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New York Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
This Young Virtuoso Now Has the X Factor: Nobility
When Roman Mejia found out he would be dancing 'Apollo,' the oldest work in New York City Ballet's repertory, he knew where to turn for god guidance. A dancer who does his homework — he is, he says, 'such a bunhead' — Mejia had a plan, or a man, in mind: Jacques d'Amboise, a family friend and an athletic, unruly Apollo from the 1950s and '60s whose performances he studied on video, would lead the way. 'His approach was just so raw,' Mejia said after a run-through of the ballet in advance of his debut. 'Essentially at the beginning of the ballet, he is just learning how to become a god. And these muses are here to teach him how to progress and how to get there. So you really see from the beginning that he's almost weak on his feet, trying to figure out things — some things work, some things don't. He gets frustrated.' The fervor of youth? Mejia, 25, has always had that down. But over the last couple of seasons, he has begun to tap into a more understated refinement, which was indelibly clear in his first 'Apollo,' on Tuesday night at Lincoln Center. Mejia went from an unfinished boy to a refined god with the help of his three muses (Unity Phelan, Dominika Afanasenkov and Ashley Hod). He was raw, yes, but also guileless. This was a sincere, musical Apollo — full of heat and strength, but also youthful and unaffected, impulsive and curious. Mejia's control was in the way that he linked the steps with emotions, giving both a logic, a fluidity. Mejia may have muscles — he is, as they say, ripped — but he doesn't muscle his way through steps. Mejia is an airborne dancer whose exuberance shines in joyful Balanchine ballets like 'Stars and Stripes,' 'Rubies' and 'Western Symphony.' But his repertoire, especially in recent seasons, has expanded to roles that require him to be more subtle, more sophisticated. His bravura side is still firmly in place, yet it is buoyed now by a growing sophistication. Mejia, who grew up in Fort Worth, saw 'Apollo' for the first time when he was 3. It might seem unusual that such a young child would fall for such an dramatic yet unadorned Balanchine ballet with music by Stravinsky, but there he was, a toddler, performing the choreography at home. 'My dad has stories of me going around the house just like this,' Mejia said, illustrating a striking moment from the ballet in which Apollo wraps an arm behind his back, the other raised, and opens and closes his hands like blinkers. Both of his parents were dancers — Maria Terezia Balogh and Paul Mejia, a former member of City Ballet who had staged 'Apollo' in Texas. 'At that age,' his father said, 'he would go to the ballet whenever we had a performance, and what was always amazing, whether it was 'Apollo' or whatever he saw, the next day he could duplicate it.' 'It was just uncanny,' he added. Roman was especially proud, Paul Mejia said, 'of the fact that he could do the hand behind the back and in front flashing. He thought that was a neat thing.' While on a visit to the zoo, the young Roman approached another little boy with his new skill. 'He said, 'Look, look — look at this!'' Paul said. 'And he did Apollo, and the little boy started to scream and cry. He thought he was a nut or something.' Mejia started training at 3. 'I was just so inspired by the whole idea of moving to music and taking up space,' he said. When Mejia was 9 or 10, he lost interest in ballet and took a couple of years off, playing the piano and studying taekwondo. (He excelled at that, too.) A couple years later, while in middle school at the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts, he learned that a nearby studio needed boys for 'The Nutcracker.' 'I wasn't too crazy about dance, but I was doing it at school so I thought why not?' Mejia said. 'And that's when I really fell back in love with it again. I think it's just the aspect of performing. I really love performing.' He began training at an academy in Coppell, Texas, more than an hour away. 'I'd go with him, and he'd do his class,' Paul said. 'I didn't watch it, nothing. I wanted to stay away from the whole thing. We saw that he was not only serious, but he had a gift.' His parents decided to open a studio themselves. At 13, Roman started training at the Mejia Ballet Academy where he focused on technique and on learning variations, classical and from the Balanchine repertory. At 14, he came to New York for one of two summer sessions at the School of American Ballet, the academy that feeds into City Ballet. Before he started, he learned about his father's history at the company — and that Paul had married Suzanne Farrell, the dancer Balanchine was most enamored with. The marriage led to drama: Paul and Farrell left the company and danced in Europe. But while Farrell eventually made her way back to City Ballet, Paul did not. 'My sister always said, 'Oh, you know, our father was married to Suzanne Farrell,'' Mejia said. 'And I was like: 'No he wasn't. That's crazy.' And she's like, 'Oh yeah, it was all over the internet.'' (A family friend confirmed it at the dinner table one night. 'My sister was, like, 'I told you so,'' he said.) Once Mejia was serious about studying at the School of American Ballet, his father 'sat down with me and kind of gave me the rundown of everything,' he said. There is more family history at the school: Both of his parents studied there along with his paternal grandmother, Romana Kryzanowska, a protégé of Joseph Pilates. Mejia is named after her father, the Detroit artist Roman Kryzanowska. D'Amboise was the reason Mejia ended up at City Ballet. At one point Mejia found himself with an offer to join Boston Ballet or to continue at the school. D'Amboise voted for New York. In 2017, Mejia joined the corps de ballet and was promoted to soloist in 2021. Two years later he became a principal dancer. In the fall of 2023, he performed his first lead in a full-length ballet as a principal: Franz, the male lead in 'Coppélia.' Franz is a comic role with virtuosic elements — Mejia trademarks — but what was most revealing about his performance was the warmth and assurance with which he held the stage, especially in the classical third act. Last winter, performing opposite Tiler Peck — his fiancée — he made his debut as Siegfried in 'Swan Lake' and, again, showed a more nuanced side of his dancing, more grounded and understated. He showed that he could be a prince. For Siegfried, Mejia worked with Gonzalo Garcia, a former principal who is now a repertory director at City Ballet, and Isabelle Guérin, a former Paris Opera Ballet étoile. She showed him, he said, that 'I don't have to always punch things to make them effective.' Garcia, who works frequently with Mejia, was proud of his Siegfried. 'I think becoming that kind of dancer, a noble dancer, can take sometimes a few tries,' he said. 'But from the moment we started until he did his first shows, I was blown away. He understood it.' It has become increasingly apparent that, however thrilling, Mejia has more to offer than virtuosity. This season, he makes his debut in Jerome Robbins's elegant, folk-infused 'A Suite of Dances,' created for Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1994; later he'll take on Balanchine's 'Divertimento from 'Le Baiser de la Fée.'' 'It's fiendishly hard,' he said of 'Baiser.' 'I didn't realize. And it's not bravura at all. That solo is long.' But Mejia, Garcia said, 'never whines' and 'never seems upset, which is kind of amazing.' Mejia got only one crack at 'Apollo' this time around. That was fine. When he describes himself as feeling 'over the moon' — a recurrent Mejia line — he means it. 'I'm ready to be pushed in this new way of not just nuanced work, but telling a story,' he said. 'Apollo is bravura, but a lot of it is so subtle and it's not so in your face. I'm starting to figure out where to play with things now.' When the curtain went up on 'Apollo,' his nerves kicked in, but the music calmed him down. 'I felt so comfortable and at home,' he said. 'It was quite something to perform, and I just feel really lucky that I was able to experience that at this point. Obviously, I feel like here's still more to do and more to grow in it. But in the moment it just felt so right.'
New York Times
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
After 25 Years of Triumphs and Troubles, a Ballerina Bids Farewell
Ashley Bouder has grit, and that's good. Since the pandemic, this New York City Ballet principal has been dealing with a lot: injuries, weight issues and sporadic performance opportunities. They have fueled one another. There was the time she tore her plantar fascia onstage during a performance of 'Western Symphony.' She made a full recovery, but it took a while. There was weight that wouldn't come off, which resulted in infrequent casting and just a smattering of shows. With few scheduled shows, there weren't many chances to rehearse. Then came another injury, this time in 'Vienna Waltzes': She tore her posterior tibial tendon. 'My dancing feet weren't there,' she said in an interview at Lincoln Center. 'That's kind of been the up and down. It's like trying to come back, but not getting enough to do and then hurting myself again.' But she wasn't ready to give up. 'I just kept waiting to dance again,' she said. 'I'm like, all I want to do is dance. Like, get me out there, let me dance, let me dance.' This season, Bouder, 41, got to do that, before closing out her 25-year City Ballet career. On Thursday, her farewell performance, she'll dance in George Balanchine's 'Firebird.' She first danced the role at 17, when she was thrown into at the last minute. 'Everybody always asks you when you get to the end, 'What do you think you're going to retire with?'' she said. 'I was always like, 'I don't know.' But I think I've know my whole life that would be the ballet.' In the years since that 'Firebird' when, she said, 'I didn't know anything,' Bouder became one of the company's most visible ballerinas — she also earned a double degree in political science and organizational leadership from Fordham University; married and had a child (her daughter, Violet, 8, is a student at School of American Ballet); and embraced being a feminist, speaking out about injustices in the ballet world. Onstage, Bouder was vivid from the start, dating back to her first major role at City Ballet as the demi-soloist in 'La Source.' Kathleen Tracey, a repertory director whom Bouder works closely with, said, 'She came bounding out onstage with so much excitement and thrill and a huge jump and a beautiful, exhilarating kind of presentation. I was blown away.' She was fearless. Soon after joining the company in 2000, Bouder, who trained at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet before attending the School of American Ballet, quickly became a dazzling interpreter of Balanchine ballets. Her virtuosic dancing matched her theatrical effervescence. Her sparkle was never put on — she was never the type to hide how happy dancing makes her feel. But over the last couple of years, she said, she had been questioning her every move. 'Finally I'm feeling like I can do it again,' Bouder said. 'Like not be nervous that they're going to judge me because my leg's not high enough. Or if I didn't hit that fifth. Or if I'm going to get tired because I don't know what kind of shape I'm in.' In other words, all of those anxiety-producing feelings that, she said, make your shoulders rise and your dancing smaller. 'So I'm finally, like, just' — she exhaled deeply — 'let it go.' There were moments during our interview when Bouder's voice shook and her eyes welled with tears. But she was just as prone to laughter as spoke about the ups and downs of her career. 'Firebird' was a high. Tracey is proud of her for choosing that ballet as her send-off. 'It means a lot to her and it means a lot to the ballet to have her leave her imprint on it,' Tracey said. 'She will be remembered in that role.' When Bouder danced it at 17, she had only two hours of rehearsal. 'I remember that Kay Mazzo was there,' she said, referring to a former principal and chairman of faculty at the school. 'I didn't know when to enter because the music is very murky in the beginning, and it's Stravinsky, and I hadn't even seen that part of the ballet.' She had danced in the ballet before, playing a monster. But 'I had never watched the beginning of it,' she said. 'So Kay stood behind me and she goes, 'OK, bend over'' — the Firebird enters leaning forward like a soaring bird — 'and she pushed me so I could run out.' Bouder triumphed in many more roles after that storied debut, including Balanchine's 'Ballo Della Regina,' 'Stars and Stripes' and 'Tarantella.' But she faced challenges in those early years too. While the onstage and studio part of dancing was great, 'the social aspect was terrible,' she said, and described one show 'that was absolutely horrifying.' She danced in three ballets on that program. For the final one, she needed to switch from pink tights and pointe shoes to white. When she returned to her spot to put on her white shoes, they were gone. 'The ribbons were all cut off,' she said, 'and the shoes were destroyed in different trash cans around the dressing room.' She ended up performing in a colleague's shoes that were a half a size too big. (She packed them with extra toe pads.) 'We were all kids at that point,' Bouder said. 'I got bullied a lot. There were certain colleagues that if I was walking down the hallway, they would say things like, 'I hope you fall tonight.'' Now City Ballet has a Human Resources department, something Bouder wishes had been around when she was coming up. 'I grew a really thick skin to the point where people were like, 'Well, she's prickly.' And I'm like, yes, but if you had been treated the way I have, you pull the wall up. You are not getting in here. And it took me a long time to reverse that.' Recent experiences have been wounding, too. In 2022, she posted on Instagram that a board member had told her that 'they don't mind the extra weight on me.' Before that Bouder said she had been taken out of a performance, 'because the costume showcased my 'problem area.'' She fell into a deep depression. 'It's like I didn't want to work,' she said. 'I couldn't lose the weight because I didn't want to work. It wasn't eating too much or doing something like that, but it's just like I couldn't get the energy.' She added, 'one of the things that I'm excited to let go of is the constant scrutiny of every part of my body.' Tracey, a former soloist with City Ballet, has watched Bouder evolve as a person and a dancer. 'She was able to always navigate through the pressure,' Tracey said. 'I think that is a testament to her mental toughness and that ability to take hard situations and make them her own — to be able to work through the difficulties of any particular ballet or situation in the workplace.' For her next act, Bouder is now in the middle of applying for nonprofit status with a new organization, Ashley Bouder Arts, which will include educational elements like workshops in different dance forms; continue her performance group, Ashley Bouder Project, with a choreographic lab; and start a summer dance festival that would tour the Northeast. 'I would love to keep dancing,' she said. 'It's funny because a lot of people say, I'm ready to hang up my pointe shoes, get rid of the pointe shoes. I love my pointe shoes.' As for 'squishing into a leotard,' as she put it? Not so much. 'I think that just the past couple of years have really destroyed me forever really wanting to do that again,' she said. 'I want to still dance, but I don't want to be in a leotard and tights in front of 2,000 people anymore.'
