Your final time at the New York City Ballet was clearly emotional for you. What inspired you to participate in a documentary about it?
Wendy Whelan: It wasn’t an easy time. I really didn’t know from day to day how it would unfold. And I had an injury. I was very emotional. I was a little unsure about doing the film at the beginning but I was like, “Well, we’ll just try it, and if it doesn’t feel right, we won’t go on.” So that gave the filmmakers a chance to start filming a bit. Then I saw some of the footage and I loved it. The trust built between us. And I started to realize that this isn’t a portion of a ballerina’s life that is talked about very often. Most ballerinas aren’t so transparent about that part of the career and I thought that it was important. I looked at this moment in a ballerina’s life as the last of the sacraments. She has to go through all of these different moments in her career, and this final moment is just as profound as all the others but the least clearly understood. I just thought, “It is very special, very beautiful, very sad. It’s exciting, it’s terrifying.” And I thought, “What have I got to lose? It’s real. It’s life.”
How did you build trust with the filmmakers?
WW: Time together, experience together. Lots of texting and phone calls. Talking about some deep issues off camera with them and hearing their responses. You could see it in their eyes how they were taking in the story. I could just feel the compassion they had for the story and also I could see how they were inspired by the story and enamored with the world of dance, particularly ballet. I could feel their feelings when we were filming and I just knew they cared about it.
In the film, you’re very open and really quite vulnerable. Was that challenging in front of the cameras?
WW: After a while I didn’t notice the cameras, which was kind of amazing because that was the fear: that they were going to be really close by and annoying (laughs). Somehow we got in to this rhythm and they sort of disappeared. There was a moment in the filming when I needed a break and I asked the filmmakers to step away and they did—reluctantly. It was after the surgery and about two weeks before I made my return to the stage. I was having a serious panic with my body and I just needed that space. They were incredibly sensitive to what I was going through and I’m incredibly grateful to them for that. The plan was that they would film the return so I knew when they would be back.
Do you think your sense of intense identification with your art is just the nature of the beast—something that all dancers face—or do you feel that your own connection to it was particularly strong?
WW: I didn’t have children, I didn’t get married until later in life, I didn’t take vacations. Dance is the main thing that I love. I dove into the skin of that career and I lived in that skin in a really deep way. I’m not going to say that I lived deeper in that world than anybody else and I can’t speak for other dancers, but for myself I felt stitched in to the career. And I had to cut myself out of it. I don’t know if other people lock themselves down like that. I definitely felt like I was pulling a skin off of myself to get out of it and it was painful in that way.
Like a snake.
WW: Yeah, I really did feel like I was shedding a skin that was covering my whole being. And I’m out of it now and it feels great. Liberating and freeing. I wouldn’t want to compare my experience of leaving the ballet company with anybody else’s because it’s a sacred moment in a dancer’s life and it’s a very personal moment and everybody deals with it in their own way. I don’t know how people saw mine from the outside. But seeing it as a film may give them a different image of what actually went on.
What was it like to have a camera crew following you through so many meaningful moments and interactions?
WW: A little bit odd. Living it from the inside and knowing that part of it was being documented from the outside was a little strange. Part of me is grateful that it’s captured and part of me thinks, “This was so long ago, I was a different person.” It’s a little time capsule. I’m glad for it, but let’s just say that it’s not the normal way (laughs).
Do you have a favorite moment from the making of the film?
WW: Yes, I do, and it’s a moment that I don’t have a recollection of, unlike all the other moments in the film. It’s the moment from my surgery. I love watching the surgery. I love it. To see how caring and concerned and thoughtful and thorough—actually, thorough is the word—my surgeon was with me when I wasn’t even coherent.… I love that guy.
What are you working on next?
WW: I just did a new project this summer with one of my collaborators, the choreographer Brian Brooks. It’s called Some of A Thousand Words and we’ll tour it next year with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider. I’ve also been at a residency at the Rockefeller Estate, performing a project I did last year, a dance/opera called Hagoromo. And I’m doing a third project at Fall for Dance in New York, performing a theatrical dance from a larger project called Other Stories. So, three incredibly different kinds of dances.
Have you done any sort of a dance that expresses your experience of leaving the ballet company?
WW: I think each choreographer who worked with me on Restless Creature tried to embody a little bit of that idea in the work. Especially Kyle Abraham. He made a piece called “The Serpent and the Smoke” in which he had me transform and slowly unwind into this other creature. I think he was looking at transformation in an abstract way—I don’t think he was thinking about City Ballet—but he was trying to bring that idea into the work and I, knowing what I was going through, could put my real-life experiences into the piece. I like doing that, parlaying what I really feel into certain dance movements. And also the Brian Brooks piece. Both of those guys made pieces that I felt transformed from within. The Brian Brooks piece I’m still performing regularly, “First Fall.”
Now that some time has passed since you left the New York City Ballet, how does it all feel to you?
WW: It feels like it was perfect. Absolutely perfect the way it went, the way it flowed, where it’s come to. I’m really glad because I didn’t know how I would feel going on two years later. But it was exactly the right moment to go and start this new chapter of myself.
I’m so happy for you that it wound up that way.
WW: Thank you, me too (laughs). When you know there’ s going to be an ending to the film and you’re in the middle of making the film, you just really pray that it’s a good ending. Going in to the surgery… I was told months afterwards by my physical therapists, “Wendy, we didn’t know if this was going to work or not. We had no idea.” I was positive the whole time: “Of course this is going to work.” But the real people who were knowledgeable about what I was going through were giving me a fifty-fifty chance of a good outcome. I didn’t know that until way late. I am really grateful that I ended up on the positive side of the odds.