The wind beneath her wings

By BERNADETTE RAE

It was just five days from opening night of the Royal New Zealand Ballet's Madame Butterfly in Wellington.

Japanese dancer Yu Takayama, who had been with the company just one month, was to dance the role of Suzuki, personal maid to the beautiful young geisha Cio-Cio San. Takayama was also understudying the lead.

Then disaster struck.

Craig Lord, Pinkerton to Jane Turner's Cio-Cio San, was injured, his performing out of the question.

Turner, dancing her final role before retirement after 14 years with the RNZB, decided she would not continue either.

"Craig and I have worked so hard for four weeks, in the weekends, at lunchtimes," she said. "Then one lift doesn't go as planned. It would be heartbreaking to have to start again at the beginning."

Always a perfectionist, Turner had the option of dancing with Pinkerton's understudy Geordan Wilcox - her partner in real life.

"That could be interesting," she declared, enigmatically. But after further, careful consideration she stuck with her decision to bow out, into the corps and into the role of one of Cio-Cio San's bridesmaids, for her swansong.

Even though it meant her star-spangled career will end very quietly, she was happy with her decision for Takayama to dance with Wilcox.

"They have developed a good rapport already. It is best this way."

The change also meant that Takayama had to relinquish her role of Suzuki, and Nadine Tyson, already dancing the part in the alternate cast, was now doing double duties.

Takayama has taken the sudden step up into the leading lady limelight in her stride.

"At first it was scary," she confesses. "I thought I had just five days to prepare for it. Because I was meant to dance Suzuki I haven't had much opportunity to watch Cio-Cio San - Suzuki and Cio-Cio San are usually dancing together."

But then her first appearance was put back several days - visiting star Amy Fote, a principal dancer with the Milwaukee Ballet, and Douglas McCubbin, were always scheduled to perform the leads, alternating with Lord and Turner. Takayama relaxed slightly.

The diminutive dancer arrived in New Zealand in June, via Europe. "Long story," she says.

An established soloist and principal dancer in Tokyo, where she performed with the Asami Maki Ballet Company and the New National Theatre, Takayama left her homeland two years ago for Europe, performing with the Zurich Ballet.

She then had another contract to perform in Portugal. But there was a paperwork problem.

Takayama waited for months in Lisbon for the hitch to be sorted, but it became an increasingly lost cause.

Meanwhile, her boyfriend, Jo Funaki, had organised an audition with the New Zealand company and suggested she audition too.

"And we are so lucky," she says. "We both got contracts until the end of the year and the end of the Coppelia season."

Four days before Madame Butterfly opened, Vicki Attard arrived, from Sydney, the very first Cio-Cio San to dance the role in this Stanton Welch choreography. Her job was to fine-tune the New Zealand female dancers into their roles.

Choreographer Welch created his Madame Butterfly for the Australian Ballet in 1995. Steven Woodgate, the original Goro, has been here for four weeks already, staging the production to Welch's original instructions. The groundwork was all done, the steps learned.

Attard's role was to "basically pass on everything I learned about the role from Stanton", she says, "and to keep the dancers here from falling into the traps I fell into."

Takayama was delighted to have this expert coaching.

"She knows everything," she says. "She is not just teaching steps, but what everything means. I am very clear now about what I have to do."

Attard explains the essential dynamics of the role, which not only requires a talented dancer with a tiny physique, necessary for the big pas de deux at the end of the first act, but a superb actor as well.

The central pas de deux of Cio-Cio San and Pinkerton is almost 10 minutes in length, twice as long as the usual pas de deux, and "managing" the female dancer in a series of lifts over that length of time can be exhausting work for her partner, says Attard.

A tall Cio-Cio San would require a male partner of front-row forward proportions.

"You have to remember also," adds Attard, "that Cio-Cio San is just 15 years old when the ballet opens. So she is very young, innocent, and immature. She has only become a geisha after her father has committed suicide for honour, and the family has fallen into poverty.

"She has to grow up very quickly, with her marriage to Pinkerton - and that all unfolds in the pas de deux.

"Then, when Act II opens it is three years on and Cio-Cio San has become a mother. She has had to deal with Pinkerton's absence for all that time. Finally comes the realisation that she has been betrayed, all her dreams are dashed, she is asked to give up her son. It is a fantastic acting role - one of the best I have ever done.

"The fact that Takayama is Japanese definitely helps her into the role. She does the things instinctively that are so right."

Takayama agrees. "It is easy for me to understand it. I have grown up with the image of a geisha."

She danced the role on stage for the first time, in a dress rehearsal.

"I had such fun," she announces afterwards. "It was not so really perfect, performance-wise but the acting part was much easier when you have the makeup, costumes, music - something happens."


PERFORMANCE

*What: Madame Butterfly, with the Royal New Zealand Ballet

*Where and when: Aotea Centre, August 11-15, 7.30pm, with 12.30pm "super saver" Aug 12; 2.30pm matinees Aug 14, 15