Webb is thrilled to be ‘living the mom life’
ity to the demanding classical pas de deux of “Raymonda,” with Jared Matthews. Every line perfect, every step effortless. The kind of dancing that makes audiences swoon and forget there’s a world outside the theater doors.
Her family was in the audience at the Hobby Center. Only a few close friends knew it was her last performance.
Last week, with the company’s tumultuous 2017-18 season finally finished, Webb sent a lengthy letter to the Houston Ballet board and a few others, including me, officially announcing her retirement and thanking virtually everyone who had been with her through the long arc of her career. She included former artistic director Ben Stevenson, who nurtured her as a young dancer, and current artistic director Stanton Welch, who promoted her to principal, of course; but also music director Ermanno Florio, plus pianists, management staff, crew people, fellow dancers and the audience.
Webb, now 39, always possessed that kind of grace on stage, too.
No two ballerinas are alike, and over many years of watching Houston Ballet, I have loved special ones for different reasons — the qualities they bring to movement, some essence in their personalities, or maybe just the shapes of their limbs and their particular ways of expressing themselves in roles that are funny or sad, aloof or tenacious.
This happens to anyone who follows ballet seriously. Dancers are vessels for our fantasies. The really great ones know that, as they push muscle and bone beyond its limits.
Webb belongs to the first generation of superballerinas, young women who train at a high level from a very young age. A local ballet studio may be their launching pad, but well before they are teenagers today’s aspiring ballerinas are spending summers away from home, at academies. (Louise Lester, Houston’s head ballet mistress, can spot potential in even the weeest of the wee ones, who may be only five.) The previous generation more likely opted out of high school at around 14 to take pre-professional classes. That’s late by today’s standards, because every hour of training matters.
By the time she is 18 or 20, a super-ballerina can sometimes make famously difficult classical variations — Odette’s fouettes in “Swan Lake,” for example, or the Rose Adagio of “The Sleeping Beauty” — look like fun and games, adding flourishes without a hiccup.
An older-school ballerina such as, say, the great former Houston prima Janie Parker, could mask technical deficiencies with other qualities, like soulful acting. You didn’t care so much about the tricks, because she could break your heart with her face. This is where a superballerina most often falls short. Developing acting chops takes experience and perhaps an oldschool coach who danced in the choreographer’s original production.
Webb had that in Stevenson, whose coaching has made him a darling of some of the world’s most famous dancers. She joined Houston Ballet in 1997, and was a soloist when he left in 2003.
She blossomed early in ingenue roles that required a mix of sweetness and sass — Lise in “La fille mal Gardée,” Swanilda in “Coppélia” and Cinderella. With her mothering instincts, she was the perfect muse for the role of Wendy in Trey McIntyre’s “Peter Pan.” With her fluidity and musicality, she also could summon the tragic profundity of Manon, Juliet, Giselle or Odette. Her lightness made her an unforgettable Sugar Plum Fairy. Her sharp footwork and clean lines made her a natural for George Balanchine’s ballets. And she could be fierce in contemporary works such as Welch’s “Divergence” or “TuTu.”
Webb also came along at a time when it was newly OK for ballerinas to have kids, and Welch, believing it gives them greater depth, has always encouraged it. Webb wanted a lot of them. She gave birth to her fourth child, son Benjamin Antes Bardo, in May, about two weeks after we met for an article about ballet moms.
She sounded upbeat on the phone last week, thrilled to be home “living the mom life” and looking forward to earning a degree in physical therapy at Lone Star College. She has used each of her pregnancy leaves to take prerequisite classes.
“I’m such a planner,” she said.
She’s seen a lot of dancers retire, beginning with Rachel Beard, who left Houston Ballet the first summer Webb came to Houston Ballet Academy as a student. For a long time, Webb found the prospect of retirement terrifying.
“Dancers become so consumed,” she said.
Her perspective broadened when she married Ryan Bardo, and it grew a little more with each child. “I made it further than I thought I ever would,” she said. “But the older kids get, the more they need you.”
Her son Joshua is now 11, about the age she was when she decided to devote her life to ballet; and she wants to be there for him. And for Lillian and Lucy and Ben. Each time she stepped away from the stage to have a child, she thought she wouldn’t come back.
But Houston Ballet’s schedule kept enticing her. She planned her third pregnancy around the opportunity to perform Stevenson’s “The Sleeping Beauty,” one of her favorite roles, in 2016. By then, she had decided to relish whatever remained of her career.
“The last five or six years were icing on the cake,” she said.
Increasingly, though, she cried when she dropped the kids off at school on her way to work, and the process of learning new choreography started to feel tedious.
Last fall, she added the company premiere of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s “Mayerling” to her repertoire. Then it was October, and the gala and the night she danced only for herself.
I am still replaying her two appearances that night in my head. What an exquisite way to embrace the inevitable, really. The thrill of Webb’s quicksilver lightness may be gone now, but her grounded attitude inspires.
Brava.