DANCE : Stepping Out of a Corps Into a Legacy

The last time the New York City Ballet performed at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, four years ago, Margaret Tracey and Ben Huys were among the newest company members. Both had made a strong impression at the School of American Ballet’s annual workshop the previous spring and had joined NYCB immediately afterward. But in October, 1986, they were dancing in the furthest reaches of the corps, and Orange County audiences were hardly likely to single them out.

This week, Tracey and Huys, both 23, arrive as soloists who have accumulated a considerable repertory of important roles. While a one-week engagement can give only a small sampling of those roles, each has some plum assignments. Tracey danced George Balanchine’s “Tarantella” on opening night and will perform the featured role that Peter Martins created for her in his most recent ballet, “Fearful Symmetries,” on Friday and Saturday nights. Huys was in the First Theme of Balanchine’s “The Four Temperaments” on opening night and will be seen as the Man in Green in Jerome Robbins’ “Dances at a Gathering” on Thursday and at the Saturday matinee.

New York audiences have been witnessing the flowering of these two young talents in recent seasons as each took on demanding assignments with aplomb. The petite, confident Tracey has tackled bravura lead roles in Balanchine’s “Square Dance” and “Donizetti Variations”; appeared as both the Sugar Plum Fairy and Dewdrop in “Nutcracker”; exerted an air of quiet mystery in Robbins’ “Afternoon of a Faun” and Balanchine’s “Ivesiana” and originated roles in several Martins ballets as well as Robbins’ “Ives, Songs.”

Huys has demonstrated an air of quiet authority and innate elegance partnering leading ballerinas in “Swan Lake,” “Cortege Hongrois” and “Nutcracker” and made an impressive debut in the lead role of the Divertimento from “Le Baiser de la Fee,” one of Balanchine’s most intricate male roles.

Given the sizable and diverse repertory available at City Ballet, both dancers would seem to have an impressive array of challenges awaiting them, and both are likely to be prominent when the company stages its first “Sleeping Beauty” next spring.

During breaks between recent rehearsals at the New York State Theater, Tracey and Huys each took time to look back on the route that led them to NYCB and their careers thus far. Both had to travel a considerable distance (in opposite directions) to get to New York and to overcome initial discomfort at finding themselves alone in the city at a very young age.

Tracey, one of four children of a family in Pueblo, Colo. (her young sister, Kathleen, also is in the company), came to the NYCB-affiliated School of American Ballet at 15 after auditioning in Colorado. She studied there for four years, although she had not particularly set her sights on New York City Ballet before her arrival at the school.

Huys, a native of Ghent, Belgium, who received his ballet training in Antwerp, had longed to join the company but been frustrated that NYCB does not hold auditions. His success at the Prix de Lausanne competition won him a scholarship to the School of American Ballet in 1985. After a year of studying there, he achieved his long-held goal.

“I was dying to get out of Pueblo. I know that if I wanted to be a professional, Colorado had nothing to offer me,” recalled Tracey, who received most of her early training from her mother.

At the School of American Ballet, she found an especially inspiring teacher in Stanley Williams, the Dane whom Balanchine invited to come teach in 1964: “We had wonderful Friday night pointe classes with him. He has an amazing understanding of pointe work. And my fondest memories of the school are of working with him on ballets for the workshop. I like his manner. He’s very gentle and encouraging. He gave me strength and precision and inspired a lot of confidence.”

After four years at the school, Tracey found that she took naturally to the Balanchine repertory upon joining the company. “You automatically feel comfortable when you step into his pieces,” she said. “They’re amazing. They just seem to work, musically and physically.”

Huys’ first months at the school were frustrating ones. His Soviet-based early training was at odds with the speed and attack emphasized there, and his early memories of Williams are of being repeatedly told, “That’s wrong.”

Huys was ready to head back to Europe but was persuaded to stick it out and soon found things going more smoothly. “They started rehearsing for the workshop, and I was cast in ‘Cortege Hongrois,’ (Bournonville’s) ‘Konservatoriet’ and a new pas de deux by Peter Martins,” he said. “All of a sudden, I got inspired. I had a great foundation from my studies in Antwerp, but I had to adjust and learn. I’m still learning. It was very difficult: The musicality is different; you use different muscles; I got injured. Now I’ve found my own way of working, so I haven’t had so many injuries.”

Quiet and reflective in conversation, Huys demonstrated assertiveness when he took matters into his own hands in gaining his first prominent role. After two years in the company, “nothing was happening,” he said. “I started to rehearse the ‘Nutcracker’ pas de deux on my own, and I asked Peter (Martins) to come look at it. He watched and said, ‘Great,’ and put me on. I don’t know if they ever would have put me out there that year. Sometimes you have to do it yourself.”

Both dancers have known the challenge of learning and performing a role within a matter of days, as well as the luxury of having lengthy preparation. Tracey learned “Square Dance” in four days. “At first I didn’t think I could actually do it, but I was extremely busy that season, so I didn’t have time to think about it, which was a blessing. If I’d had had two or three weeks to brood over it, I could have psyched myself out of it,” she said.

By contrast, Robbins, known for the meticulousness of his rehearsals, worked daily with Tracey and Jeffrey Edwards for two weeks before their debuts in “Faun.”

Huys had a similarly intensive process with Robbins when “Dances at a Gathering” was revived last spring. “He started two months before we did it. . . . He talked about the quality of dancing together, something he said the ballet had lost over the years.”

Tracey received some coaching from the source on “Tarantella” when she asked Patricia McBride, the longtime NYCB ballerina on whom Balanchine had choreographed the 1964 ballet, to make suggestions.

“I was rehearsing it for Patty’s special retirement performance, and I saw her walk by. I asked her if there were things she’d like to change. I really wanted her to be happy with the way I did it. She fixed little things, and the way she fixed it at that rehearsal is the way I’ve left it, and I won’t touch it because I feel that’s my small way of honoring Patty. I also learned a lot from watching tapes of her dancing the role. She just had so much fun with it.”

Tracey and Huys are part of the new generation, who never knew Balanchine in any personal way and are now entrusted with his ballets. Both dancers seem to recognize the significance and uniqueness of this legacy and of the extensive challenges the NYCB repertory holds for them.

Each also is out to break some molds, as well. Huys said he is concerned that he not be “stereotyped as a danseur noble. I would like to do as many different kinds of roles as I can. Otherwise, you don’t develop into a complete dancer.”

He has his eye on several of Balanchine’s knottier Stravinsky ballets, such as “Agon” and “Duo Concertante.”

Tracey mentioned “Stravinsky Violin Concerto” as a ballet others might not picture her in but that she hopes to try. She also hopes to find her way into repertory traditionally considered the property of “tall girls”--something she already has done with her roles in “Square Dance” and “Donizetti,” which mostly have been the domain of such tall ballerinas as Merrill Ashley and Kyra Nichols.

Without ever working with Balanchine, Tracey has acquired one of the primary traits associated with his dancers--a boldness and energy on stage, a willingness to take chances and give a little extra. “I don’t know how to hold back on stage,” she said. “If I did, I’d feel I was cheating not only myself but also the audience, and I wouldn’t have as much fun.”

The New York City Ballet appears through Sunday afternoon at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, in Costa Mesa. Tickets: $14 to $49. Information: (714) 740-2000 or 556-2787.