Dance Scene
'Nutcracker' prince leaps at Hawai'i role

By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Editor

Ethan Stiefel was called "the most advanced dancer in the world" by New Yorker magazine. He will make his Hawai'i debut in "Nutcracker" tonight at Blaisdell Concert Hall.

So the American Ballet Theatre principal, who was to make his Ballet Hawaii debut in the role of the Cavalier Prince in "Nutcracker," opening a three-day run today at Blaisdell Concert Hall, is doing as much as he possibly can now, when he's fit as the proverbial fiddle. Even if he loves to do nothing else but sleep when he has a day off.

But a rehearsal mishap resulted in an injured knee, and now Stiefel can only conduct a master class for Ballet Hawai'i, at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Blaisdell stage.

"The life of a dancer is limited," he said in a telephone interview from his Manhattan apartment before his injury. "So I have to take opportunities whenever they come up. I greet new experiences."

He could, for instance, pick a "Nutcracker" anywhere else in the world, but when Ballet Hawaii invited him to come here, he said yes. Log it as a new experience. And add the irony: bum leg, can't dance.

"After speaking with and working with Amanda Schull (the Island ballerina who now is with the San Francisco Ballet and who co-starred with Stiefel in the ballet feature, "Center Stage"), I thought it would be great to dance in Hawai'i," Stiefel said. "It's wonderful to perform the 'Nutcracker' at Christmas time, but even greater to be able to do it in Hawai'i." Alas, he'll be on the sidelines.

But he and his girlfriend, Gillian Murphy, also an ABT dancer in "Nutcracker" (Snow Queen) and a corps dancer in "Center Stage," were eager to combine a vacation when they take off their pointe shoes. "We'll probably spend 10 days on Kaua'i," Stiefel said.

The hiatus will likely be the last one for many months to come. Stiefel last month did a tour in London and danced the "Nutcracker" recently in North Carolina. A gig in Los Angeles before Hawai'i had to be scrapped.

"It's not the most stable career with a lot of free time," Stiefel said of his hustle-and-bustle agenda. "If there are no performances, there are rehearsals." And, in his case last year, the "Center Stage" movie.

Indeed, the down time enabled him to experience movie-making, since it provided him the opportunity to stretch as a dancer, performing well beyond ballet boundaries. "I do some (modern) dance in London and I do ride a Harley-Davidson, too," he said of elements of his screen character, Cooper Nielson, that slightly parallel his real life.

"But I'm not like him, really, as far as personality goes. He probably deserved what he got in the end."

The ballet movie, about eager wannabes and the agonies of training to make the final cut, put Stiefel opposite Hawai'i-born Schull, who danced this fall with Ballet Hawaii, when principals from the S.F. Ballet performed at Blaisdell. Schull, a S.F. corps de ballet member, earlier trained at the Hawaii State Ballet, a rival company, though her mother, Susan Schull, has been a Ballet Hawaii mover-and-shaker.

"The hard part of the movie was that first scene we filmed," Stiefel said of a nocturnal moment when Stiefel and Schull wind up in the sack. "I mean, we had just met." The intimacies included kissing.

He brought sizzle and sexiness to his Baryshnikov-type role, a rebel with a cause who woos the leading lady but gains a principal dancer, not a lover, by the final credits. He also demonstrates a riveting presence and charismatic force in the dance numbers.

"The way I look at it, opportunities like this don't come up very often for a ballet dancer," Stiefel said. "I had to jump at it. It was a chance to preserve myself, to broaden my horizons, to let people know how much I can do — outside of dancing."

Stiefel, born in Pennsylvania but raised in Wisconsin, got into dance at an early age through his sister.

"My mom sent me to dance classes with her, because I was athletic and very hyper; she figured if I were left home, I'd break things," Stiefel said. "I wasn't taking classes at first, but later gave it a shot. And enjoyed it, with love and passion, and I'm thankful it's become my career."

He loves the performance aspect best. "It's one of the hardest things to prepare for a show, and while rehearsals and classes serve their purpose, there's absolutely no greater high than the actual performance, the audience contact," Stiefel said. "Ultimately, that's why you get into entertainment. I'm not saying you go out there and do things just to please an audience, but that's where the satisfaction and joy is."

A dancer, he said, also is an athlete, and "a dancer is only as good as his body. So I make decisions and maintain discipline in my life," Stiefel said.

His regimen depends on what's cooking. "My job really gives me the exercise I need," he said. "Often, I'm on my feet from 10 a.m. in the morning on a rehearsal day, till 6 or 7 p.m. in the evening. And, if there's a performance that night, a few more hours.

"The key is to be smart, to tune in to your body. When I was younger, I'd work out at a gym, but seriously, I'm quite tired at the end of a day now. Besides, as a dancer, you can't be too bulked up, like a wrestler, so you have to watch it. I take a personal, sensible approach to eating, too, watching my diet and dictated by work. In short, I take care of myself."

He enjoys weekend jaunts outside of the city on his Harley, though admits that his ABT honchos frown upon such diversions. "It causes concern, so I don't often go to work on my Harley, but try to take long trips during the summer," he said.

The New Yorker called Stiefel "the most advanced dancer in the world" after his 1998 performance in Twyla Tharp's "Known by Heart" at ABT. While with the New York City Ballet, Stiefel was called by Vanity Fair "the most talented American male dancer ... since Edward Villella."

He joined ABT in 1997 and since has scored a growing list of roles, including Conrad in "Le Corsaire," and leads in such diverse productions as Tharp's "Push Comes to Shove," Kenneth MacMillan's "Romeo and Juliet," Jiri Kylian's "Stepping Stones," and in such repertory favorites as George Balanchine's "Apollo," Lar Lubovitch's "Otello" and Harald Landers' "Etudes." His grace and dynamics also have been demonstrated in the full-length classics "Swan Lake," and "La Sylphide."

Stiefel frets that while there's significant acceptance of males dancing in ballet, there still is a shortage of male dancers. And a stigma.

He said a man or a boy in the ballet world "gets treated differently, sometimes with great excitement. There are a lot more female dancers than male and there are some misconceptions about the business." For example, all male ballet dancers are not gay.

Further, being an American dancer has its frustrations, Stiefel said. "You can be good and talented, and you can be overlooked and left behind, because of the notion that you have to be from Russia to have talent. I'd say that the strength of the American male dancer is rising," he said.

And Stiefel is part of the reason for the growth and change in acceptance.

"I would say that physically, my coordination and my ability to perform helped me cross that bridge," he said of the path an amateur takes toward being a professional. "But things didn't really start happening till I came to New York."