Injured dancers carry on with a good grace

By BERNADETTE RAE

The best ballet looks effortless and graceful. But that's just what it looks like. Professional ballet dancers are as finely tuned physically as athletes and like athletes they suffer injuries that can potentially end a career.

Two dancers appearing in the Royal New Zealand Ballet production of Cinderella, Nadine Tyson and Stephen Wellington, are both recovering from severe injuries that luckily have not prevented them from furthering their careers.

Stephen Wellington, who is the prince in the Royal New Zealand Ballet's production of Cinderella in Hamilton this week recalls his terrifying moment during a performance of Raymonda in June at Timaru.

"The other dancers on stage heard it snap as I landed," he says. "Luckily it was practically the last step I had to perform."

Wellington still has two titanium screws holding his foot together.

"It has been difficult coming back after that," he says. "I love jumping. Big leaps have always been among the things I love best, and seem to be best at. After the accident I did feel fear about landing heavily again. There was a lot of emotional stuff to work through."

But the operation he had to repair the mangled bones in his foot has proved a success. With an immensely strong body that quickly responds to training by bulking-up muscles, Wellington has always had to "hold back" in the classical roles, such as that of Cinderella's prince. He has excelled in more contemporary works, such as Soldatenmis and Troy Games, where masculine power and lofty leaps have come into their own.

He has to operate at "about 70 per cent of what I can do" in the more classical roles, he says. "And I struggle to keep the line, the purity and cleanliness of line that is required of a prince. I have to work really hard not to look like the son of a miner who grew up in Mt Isa."

For Nadine Tyson, who plays one of Cinderella's stepsisters, the injury came just before the ballet's season of Halo in February.

In class she fell awkwardly. The result was a broken ankle. It has taken time to recover but so far it is holding up well.

"Luckily the stepsister role is not too difficult technically," she says. "In the first act there is heaps of mime."

Though that is easier physically it demands a different sort of attention, with lots of contact with other characters passing things - a hat, a mask, jewellery, a gown - requiring strict timing and perfect memory.

While the beginning of the year was disappointing for Tyson, the end holds more excitement.

In 1997 Tyson won a $5000 ECNZ award and used the money as the beginning of a travel fund to which she has been adding ever since. Now the Royal New Zealand Ballet has topped up her account with a travel grant and the day after Cinderella closes in Hamilton on December 14 Tyson and her husband, who works in stage production, are off to Britain and Europe for a six-week study tour.

Tyson will take classes with the English National Ballet, Ballet Rambert, the Dutch National Ballet and the Netherlands Dance Theatre.

She will also see performances by the Paris Opera Ballet, the New York City Ballet and the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker.

"I am just looking forward to experiencing all those other environments, people and personalities," Tyson says, "and being exposed to different sorts of influences."

She will be back, she promises, in time for rehearsals for the Royal New Zealand Ballet's next nationwide tour early next year. "London, New York, Kerikeri - that's my schedule," she says.

For Wellington, the finale of Cinderella means a more permanent shift that comes partly as the result of his serious accident.

At 27, Wellington has spent eight years with the Royal New Zealand Ballet, joining the company when he graduated from the Australian Ballet School.

Next year Wellington will be dancing with the Queensland Ballet and studying dance teaching at the Queensland University of Technology.

"I had my first experience of teaching when my foot was broken, with a group of boys at the New Zealand School of Dance. And I discovered that teaching dance is the only other thing to give me the same feeling of fulfilment as I get dancing. I have decided I really want to teach one day - and have a body that I can teach in. So it is time to make a move."

Joining the Queensland Ballet has been an ambition he held from his own student days when his family moved from Melbourne to Brisbane to support him there.

He came to New Zealand instead. "I have grown up here and I have loved every moment of it," he says. "But I have been away from my family for a long time now. And the Queensland Company offers a challenge. It will be a lot more competitive. They have seven different seasons in a year, which will mean a lot more hard work. And the director there choreographs a lot. I am really looking forward to experiencing that direct choreographic creativity too."

* The Lotto season of Cinderella by the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Founders Theatre, Hamilton, December 13-14.