Sarah Lamb
If there ever was a stereotype in the general public's mind of a ballerina, Sarah Lamb has to be it. At first glance she appears to have stepped right out of a fairy tale or off a Madame Alexander doll shelf. Her skin truly is porcelain, her long golden hair frames an angelic visage, and as she moves, she gracefully carries a sleek, but strong, well-formed body with regal aplomb. She appears to have been born to be a princess. Underneath this fem-inine façade lies a culturally refined young woman with steely determination and resolve.
Sarah was born and raised in Boston and began dance lessons at the age of four. When she was six, she auditioned and was accepted into the Boston Ballet School. She was placed in the highest level of the school when she was just thirteen and remained there during her four years in high school. Sarah feels this was very fortunate for her because Madame Tatiana Legat, the granddaughter of Nicholas Legat, was her teacher. "My work ethic and all that has made me into a better dancer has come from her," Sarah states lovingly. "She is a really attentive teacher and pays attention to detail. Not only does she emphasize the use of the port de bra, cleanliness of the legs and good technique, but also she stresses strength must be combined with grace. Without her guidance, I don't think I would have the intelligence behind the way I approach my dancing. She gave me so much. It is hard to imagine what I would be without her."
At seventeen, Sarah joined Boston Ballet II (the same as being an apprentice), became a member of the corps de ballet of the main company at eighteen, was promoted to soloist at twenty and was made a principal at twenty-two. During this time she entered several ballet competitions. When Sarah was sixteen, Laura Young, the Director of The School, encouraged her to apply for the National Foundation for Advancement for the Arts Competition, which was held in Miami for a week in January. Within a few months, she competed at the USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi where she was a finalist. This was in 1998, and Anna Marie Holmes was now the Director of The School.
Looking back at that time, Sarah says that she felt the preparation required for entering these competitions was invaluable. "Many young dancers in the corps de ballet no longer get the kind of attention they got when they were possibly the best girl in the school. They join a major company and suddenly they are at the bottom. It's difficult for many dancers to deal with. It was wonderful for me," she laughingly recalls, "to be at the bottom of the food chain during the day, but then later have a few hours to have individual coaching and attention that normally only principal dancers receive."
The following year she entered a competition in Nagoya, Japan, and came away with the Silver Medal. It gave her more confidence and made her realize that if she kept working hard, she might make ballet happen for her; that one day maybe she would actually be doing these roles in a company.
She won another silver medal the next year at The New York International Ballet Competition and yet another at the 2002 IBC in Jackson, this time as a Senior Competitor.
Now that she has left the competitions behind her, Sarah says that she is happy she did them because they have given her a good base. Comparing being in competitions to actually performing in a company, she says she finds comp-etitions far more stressful and less rewarding. She says its wonderful being a part of an entire ballet and being onstage with all of the other people who are making a complete work of art together...being a part of a story and an entire production. She adds that in a full length production, you can make some slight errors, but since people are watching you for two and a half hours, they're not going to remember every single error. They are going to remember the overall emotional involvement that you gave to it, whereas, in a competition, you're onstage for maybe one and a half minutes. She says, "that's one and a half minutes to actually make an impression, and if you mess up one step, which maybe takes twenty seconds, then you've already messed up one third of your variation."
She continues, "In a whole ballet you have so many more people watching you all the time. They're not just watching your variation, they're watching your entrance, how you interact with people on stage, your acting ability and many other things. There is a lot of pressure, but you have time to really delve into the role. It's difficult to just 'go on.' It's also difficult to dance in galas...to go onstage and do a variation or pas de deux out of nowhere. A ballet is a ballet because all of the pieces work together to create something. So to take it out of context, it is difficult to make it meaningful."
In the fall of 2004, Sarah joined The Royal Ballet as a First Soloist. Although she was happy in Boston, she felt there was 'a lot more out there'; there was a lot more that she wanted to learn and to do. She feels that any real artist is always going to challenge themselves, and that she did not want to be happy being comfortable.
Moving to London proved to be more difficult than she had anticipated. Since her father is British and she has dual citizenship and also, "I grew up watching Monty Python," she didn't expect the degree of difficulty in getting settled. The bureaucracy was hard to wade through, but she says, looking back, it was a minor irritant since she came there to dance.
While she is a First Soloist, she has also been dancing some Principal roles. Almost as soon as she got off the plane from the U.S., she was cast in Frederick Ashton's "Thais" pas de deux, which was coached by Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley, the dancers upon which the piece was originally set. It was an 'open coaching session' with an audience that paid admission. Sarah said she was very nervous, but excited to have this wonderful experience. After the dress rehearsal, Antoinette Sibley immediately came back stage saying, it was wonderful! I don't know how you did it." Sarah says, "It reminded me of Madame Legat, who used to come back even when I was half out of my tutu. She would say, 'You need to do this, this and this...,' and she would actually make me do it topless in the dressing room. Antoinette was kind of the same. I had some of my costume off and she said, 'I want you running like this.' So I was running three steps as far as I could in the dressing room and turning around and running another three steps with my hair half down. She said, 'That's it; that's what we have to do.'"
On May 21, 2004, Sarah made her debut as Odette/Odile in The Royal Ballet's "Swan Lake" at London's Royal Opera House. This writer was fortunate to be in the audience to witness her exquisitely beautiful performance. Midway through the evening, I heard someone nearby whisper, "She's perfection." I wholeheartedly agreed.
What makes her the happiest is dancing ballets that require a lot of acting. It is what makes her feel complete as a dancer. Describing the first time she danced the part of Juliet, she said she felt 'at home'. "I didn't feel there was anyplace else I should be. I felt completely comfortable and completely 'in the moment'."
Discussing the stress involved in this career, Sarah brings up her Grandmother. She is her father's mother, is British, a former actress and is very strong-willed. About a week before Sarah's debut in "Swan Lake," she spoke to her grandmother on the phone. When asked how she was, Sarah replied, "I'm a bit nervous." The Grandmother responded, "Why?" Sarah replied, "Did you ever get nervous for your premieres?" Her answer was, "No, why should I?" Sarah continued, "Don't you have any fear of failure?" Again, her answer was negative, "What are you talking about? That's nonsense!"
Taking her grandmother's example to heart, Sarah is very comfortable in her role in life. She quotes a Spanish poem that says, 'A life lived in fear is a life half lived.' She laments the fact that some people never step out of their comfort zone and take a chance. "Everyone has failed sometime, and you have to learn to just forge ahead."
Janice Barringer lives in New York City and is a ballet teacher and writer. She is co-author of The Pointe Book and the newly published On Pointe. She also has made numerous instructional DVD's.