Out in the Arts
by D.L. Groover
Photo by Drew Donovan

A PRINCE OF A GUY

Houston Ballet principal dancer Zdenek Konvalina has, as they say in the ballet world, the most beautiful line and feet for days. Which means he looks great in a pair of tights, and his feet, whenever off the ground, are curved like scimitars. You can shape your body through diet and arduous exercise to look acceptable in classical dance costume, but there’s not much you can do to get that perfect arch every dancer desires. You’ve either got perfect feet, or you don’t. Konvalina has perfect feet. He also has regal bearing and composure, a dignified quiet about him, and an intense ardor that will serve him well in the upcoming Balanchine Celebration mounted by Houston Ballet (May 27 through June 6).

Born in Brno, Czech Republic, birthplace of composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and home to the prestigious Janacek Conservatory and National Theatre, Konvalina started dance class when he was nine. Every year, representatives from the Brno Conservatory’s academy would travel the country to select children who had the most promise for a career in dance. Unsuspecting kids were prodded and poked, their legs lifted in unnatural positions, as the dour adults looked for signs of flexibility and athletic prowess.

“I had no idea what this was,” Konvalina says now with charming sincerity. “I never saw dance before.”

Nonetheless, he was chosen, and, with his mother’s blessing, off he went to ballet school. Only in recent years has he learned that his father didn’t approve of his studying dance. He didn’t want a “comedian” in the family, a circus performer. “My father’s from a very old-fashioned family. My mother was the strong one who fought against him.”

At the conservatory, students are there to dance and learn, not necessarily like it. “It was very professional, very communistic, very strict Russian school. At the beginning, I wasn’t sure about it,” Konvalina remembers. “In America, they try to attract you to dance.”

The work was physically demanding for a child, bordering on abusive. The teachers would correct a position, not with words, but a fierce laying on of hands. Konvalina admits he was a lazy pupil at first, but after he saw the professionals and the thrill live theater can give both audience and performer, he fell in love with ballet and graduated first in his class. He also graduated with a degree in sociology, and an encyclopedic knowledge of art, languages, and science.

“I was ready. I wanted to leave learning. I wanted a job.”

As Konvalina explains it, a “job” in Europe—one in the arts, anyway—isn’t quite the same thing as a job here. There it’s your life. “You’re a part of the theater; you are the theater,” he says. “You finish rehearsal and see some opera singer who invites you to Boheme. I was never home. I saw every opera, every musical, every play. Afterwards you all go to the cantina. You know, there’s no theater without the cantina.”

He auditioned for Czechoslovakia’s premier Prague Ballet, but when the smaller Ostrava offered him a principal contract, he accepted their offer.

“I’m not loud about it, but I feel that I’m good,” Konvalina says. “I knew I could learn my craft there.”

He spent two years refining his technique, and was looking to move on when Eddie Toussaint, artistic co-founder of Ballet Jazz de Montreal, came to Ostrava to stage his Requiem. They became friends and have been together ever since. Toussaint convinced Konvalina to come to America to continue his career.

“I had got what I wanted from Ostrava, but America seemed so far,” he recalls thinking at the time.

Under Toussaint’s management and guidance, Konvalina performed as a guest artist for various small companies, “seeing every city in America.” In 2001 he won a gold medal at the Helsinki International Ballet Competition. That recognition brought him to the attention of Houston Ballet, which offered a principal contract the same year.

Konvalina is featured in the three Balanchine ballets for the celebration: Apollo, Balanchine’s first international masterpiece set to Stravinsky’s immortal music; the haunting, mysterious La Valse, to Ravel’s volcanic, hypnotic score; and the glittering Theme and Variations, Balanchine’s show-stopping tribute to his school, the Imperial Russian Ballet.

Konvalina has wanted to dance Apollo ever since he saw Mikhail Baryshnikov in it in Czechoslovakia.

“At first, I wasn’t mature enough to understand what it was,” he says. “You know, the Stravinsky music is not so easy at first. But it’s so rewarding and challenging to do it.

“I’ve danced Balanchine before, Four Temperaments or Serenade, but Apollo—is not Balanchine, it’s Apollo,” he says with reverence. “It stands alone. Balanchine is Apollo and vice versa. He choreographed it when he was 24, which is incredible; and he changed it so many times that it’s now polished to perfection. And the music, I think, is the best Stravinsky ever did for ballet.

“You feel the music when you dance it. You are the music. But it’s very thin ice. You can’t pass the line. It needs to be reserved. It’s abstract and short. I don’t know . . . It’s just Apollo, a masterpiece.”

Konvalina gives a little laugh. “You know, when I travel, the customs people always ask what do I do. And I say ‘ballet dancer.’ They think I’m a belly dancer. But when I say Nutcracker, that they understand.”

D.L. Groover writes monthly on the arts for OutSmart.

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