No ‘bunhead,’ but no less pivotal
Ballet careers are brutally short, usually no more than two decades, and an ambitious dancer can spend most of it working her way through the ranks.
Jessica Collado has always been an attentiongetter — versatile but with a warm, earthy aura that makes her seem utterly approachable. She brings to mind one of Houston’s most legendary ballerinas, Janie Parker.
Like Parker, Collado grew up in Georgia. She has progressed steadily since 2003, when she had a full scholarship to Houston Ballet Academy. After a year’s apprenticeship, she spent four years in the corps de ballet, then two years as a demi-solist, two years as a soloist and four years as a first soloist.
But when Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch told her a few years ago she was “a different kind of flower” who would have a more difficult path than some of the company’s other ballerinas, Collado did not know what to think.
Realizing she would never be a “bunhead” dancer — the technically dazzling type typically chosen to perform leading roles in the big classical
ballets that are the company’s bread and butter, Collado pretty much wrote off the possibility of attaining the highest rank.
As a first soloist, she didn’t feel held back. She still got to perform any role she wanted, so she was OK with it. At Houston Ballet, “if you’re suited for something, it’s yours,” Collado said.
This season, however, Welch dangled a carrot. He cast Collado as the spunky lead for a few performances of his neoclassical “Cinderella.”
Her luminous spirit shines even through a blurry video of the central pas de deux. During the curtain call made about an hour later, Welch had a huge floral arrangement placed at her feet, stepped onto the stage and announced Collado was the company’s newest principal.
Later, he praised her complete devotion to the art form, her richly detailed character acting and her engaging personality, also acknowledging that guest stagers, teachers and choreographers love her.
“Rarely is a ballet created here that she is not a pivotal part of,” Welch said.
She appears in all three dances of the current mixed-rep program by choreographers Hans van Manen, Jirí Kylián and Justin Peck. They’re ensemble works, but Collado is prominently featured in solos and pas de deux.
She was still beaming one morning last week, when we met in one of the company’s big, warm rehearsal studios.
It was a day like so many others of her career. After a personal warmup in the conditioning studio, she took class for an hour and 15 minutes, then sweated through rehearsals for three Welch dances the company performs next month in Germany, plus the upcoming Miller Outdoor Theatre run of “Madame Butterfly” in May.
That meant eight hours of dancing, with a onehour lunch break.
Collado’s dance bag held five pairs of shoes, not counting the two on her feet: The toe shoes she’d worn during “Cinderella” were “pancaked” — coated with makeup so they would blend with her tights, to give the appearance of a longer, leaner line. A pair from Peck’s “Year of the Rabbit” were still shiny; he prefers them that way, perhaps to add a glimmer to the speed of his dancers’ feet. A new pair she wanted to break in were still stiff, wrapped in cellophane. She carried two pairs of flat slippers: one for class, the other dirtied from performing van Manen’s “Grosse Fuge.”
Her bag also held a wild assortment of stretchy thera-bands, a trio of small balls she uses to massage specific muscles, a back warmer, several pairs of leg warmers and extra sets of the toe pads she puts inside her pointe shoes.
Collado would finish the workday with her own 20-minute stretchout, taking home a bag of ice to nurse whatever was aching most (this week, her neck) before she soaked her whole body in a bath with Epsom salts.
Still, she was jazzed, anticipating the last performances of the “Legends & Prodigy” program this weekend. Each dance demands something different, she said.
The groundedness of van Manen’s ‘“Grosse Fuge” makes it hard on the legs and tires her right off the bat. She takes well to anything by Kylián, but most of his dances are done in soft slippers; this one, “Stepping Stones,” requires sharp work en pointe. Peck’s more classical, zippy ballet requires a total attitude shift, to youthful joy.
Collado dashes to her dressing room between each piece to change her costume, shoes and hair. “You kind of just go-gogo,” she said. “By the time it’s over, you’re not sure what’s happened, but it was fun.”
When she’s off the company clock, Collado often works with independent choreographers. (A few years ago in San Francisco, I was surprised to catch her onstage in a solo a California friend had created for her at the Yerba Buena Center.)
“Most everything that happens at Houston Ballet is mass production, with a lot of people in the room and formal rehearsals, and you know it’s going to be performed on a big stage,” she said. “Working with little companies on the side brings totally different experiences. It’s intimate, and you’re creating in the moment. That brings a new element to your dancing.”
Collado will soon embrace another life experience: She’s getting married next month. She met her fiance, energyfinance professional Dan Plate, in the bulk-foods aisle at Whole Foods. They already share a house and an English setter named Hobbs.
“We’re super happy,” she said. “It’s nice to come home to a nondance person. He keeps my life in balance.”