Leap of faith

Six young guns from the legendary New York City Ballet are about to knock the stuffing out of classical dance at the Edinburgh International Festival. But only after electrifying audiences at home in the Big Apple

THE man behind me in the circle of the opulent New York State Theatre is dozing, occasionally rattling his false teeth, while his wife noisily jiggles her jewels. Suddenly, he sits bolt upright and says loudly: "Who the hell was that?" That was the dazzling young dancer Adam Hendrickson, who has just streaked on stage like a flash of crimson lightning. "Wow," whispers our man in the circle.

Reputations are made in such moments. No one who was in the audience for New York City Ballet's sensational performance of Fearful Symmetries on that torrid Tuesday evening in June, will forget Hendrickson's soaring leap. The 19-year-old, with the coffee- coloured eyes and cheekbones you could cut yourself on, is a corps dancer with the company. Tonight, though, he has a featured role in ballet master-in-chief Peter Martins's Fearful Symmetries - which will be part of the repertoire when the company comes to Edinburgh - and he has just jumped with breakneck speed and panache into the hearts and minds of his audience.

At New York City Ballet - which returns to the Edinburgh International Festival after too long an absence - it is the choreography's stunning purity that counts. The dancers are rarely individually publicised, although cast lists are posted inside the theatre door each week. They do matter, of course, as they regularly scale the heights of artistic excellence. The company is famously spontaneous: you are always guaranteed a sparkling star or three, but perhaps even more thrilling is watching a corps dancer like Hendrickson make a grand debut in a principal role.

The Pennsylvania-born dancer is not unique. He is just one of many rising stars in the company founded by the late George Balanchine and fellow founding choreographer Jerome Robbins. I talked to half a dozen of the company's youngest corps dancers - all of whom have been given a chance to shine in this most democratic of galaxies. They are the future of this fabulous company. Hendrickson, for instance, has an extraordinarily strong technique. But, as New York Times critic Jennifer Dunning points out, it is the sly subversiveness in his dancing that makes him so fascinating. He joined the company almost three years ago as an apprentice, after training for nine years at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, then joining the School of American Ballet.

"I had a good, strict upbringing in dance," he says, dressed in khaki fatigues, lounging on a sofa in the company's Rose Building at the Lincoln Centre, outside one of the airy rehearsal studios. He started dancing when he was six years old because he was tired of watching his elder sister, Jessy, now also a promising company member, dancing.

"I was sick of just waiting around for her, so I got into it very slowly," he says. "It didn't come naturally at first - I had to work very hard. Some dancers are much more inclined to it. They have better bodies, better everything. So I struggled with that, but I've gotten past that now.

"I feel I'm growing up, but it was tough for me. I'm always pushing myself; it's a constant fight to stay on top. It's what it takes to get me going, because ballet is a very tense environment to work in - it can be a real stressful thing."

While he loves performing, it is the energy it requires that drives him. He thinks a lot of his dancing is driven by anger rather than by love of ballet. For instance, he was forever being told his body was terrible: "I have this whole short complex, so I try to dance as big as I can," he says. Slaving in the corps can be miserable for a young dancer, who has been acclaimed at ballet school but now finds him or herself a tiny cog in a huge wheel. He was encouraged by the company, but told he would have to make his dancing more classically pure - his reward was the technically demanding Bluebird in Sleeping Beauty.

When did he know he wanted to dance professionally? Honestly, he replies, it's all happened real fast, out of nowhere. It is weird, but there are times, like when he almost gets hit by a cab and he'll think, "Oh my God, this is my body and that's what I use". Other people leave their careers in their computers. He carries his around with him.

YOU should see Janie Taylor's toenails. Today they are painted peppermint green. "I did that for you and the photographer," the cooly pretty 19-year-old says. Her toes are black and bruised. You could say her fouettes are killing her. In Martins's newest ballet Harmonielehre, Taylor has had a role created for her. Her gorgeous duet with Jared Angle is the most lyrical section of the ballet.

She pushes her body beyond the pain barrier every day. The wonderful feeling of dancing well, doing something so worth doing, means that it doesn't really matter that your toes are bleeding, she says. Yes, she has been injured. "I had a stress fracture in my foot. I was out for five weeks, which was very depressing. Something like that affects your whole mental state, because you live, sleep, eat, breathe dance. The rest of the time I dream about all the roles I want to dance in the future."

The daughter of an oil company boss, Taylor began training at the age of four in Houston, Texas, and then continued in New Orleans when the family moved there. At the City Ballet-affiliated School of American Ballet, she won the Mae L Wien Award for promising students. In Balanchine's Nutcracker she was chosen to dance the challenging featured role of Dewdrop and the doomed girl in La Valse, a part which gave her the opportunity to act as well as dance. "And I got to die!"

Taylor's tall and talented partner in Harmonielehre, which premiered that weekend, is Jared Angle. "He is amazing," she says. "The partnering is really awkward in this piece, but Jared is just great." Set to famously difficult music by John Adams, the ballet has Angle manipulating Taylor in extraordinary turns, twists and tangles. Nineteen years old, brown-eyed and floppy-haired, Angle was born in Pennsylvania and started dancing at kindergarten. He recalls seeing a production of Nutcracker at five and wanting to be up there.

His parents - his father owns a construction company - insist he was always dancing around and singing loudly as a toddler, doing his let-me-entertain-you stuff. "My folks were great about it, because it is not the most common pursuit for a boy in a rural area and I did get a lot of hassle from other kids," he says. "But I didn't let it bother me." When he was barely ten he had been appearing annually in Nutcracker for years with the local company in Altoona.

It is two years since he became a corps dancer. "I have never ever forgotten the first time I saw New York City Ballet," he says. "I was way up on the fifth ring, it was so amazing I nearly fell out." The work is strenuous. He has had to stand in for injured dancers in leading roles several times, because he's a quick study. "I had, like, two days to learn Peter Martins's ballet, Jazz, to Wynton Marsalis's music. It was kinda scarey, but you know you have to just get on with it. You don't have time to think."

As to the future, who knows? "I'm sure everybody wants to be a principal, but I just want to go on dancing and getting better," he says. "It's taken me a while to enjoy performing because I was so worried at first about getting the steps right, hitting this position, doing that position, looking good."

The intense physicality of a dancer's life has given him an urge to exercise his brain, so he is studying English Literature part- time at Fordham University - next door to the company's home. "I guess I just want an outside perspective," he says. "You can end up thinking about ballet and nothing else all the time, which isn't good for you or your dancing."

It is a view echoed by 22-year-old Aesha Ash, who has been with the company for five years. Black, beautiful and a blast to talk to, she is also studying part-time at university. Last year she did a summer course in English Literature and is proud that she has ploughed her way through Proust.

"I think it's important to do something for yourself," she says. "For me, that means finding something outside of dance. Those days when I am so exhausted I could drop, I like to focus my head elsewhere."

Born in Rochester, New York, Ash started dancing when she was about seven, studying jazz and tap. Her serious ballet training didn't start until she was 13. "And here I am now, with City Ballet. Wow!" she yells, pinching herself.

She always knew she would dance professionally, but never dreamt that she would be a ballet dancer. "I thought by the time I was 22 I would be on Broadway in, say, Chicago or something. But I fell in love with ballet because it was a big challenge for me. I don't have the body or the facility for it, so it doesn't come naturally. I was determined and kept saying to myself, 'I gotta do this'." And she did. Now she has danced countless corps roles, as well many featured ones in Nutcracker and Western Symphony.

In Appalachia Waltz, Miriam Mahdaviani's new ballet, premiered by the company on the same programme as Fearful Symmetries, Ash danced an exquisite series of neoclassical duets, creating some perfect moments in an imperfect ballet. "I am blessed, I really am," she says.

Her father, who died recently, used to travel to see everything she did. "He couldn't stop talking about it, he was so impressed by the company. He just couldn't stop talking about it. He was in awe of it all. It was inspiring that he cared so much about what I did." Dancing for Ash is a constant striving for perfection. "I push myself constantly," she says. "It's perfecting and perfecting and perfecting."

Abi Stafford, at 18 the baby of the group, has been dancing for so long she can't remember a time when she wasn't perfecting her art. Born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, she recalls her mother saying that they would try her out in ballet, while her sister was doing gymnastics. With her sweet, heart-shaped face, Stafford looks like everyone's idea of a ballerina.

Her 20-year-old brother, Jonathan, is also in the company. "It's real nice to have him here," she says. "I was so scared when I joined, because City Ballet is as good as it gets, but he has really helped me." She has had two new roles choreographed for her. "It's a great honour, because your name goes down in history as part of the original cast."

Carrie Lee Riggins, a vivacious honey blonde with a wide smile, has also had the thrill of originating a role - in Peter Martins's Concerti Armonici. The 19-year-old, who has been with the company for four years, started dancing when she was eight. Born in Carmel, New York, she trained as a gymnast and a tap dancer before deciding to specialise in classical ballet. "I was the sort of kid who couldn't sit still. When I was ten I was only two levels away from the Olympics as a gymnast when I decided to give it up, because it was changing my body in ways that weren't suitable for a dancer."

As a ballet babe, she has danced every children's role in New York City Ballet's repertoire. Standing in the wings, she saw all the great names. "You watch them, their artistry, their special qualities and it really spurs you on to find something like that in yourself," she says. She fractured her hip just before the start of last winter's season. "It was a blow, but it gave me time to re-evaluate things, to make a fresh start - and it made me realise that each season with this company is an absolute blessing."

This sense of being part of something special seemed to transmit to the New York crowd when Adam Hendrickson unleashed his great charged leap. Scottish audiences should prepare to be similarly electrified New York City Ballet's programme of works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Peter Martins is at Edinburgh Playhouse, August 14-19, 0131 473 2000.

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