Spring season has been a hectic time for dancers. Jenifer Golden returned to dance Brenda Way’s choreography at ODC/SF. At San Francisco Ballet, Joanna Berman coached Kristin Long for hours for her debut in “Don Quixote” as Dana Genshaft rehearsed in the corps and Katita Waldo starred as Medea. Meanwhile, at Ballet San Jose, Karen Gabay launched herself into the impish role of the Cowgirl in “Rodeo.” The common thread? Every one of these dancers is a mother.
From principals to corps, modern dance to ballet, it seems as though never before have we seen so many mothers dancing onstage.
Conventional wisdom would have us believe that if a woman has a child, more likely than not, she’ll have to give up her career. But as with other professions, in the demanding and body-centered world of dance more and more women are finally discovering that they have a choice instead of an ultimatum.
Indeed, it might come as a surprise to find out that, according to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, 72% of all mothers in America are working mothers. Interestingly, eight out of the eleven dancers -- or 73% -- interviewed here returned to dancing after having children, while three retired to devote more time to their children, although they continue to work in the dance world.
A dancer’s career can be all too brief. Most begin working by 18 years old and retire by the age of 45, with the most important years almost exactly overlapping the child-bearing years. And dance can be a highly ambitious and time-consuming profession that leaves one with little energy or time for anything else.
“I retired so that I could start a family, because I knew that I just wasn’t going to be able to be the type of person that could dance once I had a baby,” says Corinne Jonas, who danced with Houston Ballet and Walnut Creek’s Diablo Ballet and now directs Berkeley Ballet Theater. “Being a dancer you have to just really in a way completely center in on yourself. Taking care of your body, getting ready to go out on stage, everything needs to be so focused, and I just knew that as a new mom, I wouldn’t feel that I was going to be able to handle that.”
It’s a concern that many professional women face, not just in the dance world. How to even visualize raising a young family and holding down a job?
“Having a child while I was dancing and then coming back to dancing wasn’t so much in my reality,” says Joanna Berman, who retired from San Francisco Ballet last year to start her family, “It just wasn’t how I pictured it for myself. Although if I had been a whole lot younger when I decided to start trying to have a family, then maybe my decision would have been different.”
However, four women at San Francisco Ballet saw the possibility of a different decision. Indeed, SFB is unusual among American ballet companies in the number of mothers in their ranks. Just recently, Tina’s sister, Sherri LeBlanc, announced that she is expecting a child this summer.
All of the mothers agree that Helgi Tomasson, the Artistic Director of SFB, has been supportive, although he shrugs off the question of whether his company has a consciously child-friendly approach.
“I feel that’s life. It brings a lot of joy to them and their families,” he says. “Are we different from other companies? I have never really thought about it very much. This is what happens here and how I deal with it and that’s it.”
For ODC, with three mothers -- Brenda Way, KT Nelson, and Kimi Okada -- at the artistic helm, children were definitely always part of the company’s plans.
“We could have gone to New York, but we wanted to settle down in a town and put down roots,” Way notes. “We said at the very beginning, we wanted to have enough months home so that we could raise kids and have a life.”
The fact that the ten-member ODC is smaller means that a person out on maternity leave for months will have an enormous impact, and probably someone would have to be hired in her place. But Way is adamant that if a dancer wanted to return after having a child they would find a way to work it out.
“We would never just say to someone, ‘Well, bye!’ These dancers have all of our works in their bodies, they are our history. So we have everything at stake in keeping them involved and encouraging them.”
“I knew that I would always continue dancing,” says Golden, who danced for two years with ODC, retiring at 38. “If I was going to dance full-time was going to be another story.”
Uncontrollable factors often drive the decision of whether to continue dancing while starting a family. Evelyn Cisneros, a long-time prima ballerina at San Francisco Ballet, planned to have a child with her husband, SFB principal Stephen Legate, while she was still with the company but ran into difficulty. After seeing specialists, she was told that there was nothing physically wrong, but because of her low body fat and the strenuous physical activity conceiving was going to be harder.
“They told me to eat more and gain some weight,” she recalls, “So I did. But it still wasn’t working, and here I was feeling fat and not getting pregnant either.”
Cisneros decided that she would focus on one last great season of dancing, retire and then concentrate on having a baby. Eventually, after struggling for a year, Cisneros and Legate had the chance to adopt their son, Ethan, and now she couldn’t be happier that she stopped dancing to have time for her family.
“I don’t think I could have managed it,” she says of balancing career and child, “I just don’t see how. You think you know how it’s going to be…I mean I had nephews, but it’s so different once you have your own.”
For Tina LeBlanc, who had her second baby only last month, having a family and a full career at the same time just made sense.
“From the time I was little I knew I wanted a family,” she says, “But I didn’t want to wait until my career was over and be forty trying to start a family, and I didn’t want to cut my career short. So the logical thing was to combine the two. I figured, other people did it in other professions. Why couldn’t I?”
Long, however, laughingly recalls that for her, the choice came about as a result of two accidents.
“It wasn’t something that was planned,” she says, “I had broken my foot and so I went to New York to spend time with my fiancé during the holidays and got pregnant. Boom.
“All along I had thought ‘I’m definitely not going to have children until I stop dancing.’ I was certain of that because I tend to get so into my work that I couldn’t even imagine having the energy with a child. However, the situation came up and we really wanted to have the baby, and I was nursing a broken foot anyway, so I thought maybe it’s a good time.”
Katita Waldo, who was considering her own options at the time, kept an eye on LeBlanc and Long. Like Long, she had always assumed that she’d wait until she stopped dancing to have children.
“I thought, ‘Well, let’s see what happens to them,’ she recalls, “And then Tina did it and came back. And Kristin came back. And I thought, ‘Well, okay, it’s possible.’”
Le Blanc, Long and Waldo may not have known it, but they were fast becoming role models.
“To see three fantastically accomplished principal women with children is a new thing.” says Berman, “These women proved something. They can have their families and they can come back to dancing better than ever, frankly. And I think that was worth it more than anything, just showing that it’s possible, showing how beautifully they’re doing it.”
“It definitely had an influence on me when I was making my decision,” says Genshaft, who returned to her place in the corps a month after giving birth to her daughter Nadia. “ Right in front of my face there were three beautiful ballerinas, so talented, so strong, so amazing, and they all have babies. They seemed to be really happy and it didn’t hurt their careers.”
“I said to myself, ‘If I have this baby, will I be able to continue with what’s important for me?’ Will I be able to pursue my career, which is what I’ve worked for my whole life? Will I be able to go to college? Will I be able to follow my own ambitions? And if the baby’s going to get in the way of that, then she’s the one who will suffer in the end. I really had to think about that. In the end, I decided I could do this. It was going to take a lot of work. Instead of having two rehearsals a day and being done and just going out to dinner with my friends or to the mall, or to the movies, like all the other girls do, I’ll come home and be with my child. But I thought, ‘Yeah, I could definitely do that.’”
Although San Francisco Ballet offers four months of maternity leave under their contract -- a welcome change from previous years when a dancer was likely to lose her place in a ballet company if she took time off to have a child – several of the women danced well into their pregnancy and returned within weeks of having the baby.
LeBlanc continued taking class until two days before her first son, Marinko, was born. Waldo performed full out all the way into her fourth month, and then luckily had the chance to do roles that didn’t require too much dancing, including the mother in “Giselle,” ironically enough.
“It sounds like I’m insane, but I actually came in a week after James was born,” she confides.
Tina LeBlanc was anxious to get back to the stage as well.
“I kind of pushed it to come back with my first, because I knew that the first thing I would be doing when I got back would be the gala in the opera house and they always tend to give me something difficult to dance,” LeBlanc laughs, “I thought that was a lot of pressure for not having been on stage for almost a year. So I decided to try for ‘Nutcracker.’ I had my son on Sept. 30, and then I started back sometime around Thanksgiving and actually did about six shows”
Unsurprisingly, both Waldo and LeBlanc had little trouble getting back in shape, which they attribute to the rigorous schedule and their pre-pregnancy shape.
“Between the breastfeeding and the exercising,” says Waldo, “It was hard to keep the weight on.”
But while many of the new mothers were happy to have their bodies back, there was still a
“As much as it was hard to not have the body I was used to, it was so incredibly special to be pregnant,” Jonas recalls. “As a dancer I think I sensed everything. I felt all the changes, and I felt cognizant of how much physically was going on inside of me and there’s a part of me that misses that.”
Golden agrees that she was content to just enjoy some time with her new baby and wait to get back into class.
“I knew then at some point that’s going to be gone,” she remembers, “I’ve been taking class for many years. Class is always going to be there.”
Perhaps the intense discipline and focus that they needed to become dancers allows some of the mothers to juggle what might seem like a superhuman schedule.
Karen Gabay, of Ballet San Jose, for instance, not only danced in the company’s season a few months after her daughter was born, but also choreographed a work for Ohio Ballet and while simultaneously running her own company, Pointe of Departure.
“I think it’s a mind-over-matter thing,” she observes philosophically, “You just go with it day by day.”
20-year old Genshaft, who is working toward her college degree while dancing with San Francisco Ballet agrees.
“It takes a lot of discipline,” she comments, “In my case, I had to wake up extra early so I could do floor barre, and then I had to pump milk, enough for the baby to last till lunch time. After class I would come home and feed again, then run off to rehearsal. And then have a rehearsal or two.”
It is striking too, that for many of the dancers, fathers have taken on a greater, sometimes primary role in their children’s lives.
“Michael is a gem,” says Long, whose husband became the stay-at-home mom allowing her to devote more time to her dancing. “He’s just incredible with Kai. I’m in a really lucky situation.”
Genshaft, who has a nanny come in a few times a week to help out notes, “It takes three people to raise a child. I’m convinced of that, even if the mother does stay at home. The husband has to be an active partner, in all the chores, and with all the baby’s needs.”
For all of the dancers who have chosen to return to the stage, motherhood has almost certainly changed them as artists.
“I’m still the same me,” says Golden, “But I always bring my life experiences to my dance, and this is a major change in my life. Seeing this new life and energy come to be and grow, I feel like that spirit is alive in me and is going to come out in my dancing.”
Waldo is equally enthusiastic.
“For me personally I think that the best thing that ever happened to my career was having my son,” she says. “He’s made me love what I do so much more. This is something I’ve wanted to do since I was a child and I get to share this with him. He’s my inspiration. He’s my reminder that it isn’t life and death, it’s wonderful and enjoyable. I can’t think of a better thing.”
Way sees motherhood in an even broader context.
“I think having children connects you to the world,” she asserts, “It gives you perspective so that you can come back fresh to the struggle. I think that the paradigm of the artist living in magnificent isolation is really over. That we are in the vanguard of modern dance as part of the culture, not a sidebar, and I think that families are why.”
Like any one-year old, Golden’s son Aaron is like an active, curious monkey, but when his mom dances in a rehearsal, he quiets down in his dad’s arms to watch her, enraptured by the movement.
Many of the mothers note that having their child be involved in their theatrical life has been on of the greatest pleasures.
“I actually think that being a dancer is one of the easiest professions to have a child in. There’s a lot of flexibility. One of the great things about it is that you educate them about how to behave in the theater from the day they arrive on the scene. And I think a lot of times people don’t give children credit for what they can and cannot do.”
Labels: ballet, Ballet_San_Jose, Contra_Costa_Times, features, modern, ODC-SF, profiles, San_Francisco_Ballet
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