San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
‘It’s been a roller coaster’
On Saturday, Lucas Ataide danced onstage for a live audience for the first time in nine months. ■ In this case, the ticket-buyers were seated in cars in the parking lot at the Del Mar Fairgrounds for two performances of “The Nutcracker.” Ataide, a principal dancer for San Diego’s City Ballet, couldn’t actually see the audience, but he said just knowing they would be out there was enough.
“Performing for an audience is the very life of a dancer,” said Ataide, 32, of University Heights. “A lot of the joy for a dancer is to have an audience out there and to receive the energy back from them.”
Since the pandemic began in March, Ataide said he’s struggled with loss of income, work and motivation, and he’s had challenges staying in prime shape with limited time to practice, train and interact with other dancers. Even when Ataide is in the studio with other artists, they can’t touch each other and must practice behind a mask.
“It’s been a roller coaster,” he said. “When I started back in the studio, I had to struggle a lot to get my breath right. Now we’re wearing masks that allow us to be close to each other, but masks are very challenging. It’s hard to breathe in them when you’re jumping and you need a lot of oxygen.”
But overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles in order to dance has been Ataide’s life story.
In the 2000 British film “Billy Elliot,” a boy from a working-class family must overcome a lack of training and his father’s prejudice in order to follow his dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer. Billy Elliot is a fictional character, but Ataide’s story is strikingly similar.
He grew up in the small town of Mogi Guaçu in São Paulo, Brazil, where he remembers “dancing around everywhere” from an early age. He tried hiphop and tango before discovering a passion and talent for ballet. But it was a passion he had to hide from his traditional parents for most of his youth, because they saw male ballet dancers as effeminate. Ataide would pretend he was going to karate classes when he was actually taking dance classes.
When Ataide was 17, his parents found out about his deception and forced him to quit. But when he turned 18, he auditioned for a prestigious ballet school in Rio de Janeiro and won a scholarship. Even though his training had been minimal, the teachers recognized his raw talent. Moving to Rio was both thrilling and scary. He struggled with self-confidence because he was so far behind the other students, but for the first time he could live an honest life as both a ballet dancer and a gay man.
“Those two things were very interconnected but separate,” he said. “For my dad, I was gay because of ballet, but no, I’m gay because I’m gay and happen to like ballet. When I moved and could be true to myself, I felt like I could just live fully and be an artist. You can’t be an artist if you don’t live authentically.”
In 2010, he joined the Brazilian Ballet Company, where he danced in numerous full-length ballets and toured the world. But because the company’s finances were often unstable, he decided to move to the United States where he could afford to live as a full-time dancer. Unfortunately, the Alabama ballet company that brought him to America in 2013 shut down not long after he arrived. He spent the next two years dancing for different companies around the U.S. to keep his work visa.
In January 2015, he moved to San Diego to join City Ballet, where he has been performing about four productions each year plus the annual “Nutcracker.”
Over the years, he has worked his way up in the company, playing Don Jose in “Carmen,” The Cavalier in “The Nutcracker,” Albrecht in “Giselle” and the male lead in the “Le Corsaire” Pas de Deux. He was about to start rehearsals for the role of Romeo in “Romeo and Juliet” when the pandemic hit.
“It was a shock to everybody in the beginning, and I was very sad, because I was really looking forward to Romeo,” he said. “We didn’t know what would happen. It was really difficult.”
City Ballet began producing online works and classes in the summer, and it reopened its studio in September. Ataide said he spent the time off working on his training at home and studying performances of other companies’ ballets online. But when he got back in the studio a few months ago, he said learning to adapt to the socialdistancing measures was difficult.
While many dancers have struggled to make ends meet this year with no dance engagements, Ataide said he’s grateful to be working again, even if it’s mostly online. He’s also grateful for his husband of two years, KPBS reporter Andrew Bowen, who has been working all year.
Ataide said the live “Nutcracker” performances this weekend, along with the company’s now-streaming “Masquerade Nutcracker” production, have given him a sense of optimism for the future.
“We’re mostly just doing online works, and it’s been challenging, but I think we’re going to survive,” he said. “Dancers will always survive, and we’ll be even better when everything comes back.”
“Performing for an audience is the very life of a dancer.”
Lucas Ataide