Ballet prodigy gets a big lift from mom _ The Japan Times.pdf

7/27/2019 Ballet prodigy gets a big lift from mom _ The Japan Times.pdf

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10/25/13 Ballet prodigy gets a big lift from mom | The Japan Times

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Ballet prodigy gets a big lift from mom
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Sixteen-year old ballerina Miko Fogarty may be an American teen prodigy, but despite hailing

from that land steeped in stardom culture, she seems to have none of the usual celebrity

trappings or to be particularly interested in them.

When we met recently on a steaming August afternoon in Tokyo, she had on a well-laundered

T-shirt shed bought in Bulgaria while she was there competing in a ballet competition, a pair

of cut-off jeans and hemp sandals. She was wearing little or no makeup and refrained from

flouncing around or showing off, even a little bit.

Beside this beaming ballet prodigy sat her mother Satoko, a former concert pianist from

Osaka. Miko had just spent a few weeks at her grandmothers house in the city of

Nishinomiya in Hyogo Prefecture, between Kobe and Osaka.

Now she was in Tokyo to promote First Position, a ballet documentary and U.S. box-office

hit directed by Bess Kargman in which she features prominently.

The film whose honors gained before its official release in the U.S. and Japan last year

include both the Best Documentary and Best New Director prizes at the Portland

International Film Festival in Oregon and the Jury Prize at the San Francisco Documentary

Festival, as well as the Audience Award at the Dallas Film Festival follows several young

ballet dancers from all over the world as they compete in the elite Youth America Grand Prix,

where their life dreams are at stake.

In the final round, the action reaches fever pitch as the events original thousands of hopefuls

are whittled down to just a handful competing for coveted contracts and scholarships, as well

as the chance to dance in a gala and appear on a television talk show.

During our meeting, Satokos gaze was rarely off her daughter, and clearly there was a bond

that went beyond the maternal. Theyre both performance-arts professionals and, as such,

her mother seems to know exactly what Miko requires to climb up another rung on the sky-

high ballet ladder.

Its not a question of what she wants, really, said Satoko (in English). Because what she

wants is to do ballet. Its always a question of what she needs to get to the place she wants to

go with the ballet. Theres nothing else.

Mikos younger brother, Jules Jarvis (aka J.J.) used to dance with his sister, and when she was

younger Mikos dream was for them to perform in the same ballet company together. But J.J.

stopped dancing after deciding he didnt have his sisters passion and drive. He wanted to

become a normal boy, Satoko says. It wasnt easy, but I came to terms with that.
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Mikos father is a British entrepreneur with his own software company in the Bay Area of

California close to San Francisco. She herself was born in London just in time for that

years Wimbledon tennis tournament.

I remember sitting on the sofa, nursing Miko and listening to the tennis and thinking, Well,

this girl could be a tennis player!, Satoko recalls. Instead, she chose ballet.

But Satoko stresses that had her daughter chosen something else, she as her mother would have offered 100-percent support. Maybe its because I used to be a concert pianist

and practice every day and all that but I hated the idea of sitting at home after I got married.

I wanted to go out, and I wanted my kids to come with me. That meant lessons, and I was

happy to take them from lesson to lesson and to see what they most wanted to learn.

In First Position, Satoko says to the camera that she never tired of watching her children

dance, and now, after meeting her, its clear she meant every word. My mom, says Miko, a

little shyly but looking at her mother with adoration, shes just been so enormously

supportive.

Before ballet, Miko took swimming, tennis and dance classes but she says nothing excited

her as much as slipping her feet into ballet shoes and standing on her toes. She had her first

lesson when she was 4, which is around the age most ballet professionals start. By 17, the

cream of the crop have competed in and won a number of international contests, and have

geared themselves for ballet scholarships or to be selected to join a prestigious company.

So Miko, who has won coveted medals at competitions in Lausanne, Switzerland, Moscow

and the Youth America Grand Prix (this, when she was 12 years old), is firmly on course to

forge a brilliant career for herself.

But rather than thinking about the future, she has always just directed her efforts toward the

next stage or the next production. Ever since she was very little, Miko has had wonderful

powers of concentration and discipline, says Satoko. But it was only after she started doing

ballet that she became happy as well all smiles.

In August, Miko danced excerpts from the title role in the 1880s French ballet La Esmeralda

by Jules Perrot in a Lausanne Gala 2013 staged at the Aoyama Gekijyo Theater in Tokyosglitzy Shibuya district. The prestigious event drew a huge crowd of ballet fans eager to see not

just Miko but star Japanese dancers working with overseas companies, including Yuriko

Kajiya (American Ballet Theatre), Misa Kuranaga (Boston Ballet) and Shoko Nakamura

(Berlin State Ballet) among others.

Nowadays, there are Japanese ballet dancers in almost every prominent ballet company

across Europe and the United States yet at home the state limits its involvement to just the

National Ballet of Japan founded in 1997 and based at the New National Theatre, Tokyo.

Though this lack of public support has undoubtedly held back ballet in Japan ever since the

performance art arrived here in the modernizing Meiji Era (1868-1912), there are nowadays

no fewer than 4,630 official ballet studios nationwide, currently with more than 400,000


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students. But adding to that unofficial studios run by former dancers, who often teach from

home, and there may well be more than 10,000 in all.

Official or not, though, close to 90 percent of all these studios are independently owned and

receive no public funding or subsidies. So ironically, while some of the best ballet dancers in

the world are Japanese, its as if their own government either doesnt know or doesnt care.

Against that backdrop, Miko who has Swiss, British and Japanese passports is in theenviable position of being able to count on her parents commitment to her career. And First

Position addresses the issue of parents with ballet kids, for whom they must fork out for toe

shoes, which can be worn out after just one days hard practice but cost around $80 dollars a

pair. Meanwhile, a tutu lasts longer but will set them back anything from $1,200 to $3,000.

Nonetheless, not one of the mothers featured in the documentary has a job instead theyre

driving little dancers from one studio or competition to the next, or making tutus on their

home sewing machines. For their part, fathers often relocate their jobs so their children can

be closer to the ballet like Mikos dad, who moved his office headquarters and family

home from Palo Alto to Walnut Creek.

In the film, his take on his daughters dancing is: If we hadnt been a ballet family, we would

all have been 10 pounds (4.5 kg) heavier, taking a lot more vacations and watching a lot more

TV.

As it is, the family can rarely take even a day off; Miko is at the studio seven days a week, up to

six hours a day with Satoko by her side. She homeschools, which is common among

American kids looking to become professionals but is frowned upon in Japan and some

countries in Europe. Across the European Union there are also a number of ballet academies

where youngsters can follow a regular school curriculum for half the day and hit the barre for

the rest.

In Japan, theres no such system as this, and the best and often the only solution is to send a

promising dancer overseas and enroll them in an academy where they can learn the language

and study under ballet masters at the same time.

But however and wherever a ballet dancer trains, the human body dictates that their on-stagelife will be short, with age 40 or thereabouts being a cutoff for the minority who can even

carry on until then. After theyve taken their final bow, Japanese dancers generally return

home to pass on their skills as teachers. Teaching, though, is notoriously low paid, with

annual earnings of around 2 million the norm out of which they must pay production fees

for recitals, and for any unsold tickets.

But if thats bad, the 3 million to 3.5 million annual salary for principal dancers with the

National Ballet of Japan is downright shameful and barely enough to support themselves and

their art.


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Miko is well aware of the harsh realities of being a ballet dancer in Japan but she also

knows that the Japanese revere and respect ballet in a way thats just not possible in the

U.S. Whenever she comes here and stays with her grandmother, commuting to a ballet studio

for daily practice, she says she is inspired by how hard the Japanese ballerinas work, their

total dedication and unflagging stamina.

Theyre also so skinny, much skinnier than the ballet dancers in the U.S., she says. I think

its because they have to walk everywhere. They walk to the train station, they walk to the

studio. Her mother Satoko adds: Miko gets very lean when shes in Japan. Its the food, and

its the daily walking. People are much more disciplined and self-controlled, too.

And whenever I come back to Japan, Im always struck by how people here love and respect

the arts. In trains, people are reading literature. They throng the book stores and in spite of

the bad economy they go to concerts and buy tickets for the ballet. Its amazing. I just dont

see that in the States.

Of course Satoko herself loves art and music, and she has made it her mission in life to see

that her artistic daughter fulfills her tremendous potential. My own mother supported my

piano-playing in every way. Im very grateful for that, and so I just want to do for Miko what

my own mother did for me, she says in a way that speaks loud and clear of love.

Bess Kargmans award-winning documentary, First Position, is out on DVD for sale

and rental.

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Ballet prodigy gets a big lift from mom _ The Japan Times.pdf

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