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Katita Waldo
San Francisco Ballet
Interviewed by Dale Brauner
published in Ballet Alert! (No. 28) 2002
copyright © 2003 Dale BraunerKatita Waldo and Vanessa Zahorian were often cast together during the San Francisco Ballet’s recent visit to New York’s City Center. They appeared in the William Forsythe’s The Vertiginous thrill of Exactitude and the pas de trois from Natalia Makarova’s staging of Paquita. Both works showed off their quick feet, sure technique and understanding of classicism.
Yet while the two principal dancers have things in common, they are in many ways very different. Waldo is the veteran. She is at once noticeable by her red hair and pale skin, but also by her generous performing spirit. The American born in Madrid, Spain shares her love of dancing with her fellow performers and the audience. She shows off a long line that an be spiky in the Stravinsky ballets by Balanchine and Jerome Robbins or centered in more standard words.
The brunette Zahorian is petite and shining—a perfect Aurora. At 23, she is just beginning her career. She studied at the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet and was the first recipient of a scholarship to study at the Vaganova Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1990. The Allentown, Pennsylvania native also won the Erik Bruhn Prize in 1999 before rising swiftly up the ranks at San Francisco.
Both dancers expect to perform in SFB’s new production of Don Quixote—Waldo as Mercedes and Zahorian as Kitri. Waldo also will dance Emilia in Lars Lubovitch’s Othello when it is broadcast on PBS in 2003.
*****
You have performed roles of such variety. Is that by design or is it a product of dancing with the San Francisco Ballet?
It’s the company. I’ve been really lucky that way. It’s something I’m extremely grateful for. I’ve been with the company for about 17 years now and I considered going somewhere else at some point, because I’ve been here for so long, and the thing that really drew me back was the variety. Helgi [Tomasson, the company director] likes to have such a wide range of styles.
It’s a constant challenge. Chor-eographers will come in and pick dancers for their pieces and I’ve been lucky that I’ve been picked for a lot of different things. Helgi lets me do a lot of different things.
Did you start doing one segment of the rep, say modern, and then want to branch out?
I didn’t. I joined the company—I was an apprentice—and I was in the corps of Swan Lake. Then I did Peter Martins’ Calcium Light Night, so that is variety right there. I’ve sort of always done both. Eventually, I did do Odette-Odile in Swan Lake. And I did ask to do that. I wasn’t chosen initially for that. I really wanted to do it, so I talked to Helgi about that. He decided to give me an opportunity. I’ve done In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated and a lot of Balanchine, and then Helgi picked me for Sleeping Beauty, which was my first full-length. So I didn’t start in one, I did all of them at once.
Talk about doing Aurora in Sleeping Beauty.
I enjoyed a lot of it. [Laughing] I can’t say I loved all of it, because it was my first full-length ballet and I was very stressed. I’d like to do it again now that I’ve been around a while and I’ve been in a lot of different ballets and a lot of full-lengths to see how I feel now. I feel a lot more confident in my technique. It isn’t my favorite full-length.
Were you more comfortable with Swan Lake?
Yes. It was more fluid. Also the character for me was a little easier to grasp. In Sleeping Beauty, you have a whole three-act ballet where you’re pretty much a little girl, or a young woman. And in Swan Lake, you have a lot more emotion to grasp on to in the character of Odette and Odile. I love character ballets; I love acting so I found it a lot easier getting into the role, which helped me to not really think about anything but who I was. That helps with nerves and preparation.
When you do character ballets, do you do a lot of research?
It depends on the ballet. For Othello I did research the play, but I also knew Lar (Lubovitch) had his own vision of how he wanted it interpreted, so I wanted to be true to that. He had some literature that he presented to us that I read and I tried to sort of stuck to that because I wanted to do his vision and not anybody else’s.
For Swan Lake, everybody knows the story. I had seen old ballets and other versions. But most important for me I watched the people around me at the time. Because I wanted to do the vision that was presented then, so I wanted to be true to that time and that place.
Your parents [Graham and Kathy Waldo] are Americans, but you were born in Spain?
They were kind of rebellious spirits at the time and they met at university, and my dad being parti-cularly rebellious said, “I’m going to Europe, do you want to come along?” And my mom said, “OK.” So they went off to Europe and they tooled around for a while. Eventually they got married and they settled in Mad-rid. They loved it there. They ended up there for 27 years because they just loved it so much.
Then you moved to Ithaca, New York.
My mom wanted to try to go back and finish her degree. She had been at Cornell. So we went back there, plus my grandfather was ailing. Franco had just past away, things weren’t certain economically, so they thought it was a good time to come back. And also I was 11 years old at that time and it was pretty obvious I was getting serious about dance [Waldo studied at Escuela Interna-cional de Danza Classica in Madrid]. Dance was a lot bigger in America than it was in Spain. They thought maybe it was a good time all around, especially if I wanted to pursue this that we come back. You might think Ithaca is a strange place (to move to), but we actually found one of the best schools [Ithaca Ballet Guild] we’ve ever come across.
You later went to North Carolina School of the Arts.
Yes, I was there for three years. I worked with Melissa Hayden, Duncan Noble, Marina Eglevsky and Mimi Paul.
What did you gain in North Carolina?
A husband! [Waldo met her husband Marshall Crutcher, a musician, at the school] It was interesting. Ithaca was exceptional training. I haven’t surpassed it. There wasn’t a particular style, even though Cindy Reid had danced with ABT and she had come back to Ithaca. It was very correct, organic, physically sensible. In that that sense it was sort of Russian school. I veered away from it for many years but I’m very grateful to remember my early training in these few years because it’s been my salvation.
I’m grateful for it, too, because doing so many different ballets in different styles, I really do think having a pure basic idea of how to use your body in ballet helps you achieve all the different styles.
What I got from North Carolina that was different, it was more of the SAB [School of American Ballet] style.
Did you go immediately to San Francisco?
My husband was from San Francisco. And I had a big decision about what I was going to do. Did I go to New York, which was what I always intended to do, or go to San Francisco. At that time, I hadn’t really heard much about. I decided to follow my heart. I auditioned for the school in Washington D.C. It hadn’t occurred to me to audition for the company. They told me at the audition to go, next week, and audition in New York for the company. And I did. There were about six of us that were left over and Helgi told me that at the time they didn’t have the space. He said he would call us and let us know if anything opened up. Sure enough, I few months later he called and said he didn’t have anything but he wanted me to come out and go into the school. I was at the school for about a year and a half. And I also had great training there with Larisa Skylanskaya, Anatole Vilzak and Irina Jacobson.
What are some of your favorite roles?
It’s hard to say. Odette-Odile, definitely. That was the ballet that actually made me want to dance in the first place. And also like In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated. I learned the big pas de deux and did the second principal. And recently I got a chance to do the main part. I can say that I love all of that ballet. I also like Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude. I’ve been doing it for five years.
The whole idea of Vertiginous is to take classical technique and take it at the speed of light and give it a little twist. It’s a variation of classical technique. So that was a huge challenge.
Another favorite part is in Othello. I’ve done Desdemona and Emelia. Boy, I couldn’t tell you which one I like better. I love them both.
You do a lot of the so-called black and white Balanchine, as in the second pas de trois in Agon and the second pas de deux in Stravinsky Violin Concerto. They are both Balanchine, Stravinsky and dressed in practice clothes. Even though they’re different parts to different music, how do you make them look differently?
First thing is, we don’t do them at the same time, which helps. The pas de deux and the pas de trois in Agon is crisp, it’s a little more flamboyant. You definitely project to the audience a lot. It’s more of a showoff piece. And in the Violin Concerto, the pas de deux that I do is more internal. It’s more about the movement. The music is different and the coaching. You work with different people and they bring different things to it.
Who coached you in those roles?
For Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Kay Mazzo came in for a little while. She helped with that. And Karin von Aroldingen also helped. And Pat Neary did Agon.
Neary is known for her high-energy rehearsals.
She’s great. I love her. The first time I did the pas de trois I was very nervous. I was first cast in the pas de trois and second cast in the pas de deux. I was younger then and Pat Neary... she’s a big presence. And I got pretty nervous doing the video-taping. She was blatant with her corrections and she doesn’t skimp. When I finished my solo, she just said, “Well, you know...” Having worked with Melissa Hayden, she reminded me a lot of Melissa Hayden. I liked her a lot. I also didn’t know at the time that that pas de trois was made on Melissa Hayden. The way [Neary] says things; it always brings a smile to my face. Her energy and enthusiasm.
The company recently added Jewels to its repertoire. You did Emeralds [the second pas de deux] which is considered a very hard section to pull off nowadays. Can you talk about working on that role?
It was hard. The solo that I do is a lot easier. I’m by myself and the music is so beautiful and lyrical. But the pas de deux is very hard because it’s all walking on pointe and changing direction. And that can be a little tricky. It’s hard to be in control. It’s a challenge to match the mood of the music.
You recently performed with a group from your company in Russia. What was that like?
It was great. We did a gala with the Bolshoi. We did Vertiginous. I think they liked it. It is hard to say. We did an evening at St. Petersburg and at Tbilsi, Georgia. The enthu-siasm of the Georgian people was just overwhelming. They are the greatest people, not just in the audi-ence, but around the theatre. I just found it was a great place to be. They have a legacy of a lot of turbu-lence, yet the people are indomitable.
We did a whole evening. We did Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, a piece by Val Caniparoli, Vertiginous Thrill and one of the pas de deux from Nacho Duato’s Without Words, and Balanchine’s Tarantella.
Who in the company do you admire or inspires you?
I’ve been in the company a long time and I’ve been inspired by many of the principals around me. This is such a loving company. It hasn’t changed, that aspect. For me, I feel close to everyone in the company - soloists, corps, and principals. I feel this is my family and friends from top to bottom. It’s a family and I love that. And the variety of our company, we don’t all look alike, from Tina LeBlanc to Muriel Maffre. There are such different approaches, such different looks. Yet they are such incredible dancers, such as Lorena Feijoo, Julie Diana, all of them.
My favorite dancers of all time, and I’m sure there are many, but Natasha Makarova. Just watching that woman now...
Makarova set Paquita on the company. What was it like working with her?
It was incredible. It’s extremely hard work. I’ve described it as totally depressing and totally inspiring at the same time. She sees so much that you get overwhelming information and you learn from it. Just watching her. No one can dream of moving like that, but we try.
Joanna Berman. She’s one of my top favorite dancers. I’ve never seen a body move as fluidly. Ahh...she’s so beautiful. And Cindy Reid at Ithaca Ballet. I’ve never seen a port de bras like that.
Where does that family attitude of the company come from? You can see it from the audience. Is that an aspect of touring or is someone at the company?
Obviously the company reflects the director. Helgi’s created a family atmosphere. I think it was that way when he took over the company, with the dancers at the company at the time. That’s they way they were. And it was a family environment with Berman and Evelyn Cisneros. With them staying with the company for as long as they did, it just fostered that type of environment. And it taught the younger people like myself how to not lose your ego by being nice to the people around you. Maybe it’s just San Francisco.
Many companies now are being criticized about pushing aside their older dancers.
That’s a tough one. I’m reaching an age where I have to look down the line, instead of ten years ahead of me. I have a finite amount [of time]. It is hard. You have to bring in a new generation because if you don’t and the older generation goes, then what does you have. You have to bring in a younger generation. And it’s tricky. Some people don’t want to let go. I don’t want to let go. I know that I don’t. It’s hard for a director to know what to do because you bring in a new ballet or resurrect a ballet and you have a principal that did a part, but you have three new people that would be good for the part. What do you do? It’s hard a call. It is tricky.
I think that dancers never want to let go, dancers never want to accept when it is time for them to step down. I’ve made it very clear to my director, and to my ballet masters and mistresses, that if I lose it I want to know. I don’t want to go out there and look bad. I don’t want to be given parts just because I did them in the past. I want to be given the parts I did because I did good in them. And if I don’t, I want to know it. I might have a hard time accepting it. Or maybe I’ll learn something from it and I’ll be able to turn back the tide by paying attention to something that I can work on. It’s hard to be a realist when you’re a dancer because you don’t want to let it go.
I do think there are some directors that don’t handle it very well. And there are some that do. It’s a personal call because you can’t please everybody.