the globe also demands detailed plan- ning. ABT’s wom-
en dancers have 10 pairs of pointe shoes allotted to them
per week. To be on the safe side, Bruce Horowitz brings
extra pairs in addition to each dancer’s allotment. For the
Japan tour, that came to around 1000 pairs. While about
half went via the ocean container, the rest went in the air
freight shipment. In addition, Horowitz must always have
pointe shoe supplies on hand. “I travel with plastic trunks
packed with ribbon, elastic, toe pads, jet glue and lambs
wool—I can’t be without that,” he explains.
Laundry presents another hurdle. Costumes and un-
der-garments often must be washed or dry cleaned be-
tween shows. Horowitz still remembers one performance
in Miami of Jerome Robbins’ Opus Jazz. “The dancers
change into white sweatshirts for the finale, and after the
first performance, they got really dirty,” he says. “We sent
them out to be dry cleaned between shows and they got
washed by mistake. Every one had shrunk. We had to find
enough white sweatshirts without a logo printed on them
by that evening’s perfor- mance—we managed.”
For the dancers, the excitement of seeing and dancing
in some of the world’s great cities still comes with a few
drawbacks. “The biggest challenge is sleep,” says corps
de ballet member Nicole Graniero. “We usually get a day
to adjust, but by performance time, you feel like you’re
dancing at 2 a.m. We all help ourselves to extra cups of
coffee. And some- how, the adrenaline kicks in and the
show goes on.”
Even when sets, costumes, crew, equipment and
dancers all arrive safely, the production can require some
adjustments. Whitehill notes that prop weapons can be
a problem for cus- toms. For the company’s Japan tour,
for instance, the pistol that fells Lescaut in the second
act went through, but the blanks that would be needed
to create the sound of firing creat- ed a problem. The lo-
cal presenter helped find a pistol with blanks, but it came
from the wrong period. So the dancer went on with the
correct pistol, and the substitute was fired off- stage at
the crucial moment.
In the end, the rewards of touring eclipse all the ef-
forts that go into pulling it off. “I love being in a different
culture,” says Graniero. “The way people act, eat, speak
and react to bal- let is fascinating.” And touring creates
indelible memories. Graniero singles out one time in Lon-
don when the company was performing Swan Lake at the
same time as The Royal Bal- let. “We did something like
10 or 12 shows in one week,” she remembers. “We didn’t
have time to see the city—we were determined to give
each show our all. At the end of the last performance,
Kevin McKenzie gave each female dancer in the company
a white rose in grat- itude. For me, tours aren’t just about
sight-seeing. It’s about bringing art to different parts of
the world and sharing the beauty of ballet.”
Hanna Rubin is editor-in-chief of Pointe Magazine.
Reprinted by permission of PLAYBILL magazine.
24 |
AUDITORIUM THEATRE 2014-2015
| OCTOBER 3 - OCTOBER 29
Nicole Graniero warms up backstage before a performance of Manon in
Otsu, Japan. Photo: Courtesy Japan Arts.
ON THE ROAD cont’d
Crew installs stage floor in Biwako Hall, Otsu, Japan.
Photo: Courtesy Japan Arts.
