Life
Barre
AT
THE
A PORTRAIT OF THE BALLERINA
AS A YOUNG WOMAN by Alex Notman
‘IT’S SUCH A CHALLENGE. I LOVE PERFORMING, WHICH IS SOME
THING I THINK I’VE GROWN INTO,’ RACHEL RICHARDSON SAYS
LUIS PONS PHOTOGRAPHY
W
hile in Moscow last autumn, ballet
dancer Rachel Richardson experienced a
decidedly Russian moment at the gilded
Kremlin Palace.
“It was crazy,” she recalls with a laugh. “While we were
backstage, 80 military men in the stereotypical fuzzy hats
with their machine guns were marching through, literally
right next to us as we were warming up.”
The native Eugenean traveled with New York’s
American Ballet Theatre for the famed Bolshoi Ballet’s
240th anniversary. It’s an hour into our discussion over
coffee at Noisette Pastry Kitchen, and her mention of the
trip to Russia is the fi rst time Richardson (who is home for
summer break) sounds like the teenager she is. “Oh my
gosh, oh my gosh. It was totally amazing,” she says. “First
of all, Russia is not somewhere I would pick to go on my
own but I was really grateful I had a reason to go because
it was really cool.” She adds, “The food in the Bolshoi
Academy was like, horrible.”
Pursuing a career in ballet would cause anyone to grow
up fast. The life of a dancer starts early with years fi lled
by long, regimented days, as well as often having to leave
home at young age.
At 17, Richardson has been dancing almost half her
life. She is gearing up to begin her second year in the
Studio Company for the America Ballet Theatre (ABT),
considered one of the most prestigious classical ballet
companies in the world. And in the ballet world, 17 is
known as the year a dancer must start looking for a job in
a profession with limited, and highly coveted, spots. This
is the pivotal year in Richardson’s path from Eugene to
New York City, and the journey has been one of adventure,
discipline and self-discovery.
Shelly Richardson, Rachel’s mother, tells me over the
phone that her daughter fi rst tried soccer and gymnastics
before coming to ballet, adding that hers is not the
traditional ballerina story. “She did not have posters
of ballerinas in her room when she was little,” Shelly
Richardson says, laughing. When Richardson was nine, her
sister’s ballet teacher, John Grensbeck of Eugene’s Oregon
Ballet Academy, noticed her “good feet” and persuaded her
to take a class.
“At 13, we saw that she had some potential,” Shelly
Richardson says, adding at that point, “As a family, we
committed to go full bore for one year at a time.”
That was the year that Rachel and Shelly Richardson
made the big leap and relocated to Philadelphia — leaving
her sister and father behind in Eugene — to attend the Rock
School for Dance Education, where she trained for the
better part of four years. There the duo lived in co-ed dorm
apartments across the street from the school with ballet
students from around the world; Shelly Richardson was the
designated dorm mom. Rachel’s days were spent balancing
her classes in classical ballet technique, contemporary dance,
pointe and pilates while homeschooling with her mom.
“It was really different,” Rachel Richardson says. “It’s
a really big city. It’s pretty dirty and kinda more grungy but
it was exciting.”
At the Rock School, students are encouraged to
compete. That’s when Richardson began entering the
Youth American Grand Prix — or, as Richardson calls
it, the YAGP — the largest international student dance
competition on the globe for ages 9-19. The Grand Prix
is such a crucial step towards a ballet career — securing
dance scholarships and company contracts — that a 2011
documentary, First Position, focused on six competing
dancers. One such dancer, Michaela DePrince, was a fellow
student and good friend of Richardson’s at the Rock.
“For ABT, they saw me at YAGP,” Richardson says.
“But I was really happy at the Rock. My mom wasn’t
@EUGENEWEEKLY
really ready for me to move to New York. I mean, I wasn’t
ready to move to New York either.”
The following year, ABT again offered Richardson a
spot with the Studio Company — a student branch; this
time, she was ready.
Shelly Richardson returned to the family in Eugene
and Rachel Richardson moved into a SoHo apartment in
New York City, provided by ABT, where she now lives
with seven dancers and a “house mom.” At ABT Studio
Company, Richardson takes classes and performs in ABT’s
annual performance of The Nutcracker alongside company
dancers as well as principles and soloists, which has been
challenging.
“I was terrifi ed in my fi rst company class. I didn’t want
to move,” she says of training with company dancers, some
who have been with ABT for 15 years. “It was really good
for me but it was scary.”
Richardson returns to ABT in September for this
decisive year and she remains unsure but confi dent of her
future. “If you’re in the Studio Company there’s a pretty
good chance of you getting an apprenticeship. Since they
saw me at YAGP, they told me that they were interested in
me …” she pauses. “I have no idea. It’s a really wonderful
company and it would be great to dance for them.”
Regardless of where Richardson ends up, she says
that ballet has taught her a lot about life. “I think a lot of
life lessons I’ve learned are just from the sort of — not
peculiar — but less normal experiences, like the fact that
I moved away, living with so many other people and so
many foreign people so young and then living alone in
New York.”
“Ballet specifi cally, discipline is a big one,” she says,
adding, “I think defi nitely sense of self and knowledge
of yourself. You have to grow into it. You have to really
understand yourself really well.” ■
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