ABT Soloist Sascha Radetsky has another essay in Vogue Online depicting his final season at ABT. This essay, his second, focuses on the dance community.
“It is a colorful community. We’ve got every shade, from the quietly competent to the garishly flamboyant. Cutthroats are rare, contrary to some beliefs, but characters are not: One choreographer used to drink Sapporo tallboys during midday rehearsals with ABT. (Even when blunted by a good buzz, his was the sharpest wit in the room.) Sometimes he would change clothes and strip naked in front of his male and female charges; it wasn’t pretty. An ex-ABT ballerina, while staging a ballet for the company, once followed a dancer into the bathroom to deliver notes through the stall door. She was was known to bark—literally, like a dog—during private rehearsals. At Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet Academy, I studied under a brilliant and fiery teacher. This tiny, stuttering old man flew into a rage if his students’ white socks failed to reach mid-calf level. Nor could he tolerate floppy hair. We wore hairnets to class—an athletic brigade of short order cooks.”
Sascha is scheduled to give his final performance this Thursday. He has been injured but language in the essay gives hope that he will perform: “When I take my final bow next week…”