest form of French court dancing and was performed by one or two men with slow and formal movements to display their expertise, control and elegance. These dances took place both in the court and on stage. It wasn’t until the 1700s when Marie-Anne de Cupis de Camargo – or, as she was more famously known, La Camargo – shortened her skirts to reveal her ankles and ditched the heels for her dancing pumps that the ballerina was born. She was the first woman to do an entrechat quatre – a jump in which you cross the ankles twice in the air, referred to in ballet slang as beats – and was seen to rival men’s superiority in ballet technique at the time. She was sort of the Emmeline Pankhurst of ballet.

At this time the pas de deux moves were fairly restrained – the closest you got to your partner would have involved holding hands or maybe a touch at the waist. Most of the remnants of these dances that survive involve fiendishly intricate lower leg moves danced side by side in the courtly manner. These dances we see today were mainly reconstructed by specialist dance historians who were both dancers and choreographers in France, but also at Drottningholm Palace Theatre in Sweden where they had working baroque theatres and wanted to keep the heritage dances of that period alive. It wasn’t until Marie Taglioni donned her ‘toe shoes’ that the pas de deux really took off. Partnering in the way we see it today developed through the Romantic period of ballet with the male dancer offering support and simple lifts to his female partner to enhance the image of weightlessness and otherworldliness. This was then further developed in the 19th century by the French choreographer and ballet master Marius Petipa. Through the intervening years the pointe technique of female dancers reached new heights, led by a number of Italian-trained ballerinas such as Pierina Legnani and Carlotta Brianza who dazzled the audience with their bravura abilities. Petipa, who reigned over Russian ballet at this time, made full use of their ability and this created the template for the classical pas de deux as it is performed today in works like The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and the reimagining in 1895 of Swan Lake.

The 20th century brought with it the creative heft of Sergei Diaghilev and his cohort of creative geniuses, including Mikhail Fokine, Léonide Massine, Bronislava Nijinska and eventually George Balanchine, who reshaped the Imperial style of ballet that Petipa had created for the Russian court into the internationally acclaimed Ballets Russes. This company embodied the energy of the new century and fostered dynamic and creative frontiers for dance to explore. Its dancers were challenged to become far more interpretive and theatrical, creating a raft of stars such as Tamara Karsavina, Anna Pavlova and possibly the first male superstar – the tights-wearing rebel – Vaslav Nijinsky. In these performances, the pas de deux, while often still the centrepiece of the work, became more of a vehicle to explore emotion and further the story rather than just being used to showcase technical feats.

While the West was very much on the path to innovation, in post-revolution Russia, ballet leaders set about creating a new ‘Soviet’ take on ballet, as well as reworking the old Imperial pieces to reflect the new values of the ‘People’s Republic’. New works from this era involved some spectacular aerobatic lifts and death-defying partnering, maybe inspired by the launch of the Sputnik spacecraft or, more likely, drawing on the Russian artists’ superior circus and acrobatic training. This style of pas de deux shocked the West when the Bolshoi Ballet began touring in the 1960s, with the lifting of the Soviet ballet’s Cold War isolation. A new wave of choreographers in the West, such as John Cranko and Sir Kenneth MacMillan, began creating equally dramatic aerial pas de deux, making all the female dancers brace for altitude shock while the male dancers headed for the gym.

Through the mid-20th century, pas de deux continued to progress. Choreographers found ever-more exciting ways to explore a rapid development in technical range and to extend the flexibility of their dancers. Drawing on influences from contemporary dance, street dance and the more gymnastic abilities of the dancers, partnering became more elastic. The pas de deux evolved into not only a way to tell stories and portray relationships but also developed as a vehicle to explore abstract emotions. Today’s duets can involve a whole mix of gender pairings and explore dance for its own sake, highlighting the physical capabilities of the dancers melding as one.

The 21st-century dancer is able to draw on a hugely varied repertoire