Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Macgregor Lay is warming up at Dance Project St. Louis, waiting to audition for The Moscow Ballet’s Great Russian Nutcracker. “The thing of nervous and excited, it’s like mixing into each other,” the 11-year-old tells me, knees bending in quick pliés. “I’ve seen a lot of people become nervous wrecks. It’s a thing that happens.”
To distract him, I ask if his heart’s set on any particular role.
“There’s these two boys at the party, and they run around and cause problems.” The freckles dusted across his nose scrunch as he grins, and I can see the gap where a side tooth’s missing.
“I’ve never been a troublemaker, but I always wished I was,” I confide.
“Yeah, I’ve never been either.” Holding his ankle, he extends his leg above his head. “I’m OK if I don’t get a humongous part, though. The big dancers have to have little dancers or else the dance wouldn’t be that good.”
Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
He’s come early for a chance to work with the Moscow Ballet’s Olena Nalyvaiko. In a few hours, she’ll teach various dances to a chattering, fluttering roomful of little girls—and a few boys—ages 6 to 11. Then she’ll watch her potential snowflakes and mice to see “how they can repeat my choreography, and are they smart enough for this role—not just to make the movements but to understand them.”
I hope Mac’s not too nervous. Nalyvaiko told me earlier that “sometimes they’re so scared, they just stare at me. Too scared is very bad.”
But when he describes how he feels when he dances—“like it’s all black around me, and I’m floating”—I stop worrying.
Nalyvaiko appears in the doorway, and I watch her walk toward us—the tensile strength in the way she holds herself erect, the precise placement of her feet.
“Chinese variation,” she announces, no preamble. “You will be Chinese doll. First, hands like sticks.”
“Like sticks,” he repeats, watching her in the mirror and stiffening his hands into the same position.
“From the first position, you will make échappé.”
“She’s very pretty,” murmurs Mac’s mother, whose hair is held back by a low-maintenance mom headband. She and Mac’s dad are sweet, smart, PBS types, far from lithe or showy, and the world of performance their son’s hurtling toward is new to them. When Robert Lay tries to help me spell pas de bourée, Siri tells him it’s potter blueray.
“Now you run around yourself like horses,” Nalyvaiko tells Mac, doing a funny, staccato canter. “Again, first position, and big échappé.” She turns and gestures to space: “And now here will be your partner, yeah?”
Mac’s eager to start “like, lifting up girls.” And he loves to act, let his hands and face tell part of the story. This is good, because when I asked Nalyvaiko what mattered for male ballet students, the first thing she said was, “It’s very nice when the boy can act. Show emotion, not just stand and make movements without any expression. And when the boy knows how to lift a girl properly, how to hold her, it’s super.”
She’s been a member of the Moscow Ballet for five years—since she was 18—and has studied ballet since she was 3. She went on her first professional tour, to South Korea, when she was 13. She can’t even remember her own first audition.
Mac started ballet lessons at 8. He remembers what he learned first: “turnout. That was hard. And being very calm and peaceful. I would be very—” He makes a whooshing sound. “High energy,” his mom explains. “We tried soccer, basketball…” Finally they hit on dance, because he’d been humming classical music since he was a toddler.
Now he leaps and spins down grocery aisles; does pliés and tendus standing behind the sofa while his parents and sister watch TV. Earlier, when I asked how ballet was different from sports, he said, “Oh. I’ve got a list for that one. Inside dance, you are more graceful. Inside soccer and football, you have to be running. And you have to wear all this big body armor; with tights, you get to feel movable.” He shook his head ruefully, dark bangs lifting. “People always seem to put down dance. The leaps look so easy, they think, ‘Oh, I could do that.’”
Nalyvaiko has paused to think—the first four empty seconds since she entered the studio. “We can learn for party, because he is good height,” she announces. “Chassé and plié. Chassé and plié.” Eyes on the mirror, the two move quickly, in perfect unison. Mac’s got this. There’s a floaty elegance to his hand gestures, and you can see the new ease in his body as it moves ahead of his mind.
“Let’s do mice,” she says abruptly, bending her hands into menacing, clawed feet. “This one’s complicated.” A fast series of intricate steps, “and now, jump, like scared mice. Good!” With her accent, it comes out crisp and satisfied: goot.
She extends her hand, arm locked straight, and shakes his with vigor. He and his dad leave to grab a bite. When they return an hour later, the lobby is clogged with little girls in white tights and black leotards. Mac takes shelter in a back room, waiting out the snowflakes and snow maidens. More than 150 children try out. Two long, tense hours later, he learns he’s in: He’ll dance as a party guest, onstage at the Fox Theatre.
