Tiit Helimets and Molly Smolen Diary

Molly's Diary

Molly Smolen was born in Philadelphia and is married to Tiit Helimets. She was a Principal Dancer with Birmingham Royal Ballet for six years, leaving the company in 2005 to move back to America. She joined San Francisco Ballet as a Principal Dancer in 2006, joining Tiit, who is also a Principal Dancer with SFB.

Well, it’s been quite a year! It was difficult to leave Birmingham Royal Ballet after spending six years there, but it was the right choice for us to make. We needed to move on and try new things and so, I tried freelancing for a season. I knew it would be difficult but it turned out to be even harder than I had expected. I did some interesting work, including a new version of “Cinderella”, “Midsummer Nights Dream”, and “Coppelia” but it was really the in between times that were difficult to deal with. Without a regular schedule it’s hard to stay motivated! And so, this past spring when Helgi offered me a contract I decided to join San Francisco Ballet as a Principal.

The company was to be touring to New York City after the first four weeks of rehearsals and I didn’t expect to be dancing at all. Imagine my surprise when Helgi told me he wanted me to dance the pas de deux from “Chopiniana” at the opening night gala at New York State Theatre! I had never danced the role before and it was a great challenge to work on. It had been a long time since I had learned a new classical role! Helgi took a lot of my rehearsals himself and I learned a lot working with him. My partner for the piece was Ruben Martin, this season’s other new Principal, although unlike me, Ruben was promoted from inside the company. For me, the challenge of the role was to create an effortless, floating effect while at the same time having the strength to sustain each movement through the music. I had seen the part danced very seriously by many people but I didn’t see it that way myself. I thought that she should be almost playful, dancing both with her partner and for herself at the same time. I enjoyed the entire rehearsal process and the performance also went well. It was quite a thrill to dance my first show with SFB on a new stage in New York City!

Not long after returning to the West Coast, Tiit and I had to start preparing a pas de deux for a festival in Miami at which we had been invited to perform. We chose “Grand Pas Classique”, a piece that I had not danced in many years and which was completely new for Tiit. It was fun to come back to something I hadn’t done in awhile and try to dance it in a fresh way. One thing that helped was all of the experience of performing that I’ve gained over the years enabled me to relax on stage and just balance as long as I wanted to in the adagio! As a teenager (when I last performed it) I just didn’t have that kind of confidence.

The shows in Florida were..........interesting. The whole festival was somewhat disorganized which made it difficult to focus on what we were there to do. We flew into Miami on Thursday night and had to be driven straight down to Palm Beach, finally arriving there just after midnight. Of course there was nowhere open at the time of night for dinner! The next day we had a stage rehearsal and then the first gala in the evening. We opened the third section and by the time we finally got onstage it was nearly 11pm! After the show it was straight back to Miami, where we checked into our hotel around 2am. Then the following day it was class, another stage rehearsal and then another gala. We were meant to open the second section of the show so I planned everything out, went to the theatre and started applying my makeup. An hour before the show was due to start the organizers came around with a revised performance order which had us dancing in the middle of the third act instead! And so, there I was, with my makeup half on, running about two hours ahead of schedule! Like I said, it was all just a bit disorganized! The whole time we were in Florida I only felt in control when I was actually dancing, which I suppose is all that matters in the end anyway. By the way, the shows went very well. I can, after all, balance.

And now we’re back in San Francisco, rehearsing new ballets for the 2007 season. I’m really looking forward to my first time dancing at the War Memorial Opera House here. And you’ll get to hear all about it!

Posted by Molly Smolen at September 20, 2006 08:32 AM