Page 1 of Barre Fight
AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL BALLET’S NEW STAR HAS SHINE, BUT LITTLE SUBSTANCE
by Ivy Page,Sydney Morning Sunjunior arts reporter
The Sleeping Beautyis a notoriously difficult ballet for the ballerina dancing the titular role. Quite apart from the considerable technical skill required to dance the infamous Rose Adagio, which demands long balances on a single pointe-shoe-clad foot, the dancer playing Princess Aurora must dance both with girlish exuberance and the maturity of a grown woman who has woken from her long, cursed slumber and found her one true love.
The role is so challenging that it can be easy to lose sight of Aurora’s partner, Prince Désiré. But the prince is always there, and his role is challenging, too. In Sunday’s performance ofThe Sleeping Beautyby Australian National Ballet at the Sydney Opera House, principal dancer Katarina Antonov was up to the challenge. The same cannot be said for her partner, newly minted principal dancer Justin Winters.
Winters has several gifts that make him a good fit for the role of the prince. His thick golden hair screams “royalty,” and when he and Antonov danced their several pas de deux, his prince appeared wholly smitten by Aurora. Antonov appeared comfortable and secure as they moved together, suggesting that Winters is an adequate partner; no small thing in an artform where women must place their bodies—their livelihoods—entirely in the hands of their male coworkers.
Above all, Winters has the natural gift of exquisitely arched and articulate feet, something that all aspiring dancers long for. “Good feet”—steep arches that snap into tight curves whenever Winters points his toes—mean that when he dances, he seems to add half a foot to his already above-average height, and when he extends his legs, he creates long, seamless lines from hip to toe. His feet, simply put, are the stuff of dancers’ dreams.
But good feet, a nice head of hair, and adequate partnering do not a principal dancer make. In Sunday’s performance, Winters danced his solo combinations with technical proficiency coated with a vapid charm, an emptiness that the most aspirational of arches could not make up for. At times, he seemed to get swallowed by the ballet’s sumptuous set and his sparkling brocade costume, disappearing into the role and not in a good way. A more substantive dancer would not merely have looked the part of a prince, but would embody the gravitas and self-assuredness one expects to find in a member of a royal family. Winters, while sparkly, wholly lacked that substance.
In its recent promotions, Australian National Ballet has demonstrated its commitment to promoting promising dancers early and giving them a chance to grow into their new ranks. Winters’ performance, however, raises the question of what he brings to the stage: true artistic promise, or merely a pretty face and a pair of freakish feet?
Chapter One
Five years later
The video was bad. No, it was a disaster. Missy had warned him, but his cousin’s description, and even her obvious disappointment in him, hadn’t properly prepared him. Justin was screwed. He winced as he looked down at the screen. The crowd of rowdy onlookers in the darkened bar was slightly blurred, but the rest of the picture was clear and sharp. For the third time since Missy had shoved the phone into his hand, Justin watched as the slightly drunk man threw vile, stomach-churning taunts at him, not quite loud enough for the bystander’s phone to pick up. But Justin had heard them perfectly, and just as they had last night, the words made his heart pound as something rotten and buried rear up in his chest. The man’s hands were shoved snugly in his pockets, and he swayed a little as he jeered at Justin.
Justin was seven again, and afraid. He was eleven again, and furious. He was fifteen again, and desperate to get out of Hillstone and away from the leering bullies who’d turned his hometown into a claustrophobic prison.
In the moment, last night, what happened next had seemed to unfold in slow motion. But on the screen it was sudden andchaotic. The tiny Justin in his sweating palm shook his head menacingly, then slammed his beer down on the bar, drew his fist back, and swung.
The man went down, and the crowd around them went apeshit.
“Fuuuuuuck,” Justin breathed, dropping the phone onto the table with a clatter. Missy picked it up and closed Instagram.
“Yeah, it’s not great.”
“Understatement of the year,” Justin replied, flopping back in his chair. He closed his eyes and massaged the knuckles of his right hand, which were aching from last night’s Apollo Creed impression.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Missy asked, eyes wide. She gestured down at the phone. “That’s… not you. That’s some toxic masculinity bullshit. Your mum taught you better than that. Why didn’t you just walk away?”
Justin rolled his shoulders in discomfort, as if he could shake the heavy weight of Missy’s judgment off his back. She hadn’t been there. She hadn’t heard the awful things the man had said to him and Ricky and Matty. If she had, she would’ve thrown a punch, too.
Justin opened his mouth to say this, but the words didn’t come. He couldn’t account for what he’d done last night. All he knew was that his brain had seemed to freeze and glitch, and his body had taken over. And not in the good way that sometimes happened on stage, when his mind felt blissfully blank and his body seemed to be nothing but muscles, connected and warm and moving seamlessly with the music.
He closed his mouth again and frowned, replaying the sequence of events so he could explain then—and himself—to Missy.
The guy had sidled up to them and sized them up, then asked them how they knew each other. From work, Ricky hadsaid. What work, he’d asked, and Matty—sweet, young, naive Matty—had told the guy the truth. Justin usually dodged or outright lied when other men asked him what he did for a living, but Matty was younger and more principled than he was. Matty didn’t want to hide who he was or what he did.
“We’re ballet dancers,” Matty had said, before Justin could throw out one of the fake jobs he kept in his back pocket for just this kind of interaction. Marketing, sales, consulting, some vague nonsense job that everyone had heard of but no one really understood. Not something unusual and eyebrow-raising like “male ballet dancer.”
Matty’s words had landed like a bucket of chum in front of a starving shark, and Justin had watched the guy’s face as surprise gave way to scorn. And then, he saw the exact moment when scorn gave way to cruelty and ignorance and small-mindedness and—yes, he knew it when he saw it, he’d seen it on too many adolescent faces back in Hillstone not to recognize it—glee.
The next few minutes had been like being plunged back into his childhood. The guy had poked and prodded, in that fake-jovial way that men did to each other, the “just giving you a hard time” jabs concealing real aggression that you weren’t supposed to respond to becausecome on, mate, can’t you take a joke? Justin had felt Matty stiffen beside him, and then shrink, his posture shifting as his shoulders tensed and his knees locked up. Matty had grown up in Sydney, half a generation after Justin had grown up in the country, and he was clearly taken aback by this response. But Justin knew better. He knew what men like this, and the boys they had been, thought about men like Matty and Justin.
The guy had kept talking and talking—Justin wasn’t going to repeat the things he’d said to Missy, who was actually queer and didn’t need to hear that kind of vile shit—and Justin had soon turned to Ricky and Matty and told them it was time to leave.His colleagues had apparently just been waiting for his permission to walk away, because they set their drinks on the bar, Matty’s relief palpable and Ricky’s hand a little shaky as he tossed a few bills down. They’d almost gotten out of there unscathed, but the guy, beer-brave and sensing weakness, had smirked and spat out one last insult.
“Yeah, time to leave, you fancy little freaks.”
Justin’s spine had gone rigid with rage and fear, all the repressed sensations of childhood rushing back into his body, flooding his brain. His vision had gone blurry around the edges until all he could see was the guy’s face, twisted with disdain and, unmistakably, triumph. In the moment, it had felt like he’d stood there a long time, the sounds of the crowded bar dulled by his fury. In the video it lasted barely a second or two but last night, he would have said it was a few minutes as his adrenaline swept through him, lighting up his limbs until his body finally caught up and cooperated with his brain.
And then he’d swung. Once the guy had said that word,freaks, walking away was never an option. Justin looked up at Missy and shook his head.
“I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
