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By Root 1261 0

She would feel the impulse to throw herself in a different direction or add an extra pirouette, change a step, or go to a different place! You never knew what was going to happen, everything was spontaneous, there would be something different at every performance. She had favorite pairs of toe shoes, and she would set them up in the wings—in one pair, she thought she did better pirouettes, another pair were for adagio, and another, softer pair for jumps (not so noisy when you land). During performance, she would exit into a wing, and, in ten seconds, switch to the shoes that best suited her next variation, her fingers a blur of untying and tying ribbons. So versatile and one of the greatest dramatic ballerinas on the stage, she had over sixty ballets in her repertoire from NYCB alone. The opera world had Maria Callas; the ballet, Melissa Hayden.

Compassion and generosity—she could hide nothing, in personal or public life. She never held back, never played it safe. She mothered two beautiful children, Stuart and Jennifer. Loyalty and Integrity were her other children. “If anything doesn’t work in my life, it’s not going to be because I didn’t do everything possible to make it work.”

Melissa Hayden joined NYCB the same year I did. I was fifteen; she was twenty-six. We danced together and became lifelong friends. Ballets were choreographed for us, and we explored, as artistic siblings, the art of dance. On that Australian tour, both of us danced into a bond of admiration and caring—connected forever.

Carrie, George, and I had our own little house in Sydney, right on Bondi Beach, and oh! how the Aussies took care of us. Carrie, paddling with George at the edge of the surf, was warned, “Lady, if you hear a klaxon blast, it just means the sharks are coming in, so you and the little tyke should consider getting out of the water.” It seemed to ring several times a day. I first saw an emu (the Australian version of an ostrich, its head atop a neck taller than my six foot two); the adorable koala bears, feasting on the leaves of eucalyptus trees; and kangaroos, cute until you see a re-creation of what they were like in prehistoric times (eight feet tall). At morning rush hour in Sydney, there would be queues of workers lined up, not for coffee and doughnuts, but for the juice and pulp of Queensland pineapples. The vendors would place a whole pineapple into a machine that, in one movement, would flay and core the pineapple, while a separate arm descended to crush the prepared fruit into a waiting container. In about six seconds, the customer would be guzzling chilled, pulped pineapple. So refreshing, just the thought of it got me out of bed in the morning. As the poet Hafiz wrote:

’Tis life’s pure river

’tis sugar’s giver

With our extensive repertoire, we presented a variety of ballets each week, but the Australian fans complained. Through word of mouth or by reading a review, they’d hear about a program, and want to see that exact program. We began to oblige, doing the same dance program several days in a row. Since Eglevsky had left, I stepped into all his virtuoso roles and had my own repertoire to dance, plus partner to most of the ballerinas. In one evening’s program, I’d be supporting the lovely Diana Adams in Concerto Barocco, dancing the faun to Allegra Kent’s nymph in Afternoon of a Faun, followed by Pas de Dix with the dynamic Patricia Wilde, then with Milly, leading the finale of Stars and Stripes. During a week, sometimes the ballerinas would change, but there was no respite for me. Doing the same program over and over was hard on the body, because you’re taxing the same muscles in the same way, night after night, and on weekend matinees. For those four months, I had the stage to myself for rehearsals during the day, and the chance to refine and explore my roles each night. I took the lessons I had learned doing Apollo the year before, put them into practice, and when we returned to New York I was dancing with a different attitude about myself. Before, it was always “Tallchief and Eglevsky” headlining. Now, it was