© Eric Antoniou Ponomarenko in reviews Boston Ballet reviews Boston Ballet on web

Gelsey Kirkland might have had Boston Ballet principal dancer Larissa Ponomarenko in mind when she described greatness in dance as a function of turn-out, not only of the legs, but the upper body, and ultimately, the heart. While often praised for her technical brilliance, Ponomarenko has long been an audience favourite, primarily for the intelligence, dramatic intensity, and emotional depth she brings to each of her performances: in short, for the perfect turn-out of her heart.

Born in Odessa, Ukraine, and trained at the Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg, Ponomarenko came to the United States as a member of the Donetsk Ballet in 1990. After three years with Ballet Mississippi and Tulsa Ballet, she landed in Boston, where (except for a stint as guest artist with the English National Ballet in 1999) she has memorably danced ever since.

I caught up with Ponomarenko at the Boston Ballet studio last fall, when Nutcracker auditions had caused hundreds of little girls and their parents to descend upon the building like snowflakes. After a trip to a nearby café for some tea, we found a quiet place on the fifth floor to chat.

Tell me about your early life.
“I always wanted to dance. When I was seven, my mother planned to send me to ballet school, but was told I was too young. So I started to train as a gymnast, but I couldn’t stand the work; it was too robotic. When I was nine, I quit gymnastics and began dance training, first in Odessa and then at the Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg. Because travel back home was very expensive, I stayed at school for 10 months of the year, but in the summer I returned to Odessa. After the vacation, it was time for me to return to school, and I hated to leave my family, but something very strong was always pulsing in me that said, ‘I have to go back.’ ”

[After eight years at the Vaganova Academy, Ponomarenko joined the Donetsk Ballet Company in Ukraine, working with her husband-to-be, former Boston Ballet principal dancer Viktor Plotnikov.]
 

How did you come to the United States?
“In 1990 the Donetsk Ballet toured the U.S. and went to the International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi. The I.B.C. was great; it gave me the chance to perform among many dancers and meet new people. On the other hand, I learned that I hate to compete -- it’s too much like gymnastics. I’m working hard to perfect my body and grow as an artist, but I’m not doing it for fame or a medal.

“After the competition, Viktor was offered a contract with a ballet company in Jackson. That was the moment when I realized I was in love with him because I knew if I couldn’t see Viktor every day, I’d be in big trouble. I couldn’t bear the idea of his living in a different country across the ocean. Soon after that, the same company offered me a contract too. Because of Perestroika, the Russian government allowed us to take advantage of these opportunities. We were completely lucky.”

Tell me about your favorite roles.
“Each one is my favorite when I’m preparing it, but the ones I like most are those that are complex and require strong acting skills, like Giselle, Tatiana in Onegin, Mme. Butterfly, Marguerite in Lady of the Camillias, and Masha in Winter Dreams. All those roles are really dear to me because they challenge me to use my intellect and imagination. They make me search the corners of my heart for different emotions. I like that. With those parts I can take the audience to another world and bring them to a completely different moment in time.

“I’ve also enjoyed contemporary pieces, such as Brake the Eyes by Jorma Elo. In that one, I had to speak, which was a new experience for me. My other favorites are works that Viktor choreographed. I cherish every minute in the studio with him, and I love to be the instrument of his imagination. He also allows me to be creative, and that is great fun.”

Who have been some of your favorite partners?
“Viktor was a great dancer and such a good partner. When we danced together, we would work out every detail of partnering and acting. We would be so honest with each other and always felt so comfortable on stage together, though we would go through many conflicts in the studio to achieve that. Now, when we remember those times, we just laugh, but back then it wasn’t always easy for us. He’s had so many injuries in his career that he had to start doing more character roles. Before he retired, he did Mme. Simone in La Fille Mal Gardée.

“I’ve been very lucky; throughout my career I’ve had great partners, including Viktor, Patrick Armand, Paul Thrussell, Devon Carney, Yury Yanowsky, Simon Ball, Lazlo Berdo, Reagan Messer, Rob Wallace, Roman Rykine, Nelson Madrigal, Carlos Molina, Reyneris Reyes, and Alex Lapshin. All are very different as dancers and as partners. Some are more passionate, some are very strong, like Yury, for example; in a work like Mme. Butterfly or Lady of the Camillias, he’ll toss you up to the second floor. You find something incredible in each of them.
 

Royal Ballet principal dancer Sarah Lamb, who trained with Boston Ballet, has described your port de bras as “transcendent.”* That reminds me of what Gelsey Kirkland said in a recent interview: “[One’s] upper body has to understand not only the correct port de bras, but also how to capture ideas.”** Do you agree that the ability to “capture ideas” is a hallmark of your art?
“For me, personally, I have to have a thread of thought for every movement: why is it done, what is the idea of it, why does it happen? What kind of movement is it, and by that movement, what am I trying to say? In dance we’re telling a story by speaking with our bodies. Each person will have different intonations, different pauses, different exclamations or whispers, but if you speak in a monotone, nobody will listen, even for a minute.”

What do you think is the most important feature of your technique?
“I can’t allow myself to think of one thing more than another. Everything is equally important. I try to work as much on the precision of my feet as on the coordination of my arms and head. I think I was just lucky, maybe, because I was taught from an early age that you can’t just try one thing and then another, and have it all work out when you go on stage. Everything has to be incorporated at once, and the more you use it in class every day, the more it becomes a technique. Then you can, as Alessandra Ferri says, forget the steps and tell the story.”

Do dancers today focus on telling the story?
“Everybody is so into technique and speed these days that other things get lost. We don’t want our audience to get the idea that ballet and acrobatics are the same. For the latter, it’s better to go to the circus. Ballet is a great art form, with a vast movement vocabulary. A pause can be just as beautiful and important as 32 fouettés, and an adagio as satisfying as a petit allegro. The same movement can express drama or tragedy, happiness or celebration. Unfortunately, the arts of mime and acting are slowly getting lost, and attention to detail is becoming a luxury because of the need to put productions on stage as soon as possible. I think good coaching is vital if ballet is to survive.”

Boston Ballet is fortunate to have its own orchestra. What does it mean to you to dance to live music?
“To me it’s everything. Music is the reason I dance. Live music makes a huge difference; it makes the ballet two performances in one. When we [Boston Ballet] went to Spain, I had the chance to sit on the empty stage and watch [Boston Ballet principal conductor] Jonathan [McPhee] rehearse La Sylphide with the orchestra. I just watched and watched the rehearsal: how he goes back and fixes things, how he stops the musicians, and what he wants from them. It was absolutely wonderful – a real treat.
 

“When you have a great soloist in the pit, you become infected with the mood of the musician. It’s a relationship. The same thing happens with a dance partner. If you have a partner who looks into your eyes, and responds to you, then you have an open channel of energy, so you get much more energy during the performance. Like a good partnership, music can put you into an emotional and physical state that’s like an ecstasy.”

What part does the conductor play in creating the performance?
“When you have a relationship with the conductor, he or she knows your tempos, your emotions. I love Jonathan because he can just look at you, and he can feel you and you can feel him. It keeps going back and forth. I can do my phrasing differently, and he’ll be fine with that; he’ll recognize it. Some ballet conductors don’t look at the stage at all, which is not the case with Jonathan. It’s a pleasure to have him here.”

Have you thought about teaching?
“I love teaching. In fact, when I graduated from the Academy, I wanted to turn around and go back to school to get a certificate in pedagogy. At that time, for some reason, I felt that coaching was what I was meant to do, not dancing. Maybe I was afraid to leave the safety of school and enter the world of professional dance, where there are so many choices. Now I’m happy about the way it worked out because I’ve really enjoyed my career. Also, you can’t be a great teacher without having dance experience. I think I would love to work in a company with professional dancers to help them prepare for the enormous challenges that await them on stage. I would like to pass on the experience and knowledge that I have accumulated over the years. Sometimes I think I would love to have one class of young students that I would take for three or four years and see what I can mold in them. By ‘mold’ I mean literally sculpting the muscles through training, which is very much like sculpting stone with a hammer and chisel.”
 

When you dance the Sugarplum Fairy do you ever think about Clara as a representative of a new generation of dancers?
“I have been in a situation like that [of Clara] because as a student I danced in some of the productions of the Kirov Ballet. For example, I was one of the angels in the Don Q dream scene. First, we all did a little dance and then we would lie or kneel on the floor, and it was a great chance for us to watch all the ballerinas in front of us, doing different interpretations of the same part. That would be the moment when we would think, ‘I want to be that one.’ ”

What do you think is your greatest strength as a performer?
“Probably honesty. I try to approach everything with that feeling. If I’m honest with myself, with my partner, with my co-workers, and with the emotions I try to convey, somehow it works out in the end. I think that’s been my strength throughout my life.”

As a teacher, I hope you will pass on to your students all the artistic values you hold dear.

Trust me on that.

*  Marie Yeveniuk, “A Winning Dancer,” Arts Editor, August 2002.
** Joseph Carman, “Christening a New Sleeping Beauty,” Dance, May 2007.