{"id":1497,"date":"2011-02-14T19:42:48","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T00:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/?p=1497"},"modified":"2011-02-14T21:23:39","modified_gmt":"2011-02-15T02:23:39","slug":"dancers-chat-with-zachary-catazaro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/dancers-chat-with-zachary-catazaro.htm","title":{"rendered":"Dancers Chat with Zachary Catazaro"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Zachary<\/a><\/p>\n

New York City Ballet
\nDancers Chat with Zachary Catazaro
\nJanuary 28, 2011<\/p>\n

Photo by Paul Kolnik<\/p>\n

On selected Friday evenings during New York City Ballet’s<\/a> season, they offer an event called Dancers Chat about an hour and a half before curtain.\u00a0 Across the street from Lincoln Center, in a studio in the School of American Ballet (SAB – the official school of New York City Ballet), there are about one hundred chairs set up for guests who reserve seats.\u00a0 A moderator interviews one of the company’s dancers and opens the floor to questions from the audience.\u00a0 This was my first visit to a Dancers Chat and it turned out to be a wonderful experience that I highly recommend.<\/p>\n

On this Friday evening, we met Zachary Catazaro<\/a>, who dances in the corps.\u00a0 Throughout the informal 45 minute discussion, he was friendly and very forthcoming.\u00a0 The audience seemed very friendly too, and even joined in sharing anecdotes about performances that they’d seen while firing questions at him.<\/p>\n

One of the highlights of the chat came when he shared his reflections on the experience of playing the Cavalier in a performance of The Nutcracker last year, with Rebecca Krohn as his Sugar Plum Fairy.\u00a0 He had one month to prepare for the role.\u00a0 He mentioned that he wanted to be in fighting shape because the costume has white tights.\u00a0 He said that throughout all the years that he’d watched the role of the Cavalier being performed, he’d always felt that it was a role he’d love to dance.\u00a0 But the reality of it was that the role is very hard.\u00a0 Once the Cavalier comes out, he doesn’t leave the stage.\u00a0 The dancers who had experience with this role advised him about just how to expend his energy.<\/p>\n

Throughout the evening, the subject of the economical use of a dancer’s energy came up again and again.\u00a0 The host quoted Margot Fonteyn as saying that the hardest thing in dancing a ballet was knowing how to pace oneself and knowing when to breathe.\u00a0 I would have thought that the hardest thing would be remembering all that choreography, but he said that it’s relatively easy to remember.<\/p>\n

He mentioned that years ago, the Second Act soloists in the Nutcracker also had to play\u00a0 Parents in the Party Scene and Mice in the Battle Scene and still have the stamina and focus left to perform their featured roles in the Second Act.\u00a0 It’s no longer done that way.<\/p>\n

It was heartwarming to hear him say that on the night that he danced the Cavalier, the other dancers cheered him from the wings.\u00a0 He kept saying how supportive the company members are of one another even though they are always engaged in \u2018friendly competition’.\u00a0 No barracudas in the company, regardless of what Hollywood films have to say on the subject.<\/p>\n

He also said, though I’m not sure if he was joking, that the dancer who is in the role of Mother Ginger receives hazard pay for having to get up on stilts.<\/p>\n

When asked about his favorite ballets, he listed Cortege Hongrois and Opus Jazz.\u00a0 He’s currently rehearsing Cortege, as well as Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake with Ana Sophia Scheller.\u00a0 He said he also hopes to dance the role of the Brown Boy in Dances At A Gathering.<\/p>\n

He attended Public School, finishing High School in two years time so that he’d be able to devote himself full time to his ballet training when he joined SAB at the age of 16.\u00a0 He talked about some of the dancers who are taking college courses.\u00a0 Once he went into detail of the exhausting schedule that a ballet dancer must maintain, it’s absolutely amazing to me that any dancer could take on college courses on top of all that.\u00a0 He mentioned that some of them get together and study on Sunday evening, because that and Monday is the only time they have off.<\/p>\n

About Alexei Ratmansky, he said that he loved working with him.\u00a0 He was very nice, very particular, and that he knows exactly what he wants, but he also listens carefully to the dancers.\u00a0 He is steeped in the history of Russian ballet.<\/p>\n

Regarding partnering, he said that a dancer has to train in partnering from a young age.\u00a0 The type of build that a dancer has can affect his partnering skills.\u00a0 Short slender men are usually not as good at partnering, but he mentioned that Joaquin De Luz was the exception to this generalization.<\/p>\n

He told us that Mr. B (George Balanchine) wanted “fingertip partnering”.\u00a0 As Mr. B taught it, the man does not help the woman spin in turns.\u00a0 He pointed out that at NYCB, partners do not hold hands in the “handshaking” position as the woman performs a promenade; instead the woman lays her hand on top of her partner’s and uses it for balance, the way she’d use the barre.\u00a0 When he said it, I could remember so many famous photos in which I’d seen the hands placed in that position.\u00a0 It’s so interesting to have these little details pointed out.\u00a0 It makes the ballet even that much more compelling to me.\u00a0 He also said that Peter Martins teaches the men to use their thumbs against the ballerina’s back to help her stay on her legs.<\/p>\n

Our host recommended Merrill Ashley’s book Dancing for Balanchine, saying that Ashley is one of the best when it came to explaining exactly what Mr. B wanted from the dancers.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m really grateful to New York City Ballet for offering this program.\u00a0 It goes a very long way toward enriching the audience\u2019s experience at the theater.\u00a0 I’d also like to send reverence<\/em> to the moderator — I think that her name is Joan Quintano — who kept the conversation moving so easily that the time just flew by.<\/p>\n

Related Reading:<\/p>\n

Ballerinas Take a New Approach: Talking<\/a><\/p>\n

Photos of Zachary Catazaro<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York City Ballet Dancers Chat with Zachary Catazaro January 28, 2011 Photo by Paul Kolnik On selected Friday evenings during New York City Ballet’s season, they offer an event called Dancers Chat about an hour and a half before … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,20],"tags":[146,80,145],"class_list":["post-1497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance","category-karen","tag-dancers-chat","tag-new-york-city-ballet","tag-zachary-catazaro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1497"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1527,"href":"https:\/\/irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497\/revisions\/1527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irasperipheralvisions.com\/WetPaint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}