Dancing in the Dark

What the Juilliard ballerinas are up to Thursday night

Every ballerina’s heart should run the same race. 

At least, this is what the kids swore by on the last Thursday of February, on the third floor of the Juilliard building. 

Hearts beating the same rhythm would mean the same amount of oxygen to muscles. They could reach the same speed of movement. 

So the kids took three heavy breaths backstage and one on-stage. 

And then Workshop #8 began. 

Haley Beck, a second-year Juilliard ballerina, was one of over forty students who danced in Workshop #8. 

It is not part of school curriculum, nor is it part of class time. Instead, students at the Juilliard dance program rehearse on top of a 9-5 scheduled dance training. 

They do so, Beck explained, because it is a night rarely seen in an otherwise traditional dance education. 

Students choreograph their own dances. They cast peers as dancers. Choices like musicality and acting elements are all up to student choreographers, too.  

“We’ve just been exploring and feeding off each other’s creative energy,” Beck said, “not putting too much stress on trying to create something cool, and just creating to create.”

She scrunched her eyes as she laughed. 

“Really, you can do whatever you want.” 

The nineteen-year-old ballerina is all crystalline blue acrylic nails and all “chill”. 

So is Workshop #8. 

The dance, Ribs, choreographed by student LaMonte Sadler, told the story of never wanting to grow old. 

It was set to the 2000s pop song Ribs, by Lorde. 

Dancers let their hair out of buns, loose against their backs. They moved in Chuck Taylor and Adidas Sambas and New Balance sneakers on stage, performing contemporary ballet. 

At the Rosemary & Meredith Wilson Theater, being able to “let loose” –– hair or otherwise –– is the stuff that puts these ballerinas amongst the best at what is already the most prestigious dance conservatory in the world. 

But Workshop #8 is also danced to perfection.

Not all students choose to participate precisely because of this dueling nature of the event. To dance in one production, students must stay in rehearsals that often stretch till 11 p.m., at least twice a week. 

Of those who partake, most ballerinas dance in two or three. 

Blu Furutate, 20, almost didn’t commit to Workshop #8. 

Furutate was crunched on time. 

“I went through like five different ideas before I finally landed on one,” Furutate said.

But she managed to choreograph and dance within her own piece. 

She wanted the production, “Shadowed by the Sheep Man,” to be paired with acting. Facial contortions and shocked eyes were an homage to Furutate’s prior theater experience as a child. 

“I definitely had to play around with everything,” she said. “Musicality is a choice.” Furutate settled on an almost robotic-sounding song. 

She was inspired by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s book Dance Dance Dance. 

“So kind of like stalker energy,” she added of the sheep man.

Throughout the night, dancers moved in calf-high sports socks and twisted into spins by way of their spines. Their plunging quadriceps were visible even through tights. 

All the dancers shyly cracked into smiles when they bowed. There was a certain humility in a theater with no raised stage.

At the end of the show, the moment of conveying life’s tragedy and drama with feet had passed. 

Now, the ballerinas were laughing about who was flirting with who backstage. Some of them were still in their sneakers from the Ribs piece. They almost looked like they came from a drink at the P.J. Clarke’s across the street. 

In the lobby, Beck was talking about her two weeks of vacation before Juilliard’s big Spring Dance, a much more traditional and yearly performance. 

But there was something about Workshop #8 still on her mind. 

As a group of dancers in leotards crowded the room, she said hey to a fellow ballerina from the year above. 

“It’s nice to get to dance with other people in other years,” Beck said. 

Next month, dances returned to the usual. For Beck, Workshop #8 was the exception. 

“Cause,” she said, drawing out the c-auuuuu-se, “we do kind of stay within our own class.”